Fungi infection, especially derived from , causes severe grapevine economic losses worldwide. Despite the availability of chemical treatments, looking for eco-friendly ways to control infection is gaining much more attention. When a plant is infected, multiple disease-control molecular mechanisms are activated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHPV vaccination rates remain low among US adolescents, with only 54% completing the series in 2019. The vaccine is recommended at age 11-12 but can be given as early as age 9. Although it has been found that offering the vaccine earlier improves completion rates by age 13, parents remain reluctant to allow their younger children to initiate this vaccine.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Mid-Regional pro-Adrenomedullin (MR-proADM) is an inflammatory biomarker that improves the prognostic assessment of patients with sepsis, septic shock and organ failure. Previous studies of MR-proADM have primarily focussed on bacterial infections. A limited number of small and monocentric studies have examined MR-proADM as a prognostic factor in patients infected with SARS-CoV-2, however there is need for multicenter validation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAcid mine drainage (AMD) systems are extremely acidic and are metal-rich formations inhabited by relatively low-complexity communities of acidophiles whose enzymes remain mostly uncharacterized. Indeed, enzymes from only a few AMD sites have been studied. The low number of available cultured representatives and genome sequences of acidophiles inhabiting AMDs makes it difficult to assess the potential of these environments for enzyme bioprospecting.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInt J Infect Dis
October 2021
Obesity has reached an epidemic level worldwide, and bariatric surgery (BS) has been proven to be the most efficient therapy to reduce severe obesity-related comorbidities. Given that the gut microbiota plays a causal role in obesity development and that surgery may alter the gut environment, investigating the impact of BS on the microbiota in the context of severe obesity is important. Although, alterations at the level of total gut bacteria, total gene content and total metabolite content have started to be disentangled, a clear deficit exists regarding the analysis of the active fraction of the microbiota, which is the fraction that is most reactive to the BS.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAim: The aim of this study was to determine whether a direct relationship existed between absolute telomere length (aTL), obesity and familial functionality in a group of Mexican children.
Methods: We recruited 134 children (52% boys) aged 8-10 years during regular primary care check-ups in 2016 and evaluated physical activity (PA), feeding practices, anthropometrics, body fat percentage (BF%) and family dysfunction. Optimised quantitative PCR determined aTL from genomic deoxyribonucleic acid isolated from saliva samples.
Composition of the gut microbiota changes during ageing, but questions remain about whether age is also associated with deficits in microbiome function and whether these changes occur sharply or progressively. The ability to define these deficits in populations of different ages may help determine a chronological age threshold at which deficits occur and subsequently identify innovative dietary strategies for active and healthy ageing. Here, active gut microbiota and associated metabolic functions were evaluated using shotgun proteomics in three well-defined age groups consisting of 30 healthy volunteers, namely, ten infants, ten adults and ten elderly individuals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAmination of bulky ketones, particularly in () configuration, is an attractive chemical conversion; however, known ω-transaminases (ω-TAs) show insufficient levels of performance. By applying two screening methods, we discovered 10 amine transaminases from the class III ω-TA family that were 38% to 76% identical to homologues. We present examples of such enzymes preferring bulky ketones over keto acids and aldehydes with stringent () selectivity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFunctional screens have been extensively used for searching native enzymes or mutant variants in clone libraries. Esterases and lipases are the most retrieved enzymes, because they are within the more demanded industrial enzymes and because a number of simple and generic screening methods can be applied for their screen. Here, we describe the use of a generic pH indicator assay protocol which unambiguously allows detecting in high-throughput manner esterase and lipase activity and quantifying specific activities using an ester concentration above 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjective: In a recent blinded randomized study, we found that in HIV-infected individuals a short supplementation with prebiotics (scGOS/lcFOS/glutamine) ameliorates dysbiosis of total gut bacteria, particularly among viremic untreated patients. Our study goal was to determine the fraction of the microbiota that becomes active during the intervention and that could provide additional functional information.
Design: A total of six healthy individuals, and 16 HIV-infected patients comprising viremic untreated patients (n = 5) and antiretroviral therapy-treated patients that are further divided into immunological responders (n = 7) and immunological nonresponders (n = 4) completed the 6-week course of prebiotic treatment, including six patients receiving a placebo.
Effects of altering the properties of an active site in an enzymatic homogeneous catalyst have been extensively reported. However, the possibility of increasing the number of such sites, as commonly done in heterogeneous catalytic materials, remains unexplored, particularly because those have to accommodate appropriate residues in specific configurations. This possibility was investigated by using a serine ester hydrolase as the target enzyme.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEsterases receive special attention because of their wide distribution in biological systems and environments and their importance for physiology and chemical synthesis. The prediction of esterases' substrate promiscuity level from sequence data and the molecular reasons why certain such enzymes are more promiscuous than others remain to be elucidated. This limits the surveillance of the sequence space for esterases potentially leading to new versatile biocatalysts and new insights into their role in cellular function.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNitrilotriacetic amine (NTA)-functionalized nanoparticles obtained by aqueous polymerization-induced self-assembly (PISA) are introduced as immobilization supports for polyhistidine-functionalized (His-tagged) enzymes. A novel initiator for nitroxide-mediated polymerization based on the nitroxide SG1 and carrying a protected NTA moiety was first synthesized. Size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (ESI-MS) proved the ability of this initiator to produce well-defined end-functional vinyl polymers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe analysis of the microbial metabolome is crucial to fully understand the symbiotic relation between humans and microbes. That is why an explosion of metabolomics took place in the area. So far, at least several hundreds of microbial metabolites have been shown to be statistically altered when humans undergo a plethora of commonly faced perturbations.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhile changes in gut microbial populations have been described in human immuno-deficiency virus (HIV)-infected patients undergoing antiretroviral therapy (ART), the mechanisms underlying the contributions of gut bacteria and their molecular agents (metabolites and proteins) to immune recovery remain unexplored. To study this, we examined the active fraction of the gut microbiome, through examining protein synthesis and accumulation of metabolites inside gut bacteria and in the bloodstream, in 8 healthy controls and 29 HIV-infected individuals (6 being longitudinally studied). We found that HIV infection is associated to dramatic changes in the active set of gut bacteria simultaneously altering the metabolic outcomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFImbalances in gut bacteria have been associated with multiple diseases. However, whether there are disease-specific changes in gut microbial metabolism remains unknown. Here, we demonstrate that human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection (n = 33) changes, at quantifiable levels, the metabolism of gut bacteria.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFComb Chem High Throughput Screen
August 2017
Nowadays, enzymes can be efficiently identified and screened from metagenomic resources or mutant libraries. A set of a few hundred new enzymes can be found using a simple substrate within few months. Hence, the establishment of collections of enzymes is no longer a big hurdle.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFRecent reports have suggested that the establishment of industrially relevant enzyme collections from environmental genomes has become a routine procedure. Across the studies assessed, a mean number of approximately 44 active clones were obtained in an average size of approximately 53,000 clones tested using naïve screening protocols. This number could be significantly increased in shorter times when novel metagenome enzyme sequences obtained by direct sequencing are selected and subjected to high-throughput expression for subsequent production and characterization.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCrude oil is one of the most important natural assets for humankind, yet it is a major environmental pollutant, notably in marine environments. One of the largest crude oil polluted areas in the word is the semi-enclosed Mediterranean Sea, in which the metabolic potential of indigenous microbial populations towards the large-scale chronic pollution is yet to be defined, particularly in anaerobic and micro-aerophilic sites. Here, we provide an insight into the microbial metabolism in sediments from three chronically polluted marine sites along the coastline of Italy: the Priolo oil terminal/refinery site (near Siracuse, Sicily), harbour of Messina (Sicily) and shipwreck of MT Haven (near Genoa).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTwo of the largest crude oil-polluted areas in the world are the semi-enclosed Mediterranean and Red Seas, but the effect of chronic pollution remains incompletely understood on a large scale. We compared the influence of environmental and geographical constraints and anthropogenic forces (hydrocarbon input) on bacterial communities in eight geographically separated oil-polluted sites along the coastlines of the Mediterranean and Red Seas. The differences in community compositions and their biodegradation potential were primarily associated (P < 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMultiple factors have been shown to alter intestinal microbial diversity. It remains to be seen, however, how multiple collective pressures impact the activity in the gut environment and which, if any, is positioned as a dominant driving factor determining the final metabolic outcomes. Here, we describe the results of a metabolome-wide scan of gut microbiota in 18 subjects with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) and 17 healthy control subjects and demonstrate a statistically significant difference (p < 0.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe shrimp Rimicaris exoculata dominates the fauna in deep-sea hydrothermal vent sites along the Mid-Atlantic Ridge (depth, 2,320 m). Here, we identified and biochemically characterized three carboxyl esterases from microbial communities inhabiting the R. exoculata gill that were isolated by naive screens of a gill chamber metagenomic library.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFHerein, we applied a community genomic approach using a naphthalene-enriched community (CN1) to isolate a versatile esterase (CN1E1) from the α/β-hydrolase family. The protein shares low-to-medium identity (≤ 57%) with known esterase/lipase-like proteins. The enzyme is most active at 25-30°C and pH 8.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe microbiomes in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT) of individuals receiving antibiotics and those in obese subjects undergo compositional shifts, the metabolic effects and linkages of which are not clearly understood. Herein, we set to gain insight into these effects, particularly with regard to carbohydrate metabolism, and to contribute to unravel the underlying mechanisms and consequences for health conditions. We measured the activity level of GIT carbohydrate-active enzymes toward 23 distinct sugars in adults patients (n = 2) receiving 14-d β-lactam therapy and in obese (n = 7) and lean (n = 5) adolescents.
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