Genetic monitoring and effects of stocking practices on small <Emphasis Type="Italic">Cyprinus carpio</Emphasis> populations

The ability to detect genetic differences both in space and time is crucial for conserving genetic variation. It can reveal genetic diversity and genetic composition changes of declining native populations that are supported through stocking with captive bred individuals. The present study was designed to analyse the temporal stability of a declining common carp (Cyprinus carpio) population from Lake Volvi (North Greece). Polymorphism was evaluated using seven microsatellite loci at two sampling time points (separated by 12 years). The genetic variability of four additional populations (from two rivers and two lakes) in Northern Greece was also investigated for comparison. Heterozygosity values (0.692–0.868) and allelic richness (8.530–11.148) were high for all studied populations and comparable to other European populations. However, the analysis of temporal common carp samples from Lake Volvi revealed a significant change in their genetic composition and admixture analysis demonstrated significant introgression of stocked individuals into the native population. Both temporal and point estimate methods revealed low effective size (Ne = 61–171.3) for this population, possibly a result of an ancient genetic bottleneck that led to population decline and/or recent anthropogenic interventions. This low Ne has rendered the native population vulnerable to alteration of its genetic composition. Our study demonstrates that enhancement programs should be applied cautiously, especially for small populations. Moreover, it underlines the need for temporal analyses, which may contribute to the evaluation of previous management policies and to future decision making.     

A large-scale analysis of targeted metabolomics data from heterogeneous biological samples provides insights into metabolite dynamics

Metabolomics - Exposure to ricin can be lethal and treatments that are under development have short windows of opportunity for administration after exposure. It is therefore essential to achieve...     

A global review and meta-analysis of applications of the freshwater Fish Invasiveness Screening Kit

Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries - The freshwater Fish Invasiveness Screening Kit (FISK) has been applied in 35 risk assessment areas in 45 countries across the six inhabited continents (11...     

Biophysics and Thermodynamics: The Scientific Building Blocks of Bio-inspired Drug Delivery Nano Systems

Biophysics and thermodynamics are considered as the scientific milestones for investigating the properties of materials. The relationship between the changes of temperature with the biophysical variables of biomaterials is important in the process of the development of drug delivery systems. Biophysics is a challenge sector of physics and should be used complementary with the biochemistry in order to discover new and promising technological platforms (i.e., drug delivery systems) and to disclose the ‘silence functionality’ of bio-inspired biological and artificial membranes. Thermal analysis and biophysical approaches in pharmaceuticals present reliable and versatile tools for their characterization and for the successful development of pharmaceutical products. The metastable phases of self-assembled nanostructures such as liposomes should be taken into consideration because they represent the thermal events can affect the functionality of advanced drug delivery nano systems. In conclusion, biophysics and thermodynamics are characterized as the building blocks for design and development of bio-inspired drug delivery systems.KEY WORDS: biophysics, drug delivery nano systems, pharmaceutics, thermal analysis, thermodynamics     

Distinctive Behaviors of Druggable Proteins in Cellular Networks

The interaction environment of a protein in a cellular network is important in defining the role that the protein plays in the system as a whole, and thus its potential suitability as a drug target. Despite the importance of the network environment, it is neglected during target selection for drug discovery. Here, we present the first systematic, comprehensive computational analysis of topological, community and graphical network parameters of the human interactome and identify discriminatory network patterns that strongly distinguish drug targets from the interactome as a whole. Importantly, we identify striking differences in the network behavior of targets of cancer drugs versus targets from other therapeutic areas and explore how they may relate to successful drug combinations to overcome acquired resistance to cancer drugs. We develop, computationally validate and provide the first public domain predictive algorithm for identifying druggable neighborhoods based on network parameters. We also make available full predictions for 13,345 proteins to aid target selection for drug discovery. All target predictions are available through canSAR.icr.ac.uk. Underlying data and tools are available at https://cansar.icr.ac.uk/cansar/publications/druggable_network_neighbourhoods/.     

Isothermal titration calorimetry determination of individual rate constants of trypsin catalytic activity

Determination of individual rate constants for enzyme-catalyzed reactions is central to the understanding of their mechanism of action and is commonly obtained by stopped-flow kinetic experiments. However, most natural substrates either do not fluoresce/absorb or lack a significant change in their spectra while reacting and, therefore, are frequently chemically modified to render adequate molecules for their spectroscopic detection. Here, isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC) was used to obtain Michaelis–Menten plots for the trypsin-catalyzed hydrolysis of several substrates at different temperatures (278–318 K): four spectrophotometrically blind lysine and arginine N-free esters, one N-substituted arginine ester, and one amide. A global fitting of these data provided the individual rate constants and activation energies for the acylation and deacylation reactions, and the ratio of the formation and dissociation rates of the enzyme–substrate complex, leading also to the corresponding free energies of activation. The results indicate that for lysine and arginine N-free esters deacylation is the rate-limiting step, but for the N-substituted ester and the amide acylation is the slowest step. It is shown that ITC is able to produce quality kinetic data and is particularly well suited for those enzymatic reactions that cannot be measured by absorption or fluorescence spectroscopy.