黑曲霉组学研究进展

黑曲霉作为重要的工业发酵菌株,被广泛用于多种有机酸和工业用酶的生产。随着组学技术的日益发展和成熟,黑曲霉的基因组、转录组、蛋白质组、代谢组等组学数据不断增长,宣告着黑曲霉生物过程研究大数据时代的到来。从单一组学的数据分析、多组学的比较到以基因组代谢网络模型为中心的多组学整合研究,人们对黑曲霉高效生产机制的理解不断深入和系统,这为通过遗传改造和过程调控对菌株的生产性能进行理性的全局优化提供了可能。本文回顾和总结了近年来黑曲霉的组学研究进展,并提出黑曲霉组学研究未来的发展方向。     

组学技术在白蚁研究中的应用

白蚁为原始的真社会性昆虫,体内蕴含丰富的纤维素酶基因资源,对维持生态系统平衡和生物多样性有重要生态作用,而其中少数白蚁种类对农作物、树木、房屋建筑、江河堤坝等造成严重危害,因此白蚁具有非常重要的生态及经济价值。随着组学技术的发展,分子生物学的研究进入了一个新的阶段,基于整体角度研究的组学技术正在深刻地改变着白蚁的研究模式,必将推动白蚁生物学以及以白蚁防治为目的的基础研究。本文综述了近年来白蚁基因组、转录组、蛋白质组、代谢组等组学的相关研究进展,并对组学在白蚁的深入研究与应用进行了展望。     

蛹虫草组学研究进展

作为虫草属的模式种,蛹虫草是目前虫草类真菌中研究和应用最为广泛的物种之一。随着基因组序列的公布,蛹虫草组学水平的研究近年来取得了明显的进展。本文从基因组、线粒体基因组、甲基化组、转录组、蛋白质组、代谢网络等角度对蛹虫草组学水平的研究现状进行综述,期望对进一步推动蛹虫草的深入研究提供帮助。     

非洲猪瘟病毒研究进展:组学视角

非洲猪瘟(African swine fever,ASF)是由非洲猪瘟病毒(African swine fever virus,ASFV)引起的一种致死率可高达100%的猪烈性传染病。ASF的传播方式复杂多样,目前无商品化疫苗可用,仅能依靠检疫结合扑杀进行防控,严重威胁全球养猪及相关行业的健康发展。阻碍ASF疫苗研发的主要因素是ASFV的基因型众多、结构复杂,以及对ASFV致病和免疫逃逸机制的认识不足。本文从基因组学、转录组学、蛋白质组学和代谢组学等层面多角度综述ASFV的生物学特性及其致病和免疫逃逸机制,以期揭开ASF这个"杀手"的神秘面纱,为ASFV的致病机制研究和ASF的防控提供参考。     

多组学前沿技术专刊序言

后基因组时代,基因组学、转录组学、蛋白质组学及代谢组学等技术应用日趋广泛,功能注释成为生命科学研究的中心任务,多组学整合分析成为全面解析生物学机理的主要手段。本专刊邀请了国内多组学领域的相关专家学者介绍了基因组学、转录组学、蛋白质组学及代谢组学等领域最新进展和应用成果,收录了相关文章28篇,以供从事多组学研究的科研工作者参考。     

系统生物学研究中不同组学数据的整合

高通量实验方法的发展导致大量基因组、转录组、代谢组等组学数据的出现,组学数据的整合为全面了解生物学系统提供了条件.但是,由于当前实验技术手段的限制,高通量组学数据大多存在系统偏差,数据类型和可靠程度也各不相同,这给组学数据的整合带来了困难.本文以转录组、蛋白质组和代谢组为重点,综述了近年来组学数据整合方面的研究进展,包括新的数据整合方法和分析平台.虽然现存的数据统计和网络分析的方法有助于发现不同组学数据之间的关联,但是生物学意义上的深层次的数据整合还有待于生物、数学、计算机等各种领域的全面发展.     

植物响应盐胁迫组学研究进展

盐胁迫对植物生长的影响主要表现在离子毒害、渗透胁迫以及次级氧化胁迫等,植物遭受盐胁迫时迅速启动相关基因,进行转录调控,进而合成相应蛋白质来控制代谢物合成和离子转运以调节渗透平衡。随着现代分子生物学迅速发展,对植物耐盐机理研究也深入到了转录组、蛋白质组、代谢组及离子组等水平,"组学"研究为耐盐基因鉴定及标志性代谢物的挖掘等提供了有力手段。该文对近年来国内外有关转录组学、蛋白质组学、代谢组学、离子组学的主要研究方法及在盐胁迫中的应用研究进展进行综述,以揭示植物耐盐机理,为优良耐盐碱植物的筛选与培育提供支持。     

组学技术在产油微生物中的应用

微生物油脂是未来燃料和食品用油的重要潜在资源.近年来,随着系统生物学技术的快速发展,从全局角度理解产油微生物生理代谢及脂质积累的特征成为研究热点.组学技术作为系统生物学研究的重要工具被广泛用于揭示产油微生物脂质高效生产的机制研究中,这为产油微生物理性遗传改造和发酵过程控制提供了基础.文中对组学技术在产油微生物中的应用概...     

基于蛋白质组芯片的结核分枝杆菌系统生物学研究进展

近些年全球结核病疫情愈发严重,耐药性结核病使其雪上加霜。一个重要原因是结核病新药的匮乏以及结核分枝杆菌相关基础研究的不足。因此迫切需要开发新的技术以促进结核病系统生物学基础研究,并在此基础上研究新机制,发现新靶标,开发新药物。结核分枝杆菌功能蛋白质组芯片的出现旨在促进结核病相关研究工作。考虑到结核分枝杆菌高毒力、复制周期长和需要在生物安全三级实验室中开展研究等特点和难点,该工具为结核病相关研究人员提供了一个强有力的武器。目前这一技术手段的应用已经使我们对结核分枝杆菌-宿主相互作用、小分子-蛋白结合以及抗生素耐药性机制等关键生物过程有了更深入的了解。为了更好地帮助同行了解这一有效的工具,本文综述了结核分枝杆菌功能蛋白组芯片的几种主要应用,期望同行专家能更好地将其应用于结核病相关的基础研究中。     

基于转录组学和代谢组学联合分析草珊瑚萜类化合物生物合成的组织特异性分布

本研究旨在探究草珊瑚叶和根中萜类化合物的组织特异性分布差异,解析其药效品质差异形成的分子机制。采用液相色谱-质谱联用技术(liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry, LC-MS)和Illumina HiSeq^TM高通量测序技术获得草珊瑚[Sarcandra glabra (thunb) naka]叶和根的代谢组学和转录组学数据。代谢组学结果表明参与叶和根中萜类合成的差异代谢物有50个,包括法尼西基半胱氨酸、甘油醛-3-磷酸、甲羟戊酸-5-磷酸等。转录学结果表明差异代谢酶基因有57条,包括ACTC、HMGCR、MVK、DXS与KS等,并预测了MYB、C2H2、AP2/ERF-ERF等7个转录因子参与调控草珊瑚不同组织部位中萜类的合成和积累差异。实时荧光定量PCR (quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction, qRT-PCR)结果显示,随机选取的8个参与萜类合成的酶基因在草珊瑚不同组织部位中的表达趋势与转录组学测序结果一致。本研究有助于阐明草珊瑚叶和根临床疗效差异形成的分子机制,同时为草珊瑚的资源开发利用奠定基础。     

结核分枝杆菌培养物不同组份蛋白质组研究

将结核分枝杆菌H37RV株在苏通培养基内,37℃培养21d,然后将培养物分成上清液(A)、细胞浆(B)和细胞膜?蛋白质样品。以pH3.0～10.0的IPG预制胶条等电聚焦电泳为第一向,SDSPAGE为第二向进行双向电泳(2DE)、银染。经扫描、计算机处理。A组份的部分蛋白质斑点采用质谱仪进行蛋白质鉴定。A、B和C 3个组份蛋白质斑点总数分别为907、884和681;3个组份蛋白质分子量分布基本相似,约70.5%～74.4%在10～49kD之间;蛋白质等电点(pH)A、B两组份分布基本相似,约80.9%～83.5%在pH3.0～6.4之间,而C组份pH7.6～10.0之间的蛋白质斑点数比A和B两组分略多;A、B和C 3个组份表达丰度较高的蛋白质斑点数占各组蛋白质斑点总数的比例分别为7.8%、27.4%和2.8%,蛋白质等电点90.0%均分布在pH3.0～6.4范围内。B组份蛋白质分子质量73.1%分布在10～49kD之间,比A、B两组份略高。A组份14个蛋白质斑点经肽质量指纹谱分析,其中,9个点有同源性的或推测的蛋白质功能,5个蛋白质功能不清楚。总之,初步获得了结核分枝杆菌H37RV株在上述体外培养条件下收获的培养物的上清液、细胞浆、细胞膜蛋白质组2DE图谱及其特点,为该菌功能基因组研究提供蛋白质组信息。     

Lipoproteins of Mycobacterium tuberculosis: an abundant and functionally diverse class of cell envelope components

Mycobacterium tuberculosis remains the predominant bacterial scourge of mankind. Understanding of its biology and pathogenicity has been greatly advanced by the determination of whole genome sequences for this organism. Bacterial lipoproteins are a functionally diverse class of membrane-anchored proteins. The signal peptides of these proteins direct their export and post-translational lipid modification. These signal peptides are amenable to bioinformatic analysis, allowing the lipoproteins encoded in whole genomes to be catalogued. This review applies bioinformatic methods to the identification and functional characterisation of the lipoproteins encoded in the M. tuberculosis genomes. Ninety nine putative lipoproteins were identified and so this family of proteins represents ca. 2.5% of the M. tuberculosis predicted proteome. Thus, lipoproteins represent an important class of cell envelope proteins that may contribute to the virulence of this major pathogen.     

一种新型抗结核先导化合物S28 对结核分枝杆菌蛋白质组表达的影响

目的 探讨从化合物库中高通量筛选得到的、可有效抑制结核分枝杆菌生长和繁殖的新型活性化合物S28 的作用机制及其可能的作用靶点。方法 采用双向电泳技术, 比较分析活性化合物作用于结核分枝杆菌H37Ra 前、后的全细胞蛋白表达差异。结果 13 个蛋白质斑点表达下调, 对其中6 个改变明显的蛋白质斑点进行基质辅助激光解吸/ 电离飞行时间质谱分析, 成功测定2 个蛋白质斑点。数据库检索分析确定这2 个差异蛋白点分别为延长因子Tu 和短链脱氢酶, 是参与蛋白质翻译和氧化呼吸、能量代谢等生理过程的重要蛋白。结论 为 进一步深入探索新型抗结核活性化合物的作用机制和可能的靶点提供研究基础和方向。     

Sterilization as an alternative strategy to control wildlife diseases: bovine tuberculosis in European badgers as a case study

Sterilization has rarely been considered as an alternative to culling or vaccination to control wildlife diseases. Disease control by sterilization, as by culling, has most promise when the host'ss ability for compensatory growth following the removal of density-dependent inhibitions is limited, and when moderate reductions in population density cause disproportionately large reductions in disease prevalence, or even eliminate the disease. For many host/disease examples this will not be the case and vaccination may have overwhelming advantages or may be the only practical option. The impact of sterilization on host density and disease prevalence will develop relatively slowly because sterilization can prevent the recruitment of only one age-cohort at a time. Moreover, unless there is vertical transmission, this age-cohort will consist only of susceptibles. Culling, on the contrary, removes infected as well as susceptible animals. However, for certain disease/host examples, the r elative effectiveness of the different control strategies may be altered considerably if their variable effects on the probability of disease transmission are taken into account. Social perturbation or stress could render certain culling strategies ineffective or even counter-productive. Depending on how disease dynamics are influenced by the host'ss age-structure and reproductive investment, fertility control could offer epidemiological advantages that have been ignored by most disease/host models. We illustrate some of these principles by investigating the theoretical and practical feasibility of an hypothetical sterilization campaign to control bovine tuberculosis in badgers (and hence cattle) in Britain.     

X-ray structural studies of Mycobacterium tuberculosis RRF and a comparative study of RRFs of known structure. Molecular plasticity and biological implications

The crystal structure of Mycobacterium tuberculosis ribosome recycling factor has been determined and refined against three X-ray diffraction data sets, two collected at room temperature and the other at 100K. The two room-temperature data sets differ in the radiation damage suffered by the crystals before the data used for processing were collected. A comparison between the structures refined against the two data sets indicates the possibility of radiation-induced conformational change. The L-shaped molecule is composed of a long three-helix bundle domain (domain I) and a globular domain (domain II) connected by a linker region. The main difference between the room-temperature structure and the low temperature structure is in the rotation of domain II about an axis close to its libration axis. This observation and a detailed comparative study of ribosome recycling factors (RRFs) of known structures led to an elaboration of the present understanding of the structural variability of RRF. The variability involves a change in the angle between the two arms of the molecule, a rotation of domain II in a plane nearly perpendicular to the axis of the helix bundle and an internal rotation of domain II. Furthermore, the domains and the linker could be delineated into fixed and variable regions in a physically meaningful manner. The relative mobility of the domains of the molecule in the crystal structure appears to be similar to that in the ribosome--RRF complex. That permits a meaningful discussion of the structural features of RRF in terms of ribosome--RRF interactions. The structure also provides insights into the results of inter-species complementation studies.     

Identification and validation of l-asparaginase as a potential metabolic target against Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Multidrug-resistant Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) has emerged as a major health challenge, necessitating the search for new molecular targets. A secretory amidohydrolase, l -asparaginase of Mtb (MtA), originally implicated in nitrogen assimilation and neutralization of acidic microenvironment inside human alveolar macrophages, has been proposed as a crucial metabolic enzyme. To investigate whether this enzyme could serve as a potential drug target, it was studied for structural details and active site–specific inhibitors were tested on cultured Mycobacterial strain. The structural details of MtA obtained through comparative modeling and molecular dynamics simulations provided insights about the orchestration of an alternate reaction mechanism at the active site. This was contrary to the critical Tyr flipping mechanism reported in other asparaginases. We report the novel finding of Tyr to Val replacement in catalytic triad I along with the structural reorganization of a β-hairpin loop upon substrate binding in MtA active site. Further, 5 MtA-specific, active-site–based inhibitors were obtained by following a rigorous differential screening protocol. When tested on Mycobacterium culture, 3 of these, M3 (ZINC 4740895), M26 (ZINC 33535), and doxorubicin showed promising results with inhibitory concentrations (IC ₅₀) of 431, 100, and 56 µM, respectively. Based on our findings and considering stark differences with human asparaginase, we project MtA as a promising molecular target against which the selected inhibitors may be used to counteract Mtb infection effectively.     

Proteins with complex architecture as potential targets for drug design: a case study of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Lengthy co-evolution of Homo sapiens and Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the main causative agent of tuberculosis, resulted in a dramatically successful pathogen species that presents considerable challenge for modern medicine. The continuous and ever increasing appearance of multi-drug resistant mycobacteria necessitates the identification of novel drug targets and drugs with new mechanisms of action. However, further insights are needed to establish automated protocols for target selection based on the available complete genome sequences. In the present study, we perform complete proteome level comparisons between M. tuberculosis, mycobacteria, other prokaryotes and available eukaryotes based on protein domains, local sequence similarities and protein disorder. We show that the enrichment of certain domains in the genome can indicate an important function specific to M. tuberculosis. We identified two families, termed pkn and PE/PPE that stand out in this respect. The common property of these two protein families is a complex domain organization that combines species-specific regions, commonly occurring domains and disordered segments. Besides highlighting promising novel drug target candidates in M. tuberculosis, the presented analysis can also be viewed as a general protocol to identify proteins involved in species-specific functions in a given organism. We conclude that target selection protocols should be extended to include proteins with complex domain architectures instead of focusing on sequentially unique and essential proteins only.     

The influence of glycerol on the binding of methotrexate to Mycobacterium tuberculosis dihydrofolate reductase: a molecular modelling study

The enzyme, dihydrofolate reductase (DHFR), from Mycobacterium tuberculosis (mt-DHFR) is believed to be a potential drug target for the treatment of tuberculosis. The co-crystal structure of mt-DHFR bound with glycerol (GOL), NAPDH and methotrexate (MTX) reveals a GOL binding site on the enzyme. This GOL binding site could be very important for the design of novel, selective mt-DHFR inhibitors, because this binding site is absent on human DHFR (h-DHFR). We have performed molecular dynamic simulations and free energy calculations to evaluate the binding affinity of GOL and its free energy contribution to the binding of MTX to mt-DHFR. The results showed that GOL does not bind tightly to mt-DHFR. Although GOL itself contributed free energy on MTX binding to mt-DHFR, GOL also increased the flexibilities of MTX, so that MTX cannot maintain strong electronic interactions with ARG32 and ARG60, which caused the total binding free energy to decrease. These data suggest that GOL binding is weak and it could be expelled from the binding site, to allow inhibitors containing appropriate side chains to bind. This observation can be used to inform future drug design studies, especially those aimed at improving drug selectivity against h-DHFR.