Publications by authors named "Lutter L"

Breastfeeding provides important immunological benefits to the neonate, but how the different immunoactive components in breastmilk contribute to immunity remains poorly understood. Here, we characterized human breastmilk T cells using single-cell RNA-Seq and flow cytometry. Breastmilk contained predominantly memory T cells, with expression of immune signaling genes, high proliferation, and an effector Th1/cytotoxic profile with high cytokine production capacities.

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  • Sourdough bread production depends on active starters that need daily feeding with flour and water, making microbial stability essential for consistent quality.
  • A study analyzed lactic acid bacteria (LAB) in wheat and rye sourdoughs over multiple seasons, identifying 66 LAB isolates and discovering significant diversity with 19 distinct genotypes.
  • The research indicated that LAB in rye sourdoughs were more stable than those in wheat, highlighting the need for ongoing monitoring of microbial strains to ensure high-quality bread.
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Reducing fibrous aggregates of protein tau is a possible strategy for halting progression of Alzheimer's dis-ease (AD). Previously we found that in vitro the D-peptide D-TLKIVWC disassembles tau fibrils from AD brains (AD-tau) into benign segments with no energy source present beyond ambient thermal agitation. This disassembly by a short peptide was unexpected, given that AD-tau is sufficiently stable to withstand disas-sembly in boiling SDS detergent.

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Reducing fibrous aggregates of protein tau is a possible strategy for halting progression of Alzheimer's disease (AD). Previously we found that the D-peptide D-TLKIVWC disassembles tau fibrils from AD brains (AD-tau) into benign segments with no energy source present beyond ambient thermal agitation. This disassembly by a short peptide was unexpected, given that AD-tau is sufficiently stable to withstand disassembly in boiling SDS detergent.

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The mucosal immune system is implicated in the etiology and progression of inflammatory bowel diseases. The lamina propria and epithelium of the gut mucosa constitute two separate compartments, containing distinct T-cell populations. Human CD4 T-cell programming and regulation of lamina propria and epithelium CD4 T cells, especially during inflammation, remain incompletely understood.

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  • The Nucleocapsid protein (NCAP) of SARS-CoV-2 plays a vital role in the virus's function, with its self-assembly being central to this role.
  • Analysis shows that NCAP has low-complexity domains (LCDs) similar to those in other proteins, which can form phase separation droplets and amyloid fibrils.
  • The study reveals that the central LCD of NCAP can lead to both phase separation and amyloid formation, highlighting three adhesive segments that, when targeted by a new peptide (G12), can inhibit NCAP's self-assembly and exhibit antiviral effects against SARS-CoV-2.
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The demand for healthy foods without artificial food additives is constantly increasing. Hence, natural food preservation methods using bioprotective cultures could be an alternative to chemical preservatives. Thus, the main purpose of this work was to screen the indigenous lactobacilli isolated from fermented cow milk for their safety and antifungal activity to select the safe strain with the strongest fungicidal properties for the development of bioprotective acid whey protein concentrate (AWPC) based fermentates and their coatings intended for fresh cheese quality maintenance.

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Edible coatings as carriers for protective lactic acid bacteria (LAB) can enhance hygienic quality to dairy products. Thus, the aim of this study was to improve the quality of artisanal acid-curd cheese by applying liquid acid whey protein concentrate based edible coating with entrapped indigenous antimicrobial Lactobacillus helveticus MI-LH13. The edible fresh acid-curd cheese coating was composed of 100% (w/w) liquid acid whey protein concentrate (LAWPC), apple pectin, sunflower oil, and glycerol containing 6 log10 CFU/mL of strain biomass applied on cheese by dipping.

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Tau is a natively unfolded protein that contributes to the stability of microtubules. Under pathological conditions such as Alzheimer's disease (AD), tau protein misfolds and self-assembles to form paired helical filaments (PHFs) and straight filaments (SFs). Full-length tau protein assembles poorly and its self-assembly is enhanced with polyanions such as heparin and RNA in vitro, but a role for heparin or other polyanions in vivo remains unclear.

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Objective: Tregs are crucial for immune regulation, and environment-driven adaptation of effector (e)Tregs is essential for local functioning. However, the extent of human Treg heterogeneity in inflammatory settings is unclear.

Methods: We combined single-cell RNA- and TCR-sequencing on Tregs derived from three to six patients with juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA) to investigate the functional heterogeneity of human synovial fluid (SF)-derived Tregs from inflamed joints.

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Although "zero waste" valorization concepts are gaining increasing attention, colostrum, a byproduct of milk production, remains underused due to technological challenges. Information about the fat fraction and the size of fat globules is needed to address these challenges, but such information is currently lacking. This study aimed to fill this gap in the knowledge by measuring the size distribution of bovine colostrum fat globules (CFG) and analyzing its relationships with postpartum milkings, parity, and fatty acids (FA) profile.

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The presence of amyloid fibrils is a hallmark of more than 50 human disorders, including neurodegenerative diseases and systemic amyloidoses. A key unresolved challenge in understanding the involvement of amyloid in disease is to explain the relationship between individual structural polymorphs of amyloid fibrils, in potentially mixed populations, and the specific pathologies with which they are associated. Although cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) and solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance (ssNMR) spectroscopy methods have been successfully employed in recent years to determine the structures of amyloid fibrils with high resolution detail, they rely on ensemble averaging of fibril structures in the entire sample or significant subpopulations.

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Background & Aims: Tissue-resident memory T (Trm) cells, both of the CD4 and CD8 lineage, have been implicated in disease flares in inflammatory bowel disease. However, data are conflicting regarding the profile of human CD8 Trm cells, with studies suggesting both proinflammatory and regulatory functions. It is crucial to understand the functional profile of these cells in the context of (new) therapeutic strategies targeting (trafficking of) gut Trm cells.

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The prediction of highly ordered three-dimensional structures of amyloid protein fibrils from the amino acid sequences of their monomeric self-assembly precursors constitutes a challenging and unresolved aspect of the classical protein folding problem. Because of the polymorphic nature of amyloid assembly whereby polypeptide chains of identical amino acid sequences under identical conditions are capable of self-assembly into a spectrum of different fibril structures, the prediction of amyloid structures from an amino acid sequence requires a detailed and holistic understanding of its assembly free energy landscape. The full extent of the structure space accessible to the cross-β molecular architecture of amyloid must also be resolved.

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  • Treg cells play a key role in maintaining immune balance, and their transition into effector Treg (eTreg) cells is essential for immune function, particularly during inflammation.
  • The study uses transcriptional and epigenetic analysis to reveal a distinct eTreg cell signature in humans, highlighting increased expression of specific markers (like FOXP3 and GITR) during inflammatory responses.
  • It finds that the vitamin D receptor (VDR) is a significant regulator in eTreg differentiation, and the altered epigenetic landscape suggests a connection between inflammation-derived Treg cells and those found in tumors.
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Aim: A "leaky" gut barrier has been implicated in the initiation and progression of a multitude of diseases, for example, inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), irritable bowel syndrome and celiac disease. Here we show how pro-hormone Chromogranin A (CgA), produced by the enteroendocrine cells, and Catestatin (CST: hCgA ), the most abundant CgA-derived proteolytic peptide, affect the gut barrier.

Methods: Colon tissues from region-specific CST-knockout (CST-KO) mice, CgA-knockout (CgA-KO) and WT mice were analysed by immunohistochemistry, western blot, ultrastructural and flowcytometry studies.

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T lymphocytes accumulate in inflamed tissues of patients with chronic inflammatory diseases (CIDs) and express pro-inflammatory cytokines upon re-stimulation in vitro. Further, a significant genetic linkage to MHC genes suggests that T lymphocytes play an important role in the pathogenesis of CIDs including juvenile idiopathic arthritis (JIA). However, the functions of T lymphocytes in established disease remain elusive.

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Signal Inhibitory Receptor on Leukocytes-1 (SIRL-1) is expressed on human blood monocytes and granulocytes and inhibits myeloid effector functions. On monocytes, but not granulocytes, SIRL-1 expression is low or absent in individuals with the single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rs612529C. The expression of SIRL-1 in tissue and the influence of rs612529 hereon is currently unknown.

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Amyloid fibrils are highly polymorphic structures formed by many different proteins. They provide biological function but also abnormally accumulate in numerous human diseases. The physicochemical principles of amyloid polymorphism are not understood due to lack of structural insights at the single-fibril level.

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Atomic force microscopy, AFM, is a powerful tool that can produce detailed topographical images of individual nano-structures with a high signal-to-noise ratio without the need for ensemble averaging. However, the application of AFM in structural biology has been hampered by the tip-sample convolution effect, which distorts images of nano-structures, particularly those that are of similar dimensions to the cantilever probe tips used in AFM. Here we show that the tip-sample convolution results in a feature-dependent and non-uniform distribution of image resolution on AFM topographs.

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The constituent paired helical filaments (PHFs) in neurofibrillary tangles are insoluble intracellular deposits central to the development of Alzheimer's disease (AD) and other tauopathies. Full-length tau requires the addition of anionic cofactors such as heparin to enhance assembly. We have shown that a fragment from the proteolytically stable core of the PHF, tau 297-391 known as 'dGAE', spontaneously forms cross-β-containing PHFs and straight filaments under physiological conditions.

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The formation of a diverse range of amyloid structures from normally soluble proteins and peptides is a hallmark of devastating human disorders as well as biological functions. The current molecular understanding of the amyloid lifecycle reveals four processes central to their growth and propagation: primary nucleation, elongation, secondary nucleation and division. However, these processes result in a wide range of cross-β packing and filament arrangements, including diverse assemblies formed from identical monomeric precursors with the same amino acid sequences.

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The epithelial barrier of the gastrointestinal tract is home to numerous intraepithelial T cells (IETs). IETs are functionally adapted to the mucosal environment and are among the first adaptive immune cells to encounter microbial and dietary antigens. They possess hallmark features of tissue-resident T cells: they are long-lived nonmigratory cells capable of rapidly responding to antigen challenges independent of T cell recruitment from the periphery.

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Autologous hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (aHSCT) for autoimmune diseases has been applied for two decades as a treatment for refractory patients with progressive disease. The rationale behind aHSCT is that high-dose immunosuppression eliminates autoreactive T and B cells, thereby resetting the immune system. Post-aHSCT the cytotoxic CD8 T cells normalize clonal expansion due to homeostatic proliferation within a few months.

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Regulatory approaches for evaluating therapeutic equivalence of multisource (or generic) drug products vary among different countries and/or regions. Harmonization of these approaches may decrease the number of in vivo bioequivalence studies and avoid unnecessary drug exposure to humans. Global harmonization for regulatory requirements may be promoted by a better understanding of factors underlying product performance and expectations from different regulatory authorities.

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