Publications by authors named "M D Kazanov"
Recent advancements in experimental and computational methods for RNA secondary structure detection have revealed the crucial role of RNA structural elements in diverse molecular processes within living cells. It has been demonstrated that the secondary structure of the entire viral genome is often responsible for performing crucial functions in the viral life cycle and also influences virus evolution. To investigate the role of viral RNA secondary structure, alongside experimental techniques, the use of bioinformatics tools is important for analyzing various secondary structure patterns, including hairpin loops, internal loops, multifurcations, external loops, bulges, stems, and pseudoknots.
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- Bifidobacteria are important early colonizers of the gut and offer various health benefits, but individual responses to probiotics can differ based on factors like strain type and diet.
- A study reconstructed 66 pathways related to carbohydrate utilization in bifidobacteria, revealing significant variability in their glycan metabolism capabilities at both species and strain levels.
- This research enhances understanding of bifidobacterial metabolism and lays the groundwork for developing targeted probiotic and synbiotic formulations that optimize health benefits.
Article Synopsis
- The study focuses on how viruses like SARS-CoV-2 enter host cells via membrane fusion activated by proteolytic enzymes, which are usually host cell proteases.
- Researchers developed a bioinformatics method to identify these proteases that can cleave viral proteins, crucial for creating antiviral drugs.
- Their approach combined predictive models of human proteases' substrate specificity with structural analysis to assess potential proteolysis sites, and it was validated using the well-studied spike protein of SARS-CoV-2.
Article Synopsis
- - The virus SARS-CoV-2 uses its spike protein to enter human cells by binding to the angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor, followed by cleavage by specific host proteases such as furin and protease serine 2, which facilitate membrane fusion.
- - This study employed a bioinformatics approach to analyze 169 human proteases that can potentially cleave the spike protein, identifying several families of proteases that cleave important sites on the spike protein and influence its entry into the cell.
- - A particular focus was given to the potential cleavage site at the K790 position, where cleavage could mimic other influential cleavages, leading to significant changes in the spike protein's structure and
Evidence is accumulating that perturbed postnatal development of the gut microbiome contributes to childhood malnutrition. Here we analyse biospecimens from a randomized, controlled trial of a microbiome-directed complementary food (MDCF-2) that produced superior rates of weight gain compared with a calorically more dense conventional ready-to-use supplementary food in 12-18-month-old Bangladeshi children with moderate acute malnutrition. We reconstructed 1,000 bacterial genomes (metagenome-assembled genomes (MAGs)) from the faecal microbiomes of trial participants, identified 75 MAGs of which the abundances were positively associated with ponderal growth (change in weight-for-length Z score (WLZ)), characterized changes in MAG gene expression as a function of treatment type and WLZ response, and quantified carbohydrate structures in MDCF-2 and faeces.
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