Category: Technology

A group from Faculté de Pharmacie, Université Paul, Sabatier, Toulouse, France, etc has reported that Helix pomatia lectin (HPA) is not only a good tool as cancer marker, but could also be used for therapeutic applications.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8431231/

Morniga G lectin and HPA lectin are know to have binding specificity to Tn-antigen. Authors demonstrated in the past that Morniga G can interact with Tn antigen present on Jurkat human leukemia, inducing tumor cell death but not death of Tn-negative healthy peripheral blood lymphocytes. However, very little information was known about the putative functional role of HPA-binding glycoproteins on tumor cells.

In this paper, authors have demonstrated for the first time that HPA induces cell death in human Jurkat T-cell leukemia and mouse EL4 T-cell lymphoma. In the mouse, HPA is clearly more toxic than Morniga G for EL4 cells. In addition, HPA appears to be non-toxic for healthy lymphocytes, suggesting that HPA could be used for therapeutic applications.

A group from Gansu Agricultural University, Lanzhou, China, etc. has reported on the effects of different vegetable rotations on the tomato’s rhizobacteria.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8459948/

The vegetable rotations, cabbage/tomato (B), kidney bean/tomato (D), and celery/tomato (Q), were compared with the continuous tomato cropping (CK) as a control from view points of changes in tomato’s rhizobacteria and effects on tomato plants growth.

The light and photosynthetic parameters of the leaves (intercellular CO² concentration, transpiration rate, stomatal conductance, net photosynthetic rate) were higher in the celery/tomato rotation that the continuous tomato cropping. As for the changes in tomato’s rhizobacteria, Actinomycetaies decreased, and Actinobacteria, Anaerolineaceae, Hyphomicrobium increased in the celery/tomato rotation significantly compared with the continuous tomato cropping.

A group from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA, etc. has reported that FIB-4 would be a good independent predictor of COVID-19 mortality.
https://aasldpubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/hep4.1650

A total of 202 participants were selected from the two cohorts (n = 87 from the MassCPR cohort and n = 115 from the BWH cohort).
FIB-4 is defined by the following formula:
FIB-4=(Age(year)xAST(U/L)/(PLT(100/uL)x√ALT(U/L))

In logistic regression analysis, higher FIB-4 was associated with mortality and an unadjusted OR = 1.75 (95% CI, 1.37, 2.23; P < 0.001), and after adjusting for sex, BMI, ethnicity, hypertension, diabetes, remdesivir use, and liver diseases, FIB-4 remained to be associated with mortality (adjusted OR = 1.79; 95% CI, 1.36, 2.35; P < 0.001) In conclusion, it was shown that FIB-4 at admission would be a good independent index in predicting COVID-19 death, with an AUC of 0.79.

A group from Department of Molecular Genetics, University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands, etc. has reported that Bacillus cabrialesii BH5 Protects Tomato Plants Against Botrytis cinerea.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8441496/

To date, more and more reports show that applying plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) into agriculture as biological control agents is a successful strategy for plant disease control. PGPR can influence plant growth by either facilitating resource acquisition or modulating plant hormone levels. Moreover, PGPR can decrease the various pathogenic effects, either by evoking immunity of plants or by producing antimicrobial compounds.

It was shown that Bacillus cabrialesii BH5 isolated from the rhizosphere soil of a healthy tomato plant shows potent biocontrol activity against fungal pathogens via producing an antifungal compound named fengycin H (see below).

(The antifungal activity of volatile organic compounds (fengycin H) produced by BH5, strong inhibition against botrytis cinerea)

It was also found that B. cabrialesii BH5 is able to promote tomato plant resistance to B. cinerea by activating the jasmonic acid (JA) signaling pathway, which is own mechanism to deal with pathogens and to coordinate the appropriate defense responses. Actually, the expression of the JA signaling pathway-related gene SlLoxD in fengycin H or BH5 treatment was always significantly higher than that in control from 48 to 96 h.

The effect of BH5 on the growth of tomato seedlings was monitored by measuring the shoot/root length, shoot/root fresh weight, and dry weight. B. cabrialesii BH5 showed a significantly increase of fresh and dry weight both of the shoot and root.

A group from Institute of Molecular Biotechnology of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna Austria, etc. has reported CLEC4G and CD209c lectins could block SARS-CoV-2 infections.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8420505/

Of 168 annotated carbohydrate recognition domains (CRDs) of mouse C‐type lectins, Galectins and Siglecs, 143 lectin‐CRDs as IgG2a‐Fc fusion proteins were expressed with human HEK293F cells. The resulting dimeric lectin‐Fc fusion proteins will be the first comprehensive library of mammalian CRDs. Through this study, the dimeric lectin-Fc fusion proteins were used as lectins.

The detected N‐glycan species from SARS-CoV-2 Spike ranged from poorly processed oligo‐mannose structures to highly processed multi‐antennary complex N‐glycans in a site‐dependent manner. The two glycosylation sites N331 and N343 located in the RBD carried more extended glycans, including sialylated and di‐fucosylated structures, when expressed as an independent construct as opposed to the full‐length Spike protein. It has to be noted that the N‐glycosylation of the RBD within full‐length trimeric Spike is different from N‐glycosylation of the RBD expressed as minimal ACE2 binding domain. This highlights the importance of using a full‐length trimeric Spike protein for its functional studies. This also suggests slight changes in glycosylation might explain differences in antiviral immunity and possibly severity of the disease.

Anyway, it was demonstrated that two lectins, CLEC4G and CD209c, were identified to strongly bind to Spike. CLEC4G and CD209c binding to Spike was visualized in real time and at single‐molecule resolution using atomic force microscopy, and the 3D modelling showed that both lectins can bind to a glycan within the RBD‐ACE2 interface and thus interferes with Spike binding to cell surfaces. Finally, it was shown that CLEC4G and CD209c significantly reduced SARS‐CoV‐2 infection.

The Viral RNA was measured with qRT–PCR 15 h after infection of SARS‐CoV‐2. Data are presented as fold changes of viral loads over mock (only SARS‐CoV‐2 was added).

A group from Agricultural University of Athens, Athens, Greece, etc. has reported that the mixtures of Bacillus (1.SG.7, 5.SG.3) and Pseudomonas (2.SG.20, 2.C.19) strains in wheat rhizosphere enhanced the lateral roots abundance and shoots biomass of wheat, and mitigated salinity stress, comparing with the cases used independently.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8400701/

Sixty-eight arylsulfatase (ARS)-producing bacterias were isolated from the rhizosphere of durum wheat on calcareous soil. Phylogenetic analysis showed that most of the isolates belonged to the Pseudomonas and Bacillus genus. From view points of the following items, IAA production, antifungal activity, biofilm formation, and salinity tolerance, Bacterial Strains were selected from the isolated ARS-producing bacterias. Those were Bacillus (1.SG.7, 5.SG.3), Pseudomonas (2.SG.20, 2.C.19, 3.SG.19, 2.C.23, 4.SG.6, 2.SG.8)

All 8 bacterial strains enhanced the number of lateral roots and shoot biomass. The growth-promoting ability was enhanced by using strain mixtures, above all, mixtures of Bacillus (1.SG.7, 5.SG.3) and Pseudomonas (2.SG.20, 2.C.19) strains, enhanced the lateral roots abundance and shoots biomass, mitigated salinity stress.

Since the rhizosphere is a quite complex system including a number of bacterias and fungi, it must be a good way to focus on representative strains as shown here to understand how more effective rhizospheric consortium is formed as plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR).

A group from University of Colorado, Aurora, USA, etc. has reported that SARS-CoV-2 Lambda variant has higher infectivity than Delta variant.
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/34462744/

The binding affinity of overall antibodies from Pfizer-BioNTech vaccinated individuals droped dramatically (about 3.5 times fold drop for the Delta variant, and about 4.0times fold for the Lambda variant) after six months. These data suggest that the Lambda variant has a better chance than the Delta variant to escape the immunity built by the vaccination.

Although the mutations of L452Q and F490S in RBD of Lambda varient do not bring any enhance of the binding between RBD and ACE2 comparing with Delta variant, both mutations lead to the disruptions of a hydrophobic patch, which is a critical area for the binding of broadly neutralizing antibodies. This could be a reason why Lambda variant has higher infectivity than Delta variant.