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- Klinter, Stefan, 1985-
(author)
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Identification and characterisation of chitin and cellulose synthases in oomycetes : New tools for biochemical studies and structure determination
- 2021
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Despite resembling ‘true’ fungi in terms of morphological features, oomycetes form a distinct eukaryotic lineage of filamentous microorganisms that belongs to the stramenopiles, a group of protists also comprising the closely-related brown algae and diatoms. Many oomycetes are devastating pathogens of plants and animals, globally causing significant economic losses in the agriculture and aquaculture industries, and posing considerable environmental damage to natural ecosystems. Although the cell wall (CW) is critical for the viability and morphogenesis of the organism it surrounds, our knowledge of oomycete CW architecture and biosynthetic enzymes is limited. Given the vast threat that pathogenic oomycetes pose, uncovering the details of CW biosynthesis and regulation in these pathogens may reveal new opportunities for disease control.To this end, we aimed to elucidate the role of putative membrane-bound glycosyltransferase family 2 enzymes implicated in the biosynthesis of oomycete CW polysaccharides. Suitable gene candidates were identified, and their products analysed, as illustrated by the oomycete-wide discovery and phylogenetic analysis of the chitin synthase gene family (paper I), and the identification of the cellulose synthase genes in Saprolegnia parasitica (paper II) and Phytophthora capsici (paper III). Expression of promising candidate genes was verified using different techniques, including gene expression analysis (papers II and III), and the effect of inhibitors on hyphal growth (papers I and II) and enzymatic activity in in vitro assays (paper II). Single enzymes representing putative chitin synthases from various organisms (unpublished data) and cellulose synthases from S. parasitica (extended data for paper II), and P. capsici cellulose synthase 1 (paper III) were produced, and partly enriched or even purified, in yeast strains specifically engineered to facilitate the biochemical characterisation of the recombinant proteins in in vitro enzyme assays. To advance functional investigations and structure determination of integral membrane proteins, we developed DirectMX, a method that allows the reconstitution of target proteins with their surrounding lipids directly from crude cell membranes into Salipro nanoparticles (paper IV).
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| 2. |
- Brown, Christian, 1976-
(author)
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Characterization of specific domains of the cellulose and chitin synthases from pathogenic oomycetes
- 2015
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- Some oomycetes species are severe pathogens of fish or crops. As such, they are responsible for important losses in the aquaculture industry as well as in agriculture. Saprolegnia parasitica is a major concern in aquaculture as there is currently no method available for controlling the diseases caused by this microorganism. The cell wall is an extracellular matrix composed essentially of polysaccharides, whose integrity is required for oomycete viability. Thus, the enzymes involved in the biosynthesis of cell wall components, such as cellulose and chitin synthases, represent ideal targets for disease control. However, the biochemical properties of these enzymes are poorly understood, which limits our capacity to develop specific inhibitors that can be used for blocking the growth of pathogenic oomycetes.In our work, we have used Saprolegnia monoica as a model species for oomycetes to characterize two types of domains that occur specifically in oomycete carbohydrate synthases: the Pleckstrin Homology (PH) domain of a cellulose synthase and the so-called ‘Microtubule Interacting and Trafficking’ (MIT) domain of chitin synthases. In addition, the chitin synthase activity of the oomycete phytopathogen Aphanomyces euteiches was characterized in vitro using biochemical approaches.The results from our in vitro investigations revealed that the PH domain of the oomycete cellulose synthase binds to phosphoinositides, microtubules and F-actin. In addition, cell biology approaches were used to demonstrate that the PH domain co-localize with F-actin in vivo. The structure of the MIT domain of chitin synthase (CHS) 1 was solved by NMR. In vitro binding assays performed on recombinant MIT domains from CHS 1 and CHS 2 demonstrated that both proteins strongly interact with phosphatidic acid in vitro. These results were further supported by in silico data where biomimetic membranes composed of different phospholipids were designed for interaction studies. The use of a yeast-two-hybrid approach suggested that the MIT domain of CHS 2 interacts with the delta subunit of Adaptor Protein 3, which is involved in protein trafficking. These data support a role of the MIT domains in the cellular targeting of CHS proteins. Our biochemical data on the characterization of the chitin synthase activity of A. euteiches suggest the existence of two distinct enzymes responsible for the formation of water soluble and insoluble chitosaccharides, which is consistent with the existence of two putative CHS genes in the genome of this species.Altogether our data support a role of the PH domain of cellulose synthase and MIT domains of CHS in membrane trafficking and cellular location.
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| 3. |
- Dahlin, Paul, 1983-
(author)
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Analysis of sterol metabolism in the pathogenic oomycetes Saprolegnia parasitica and Phytophthora infestans
- 2016
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The primary objective of this thesis was to investigate the sterol metabolism of two pathogenic oomycetes, specifically the processes of sterol synthesis and sterol acquisition in the fish pathogen Saprolegnia parasitica (Saprolegniales) and the plant pathogen Phytophthora infestans (Peronosporales). Furthermore, the effects of steroidal glycoalkaloids from Solanaceous plants, on P. infestans, were examined. The improved understanding of these processes should help to identify approaches for the identification of new oomycete inhibitors targeting sterol metabolism in agriculture and aquaculture farming systems, and to guide plant-breeding strategies to defend solanaceous plants against oomycetes.For these reasons, the molecular basis of the metabolic pathways of sterol synthesis and/or sterol acquisition was investigated. Sterols are derived from isoprenoids and indispensable in various biological processes. Our biochemical investigation of an oxidosqualene cyclase revealed that sterol synthesis in S. parasitica begins with the formation of lanosterol (Paper I), and a reconstruction of the complete sterol synthesis pathway to the final compound, fucosterol, in S. parasitica was performed using bioinformatics (Paper II). Complementary to this work, the extent to which P. infestans, which is incapable of de novo sterol synthesis, is able to modify exogenously provided sterols was investigated by determining the growth impact of various sterol supplements in the growth media (Paper II). Building on the sterol investigations, the solanaceous sterol derivatives from the glycoalkaloid family were analysed. These compounds contain both a steroidal and a carbohydrate (glycan) moiety. Data obtained by feeding various deuterium-labeled sterols to potato shoots, supported the theory that steroidal glycoalkaloids in Solanum tuberosum are produced from cholesterol (Paper III). Since these steroidal glycoalkaloids are thought to play a role in plant defense, their physiological effects on P. infestans were investigated (Paper IV). Unexpectedly we found that non-glycosylated steroidal alkaloids had a greater inhibitory effect than steroidal glycoalkaloids. Steroidal glycoalkaloids derived from other Solanaceous species exhibited different physiological effects on the growth of P. infestans. This research was conducted on two oomycete species belonging to the Saprolegniales and Peronosporales orders, hence the results presented are likely to be representative of each of these two oomycete orders.
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| 4. |
- Larsbrink, Johan, 1982-
(author)
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Strategies for the Discovery of Carbohydrate-Active Enzymes from Environmental Bacteria
- 2013
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The focus of this thesis is a comparative study of approaches in discovery of carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes). CAZymes synthesise, bind to, and degrade all the multitude of carbohydrates found in nature. As such, when aiming for sustainable methods to degrade plant biomass for the generation of biofuels, for which there is a strong drive in society, CAZymes are a natural source of environmentally friendly molecular tools.In nature, microorganisms are the principal degraders of carbohydrates. Not only do they degrade plant matter in forests and aquatic habitats, but also break down the majority of carbohydrates ingested by animals. These symbiotic microorganisms, known as the microbiota, reside in animal digestive tracts in immense quantities, where one of the key nutrient sources is complex carbohydrates. Thus, microorganisms are a plentiful source of CAZymes, and strategies in the discovery of new enzymes from bacterial sources have been the basis for the work presented here, combined with biochemical characterisation of several enzymes.Novel enzymatic activities for the glycoside hydrolase family 31 have been described as a result of the initial projects of the thesis. These later evolved into projects studying bacterial multi-gene systems for the partial or complete degradation of the heterogeneous plant polysaccharide xyloglucan. These systems contain, in addition to various hydrolytic CAZymes, necessary binding-, transport-, and regulatory proteins. The results presented here show, in detail, how very complex carbohydrates can efficiently be degraded by bacterial enzymes of industrial relevance.
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| 5. |
- Rzeszutek, Elzbieta
(author)
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Cell wall biosynthesis in the pathogenic oomycete Saprolegnia parasitica
- 2019
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Doctoral thesis (other academic/artistic)abstract
- The oomycete Saprolegnia parasitica is a fungus-like microorganism responsible for the fish disease saprolegniosis, which leads to important economic losses in aquaculture. Currently, there is no efficient method to control the infection and therefore methods for disease management are urgently needed. One of the promising approaches to tackle the pathogen is the inhibition of cell wall biosynthesis, specifically the enzymes involved in carbohydrate biosynthesis. The cell wall of S. parasitica consists mainly of cellulose, β-1,3 and β-1,6-glucans, whereas chitin is present in minute amounts only. The available genome sequence allowed the identification of six putative chitin (Chs) and cellulose (CesA) synthase genes. The main objective of this work was to characterize CHSs and CesAs from S. parasitica and test the effect of cell wall related inhibitors on pathogen growth. The tested inhibitors included nikkomycin Z, a competitive inhibitor of CHS as well as inhibitors of cellulose biosynthesis, namely flupoxam, CGA325'615 and compound I (CI). All drugs strongly reduced the growth of S. parasitica and inhibited the in vitro formation of chitin or cellulose, demonstrated by the use of a radiometric assay. The chemicals also affected the expression of some of the corresponding Chs and CesA genes.One of the CHSs, namely SpCHS5, was successfully expressed in yeast and purified to homogeneity as a full length protein. The recombinant enzyme was biochemically characterized and demonstrated to form chitin crystallites in vitro. Moreover, our data indicate that SpCHS5 most likely occurs as a homodimer which can further assemble into larger multi-subunit complexes. Point mutations of conserved amino acids allowed us to identify the essential residues for activity and processivity of the enzyme.In addition to the cell wall related inhibitors, a biosurfactant naturally produced by Pseudomonas species, massetolide A, was tested, showing strong inhibition of S. parasitica growth.Altogether, our data provide key information on the fundamental mechanisms of chitin and cellulose biosynthesis in oomycetes and the biochemical properties of the enzymes involved. They also demonstrate that the enzymes involved in cell wall biosynthesis represent promising targets for anti-oomycete drugs, even when the corresponding polysaccharides, such as chitin, occur in small amounts in the cell wall.
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