Month: December 2022

A group from Faculty of Biology, University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany, etc. has reported about a lectibody recruiting cytotoxic T lymphocytes while simultaneously binding to tumor-associated antigen on cancer cells as a new modality for cancer therapy.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9733292/

The lectibody was realized by conjugating an anti-CD3 single-chain antibody fragment to the B-subunit of Shiga toxin. The tumor-related glycosphingolipid globotriaosylceramide (Gb3) expressed on malignant cancer cells can be selectively recognized by the B-subunit of Shiga toxin (which is a kind of lectin), and the CD3 receptor on T cells can be targeted by the single chain variable fragment (scFv) OKT3 as the anti-CD3-binding molecule.

To show the proof of the concept, two human colon adenocarcinoma cell lines HT-29 and LS-174 which express different abundance of Gb3 antigen were targeted with the lectibody. The HT-29 cell line expresses a high amount of Gb3, in contrast, the LS-174 cell line expresses very low or no amounts of Gb3. As shown below, it was demonstrated that the killing activity strongly correlates to the abundance of the Gb3 antigen at the surface of the target cells.

A group from Key Laboratory of Mollisols Agroecology, Northeast Institute of Geography and Agroecology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Harbin, China, etch. has reported about changes in dominant bacterial and fungal taxa due to chitin addition into soybean soils.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9730418/#SM1

Chitin addition is considered promising methods for alleviating soybean continuous cropping obstacles, however, the underlying mechanisms of soil sickness reduction remain unclear.

In this study, changes in dominant bacterial and fungal taxa due to chitin addition were evaluated.
At the bacterial OTU level, chitin distinctly increased the relative abundance of Streptomyces, Sphingomonas, Bacillus, Mesorhizobium and Nitrospira. At the fungal phylum level, chitin addition markedly increased the relative abundance of Zygomycota, and conversely drastically reduced the relative abundance of potential pathogens affiliated with Fusarium, Paraphoma, Cylindrocarpon and Septoria.

A group from Biomolecular Medicine, Division of Biomolecular and Cellular Medicine, Department of Laboratory Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Huddinge Sweden, etc. has reported about cell‐specific targeting of extracellular vesicles (EVs) though engineering of glycan expression on EVs.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9719568/

Extracellular vesicles are thought to be promising carriers for the delivery of a variety of chemical and biological drugs. In order to improve the targeting performance of EVs, EVs were engineered to display the glycan of interest.
EV producer cells were genetically engineered to co‐express a glycosylation domain (GD) inserted into the large extracellular loop of CD63 and fucosyltransferase VII (FUT7) or IX (FUT9). P19 (19‐mer, derived from PSGL‐1) and CTP (28‐mer, from beta‐chorionic gonadotropin) were selected as potential sLeX peptide carriers (i.e., as the glycosylation domain). The combination of FUT7 and PSGL-1 resulted in the highest expression of sLeX, and also the combination of FUT9 and PSGL‐1 resulted in the highest expression of Lewis X (LeX) but not sLeX.

Through this strategy, surface display of two types of glycan ligands, sLeX and LeX, on EVs was demonstrated, and achieved high specificity towards activated endothelial cells and dendritic cells, respectively.

A group from State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Diseases and Insect Pest, Institute of Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China, etc. has reported seed priming of entomopathogenic fungi to increase crop growth and tolerance against herbivores.
https://bmcplantbiol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12870-022-03949-3

Ostrinia furnacalis is the most destructive pest of maize causing an annual yield loss of about 6 to 9 million tons in East and Southeast Asia.

Seed priming is nowadays considered one the most promising techniques in enhancing abiotic and biotic stress tolerance, yield, and growth in crop plants. In this study, seed priming using Beauveria bassiana (BB) and Trichoderma asperellum (TA) were evaluated.

From the experimental results, the additional yield and gross return were calculated to estimate the increase in corn yield and economic return by the seed priming of entomopathogenic fungi. The highest additional yield of 6811.62 KG/ha and 8117.45 KG/ha in year 2018 and 2019 respectively was recorded in consortium treatment (BT), which is an increase of 82 – 96% over control. Treatment by BB and TA resulted in additional yield of 4518.06 (52.2%) and 2930.19 (35.4%) respectively in 2018 year and 4688.58 (55.8%) and 3982.40 (47.5%) in 2019 over control.

The effect of seed priming of entomopathogenic fungi was seen in O. furnacalis larval development, especially in consortium inoculated plants (BT). The growth speed was greatly reduced and larval survival rate was also reduced. It was seen that more then 50% larvae cannot even reached at 3rd instar stage and died. The lowest survival rate of 13% was recorded in consortium (BT) treated plants followed by 28% in B. bassiana (BB) and 36% in T. asperellum (TA) was recorded whereas the survival rate in control group was 94%.

Leaf samples of seed primed and non-primed maize under O. furnacalis stress were analyzed for antioxidants, proline, and chlorophyll content. Seed priming with fungal strains significantly increased the enzyme activities at 24-h by the consortium treatment (BT) compared to non-primed control (IC). The seed priming with BT significantly enhanced the SOD, POD, Protease, PPO, and Proline activities up to 80.29-, 336-, 302-, 141-, and 65.8-fold respectively. And further, O. furnacalis infestation significantly increased cis-OPDA, JA, and JA-Ile in all fungal inoculated treatments (BB, TA, BT) but the highest phytohormone content was observed in consortium treated plants (BT), suggesting that the entomopathogenic fungal inoculation., especially consortium (BT) induced the enhanced production of JA metabolites in maize.