| 1. |
- Kmezik, Cathleen, 1991, et al.
(författare)
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A polysaccharide utilization locus from the gut bacterium Dysgonomonas mossii encodes functionally distinct carbohydrate esterases.
- 2021
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Ingår i: The Journal of biological chemistry. - : Elsevier BV. - 1083-351X .- 0021-9258. ; 296
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The gut microbiota plays a central role in human health by enzymatically degrading dietary fiber and concomitantly excreting short chain fatty acids that are associated with manifold health benefits. The polysaccharide xylan is abundant in dietary fiber but non-carbohydrate decorations hinder efficient cleavage by glycoside hydrolases (GHs) and need to be addressed by carbohydrate esterases (CEs). Enzymes from carbohydrate esterase families 1 and 6 (CE1 & 6) perform key roles in xylan degradation by removing feruloyl and acetate decorations, yet little is known about these enzyme families especially with regards to their diversity in activity. Bacteroidetes bacteria are dominant members of the microbiota and often encode their carbohydrate-active enzymes in multi-gene polysaccharide utilization loci (PULs). Here we present the characterization of three CEs found in a PUL encoded by the gut Bacteroidete Dysgonomonas mossii. We demonstrate that the CEs are functionally distinct, with one highly efficient CE6 acetyl esterase and two CE1 enzymes with feruloyl esterase activities. One multidomain CE1 enzyme contains two CE1 domains: an N-terminal domain feruloyl esterase, and a C-terminal domain with minimal activity on model substrates. We present the structure of the C-terminal CE1 domain with the carbohydrate binding module that bridges the two CE1 domains, as well as a complex of the same protein fragment with methyl ferulate. The investment of D. mossii in producing multiple CEs suggests that improved accessibility of xylan for GHs as well as cleavage of covalent polysaccharide-polysaccharide and lignin-polysaccharide bonds are important enzyme activities in the gut environment.
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| 2. |
- Ahluwalia, Bani, et al.
(författare)
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A Distinct Faecal Microbiota and Metabolite Profile Linked to Bowel Habits in Patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome
- 2021
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Ingår i: Cells. - : MDPI AG. - 2073-4409. ; 10:6
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) are suggested to have an altered intestinal microenvironment. We therefore aimed to determine the intestinal microenvironment profile, based on faecal microbiota and metabolites, and the potential link to symptoms in IBS patients. The faecal microbiota was evaluated by the GA-map(TM) dysbiosis test, and tandem mass spectrometry (GC-MS/MS) was used for faecal metabolomic profiling in patients with IBS and healthy subjects. Symptom severity was assessed using the IBS Severity Scoring System and anxiety and depression were assessed using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. A principal component analysis based on faecal microbiota (n = 54) and metabolites (n = 155) showed a clear separation between IBS patients (n = 40) and healthy subjects (n = 18). Metabolites were the main driver of this separation. Additionally, the intestinal microenvironment profile differed between IBS patients with constipation (n = 15) and diarrhoea (n = 11), while no clustering was detected in subgroups of patients according to symptom severity or anxiety. Furthermore, ingenuity pathway analysis predicted amino acid metabolism and several cellular and molecular functions to be altered in IBS patients. Patients with IBS have a distinct faecal microbiota and metabolite profile linked to bowel habits. Intestinal microenvironment profiling, based on faecal microbiota and metabolites, may be considered as a future non-invasive diagnostic tool, alongside providing valuable insights into the pathophysiology of IBS.
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| 3. |
- Dahlstrand Rudin, Agnes, et al.
(författare)
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Porphyromonas gingivalis Produce Neutrophil Specific Chemoattractants Including Short Chain Fatty Acids
- 2021
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Ingår i: Frontiers in cellular and infection microbiology. - : Frontiers Media SA. - 2235-2988. ; 10
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Neutrophil migration from blood to tissue-residing microbes is governed by a series of chemoattractant gradients of both endogenous and microbial origin. Periodontal disease is characterized by neutrophil accumulation in the gingival pocket, recruited by the subgingival biofilm consisting mainly of gram-negative, anaerobic and proteolytic species such as Porphyromonas gingivalis. The fact that neutrophils are the dominating cell type in the gingival pocket suggests that neutrophil-specific chemoattractants are released by subgingival bacteria, but characterization of chemoattractants released by subgingival biofilm species remains incomplete. In the present study we characterized small (< 3 kDa) soluble chemoattractants released by growing P. gingivalis, and show that these are selective for neutrophils. Most neutrophil chemoattractant receptors are expressed also by mononuclear phagocytes, the free fatty acid receptor 2 (FFAR2) being an exception. In agreement with the selective neutrophil recruitment, the chemotactic activity found in P. gingivalis supernatants was mediated in part by a mixture of short chain fatty acids (SCFAs) that are recognized by FFAR2, and other leukocytes (including monocytes) did not respond to SCFA stimulation. Although SCFAs, produced by bacterial fermentation of dietary fiber in the gut, has previously been shown to utilize FFAR2, our data demonstrate that the pronounced proteolytic metabolism employed by P. gingivalis (and likely also other subgingival biofilm bacteria associated with periodontal diseases) may result in the generation of SCFAs that attract neutrophils to the gingival pocket. This finding highlights the interaction between SCFAs and FFAR2 in the context of P. gingivalis colonization during periodontal disease, but may also have implications for other inflammatory pathologies involving proteolytic bacteria.
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| 4. |
- Liu, Quanli, 1988, et al.
(författare)
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De novo biosynthesis of bioactive isoflavonoids by engineered yeast cell factories
- 2021
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Ingår i: Nature Communications. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2041-1723 .- 2041-1723. ; 12:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Isoflavonoids comprise a class of plant natural products with great nutraceutical, pharmaceutical and agricultural significance. Their low abundance in nature and structural complexity however hampers access to these phytochemicals through traditional crop-based manufacturing or chemical synthesis. Microbial bioproduction therefore represents an attractive alternative. Here, we engineer the metabolism of Saccharomyces cerevisiae to become a platform for efficient production of daidzein, a core chemical scaffold for isoflavonoid biosynthesis, and demonstrate its application towards producing bioactive glucosides from glucose, following the screening-reconstruction-application engineering framework. First, we rebuild daidzein biosynthesis in yeast and its production is then improved by 94-fold through screening biosynthetic enzymes, identifying rate-limiting steps, implementing dynamic control, engineering substrate trafficking and fine-tuning competing metabolic processes. The optimized strain produces up to 85.4 mg L−1 of daidzein and introducing plant glycosyltransferases in this strain results in production of bioactive puerarin (72.8 mg L−1) and daidzin (73.2 mg L−1). Our work provides a promising step towards developing synthetic yeast cell factories for de novo biosynthesis of value-added isoflavonoids and the multi-phased framework may be extended to engineer pathways of complex natural products in other microbial hosts.
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| 5. |
- Maasfeh, Lujain, et al.
(författare)
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Impaired Luminal Control of Intestinal Macrophage Maturation in Patients With Ulcerative Colitis During Remission
- 2021
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Ingår i: Cellular and Molecular Gastroenterology and Hepatology. - : Elsevier BV. - 2352-345X. ; 12:4, s. 1415-1432
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BACKGROUND & AIMS: Intestinal macrophages adopt a hyporesponsive phenotype through education by local signals. Lack of proper macrophage maturation in patients with ulcerative colitis (UC) in remission may initiate gut inflammation. The aim, therefore, was to determine the effects of fecal luminal factors derived from healthy donors and UC patients in remission on macrophage phenotype and function. METHODS: Fecal supernatants (FS) were extracted from fecal samples of healthy subjects and UC patients in remission. Monocytes were matured into macrophages in the presence of granulocyte-macrophage colony-stimulating factor without/with FS, stimulated with lipopolysaccharide, and macrophage phenotype and function were assessed. Fecal metabolomic profiles were analyzed by gas-chromatography/mass-spectrometry. RESULTS: Fecal luminal factors derived from healthy donors were effective in down-regulating Toll-like receptor signaling, cytokine signaling, and antigen presentation in macrophages. Fecal luminal factors derived from UC patients in remission were less potent in inducing lipopolysaccharide hyporesponsiveness and modulating expression of genes involved in macrophage cytokine and Toll-like receptor signaling pathways. Although phagocytic and bactericidal abilities of macrophages were not affected by FS treatment, healthy FS-treated macrophages showed a greater ability to suppress cluster of differentiation 4(+) T-cell activation and interferon gamma secretion compared with UC remission FS-treated counterparts. Furthermore, metabolomic analysis showed differential fecal metabolite composition for healthy donors and UC patients in remission. CONCLUSIONS: Our data indicate that UC patients in remission lack luminal signals able to condition macrophages toward a hyporesponsive and tolerogenic phenotype, which may contribute to their persistent vulnerability to relapse.
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| 6. |
- Repecka, Donatas, et al.
(författare)
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Expanding functional protein sequence spaces using generative adversarial networks
- 2021
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Ingår i: Nature Machine Intelligence. - : Springer Science and Business Media LLC. - 2522-5839. ; 3:4, s. 324-333
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- De novo protein design for catalysis of any desired chemical reaction is a long-standing goal in protein engineering because of the broad spectrum of technological, scientific and medical applications. However, mapping protein sequence to protein function is currently neither computationally nor experimentally tangible. Here, we develop ProteinGAN, a self-attention-based variant of the generative adversarial network that is able to ‘learn’ natural protein sequence diversity and enables the generation of functional protein sequences. ProteinGAN learns the evolutionary relationships of protein sequences directly from the complex multidimensional amino-acid sequence space and creates new, highly diverse sequence variants with natural-like physical properties. Using malate dehydrogenase (MDH) as a template enzyme, we show that 24% (13 out of 55 tested) of the ProteinGAN-generated and experimentally tested sequences are soluble and display MDH catalytic activity in the tested conditions in vitro, including a highly mutated variant of 106 amino-acid substitutions. ProteinGAN therefore demonstrates the potential of artificial intelligence to rapidly generate highly diverse functional proteins within the allowed biological constraints of the sequence space.
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| 7. |
- Ross, Alastair, 1976, et al.
(författare)
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Making complex measurements of meat composition fast: Application of rapid evaporative ionisation mass spectrometry to measuring meat quality and fraud
- 2021
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Ingår i: Meat Science. - : Elsevier BV. - 0309-1740. ; 181
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Increasing demands are being placed on meat producers to verify more about their product with regards to safety, quality and authenticity. There are many methods that can detect aspects of these parameters in meat, yet most are too slow to keep up with the demands of modern meat processing plants and supply chains. A new technology, Rapid Evaporative Ionisation Mass Spectrometry (REIMS), has the potential to bridge the gap between advanced laboratory measurements and technology that can screen for quality, safety and authenticity parameters in a single measurement. Analysis with REIMS generates a detailed mass spectral fingerprint representative of a meat sample without the need for sample processing. REIMS has successfully been used to detect species fraud, detect use of hormones in meat animals, monitor meat processing and to detect off flavours such as boar taint. The aim of this review is to summarize these and other applications to highlight the potential of REIMS for meat analysis. Sampling methods and important considerations for data analysis are discussed as well as limitations of the technology and remaining challenges for practical adoption.
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| 8. |
- Ross, Alastair, 1976, et al.
(författare)
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Umbilical cord blood metabolome differs in relation to delivery mode, birth order and sex, maternal diet and possibly future allergy development in rural children
- 2021
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Ingår i: PLoS ONE. - : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 16:1
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Allergy is one of the most common diseases among young children yet all factors that affect development of allergy remain unclear. In a small cohort of 65 children living in the same rural area of south-west Sweden, we have previously found that maternal factors, including prenatal diet, affect childhood allergy risk, suggesting that in utero conditions may be important for allergy development. Here, we studied if metabolites in the umbilical cord blood of newborns may be related to development of childhood allergy, accounting for key perinatal factors such as mode of delivery, birth order and sex. Available umbilical cord blood plasma samples from 44 of the participants were analysed using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry metabolomics; allergy was diagnosed by specialised paediatricians at ages 18 months, 3 years and 8 years and included eczema, asthma, food allergy and allergic rhinoconjunctivitis. Nineteen cord blood metabolites were related to future allergy diagnosis though there was no clear pattern of up- or downregulation of metabolic pathways. In contrast, perinatal factors birth order, sex and mode of delivery affected several energy and biosynthetic pathways, including glutamate and aspartic acid-histidine metabolism (p = 0.004) and the tricarboxylic acid cycle (p = 0.006) for birth order; branched chain amino acid metabolism (p = 0.0009) and vitamin B-6 metabolism (p = 0.01) for sex; and glyoxylate and dicarboxylic acid metabolism (p = 0.005) for mode of delivery. Maternal diet was also related to some of the metabolites associated with allergy. In conclusion, the cord blood metabolome includes individual metabolites that reflect lifestyle, microbial and other factors that may be associated with future allergy diagnosis, and also reflects temporally close events/factors. Larger studies are required to confirm these associations, and perinatal factors such as birth order or siblings must be considered in future cord-blood metabolome studies.
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