Proteomics and metabolomics analyses of camptothecin-producing Aspergillus terreus reveal the integration of PH domain-containing proteins and peptidylprolyl cis/trans isomerase in restoring the camptothecin biosynthesis.

IMPORTANCE: Decreasing the camptothecin productivity by fungi with storage and subculturing is the challenge that halts their further implementation to be an industrial platform for camptothecin (CPT) production. The highest differentially abundant proteins were Pleckstrin homology (PH) domain-containing proteins and Peptidyl-prolyl cis/trans isomerase that fluctuated with the subculturing of A. terreus with a remarkable relation to CPT biosynthesis and restored with addition of F. elastica microbiome.

Impact of gut microbiota composition on black cutworm, Agrotis ipsilon (hufnagel) metabolic indices and pesticide degradation.

Endosymbionts are known to have significant effects on their insect hosts, including nutrition, reproduction, and immunity. Insects gut microbiota is a critical component that affects their physiological and behavioral characteristics. The black cutworm (BCW), Agrotis ipsilon, is an economically important lepidopteran pest that has a diverse gut microbiome composed of nine species belonging to three phyla: Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria, and Firmicutes. This study was conducted to investigate the diversity of gut bacteria isolated from BCW larvae and moths and their effects on metabolism and pesticide degradation. The bacterial isolates were identified using the 16 S rRNA gene. The study showed that the gut microbiome composition significantly affected the metabolism of BCW larvae. Based on the screening results of synthesis of digestive enzymes and pesticide degradation, Brachybacterium conglomeratum and Glutamicibacter sp were selected to perform the remaining experiments as single isolates and consortium. The consortium-fed larvae showed high metabolic indices compared to antibiotic-fed larvae and the control. The gut bacteria were also shown to degrade three pesticide groups. Concerns regarding the health risk of chlorpyrifos have been raised due to its extensive use in agriculture. The isolated B. conglomeratum was more effective in chlorpyrifos degradation than the consortium. Furthermore, the study also examined the presence of sex related endosymbionts (Wolbachia, Spiroplasma, and Rickettsia) in the reproductive tissues of adults. The outcomes demonstrated that none of the examined endosymbionts existed. In conclusion, the study highlights the importance of the gut microbiome in insect physiology and behavior and its potential applications in biotechnology. It provides insights into developing eco-friendly pest control and bioremediation strategies using gut bacteria.

Triggering the biosynthetic machinery of Taxol by Aspergillus flavipes via cocultivation with Bacillus subtilis: proteomic analyses emphasize the chromatin remodeling upon fungal-bacterial interaction.

Attenuating the Taxol biosynthesis by fungi with storage and subculturing is the major challenge that limits their further industrial applications. Aspergillus flavipes has been reported as a potent Taxol producer, with plausible increasing to its Taxol yield upon coculturing with the microbiome of Podocarpus gracilior (El-Sayed et al., Process Biochemistry 76:55-67, 2019a; Scientific Reports 9, 2019b; Enzyme and Microbial Technology 131, 2019c); however, the identity of these microbial inducers remains ambiguous. Thus, this study was to assess the potency of individual microbes to trigger the Taxol biosynthesis by A. flavipes and to unravel the differentially expressed protein in response to bacterial interaction. Among the 25 bacterial endophytes of P. gracilior, Bacillus subtilis was the potent isolate enhancing the Taxol yield of A. flavipes by ~1.6-fold. Strikingly, this bacterial elicitor displayed a reliable inhibition to the growth of A. flavipes, so the released antifungal compound by B. subtilis could be the same signals for triggering the expression of A. flavipes Taxol synthesis. The highest Taxol yield by A. flavipes was obtained with the viable cells of B. subtilis, ensuring the pivotality of physical intimate bacterial-fungal interaction. Differential proteome of the cocultures A. flavipes and B. subtilis as well as the axenic A. flavipes was conducted by LC-MS/MS. From the total of 106 identified proteins, 50 proteins were significantly expressed, 47 were upregulated ones, and 59 were downregulated ones for the cocultures normalizing to the axenic one. From the Gene Ontology (GO) and KEGG enrichment analyses, the cellular process, primary metabolic process, and nitrogen compound metabolic process were significantly changed in the coculture normalizing to monoculture of A. flavipes. The molecular function terms (histones H2B, H2A, peptidyl-prolyl cis-trans isomerase, and nucleoside-diphosphate kinase (NDPK)) were the highly significantly expressed proteins of A. flavipes in response to B. subtilis, with strong correlation to triggering of Taxol biosynthesis. The intimate interaction of A. flavipes with B. subtilis strongly modulates the Taxol biosynthetic machinery of A. flavipes by modulating the chromatin remodeling.

Coronavirus diseases 2019: Current biological situation and potential therapeutic perspective.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by a Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-2 (SARS-CoV-2) was first reported in Wuhan, China at the end of December 2019. SARS-CoV-2 is a highly pathogenic zoonotic virus and closely related to the Severe Acute Respiratory Coronavirus (SARS-CoV) and Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus (MERS-CoV). The COVID-19 was declared as a global pandemic due to its high infectiousness, and worldwide morbidities and mortalities. The Chinese scientists at the start of the outbreak reported genome sequences, which made the characterization of glycoproteins and other structural proteins possible. Moreover, researchers across the world have widely focused on understanding basic biology, developing vaccines, and therapeutic drugs against the COVID-19. However, until now, no promising treatment options, as well as vaccines, are available. In this review, we have described SARS-CoV-2's genome, transmission, and pathogenicity. We also discussed novel potential therapeutic agents that can help to treat the COVID-19 patients.

Development of transgenic wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) expressing avidin gene conferring resistance to stored product insects.

BACKGROUND: Wheat is considered the most important cereal crop all over the world. The wheat weevil Sitophilus granarius is a serious insect pests in much of the wheat growing area worldwide and is responsible for significant loss of yield. Avidin proteins has been proposed to function as plant defense agents against insect pests. RESULTS: A synthetic avidin gene was introduced into spring wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) cv. Giza 168 using a biolistic bombardment protocol. The presence and expression of the transgene in six selected T0 transgenic wheat lines were confirmed at the molecular level. Accumulation of avidin protein was detected in transgenic plants compared to non-transgenic plants. Avidin transgene was stably integrated, transcribed and translated as indicated by Southern blot, ELISA, and dot blot analyses, with a high level of expression in transgenic wheat seeds. However, no expression was detected in untransformed wheat seeds. Functional integrity of avidin was confirmed by insect bioassay. The results of bioassay using transgenic wheat plants challenged with wheat weevil revealed 100 % mortality of the insects reared on transgenic plants after 21 days. CONCLUSION: Transgenic wheat plants had improved resistance to Sitophilus granarius.

Characterization of P5CS gene in Calotropis procera plant from the de novo assembled transcriptome contigs of the high-throughput sequencing dataset.

The wild plant known as Calotropis procera is important in medicine, industry and ornamental fields. Due to spread in areas that suffer from environmental stress, it has a large number of tolerance genes to environmental stress such as drought and salinity. Proline is one of the most compatible solutes that accumulate widely in plants to tolerate unfavorable environmental conditions. Plant proline synthesis depends on Δ-pyrroline-5-carboxylate synthase (P5CS) gene. But information about this gene in C. procera is unavailable. In this study, we uncovered and characterized P5CS (P5CS, NCBI accession no. KJ020750) gene in this medicinal plant from the de novo assembled transcriptome contigs of the high-throughput sequencing dataset. A number of GenBank accessions for P5CS sequences were blasted with the recovered de novo assembled contigs. Homology modeling of the deduced amino acids (NCBI accession No. AHM25913) was further carried out using Swiss-Model, accessible via the EXPASY. Superimposition of C. procera P5CS-like full sequence model on Homo sapiens (P5CS_HUMAN, UniProt protein accession no. P54886) was constructed using RasMol and Deep-View programs. The functional domains of the novel P5CS amino acids sequence were identified from the NCBI conserved domain database (CDD) that provide insights into sequence structure/function relationships, as well as domain models imported from a number of external source databases (Pfam, SMART, COG, PRK, TIGRFAM).