Exploring Peripheral and Cardiac Immune Responses in a Pneumosepsis Mouse Model with Group A Streptococcus.

(Group A Streptococcus, GAS) is a human pathogen that causes local and systemic infections of the skin and mucous membranes. However, GAS is also found asymptomatically in the nasopharynx of infants. GAS infections, including pharyngitis and invasive pneumosepsis, pose significant public health concerns.

Lysine Phoshoglycerylation Is Widespread in Bacteria and Overlaps with Acylation.

Phosphoglycerylation is a non-enzymatic protein modification in which a phosphoglyceryl moiety is covalently bound to the ε-amino group of lysine. It is enriched in glycolytic enzymes from humans and mice and is thought to provide a feedback mechanism for regulating glycolytic flux. We report the first proteomic analysis of this post-translational modification in bacteria by profiling phosphoglyceryl-lysine during the growth of in different culture media.

Dynamic Protein Phosphorylation in during Growth, Stationary Phase, and Starvation.

Phosphorylation of proteins at serine, threonine, and tyrosine residues plays an important role in physiological processes of bacteria, such as cell cycle, metabolism, virulence, dormancy, and stationary phase functions. Little is known about the targets and dynamics of protein phosphorylation in , which possesses a single known transmembrane serine/threonine kinase belonging to the class of PASTA kinases. A proteomics and phosphoproteomics workflow was performed with serotype M49 under different growth conditions, stationary phase, and starvation.

Synthetic mRNA delivered to human cells leads to expression of Cpl-1 bacteriophage-endolysin with activity against .

Endolysins are bacteriophage-encoded hydrolases that show high antibacterial activity and a narrow substrate spectrum. We hypothesize that an mRNA-based approach to endolysin therapy can overcome some challenges of conventional endolysin therapy, namely organ targeting and bioavailability. We show that synthetic mRNA applied to three human cell lines (HEK293T, A549, HepG2 cells) leads to expression and cytosolic accumulation of the Cpl-1 endolysin with activity against Addition of a human lysozyme signal peptide sequence translocates the Cpl-1 to the endoplasmic reticulum leading to secretion (hlySP-sCpl-1).

Immunogenicity and contraceptive efficacy of plant-produced putative mouse-specific contraceptive peptides.

Rodent population control through contraception requires species-specific oral contraceptive vaccines. Therefore, in this study, we produced putative mouse-specific contraceptive peptides, mZP2 (from oocyte) and mIzumo1 (from sperm), in plants using -mediated transient expression. Peptides were produced separately in using constructs encoding antigens containing three copies of each peptide.