Polyclonal antibodies for specific detection of tobacco host cell proteins can be efficiently generated following RuBisCO depletion and the removal of endotoxins

The production of biopharmaceutical proteins in plants requires efficient downstream processing steps that remove impurities such as host cell proteins (HCPs) and adventitious endotoxins produced by bacteria during transient expression. We therefore strived to develop effective routines for endotoxin removal from plant extracts and the subsequent use of the extracts to generate antibodies detecting a broad set of HCPs. At first, we depleted the superabundant protein ribulose‐1,5‐bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase (RuBisCO) for which PEG precipitation achieved the best results, preventing a dominant immune reaction against this protein. We found that a mixture of sera from rabbits immunized with pre‐depleted or post‐depleted extracts detected more HCPs than the individual sera used alone. We also developed a powerful endotoxin removal procedure using Polymyxin B for extracts from wild type plants or a combination of fiber‐flow filtration and EndoTrap Blue for tobacco plants infiltrated with Agrobacterium tumefaciens. The antibodies we generated will be useful for quality and performance assessment in future process development and the methods we present can easily be transferred to other expression systems rendering them useful in the field of plant molecular farming.     

Targeting head and neck tumoral stem cells: From biological aspects to therapeutic perspectives

Head and neck squamous cell cancer(HNSCC) is the sixth most common cancer in the world. Effective therapeutic modalities such as surgery, radiation, chemotherapy and combinations of each are used in the management of the disease. In most cases, treatment fails to obtain total cancer cure. In recent years, it appears that one of the key determinants of treatment failure may be the presence of cancer stem cells(CSCs) that escape currently available therapies. CSCs form a small portion of the total tumor burden but may play a disproportionately important role in determining outcomes. CSCs have stem features such as self-renewal, high migration capacity, drug resistance, high proliferation abilities. A large body of evidence points to the fact that CSCs are particularly resistant to radiotherapy and chemotherapy. In HNSCC, CSCs have been increasingly shown to have an integral role in tumor initiation, disease progression, metastasis and treatment resistance. In the light of such observations, the present review summarizes biological characteristics of CSCs in HNSCC, outlines targeted strategies for the successful eradication of CSCs in HNSCC including targeting the self-renewal controlling pathways, blocking epithelial mesenchymal transition, niche targeting, immunotherapy approaches and highlights the need to better understand CSCs biology for new treatments modalities.     

Model of the pathway of −1 frameshifting: Long pausing

It has been characterized that the programmed ribosomal ?1 frameshifting often occurs at the slippery sequence on the presence of a downstream mRNA pseudoknot. In some prokaryotic cases such as the dnaX gene of Escherichia coli, an additional stimulatory signal—an upstream, internal Shine–Dalgarno (SD) sequence—is also necessary to stimulate the efficient ?1 frameshifting. However, the molecular and physical mechanism of the ?1 frameshifting is poorly understood. Here, we propose a model of the pathway of the ?1 translational frameshifting during ribosome translation of the dnaX ?1 frameshift mRNA. With the model, the single-molecule fluorescence data (Chen et al. (2014) [29]) on the dynamics of the shunt either to long pausing or to normal translation, the tRNA transit and sampling dynamics in the long-paused rotated state, the EF-G sampling dynamics, the mean rotated-state lifetimes, etc., are explained quantitatively. Moreover, the model is also consistent with the experimental data (Yan et al. (2015) [30]) on translocation excursions and broad branching of frameshifting pathways. In addition, we present some predicted results, which can be easily tested by future optical trapping experiments.     

头孢菌素C生物合成调控研究进展北大核心CSCD

头孢菌素C由丝状真菌顶头孢霉产生,属于β-内酰胺类抗生素。其经改造后的7-氨基头孢烷酸是头孢类抗生素的重要中间体。头孢类抗生素在国内外抗生素市场中占有巨大的份额,是临床上的主要抗感染药物。随着分子生物学的发展,头孢菌素C的生物合成途径已基本阐明。为提高头孢菌素C的产量和降低生产成本,越来越多的研究者开始关注其较为精细、复杂的调控机制。本文重点对头孢菌素C生物合成及其调控机制的最新进展进行了简述,希望为今后头孢菌素C生产菌株的菌种改造和传统产业的升级换代提供一定的借鉴。     

Invariant TAD Boundaries Constrain Cell-Type-Specific Looping Interactions between Promoters and Distal Elements around the CFTR Locus

Three-dimensional genome structure plays an important role in gene regulation. Globally, chromosomes are organized into active and inactive compartments while, at the gene level, looping interactions connect promoters to regulatory elements. Topologically associating domains (TADs), typically several hundred kilobases in size, form an intermediate level of organization. Major questions include how TADs are formed and how they are related to looping interactions between genes and regulatory elements. Here we performed a focused 5C analysis of a 2.8 Mb chromosome 7 region surrounding CFTR in a panel of cell types. We find that the same TAD boundaries are present in all cell types, indicating that TADs represent a universal chromosome architecture. Furthermore, we find that these TAD boundaries are present irrespective of the expression and looping of genes located between them. In contrast, looping interactions between promoters and regulatory elements are cell-type specific and occur mostly within TADs. This is exemplified by the CFTR promoter that in different cell types interacts with distinct sets of distal cell-type-specific regulatory elements that are all located within the same TAD. Finally, we find that long-range associations between loci located in different TADs are also detected, but these display much lower interaction frequencies than looping interactions within TADs. Interestingly, interactions between TADs are also highly cell-type-specific and often involve loci clustered around TAD boundaries. These data point to key roles of invariant TAD boundaries in constraining as well as mediating cell-type-specific long-range interactions and gene regulation.