Project description:Experiment to test how different growth mediums affect bacterial growth. The supernatants of 17 strains of bacteria (10 grown in one medium and 7 grown in another medium) were submitted for metabolite analysis.
Project description:Endometrial cancer is the most commonly diagnosed gynecologic malignancy in women after breast, lung and colorectal cancer. Despite numerous scientific advances, the incidence and mortality rate of endometrial cancer is on the rise. Considerable research effort has therefore been placed on understanding the pathogenesis of this disease to combat this growing issue. There is now emerging evidence to suggest a putative role for dysregulation of the renin angiotensin system (RAS) and in particular the (pro)renin receptor ((P)RR), in the ontogenesis of endometrial cancer. Support for this notion arises from previous literature implicating (P)RR in cancer pathophysiology (e.g., breast cancer and pancreatic carcinoma) by virtue of its role in proliferation, angiogenesis, fibrosis, migration and invasion. In view of these data, we aimed to investigate the functional role of (P)RR in human endometrial cancer progression and development. To this end, we employed an siRNA-mediated knock down approach to abrogate (P)RR expression in the immortalized endometrial epithelial cell lines; Ishikawa, AN3CA and HEC-1A to explore the role of (P)RR in cellular proliferation and cellular viability. To further extend these analyses we also carried out a sophisticated proteomic screen, that investigated the potential pathways via which (P)RR is acting in endometrial cancer physiology. These data confirmed that (P)RR is critical for endometrial cell cancer development, contributing to both its proliferative capacity and in the maintenance cell viability. This is likely mediated through proteins such as MGA, SLC4A7, SLC7A11 or DHRS2, which were reduced following (P)RR knockdown. These putative protein interactions/pathways, which rely on the presence of (P)RR, are likely to contribute to endometrial cancer progression and could therefore, represent several novel therapeutic targets in the treatment of this cancer. Finally we contend that (P)RR, in its soluble form (s(P)RR) in blood, may have substantial potential as a novel biomarker for cancer diagnosis and prognosis prediction going forward.
Project description:The trypanosomatid protozoan parasite Leishmania has a significant impact on human health globally. Understanding the pathways associated with virulence within this significant pathogen is critical for identifying novel vaccination and chemotherapy targets. Within this study we leverage an ultradeep proteomic approach to improve our understanding of two virulence associated genes in Leishmania; the Golgi Mannose/Arabinopyranose/Fucose nucleotide-sugar transporter LPG2, and the mitochondrial fucosyltransferase FUT1. Using deep peptide fractionation followed by complementary fragmentation approaches with higher energy collisional dissociation (HCD) and Electron-transfer dissociation (ETD) allowed the identification of over 6500 proteins, nearly doubling the experimentally observed Leishmania major proteome. This deep proteomic analysis revealed significant quantitative differences in both lpg2- and fut1s mutants with FUT1-dependent changes linked to marked alterations within mitochondrial associated proteins while LPG2-dependent changes impacted multiple aspects of the secretory pathway. While FUT1 has been shown to fucosylate peptides in vitro, no evidence for protein fucosylation was identified within our ultradeep analysis nor did we observe fucosylated glycans within Leishmania glycopeptides isolated using HILIC enrichment. Combined this work provides a critical proteomic resource for the community on the observable Leishmania proteome as well as highlights phenotypic changes associated with LPG2/FUT1 which may guide the development of future therapeutics.
Project description:Experiment to test how different growth mediums affect bacterial growth. The supernatants of 17 strains of bacteria (10 grown in one medium and 7 grown in another medium) were submitted for metabolite analysis.
Project description:In this work, we performed a fully descriptive analysis N- and O- linked glycosylation of SARS-COV-2 S glycoprotein. We investigated that dual-functionalized Ti-IMAC material enable the simultaneous enrichment and separation of neutral and sialyl glycopeptides of a recombinant SARS-CoV-2 S glycoprotein from HEK293, which will eliminate the signal suppression of neutral glycopeptides to sialyl glycopeptides and improve the glycoform coverage of S protein. We have profiled 19 of its 22 potential N-glycosylated sites with 398 unique glycoforms in dual-functional Ti-IMIAC approach that is 1.6-fold of that in conventional HILIC method. We also identified O-linked glycosylation site that was not found in dual-functional Ti-IMIAC approach. In addition, we have also identified mannose-6-phosphate (M6P) glycosylation, which substantially expands the current knowledge of the spike protein’s glycosylation and enables the investigation of the influence of mannose-6-Phosphate on its cell entry.