1,380 results match your criteria: "Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB-Barcelona)[Affiliation]"

Maintaining homeostasis is essential for continued health, and the progressive decay of homeostatic processes is a hallmark of ageing. Daily environmental rhythms threaten homeostasis, and circadian clocks have evolved to execute physiological processes in a manner that anticipates, and thus mitigates, their effects on the organism. Clocks are active in almost all cell types; their rhythmicity and functional output are determined by a combination of tissue-intrinsic and systemic inputs.

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Quantifying the mechanical response of the biological milieu (such as the cell's interior) and complex fluids (such as biomolecular condensates) would enable a better understanding of cellular differentiation and aging and accelerate drug discovery. Here we present time-shared optical tweezer microrheology to determine the frequency- and age-dependent viscoelastic properties of biological materials. Our approach involves splitting a single laser beam into two near-instantaneous time-shared optical traps to carry out simultaneous force and displacement measurements and quantify the mechanical properties ranging from millipascals to kilopascals across five decades of frequency.

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Single-Cell Lineage Tracing and Clonal State-Fate Analysis.

Methods Mol Biol

January 2025

Institute for Research in Biomedicine (IRB Barcelona), The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain.

Lineage tracing has significantly advanced our comprehension in many areas of biology, such as development or immunity, by precisely measuring cellular processes like migration, division, or differentiation across labeled cells and their progeny. Traditional recombinase-based prospective lineage tracing is limited by the need for a priori cell type information and is constrained in the numbers of clones it can simultaneously track. In this sense, clonal lineage tracing with integrated random barcodes offers a robust alternative, enabling researchers to label and track a vast array of cells and their progeny over time.

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Multi-omics profiling reveals altered mitochondrial metabolism in adipose tissue from patients with metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis.

EBioMedicine

December 2024

Unitat de Recerca Biomèdica, Hospital Universitari de Sant Joan, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Institut d'Investigació Sanitària Pere Virgili, Reus, Spain; Department of Medicine and Surgery, Faculty of Medicine, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Reus, Spain; The Campus of International Excellence Southern Catalonia, Tarragona, Spain. Electronic address:

Background: Metabolic dysfunction-associated steatotic liver disease (MASLD) and its more severe form steatohepatitis (MASH) contribute to rising morbidity and mortality rates. The storage of fat in humans is closely associated with these diseases' progression. Thus, adipose tissue metabolic homeostasis could be key in both the onset and progression of MASH.

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The pipeline for new drugs against multidrug-resistant remains limited, highlighting the urgent need for innovative treatments. New strategies, such as membrane-targeting molecules acting as adjuvants, aim to enhance antibiotic effectiveness and combat resistance. RW01, a cyclic peptide with low antimicrobial activity, was selected as an adjuvant to enhance drug efficacy through membrane permeabilization.

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Background: Propolis mouthwash (PROP-M) has demonstrated antibacterial properties like those of chlorhexidine mouthwash (CHX-M). However, its impact on the abundance of oral nitrite-producing species (NPS) and nitrite-producing activity (NPA) remains unexplored.

Methods: Forty-five healthy individuals were randomised into 2 groups to rinse their mouth twice a day for seven days with either CHX-M ( = 21) or PROP-M ( = 24).

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MFN1 (mitofusin 1) and MFN2 are key players in mitochondrial fusion, endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-mitochondria juxtaposition, and macroautophagy/autophagy. However, the mechanisms by which these proteins participate in these processes are poorly understood. Here, we studied the interactomes of these two proteins by using CRISPR-Cas9 technology to insert an HA-tag at the C terminus of MFN1 and MFN2, and thus generating HeLa cell lines that endogenously expressed MFN1-HA or MFN2-HA.

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New developments for the Quest for Orthologs benchmark service.

NAR Genom Bioinform

December 2024

Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Stockholm University, Science for Life Laboratory, Box 1031, SE-17121 Solna, Sweden.

The Quest for Orthologs (QfO) orthology benchmark service (https://orthology.benchmarkservice.org) hosts a wide range of standardized benchmarks for orthology inference evaluation.

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Summary: Advances in high-throughput DNA sequencing technologies and decreasing costs have fueled the identification of small genetic variants (such as single nucleotide variants and indels) across tumors. Despite efforts to standardize variant formats and vocabularies, many sources of variability persist across databases and computational tools that annotate variants, hindering their integration within cancer genomic analyses. In this context, we present OpenVariant, an easily extendable Python package that facilitates seamless reading, parsing and refinement of diverse input file formats in a customizable structure, all within a single process.

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Article Synopsis
  • Chiral nitrogen-containing compounds are essential in various industries, but their synthesis can be challenging due to a vast range of chemical possibilities.
  • This research details a selective method to create 3,3-diarylallyl phthalimides, which, when treated with iridium catalysts, transform into 3,3-diarylpropyl amines with very high enantioselectivity (98-99% ee).
  • The study highlights the role of alkene purity in achieving high enantioselectivity and illustrates how the resulting chiral propylamines can be used to make important bioactive drugs like tolterodine and tolpropamine.
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Article Synopsis
  • - Alternative splicing includes microexons in neuronal proteins, which are often linked to neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism spectrum disorder (ASD).
  • - A specific 24-nucleotide microexon in the RNA-binding protein CPEB4, previously shown to be less included in individuals with ASD, plays a critical role in regulating gene expression linked to neurodevelopment.
  • - The study finds that this microexon helps maintain the flexible regulation of CPEB4 during neuronal activation by preventing its aggregation, allowing it to switch from repressing to activating translation of genes.
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Senescent cells are commonly detected in tumors after chemo and radiotherapy, leading to a characteristic cellular phenotype that resists apoptotic cell death. In this study, we used multiple melanoma cell lines, molecular markers, and therapies to investigate the key role of the BCL-2 family proteins in the survival of senescent cells. We first used BH3 profiling to assess changes in apoptotic priming upon senescence induction.

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Reconstructing the last common ancestor of all eukaryotes.

PLoS Biol

November 2024

Center for Mechanisms of Evolution, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, United States of America.

Understanding the origin of eukaryotic cells is one of the most difficult problems in all of biology. A key challenge relevant to the question of eukaryogenesis is reconstructing the gene repertoire of the last eukaryotic common ancestor (LECA). As data sets grow, sketching an accurate genomics-informed picture of early eukaryotic cellular complexity requires provision of analytical resources and a commitment to data sharing.

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Senescence is a crucial hallmark of ageing and a significant contributor to the pathology of age-related disorders. As committee members of the young International Cell Senescence Association (yICSA), we aim to synthesise recent advancements in the identification, characterisation, and therapeutic targeting of senescence for clinical translation. We explore novel molecular techniques that have enhanced our understanding of senescent cell heterogeneity and their roles in tissue regeneration and pathology.

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Drug-resistant microbes typically carry mutations in genes involved in critical cellular functions and may therefore be less fit under drug-free conditions than susceptible strains. Candida glabrata is a prevalent opportunistic yeast pathogen with a high rate of fluconazole resistance (FLZR), echinocandin resistance (ECR), and multidrug resistance (MDR) relative to other Candida. However, the fitness of C.

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The Drosophila adult midgut progenitor cells (AMPs) give rise to all cells in the adult midgut epithelium, including the intestinal stem cells (ISCs). While they share many characteristics with the ISCs, it remains unclear how they are generated in the early embryo. Here, we show that they arise from a population of endoderm cells, which exhibit multiple similarities with Drosophila neuroblasts.

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Neuregulin 4 (Nrg4) is an adipokine that belongs to the epidermal growth factor family and binds to ErbB4 tyrosine kinase receptors. In 3T3-L1 adipocytes, the downregulation of expression enhances inflammation and autophagy, resulting in insulin resistance. Here, we searched for the causes of this phenotype.

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Background: The Nakaseomyces clade is formed by at least nine described species among which three can be pathogenic to humans, namely Nakaseomyces glabratus (Candida glabrata), the second most-common cause of candidiasis worldwide, and two rarer emerging pathogens: Nakaseomyces (Candida) nivarensis and Nakaseomyces (Candida) bracarensis. Early comparative genomics analyses identified parallel expansions of subtelomeric adhesin genes in N. glabratus and N.

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SUMMARY is a common agent of candidiasis that has gained increased attention in recent years, culminating with its recent consideration as a high-priority fungal pathogen by the World Health Organization. Reasons for this classification are the recent surge in incidence and the alarmingly growing rates of drug and multidrug resistance. In addition, several closely related species such as and may represent recently emerged opportunistic pathogens originated from environmental niches through interspecies hybridization.

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Anticancer therapies can induce cellular senescence or drug-tolerant persistence, two types of proliferative arrest that differ in their stability. While senescence is highly stable, persister cells efficiently resume proliferation upon therapy termination, resulting in tumor relapse. Here, we used an ATP-competitive mTOR inhibitor to induce and characterize persistence in human cancer cells of various origins.

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Article Synopsis
  • Multiple sequence alignments and phylogenetic trees are essential tools in biology research, providing detailed biological insights.
  • PhyKIT is a software tool designed to streamline the analysis of these alignments and trees, offering various functionalities like constructing supermatrices and identifying errors in orthology inference.
  • The text outlines several protocols for using PhyKIT, covering installation, data processing, and features that aid in understanding gene functions and evolutionary relationships.
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Collateral sensitivity counteracts the evolution of antifungal drug resistance in Candida auris.

Nat Microbiol

November 2024

Laboratory of Molecular Cell Biology, Department of Biology, KU Leuven, Leuven, Belgium.

Article Synopsis
  • Antifungal drug resistance is a significant global health issue, prompting the need for new treatment strategies that involve understanding collateral sensitivity and cross-resistance in pathogenic fungi.
  • A study on Candida auris revealed that using collateral sensitivity-based drug cycling can effectively prevent drug resistance from developing and can help eliminate resistant sub-populations.
  • The findings indicate that incorporating collateral sensitivity into treatment decisions could lead to better antifungal therapies, as certain sensitivity trends appear consistent across different strains and resistance mechanisms.
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Quantification of Histone H1 Subtypes Using Targeted Proteomics.

Biomolecules

September 2024

Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Department, Biosciences Faculty, Autonomous University of Barcelona, 08193 Bellaterra, Spain.

Histone H1 is involved in the regulation of chromatin structure. Human somatic cells express up to seven subtypes. The variability in the proportions of somatic H1s (H1 complement) is one piece of evidence supporting their functional specificity.

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Background: Understanding genetic-metabolite associations has translational implications for informing cardiovascular risk assessment. Interrogating functional genetic variants enhances our understanding of disease pathogenesis and the development and optimization of targeted interventions.

Methods: In this study, a total of 187 plasma metabolite levels were profiled in 4974 individuals of European ancestry of the GCAT| Genomes for Life cohort.

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Senescent cells play a causative role in many diseases, and their elimination is a promising therapeutic strategy. Here, through a genome-wide CRISPR/Cas9 screen, we identify the gene PPIF, encoding the mitochondrial protein cyclophilin D (CypD), as a novel senolytic target. Cyclophilin D promotes the transient opening of the mitochondrial permeability transition pore (mPTP), which serves as a failsafe mechanism for calcium efflux.

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