Testing the Purity of Cultures After Axenicity Treatments.

Contaminations are challenging for monocultures, as they impact the culture conditions and thus influence the growth of the target organism and the overall biomass composition. In phycology, axenic cultures comprising a single living species are commonly strived for both basic research and industrial applications, because contaminants reduce significance for analytic purposes and interfere with the safety and quality of commercial products. We aimed to establish axenic cultures of , known as the food additive "Spirulina".

is a putative producer of polyunsaturated fatty acids in the gut soil of the composting earthworm .

Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFAs) play a crucial role in aiding bacteria to adapt to extreme and stressful environments. While there is a well-established understanding of their production, accrual, and transfer within marine ecosystems, knowledge about terrestrial environments remains limited. Investigation of the intestinal microbiome of earthworms has illuminated the presence of PUFAs presumably of microbial origin, which contrasts with the surrounding soil.

Proteome-wide non-cleavable crosslink identification with MS Annika 3.0 reveals the structure of the C. elegans Box C/D complex.

The field of crosslinking mass spectrometry has seen substantial advancements over the past decades, enabling the structural analysis of proteins and protein complexes and serving as a powerful tool in protein-protein interaction studies. However, data analysis of large non-cleavable crosslink studies is still a mostly unsolved problem due to its n-squared complexity. We here introduce an algorithm for the identification of non-cleavable crosslinks implemented in our crosslinking search engine MS Annika that is based on sparse matrix multiplication and allows for proteome-wide searches on commodity hardware.

Gut microbiota genome features associated with brain injury in extremely premature infants.

Severe brain damage is common among premature infants, and the gut microbiota has been implicated in its pathology. Although the order of colonizing bacteria is well described, the mechanisms underlying aberrant assembly of the gut microbiota remain elusive. Here, we employed long-read nanopore sequencing to assess abundances of microbial species and their functional genomic potential in stool samples from a cohort of 30 extremely premature infants.

Characteristics of putative keystones in the healthy adult human gut microbiota as determined by correlation network analysis.

Keystone species are thought to play a critical role in determining the structure and function of microbial communities. As they are important candidates for microbiome-targeted interventions, the identification and characterization of keystones is a pressing research goal. Both empirical as well as computational approaches to identify keystones have been proposed, and in particular correlation network analysis is frequently utilized to interrogate sequencing-based microbiome data.

Enhancer cooperativity can compensate for loss of activity over large genomic distances.

Enhancers are short DNA sequences that activate their target promoter from a distance; however, increasing the genomic distance between the enhancer and the promoter decreases expression levels. Many genes are controlled by combinations of multiple enhancers, yet the interaction and cooperation of individual enhancer elements are not well understood. Here, we developed a synthetic platform in mouse embryonic stem cells that allows building complex regulatory landscapes from the bottom up.

The Parkinson's disease drug entacapone disrupts gut microbiome homoeostasis via iron sequestration.

Many human-targeted drugs alter the gut microbiome, leading to implications for host health. However, the mechanisms underlying these effects are not well known. Here we combined quantitative microbiome profiling, long-read metagenomics, stable isotope probing and single-cell chemical imaging to investigate the impact of two widely prescribed drugs on the gut microbiome.

Molecular profiles, sources and lineage restrictions of stem cells in an annelid regeneration model.

Regeneration of missing body parts can be observed in diverse animal phyla, but it remains unclear to which extent these capacities rely on shared or divergent principles. Research into this question requires detailed knowledge about the involved molecular and cellular principles in suitable reference models. By combining single-cell RNA sequencing and mosaic transgenesis in the marine annelid Platynereis dumerilii, we map cellular profiles and lineage restrictions during posterior regeneration.

A respiro-fermentative strategy to survive nanoxia in Acidobacterium capsulatum.

Microbial soil habitats are characterized by rapid shifts in substrate and nutrient availabilities, as well as chemical and physical parameters. One such parameter that can vary in soil is oxygen; thus, microbial survival is dependent on adaptation to this substrate. To better understand the metabolic abilities and adaptive strategies to oxygen-deprived environments, we combined genomics with transcriptomics of a model organism, Acidobacterium capsulatum, to explore the effect of decreasing, environmentally relevant oxygen concentrations.

A metalloprotease secreted by an environmentally acquired gut bacterium hinders colonization in .

Although the importance of the microbiome in the context of tick biology and vector competence has recently come into a broader research focus, the field is still in its infancy and the complex ecological interactions between the tick residential bacteria and pathogens are obscure. Here, we show that an environmentally acquired gut bacterium has the potential to impair colonization within the tick vector through a secreted metalloprotease. Oral introduction of either LTG-1 isolate or its purified enhancin (Enhancin) protein significantly reduces burden in the guts of ticks.

Sulfur-oxidizing symbionts colonize the digestive tract of their lucinid hosts.

Like many marine invertebrates, marine lucinid clams have an intimate relationship with beneficial sulfur-oxidizing bacteria located within specialized gill cells known as bacteriocytes. Most previous research has focused on the symbionts in the gills of these (and other) symbiotic bivalves, often assuming that the symbionts only persistently colonize the gills, at least in the adult stage. We used 16S rRNA gene sequencing and digital polymerase chain reaction with symbiont-specific primers targeting the soxB gene on the foot, mantle, visceral mass, and gills of the lucinid clam Loripes orbiculatus.

Cytosolic nucleic acid sensors and interferon beta-1 activation drive radiation-induced anti-tumour immune effects in human pancreatic cancer cells.

Introduction: Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) remains a leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide with limited treatment options due to extensive radiation and chemotherapy resistance. Monotherapy with immune checkpoint blockade showed no survival benefit. A combination of immunomodulation and radiotherapy may offer new treatment strategies, as demonstrated for non-small cell lung cancer.

Facilitators and barriers of long-term exercise adherence in healthcare workers formerly suffering from post-COVID-19 syndrome : A qualitative 1-year follow-up and quantitative pilot study of the COFIT trial.

Background: Early exercise intervention studies showed promising positive effects of physical exercising on post-COVID-19 symptoms; however, little is known about long-term training adherence and what influences it.

Material And Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 17 participants of the 8‑week original exercise intervention study. Facilitators and barriers were identified via thematic analysis and compared between those participants who continued their regular exercise behavior (continuous exercise group, CEG, n = 7) and those who stopped exercising (discontinuous exercise group, DEG, n = 10).

Lamin chromatin binding is modulated by interactions of different LAP2α domains with lamins and chromatin.

Lamins A and C are components of the lamina at the nuclear periphery and associate with heterochromatin. A distinct, relatively mobile pool of lamin A/C in the nuclear interior associates with euchromatic regions and with lamin-associated polypeptide 2α (LAP2α). Here we show that phosphorylation-dependent impairment of lamin assembly had no effect on its chromatin association, while LAP2α depletion was sufficient to increase chromatin association of lamins.

Climate influences the gut eukaryome of wild rodents in the Great Rift Valley of Jordan.

Background: The mammalian gut microbiome includes a community of eukaryotes with significant taxonomic and functional diversity termed the eukaryome. The molecular analysis of eukaryotic diversity in microbiomes of wild mammals is still in its early stages due to the recent emergence of interest in this field. This study aimed to fill this knowledge gap by collecting data on eukaryotic species found in the intestines of wild rodents.

Distinct microbial communities are linked to organic matter properties in millimetre-sized soil aggregates.

Soils provide essential ecosystem services and represent the most diverse habitat on Earth. It has been suggested that the presence of various physico-chemically heterogeneous microhabitats supports the enormous diversity of microbial communities in soil. However, little is known about the relationship between microbial communities and their immediate environment at the micro- to millimetre scale.

The FinO/ProQ-like protein PA2582 impacts antimicrobial resistance in .

Bacteria employ small regulatory RNAs (sRNA) and/or RNA binding proteins (RBPs) to respond to environmental cues. In , the FinO-domain containing RBP ProQ associates with numerous sRNAs and mRNAs, impacts sRNA-mediated riboregulation or mRNA stability by binding to 5'- or 3'-untranslated regions as well as to internal stem loop structures. Global RNA-protein interaction studies and sequence comparisons identified a ProQ-like homolog (PA2582/ProQ ) in ().

Plant roots affect free-living diazotroph communities in temperate grassland soils despite decades of fertilization.

Fixation of atmospheric N by free-living diazotrophs accounts for an important proportion of nitrogen naturally introduced to temperate grasslands. The effect of plants or fertilization on the general microbial community has been extensively studied, yet an understanding of the potential combinatorial effects on the community structure and activity of free-living diazotrophs is lacking. In this study we provide a multilevel assessment of the single and interactive effects of different long-term fertilization treatments, plant species and vicinity to roots on the free-living diazotroph community in relation to the general microbial community in grassland soils.

Rotational stability and refractive outcomes of a new hydrophobic acrylic toric intraocular lens.

Purpose: To assess rotational stability and refractive outcomes of a new toric hydrophobic acrylic intraocular lens (IOL).

Design: Single-center, prospective, interventional clinical trial.

Methods: A total of 130 eyes of 82 patients with age-related cataract and total corneal astigmatism of greater than 1.

Genomes and secondary metabolomes of spp. isolated from ssp. .

Bacterial endophytes dwelling in medicinal plants represent an as yet underexplored source of bioactive natural products with the potential to be developed into drugs against various human diseases. For the first time, several spp. were isolated from the rare and endangered traditional medicinal plant ssp.