Pantothenate kinase: A promising therapeutic target against pathogenic species.

Current treatment of clostridial infections includes broad-spectrum antibiotics and antitoxins, yet antitoxins are ineffective against all species. Moreover, rising antimicrobial resistance (AMR) threatens treatment effectiveness and public health. This study therefore aimed to discover a common drug target for four pathogenic clostridial species, , , , and through an core genomic approach.

Antiviral peptides inhibiting the main protease of SARS-CoV-2 investigated by computational screening and in vitro protease assay.

The main protease (Mpro) of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) plays an important role in viral replication and transcription and received great attention as a vital target for drug/peptide development. Therapeutic agents such as small-molecule drugs or peptides that interact with the Cys-His present in the catalytic site of Mpro are an efficient way to inhibit the protease. Although several emergency-approved vaccines showed good efficacy and drastically dropped the infection rate, evolving variants are still infecting and killing millions of people globally.

Identification of Inflammatory Proteomics Networks of Toll-like Receptor 4 through Immunoprecipitation-Based Chemical Cross-Linking Proteomics.

Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) is a receptor on an immune cell that can recognize the invasion of bacteria through their attachment with bacterial lipopolysaccharides (LPS). Hence, LPS is a pro-immune response stimulus. On the other hand, statins are lipid-lowering drugs and can also lower immune cell responses.

Proteomics Network Analysis of Polarized Macrophages.

Macrophages play a critical role in innate immunity through Toll-like receptor (TLR) signaling. Lipopolysaccharides (LPS) are a ligand of microbial origin that can trigger cell signaling in macrophages through TLRs and production of pro-inflammatory cytokines. Statin, a hypercholesterolemia drug, on the contrary, can reduce inflammatory cytokine production, and inflammation at large.

Improved in-solution trypsin digestion method for methanol-chloroform precipitated cellular proteomics sample.

Methanol-chloroform based protein precipitation is an essential step in many liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry-based cellular proteomics applications. However, re-solubilization of the total protein precipitate is difficult using regular in-solution digestion protocol. Sodium deoxycholate is reported as an efficient surfactant for re-solubilization of membrane fractions.