Thraustochytrid hosts for expression of proteins relevant to SARS-CoV-2 intervention.

The emergence of COVID-19 as a global pandemic had sharply illustrated the limitations of research and development pipelines and scaled manufacturing. Although existing vaccines were created in record time, global deployment remains limited by regional production scales. Similarly, the most effective treatments for infected COVID-19 patients are also constrained by production scales as well as by the cost of production and thus expense per treatment.

Ergothioneine Mitigates Telomere Shortening under Oxidative Stress Conditions.

Shortened telomeres are associated with aging and age-related diseases. Oxidative stress is thought to be a major contributor to telomere shortening, and antioxidants may be able to mitigate these effects. Ergothioneine is a naturally occurring amino acid with potent antioxidant properties.

Synthesis and Biological Evaluation of Antibody Drug Conjugates Based on an Antibody Expression System: Conamax.

Antibody production for ADCs (or in general) is commonly performed by CHO-based platforms and limited by volumetric productivity, expensive downstream purification, and extended optimization timelines. The Conamax platform is a novel microbial-based protein production and secretion system. A suite of synthetic biology tools have enabled high volumetric productivity (>1 g/L/d) and glycoengineering to produce simple and consistent human-like post-translational modifications.

Dinoflagellate Gene Structure and Intron Splice Sites in a Genomic Tandem Array.

Dinoflagellates are one of the last major lineages of eukaryotes for which little is known about genome structure and organization. We report here the sequence and gene structure of a clone isolated from a cosmid library which, to our knowledge, represents the largest contiguously sequenced, dinoflagellate genomic, tandem gene array. These data, combined with information from a large transcriptomic library, allowed a high level of confidence of every base pair call.

Dinoflagellate phylogeny revisited: using ribosomal proteins to resolve deep branching dinoflagellate clades.

The alveolates are composed of three major lineages, the ciliates, dinoflagellates, and apicomplexans. Together these 'protist' taxa play key roles in primary production and ecology, as well as in illness of humans and other animals. The interface between the dinoflagellate and apicomplexan clades has been an area of recent discovery, blurring the distinction between these two clades.

Vaccination against influenza with recombinant hemagglutinin expressed by Schizochytrium sp. confers protective immunity.

For the rapid production of influenza vaccine antigens in unlimited quantities, a transition from conventional egg-based production to cell-based and recombinant systems is required. The need for higher-yield, lower-cost, and faster production processes is critical to provide adequate supplies of influenza vaccine to counter global pandemic threats. In this study, recombinant hemagglutinin proteins of influenza virus were expressed in the microalga Schizochytrium sp.

Characterization of both polyunsaturated fatty acid biosynthetic pathways in Schizochytrium sp.

Schizochytrium produces long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) via a PUFA synthase. Targeted mutagenesis of one gene of this synthase was conducted to confirm PUFA synthase function and determine its metabolic necessity. The resulting mutants were auxotrophic and required supplementation with PUFAs.

Labyrinthulomycetes phylogeny and its implications for the evolutionary loss of chloroplasts and gain of ectoplasmic gliding.

The labyrinthulomycetes, also known as the 'Labyrinthulomycota' are saprotrophic or less frequently parasitic stramenopilan protists, usually in marine ecosystems. Their distinguishing feature is an 'ectoplasmic net,' an external cytoplasmic network secreted by a specialized organelle that attaches the cell to its substrate and secretes digestive enzymes for absorptive nutrition. In this study, one of our aims was to infer the phylogenetic position of the labyrinthulomycetes relative to the non-photosynthetic bicoeceans and oomycetes and the photosynthetic ochrophytes and thereby evaluate patterns of change from photosynthesis to saprotrophism among the stramenopiles.

Plastid genes in a non-photosynthetic dinoflagellate.

Dinoflagellates are a diverse group of protists, comprising photosynthetic and heterotrophic free-living species, as well as parasitic ones. About half of them are photosynthetic with peridinin-containing plastids being the most common. It is uncertain whether non-photosynthetic dinoflagellates are primitively so, or have lost photosynthesis.

The genome of the diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana: ecology, evolution, and metabolism.

Diatoms are unicellular algae with plastids acquired by secondary endosymbiosis. They are responsible for approximately 20% of global carbon fixation. We report the 34 million-base pair draft nuclear genome of the marine diatom Thalassiosira pseudonana and its 129 thousand-base pair plastid and 44 thousand-base pair mitochondrial genomes.

In vivo characterization of diatom multipartite plastid targeting signals.

Plastids of diatoms and related algae are delineated by four membranes: the outermost membrane (CER) is continuous with the endoplasmic reticulum while the inner two membranes are homologous to plastid envelope membranes of vascular plants and green algae. Proteins are transported into these plastids by pre-sequences that have two recognizable domains. To characterize targeting of polypeptides within diatom cells, we generated constructs encoding green fluorecent protein (GFP) fused to leader sequences.