Mass Coral Reef Bleaching: A Recent Outcome of Increased El Niño Activity?

Coral reefs are generally considered to be the most biologically productive of all marine ecosystems, but in recent times these vulnerable aquatic resources have been subject to unusual degradation. The general decline in reefs has been greatly accelerated by mass bleaching in which corals whiten en masse and often fail to recover. Empirical evidence indicates a coral reef bleaching cycle in which major bleaching episodes are synchronized with El Niño events that occur every 3–4 years on average. By heating vast areas of the Pacific Ocean, and affecting the Indian and Atlantic Oceans as well, El Niño causes widespread damage to reefs largely because corals are very sensitive to temperature changes. However, mass bleaching events were rarely observed before the 1970s and their abrupt appearance two decades ago remains an enigma. Here we propose a new explanation for the sudden occurrence of mass bleaching and show that it may be a response to the relative increase in El Niño experienced over the last two decades.     

TheAspergillus parasiticus polyketide synthase genepksA,a homolog ofAspergillus nidulans wA,is required for aflatoxin B1 biosynthesis

Aflatoxins comprise a group of polyketide-derived carcinogenic mycotoxins produced byAspergillus parasiticus andAspergillus flavus. By transformation with a disruption construct, pXX, we disrupted the aflatoxin pathway inA. parasiticus SRRC 2043, resulting in the inability of this strain to produce aflatoxin intermediates as well as a major yellow pigment in the transformants. The disruption was attributed to a single-crossover, homologous integration event between pXX and the recipientA. parasiticus genome at a specific locus, designatedpksA. Sequence analysis suggest thatpksA is a homolog of theAspergillus nidulans wA gene, a polyketide synthase gene involved in conidial wall pigment biosynthesis. The conservedβ-ketoacyl synthase, acyltransferase and acyl carrier-protein domains were present in the deduced amino acid sequence of thepksA product. Noβ-ketoacyl reductase and enoyl reductase domains were found, suggesting thatpksA does not encode catalytic activities for processingβ-carbon similar to those required for long chain fatty acid synthesis. ThepksA gene is located in the aflatoxin pathway gene cluster and is linked to thenor-1 gene, an aflatoxin pathway gene required for converting norsolorinic acid to averantin. These two genes are divergently transcribed from a 1.5 kb intergenic region. We propose thatpksA is a polyketide synthase gene required for the early steps of aflatoxin biosynthesis.     

Effects of antifilarial drugs on the activities of the oxidative enzymes of mitochondria and microsomes of rat liver and kidneys

Centperazine or diethylcarbamazine, administered at various dose levels to rats inhibited the activity of succinate dehydrogenase significantly in 4 hrs in liver. Centperazine also inhibited the activity of cytochrome-c oxidase but stimulated the activity of benzo (a) pyrene hydroxylase in liver. In kidneys, activities of succinate dehydrogenase, cytochrome-c oxidase and aniline hydroxylase were significantly inhibited by centperazine only, however, the activity of benzo (a) pyrene hydroxylase was inhibited by both the drugs. These drugs had no effect on the activity of aminopyrene N-demethylase and cytochrome P-450 contents of liver and kidneys.     

A silicone polymer as a Steroid Reservoir for enzyme-catalyzed Steroid reactions

Since steroids are only slightly soluble in the aqueous solutions in which enzymatic reactions take place, it is difficult to obtain high effective concentrations per unit reactor volume when enzymes are used to catalyze steroid reactions. In order to obtain high effective concentrations in the present work, we have used small particles of a hydrophobic polymer, poly (dimethyl siloxane), as a reservoir for the steroid substrate and product. The activity of a bacterial hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase in a buffer solution declines much more slowly in the presence of those polymer particles than in the presence of a comparable amount of butyl acetate or ethyl acetate, the organic solvents used as steroid reservoirs in previous work with steroid transforming enzymes. When another substrate of the hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase is loaded into the polymer particles and the particles are suspended in an aqueous solution containing the enzyme and its cofactor, more product is formed that when a similar solution is emulsified with butyl acetate.     

Integrated Artificial Intelligence Approaches for Disease Diagnostics

Mechanocomputational techniques in conjunction with artificial intelligence (AI) are revolutionizing the interpretations of the crucial information from the medical data and converting it into optimized and organized information for diagnostics. It is possible due to valuable perfection in artificial intelligence, computer aided diagnostics, virtual assistant, robotic surgery, augmented reality and genome editing (based on AI) technologies. Such techniques are serving as the products for diagnosing emerging microbial or non microbial diseases. This article represents a combinatory approach of using such approaches and providing therapeutic solutions towards utilizing these techniques in disease diagnostics.     

Targeted mutagenesis of duplicated genes in soybean with zinc-finger nucleases

We performed targeted mutagenesis of a transgene and nine endogenous soybean (Glycine max) genes using zinc-finger nucleases (ZFNs). A suite of ZFNs were engineered by the recently described context-dependent assembly platform--a rapid, open-source method for generating zinc-finger arrays. Specific ZFNs targeting dicer-like (DCL) genes and other genes involved in RNA silencing were cloned into a vector under an estrogen-inducible promoter. A hairy-root transformation system was employed to investigate the efficiency of ZFN mutagenesis at each target locus. Transgenic roots exhibited somatic mutations localized at the ZFN target sites for seven out of nine targeted genes. We next introduced a ZFN into soybean via whole-plant transformation and generated independent mutations in the paralogous genes DCL4a and DCL4b. The dcl4b mutation showed efficient heritable transmission of the ZFN-induced mutation in the subsequent generation. These findings indicate that ZFN-based mutagenesis provides an efficient method for making mutations in duplicate genes that are otherwise difficult to study due to redundancy. We also developed a publicly accessible Web-based tool to identify sites suitable for engineering context-dependent assembly ZFNs in the soybean genome.     

Oncosecretomics coupled to bioenergetics identifies α-amino adipic acid, isoleucine and GABA as potential biomarkers of cancer: Differential expression of c-Myc, Oct1 and KLF4 coordinates metabolic changes

Bioenergetic profiling of tumors is a new challenge of cancer research and medicine as therapies are currently being developed. Meanwhile, methodological means must be proposed to gather information on tumor metabolism in order to adapt these potential therapies to the bioenergetic specificities of tumors. Studies performed on tumors and cancer cell lines have shown that cancer cells bioenergetics is highly variable. This profile changes with microenvironmental conditions (eg. substrate availability), the oncogenes activated (and the tumor suppressors inactivated) and the interaction with the stroma (i.e. reverse Warburg effect). Here, we assessed the power of metabolic footprinting (MFP) to unravel the bioenergetics and associated anabolic changes induced by three oncogenes, c-Myc, KLF4 and Oct1. The MFP approach provides a quantitative analysis of the metabolites secreted and consumed by cancer cells. We used ultra performance liquid chromatography for quantifying the amino acid uptake and secretion. To investigate the potential oncogene-mediated alterations in mitochondrial metabolism, we measured oxygen consumption rate and ATP production as well as the glucose uptake and lactate release. Our findings show that c-Myc deficiency initiates the Warburg effect along with a reduction of mitochondrial respiration. KLF4 deficiency also stimulated glycolysis, albeit without cellular respiration impairment. In contrast, Oct1 deficiency reduced glycolysis and enhanced oxidative phosphorylation efficiency. MFP revealed that c-Myc, KLF4 and Oct1 altered amino acid metabolism with specific patterns. We identified isoleucine, α-aminoadipic acid and GABA (γ-aminoisobutyric acid) as biomarkers related. Our findings establish the impact of Oct1, KLF4 and c-Myc on cancer bioenergetics and evidence a link between oncosecretomics and cellular bioenergetics profile.     

Fuzzy logic feedback control for fed-batch enzymatic hydrolysis of lignocellulosic biomass

A fuzzy logic feedback control system was developed for process monitoring and feeding control in fed-batch enzymatic hydrolysis of a lignocellulosic biomass, dilute acid-pretreated corn stover. Digested glucose from hydrolysis reaction was assigned as input while doser feeding time and speed of pretreated biomass were responses from fuzzy logic control system. Membership functions for these three variables and rule-base were created based on batch hydrolysis data. The system response was first tested in LabVIEW environment then the performance was evaluated through real-time hydrolysis reaction. The feeding operations were determined timely by fuzzy logic control system and efficient responses were shown to plateau phases during hydrolysis. Feeding of proper amount of cellulose and maintaining solids content was well balanced. Fuzzy logic proved to be a robust and effective online feeding control tool for fed-batch enzymatic hydrolysis.