Publications by authors named "E Pruitt"

Article Synopsis
  • Researchers use different methods to create giant unilamellar vesicles, but each method can produce vesicles with different amounts of lipids, even when using the same materials.
  • They studied the lipid ratios in vesicles made by five common methods and found that some methods have small differences while one method, emulsion transfer, had a much lower amount of cholesterol than expected.
  • The results suggest that small changes in lipid ratios can be really affected by the method used, but experiments that change lipid ratios more dramatically will be less affected by these variations.
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Unlabelled: Researchers choose different methods of making giant unilamellar vesicles in order to satisfy different constraints of their experimental designs. A challenge of using a variety of methods is that each may produce vesicles of different lipid compositions, even if all vesicles are made from a common stock mixture. Here, we use mass spectrometry to investigate ratios of lipids in vesicles made by five common methods: electroformation on indium tin oxide slides, electroformation on platinum wires, gentle hydration, emulsion transfer, and extrusion.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study focused on the impact of prenylated peanut stilbenoids on the growth and biofilm formation of a dental caries pathogen.
  • Previous research showed non-prenylated stilbenes like resveratrol and piceatannol had anti-caries effects, so this study aimed to see if adding a prenyl group improved efficacy.
  • Results indicated that the prenylated stilbenes, arachidin-1 and arachidin-3, were more effective than their non-prenylated counterparts, significantly inhibiting bacterial growth, reducing biofilm formation, and decreasing acid production linked to tooth enamel erosion.
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Incorporation of host-derived exogenous fatty acids (eFAs), particularly unsaturated fatty acids (UFAs), by could affect the bacterial membrane fluidity and susceptibility to antimicrobials. In this work, we found that glycerol ester hydrolase (Geh) is the primary lipase hydrolyzing cholesteryl esters and, to a lesser extent, triglycerides and that human serum albumin (HSA) could serve as a buffer of eFAs, where low levels of HSA facilitate the utilization of eFAs but high levels of HSA inhibit it. The fact that the type II fatty acid synthesis (FASII) inhibitor, AFN-1252, leads to an increase in UFA content even in the absence of eFA suggests that membrane property modulation is part of its mechanism of action.

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