Publications by authors named "Marketa Macho"

Resistance development and exhaustion of the arsenal of existing antibacterial agents urgently require an alternative approach toward drug discovery. Herein, we report the screening of Medicines for Malaria Venture (MMV) Pandemic Response Box (PRB) through a cascade developed to streamline the potential compounds with antivirulent properties to combat an opportunistic pathogen, Pseudomonas aeruginosa. To find an agent suppressing the production of P.

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Wounds are structural and functional disruptions of skin that occur because of trauma, surgery, acute illness, or chronic disease conditions. Chronic wounds are caused by a breakdown in the finely coordinated cascade of events that occurs during healing. Wound healing is a long process that split into at least three continuous and overlapping processes: an inflammatory response, a proliferative phase, and finally the tissue remodeling.

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Microbial cyclic lipopeptides are an important class of antifungal compounds with applications in pharmacology and biotechnology. However, the cytotoxicity of many cyclic lipopeptides limits their potential as antifungal drugs. Here we present a structure-activity relationship study on the puwainaphycin/minutissamide (PUW/MIN) family of cyclic lipopeptides isolated from cyanobacteria.

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Puwainaphycins (PUW) and minutissamides (MIN) are structurally homologous cyclic lipopeptides that exhibit high structural variability and possess antifungal and cytotoxic activities. While only a minor variation can be found in the amino acid composition of the peptide cycle, the fatty acid (FA) moiety varies largely. The effect of FA functionalization on the bioactivity of PUW/MIN chemical variants is poorly understood.

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Scytophycins, including tolytoxin, represent a class of actin disrupting macrolides with strong antiproliferative effects on human cells. Despite intense research, little attention has been paid to scytophycin-induced cell death or the structural features affecting its potency. We show that tolytoxin and its natural analogue, 7-O-methylscytophycin B, lacking the hydroxyl substitution in its macrolactone ring, differ substantially in their cytotoxic effect.

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Article Synopsis
  • The regulation of oligopeptide production is crucial for understanding their ecological impacts, particularly in harmful cyanobacterial blooms and interactions with microbial communities.
  • Research reveals that bacterial epibionts influence the production of microviridins, which may have anti-grazing properties, through a quorum-sensing mechanism.
  • The findings suggest that these chemical interactions facilitate specific metabolic responses among cyanobacteria, indicating the need for further exploration into cyanopeptides and their effects on aquatic ecosystems and human health.
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Xylitol is a white crystalline, amorphous sugar alcohol and low-calorie sweetener. Xylitol prevents demineralization of teeth and bones, otitis media infection, respiratory tract infections, inflammation and cancer progression. NADPH generated in xylitol metabolism aid in the treatment of glucose-6-phosphate deficiency-associated hemolytic anemia.

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Heterocytous cyanobacteria are among the most prolific sources of bioactive secondary metabolites, including anabaenopeptins (APTs). A terrestrial filamentous sp. CT11 collected in Costa Rica bamboo forest as a black mat, was studied using a multidisciplinary approach: genome mining and HPLC-HRMS/MS coupled with bioinformatic analyses.

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The rapid emergence of resistance in pathogenic bacteria together with a steep decline in economic incentives has rendered a new wave in the drug development by the pharmaceutical industry and researchers. Since cyanobacteria are recognized as wide producers of pharmaceutically important compounds, we investigated thirty-four cyanobacterial extracts prepared by solvents of different polarities for their antimicrobial potential. Almost all tested cyanobacterial strains exhibited some degree of antimicrobial bioactivity, with more general effect on fungal strains compared with bacteria.

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