Distal Lateral Subungual Onychomycosis Owing to <Emphasis Type="Italic">Tritirachium oryzae</Emphasis>: A Bystander or Invader?

The genus Tritirachium is a mitosporic fungus which inhabits in soil and decaying plant material and also a notable insect pathogen. Human infections with Tritirachium species though rare were previously reported to cause corneal ulcers, otomycosis, onychomycosis, and dermatomycosis of the scalp and hence may be considered as a potential pathogen. Here we report a case of distal lateral subungual onychomycosis involving right great toenail in a 22-year-old female, wherein direct potassium hydroxide preparations, fungal cultures, and molecular sequencing of the isolate established Tritirachium oryzae as the etiological agent. Antifungal susceptibility performed by the microbroth technique of CLSI revealed increased MICs to amphotericin B and low MICs to azoles and echinocandins. The case was managed with surgical nail avulsion followed by topical application of 2% ketoconazole cream resulting regrowth of normal nail. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of non-dermatophytic mold T. oryzae causing onychomycosis in India.     

Designed β-Boomerang Antiendotoxic and Antimicrobial Peptides: STRUCTURES AND ACTIVITIES IN LIPOPOLYSACCHARIDE*?

Lipopolysaccharide (LPS), an integral part of the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria, is involved in a variety of biological processes including inflammation, septic shock, and resistance to host-defense molecules. LPS also provides an environment for folding of outer membrane proteins. In this work, we describe the structure-activity correlation of a series of 12-residue peptides in LPS. NMR structures of the peptides derived in complex with LPS reveal boomerang-like β-strand conformations that are stabilized by intimate packing between the two aromatic residues located at the 4 and 9 positions. This structural feature renders these peptides with a high ability to neutralize endotoxicity, >80% at 10 nm concentration, of LPS. Replacements of these aromatic residues either with Ala or with Leu destabilizes the boomerang structure with the concomitant loss of antiendotoxic and antimicrobial activities. Furthermore, the aromatic packing stabilizing the β-boomerang structure in LPS is found to be maintained even in a truncated octapeptide, defining a structured LPS binding motif. The mode of action of the active designed peptides correlates well with their ability to perturb LPS micelle structures. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy studies of the peptides delineate β-type conformations and immobilization of phosphate head groups of LPS. Trp fluorescence studies demonstrated selective interactions with LPS and the depth of insertion into the LPS bilayer. Our results demonstrate the requirement of LPS-specific structures of peptides for endotoxin neutralizations. In addition, we propose that structures of these peptides may be employed to design proteins for the outer membrane.LPS² or endotoxin, a major component of the outer leaflet of the outer membrane of Gram-negative bacteria, is critically involved in health and diseases of humans (1, 2). LPS is essential for bacterial survival through establishing an efficient permeability barrier against a variety of antimicrobial compounds including hydrophobic antibiotics, detergents, host-defense proteins, and antimicrobial peptides (3, 4). Several studies have demonstrated that LPS catalyzes folding of outer membrane proteins as a chaperone (5–7).LPS, a potent inducer of innate immune systems, hence called endotoxin, is primarily responsible for lethality in sepsis and septic shock syndromes associated with serious Gram-negative infections (8–10). Circulating LPS in bloodstream is intercepted by the phagocytic cells of the innate immune system. Once induced by LPS, these phagocytes produce proinflammatory cytokines, e.g. tumor necrosis factor-α, interleukin-6, and interleukin-1β, through the activation of a Toll-like pattern recognition receptor (11, 12). The release of cytokines in response to microbial invasion is a natural function of the innate immunity. However, an uncontrolled and overwhelming production of these cytokines may cause “endotoxic shock” or septic shock, typified by endothelial tissue damage, loss of vascular tone, coagulopathy, and multiple organ failure, often resulting in death (9, 10). Sepsis is the major cause of mortality in the intensive care unit, accounting for 200,000 deaths every year in the United States alone (13). It was demonstrated that release of LPS from antibiotic-treated Gram-negative bacteria can indeed enhance sepsis (14). Therefore, an effective antibiotic should not only exert antibacterial activities but also have the ability to sequester LPS and ameliorate its toxicity. Therefore, an amalgamated property of LPS-neutralizing and antimicrobial activity would be highly desirable for antimicrobial agents. Polymyxin B is a prototypical antimicrobial and antiendotoxic antibiotic; however, its neurotoxicity and nephrotoxicity limit its application to topical use (15). The increasing emergence of bacterial strains that are resistant to conventional antibiotics has initiated vital structure/function studies of membrane-perturbing cationic antimicrobial peptides (16–20). More recent studies have been conducted to understand interactions between antimicrobial peptides with LPS to gain insights into the mechanism of outer membrane perturbation, antibacterial activities, and LPS neutralization (21–26). These studies have delineated the role of amino acid sequence properties, LPS-peptide interactions by biophysical methods, and global structural parameters, obtained by CD and FTIR.Designing synthetic peptides and elucidation of three-dimensional structures in complex with LPS would be useful for the purpose of rational development of non-toxic antisepsis and antimicrobial therapeutics. Such studies will also be potentially instructive in establishing rules by which folded structures can be stabilized on the LPS surface. Extensive work in the field of peptide design primarily focuses on mimicking secondary structures and tertiary folds of proteins. Usually, short linear peptides are often structurally flexible; however, the functions of these peptides are highly dependent on their ability to adopt folded structures upon complex formation with their cognate receptors. In this regard, designed peptides that would yield high resolution structures in complex with LPS have not been well pursued. LPS, being a negatively charged amphiphilic molecule, interacts with naturally occurring peptides or protein fragments containing basic/polar and hydrophobic amino acids, although there are considerable variations in lengths, sequences, and amino acid compositions among these peptides (27, 28).Here, we have determined the three-dimensional structures of a series of 12-residue peptides in the context of LPS. To the best of our knowledge, these results show, for the first time, that atomic resolution structures of designed peptides obtained in LPS could be correlated with their antiendotoxic activities. Furthermore, the LPS-induced structures of active, inactive, and short peptide motif, presented here, may provide building blocks for the designing novel proteins for the outer membrane.     

Optimization of an Elastic Network Augmented Coarse Grained Model to Study CCMV Capsid Deformation

The major protective coat of most viruses is a highly symmetric protein capsid that forms spontaneously from many copies of identical proteins. Structural and mechanical properties of such capsids, as well as their self-assembly process, have been studied experimentally and theoretically, including modeling efforts by computer simulations on various scales. Atomistic models include specific details of local protein binding but are limited in system size and accessible time, while coarse grained (CG) models do get access to longer time and length scales but often lack the specific local interactions. Multi-scale models aim at bridging this gap by systematically connecting different levels of resolution. Here, a CG model for CCMV (Cowpea Chlorotic Mottle Virus), a virus with an icosahedral shell of 180 identical protein monomers, is developed, where parameters are derived from atomistic simulations of capsid protein dimers in aqueous solution. In particular, a new method is introduced to combine the MARTINI CG model with a supportive elastic network based on structural fluctuations of individual monomers. In the parametrization process, both network connectivity and strength are optimized. This elastic-network optimized CG model, which solely relies on atomistic data of small units (dimers), is able to correctly predict inter-protein conformational flexibility and properties of larger capsid fragments of 20 and more subunits. Furthermore, it is shown that this CG model reproduces experimental (Atomic Force Microscopy) indentation measurements of the entire viral capsid. Thus it is shown that one obvious goal for hierarchical modeling, namely predicting mechanical properties of larger protein complexes from models that are carefully parametrized on elastic properties of smaller units, is achievable.     

Lipopolysaccharide bound structures of the active fragments of fowlicidin-1, a cathelicidin family of antimicrobial and antiendotoxic peptide from chicken, determined by transferred nuclear Overhauser effect spectroscopy

Cathelicidins comprise a major family of host-defense antimicrobial peptides in vertebrates. The C-terminal part of the cathelicidins is bestowed with antimicrobial and lipopolysaccharide (LPS) neutralizing activities. In this work, we repot high resolution solution structures of two nontoxic active fragments, residues 1-16 or RG16 and residues 8-26 or LK19, of fowlicidin-1, a cathelicidin family of peptide from chicken, as a complex with LPS using two-dimensional transferred nuclear Overhauser effect (Tr-NOE) spectroscopy. Both peptides are highly flexible and do not assume any preferred conformations in their free states. Upon complexation with endotoxin or LPS, peptides undergo structural transitions towards folded conformations. Structure calculations reveal that the LK19 peptide adopts a well defined helical structure with a bend at the middle. By contrast, the first seven amino acids of RG16 are found to be flexible followed by a helical conformation for the residues L8-A15. In addition, a truncated version of LK19 encompassing residues A15-K26 or AK12 displays an amphipathic helical structure in LPS. Saturation transfer difference (STD) NMR studies demonstrate that all peptides, RG16, LK19, and AK12, are in close proximity with LPS, whereby the aromatic residues showed the strongest STD effects. Fluorescence studies with fluorescein isothiocyanate (FITC) labeled LPS in the presence of full-length fowlicidin-1, LK19, RG16, and AK12 indicated that LPS-neutralization property of these peptides may result from plausible dissociation of LPS aggregates. The helical structures of peptide fragments derived from fowlicidin-1 in LPS could be utilized to develop nontoxic antiendotoxic compounds.     

SMoS: a database of structural motifs of protein superfamilies

The Structural Motifs of Superfamilies (SMoS) database provides information about the structural motifs of aligned protein domain superfamilies. Such motifs among structurally aligned multiple members of protein superfamilies are recognized by the conservation of amino acid preference and solvent inaccessibility and are examined for the conservation of other features like secondary structural content, hydrogen bonding, non-polar interaction and residue packing. These motifs, along with their sequence and spatial orientation, represent the conserved core structure of each superfamily and also provide the minimal requirement of sequence and structural information to retain each superfamily fold.     

Rhizosphere microbiome: revisiting the synergy of plant-microbe interactions

Sustainable enhancement in food production from less available arable land must encompass a balanced use of inorganic, organic, and biofertilizer sources of plant nutrients to augment and maintain soil fertility and productivity. The varied responses of microbial inoculants across fields and crops, however, have formed a major bottleneck that hinders its widespread adoption. This necessitates an intricate analysis of the inter-relationships between soil microbial communities and their impact on host plant productivity. The concept of “biased rhizosphere,” which evolved from the interactions among different components of the rhizosphere including plant roots and soil microflora, strives to garner a better understanding of the complex rhizospheric intercommunications. Moreover, knowledge on rhizosphere microbiome is essential for developing strategies for shaping the rhizosphere to benefit the plants. With the advent of molecular and “omics” tools, a better understanding of the plant-microbe association could be acquired which could play a crucial role in drafting the future “biofertilizers.” The present review, therefore aims to (a) to introduce the concepts of rhizosphere hotspots and microbiomes and (b) to detail out the methodologies for creating biased rhizospheres for plant-mediated selection of beneficial microorganisms and their roles in improving plant performance.