Project description:For art historians, understanding the animal origin of blood used in artworks is crucial for interpreting materials, techniques, and historical practices. It provides insight into the cultural, and religious significance of the work and allows for a more nuanced interpretation of its symbolic meaning. In this work, sets of peptides of blood proteins, more specifically their amino acid sequences, that are responsible for the differences between seven animal species (cat, cow, dog, goose, hen, human, and pig) were identified by LC-MS/MS. Protein materials used for the preparation of six model blood coatings were confirmed and the animal origin of the used blood was found. Finally, the blood origin in four samples taken from a set of Japanese and Chinese lacquer artworks from 18th and 19th century was also determined.
Project description:Recent evidence that the unicellular ancestor of animals had a complex repertoire of genes linked to multicellular processes suggests that changes in the regulatory genome, rather than gene innovation, were key to the origin of animals. Here, we carry out multiple functional genomic assays in Capsaspora owczarzaki, the unicellular relative of animals with the largest known gene repertoire for transcriptional regulation. We show that changing chromatin states, differential lincRNA expression and dynamic cis-regulatory sites are associated with life cycle transitions in Capsaspora. Moreover, we demonstrate conservation of animal developmental transcription factor networks and extensive network interconnection in this premetazoan organism. In contrast, however, Capsaspora lacks animal promoter types and its regulatory sites are small, proximal and lack signatures of animal enhancers. Overall, our results indicate that the emergence of animal multicellularity was linked to a major shift in genome regulatory complexity, most notably the appearance of distal enhancer regulation.
Project description:A prototype oligonucleotide microarray was designed to detect and identify viable bacterial species with the potential to grow of common beer spoilage microorganisms from the genera Lactobacillus, Megasphaera, Pediococcus and Pectinatus. Probes targeted the intergenic spacer regions (ISR) between 16S and 23S rRNA, which were amplified in a combination of reverse transcriptase (RT) and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) prior to hybridization. This method allows the detection and discrimination of single bacterial species in a complex sample. Furthermore, microarrays using oligonucleotide probes targeting the ISR allow the distinction between viable bacteria with the potential to grow and non-growing bacteria. The results demonstrate the feasibility of oligonucleotide microarrays as a contamination control in food industry for the detection and identification of spoilage microorganisms within mixed population. Keywords: microarray, oligonucleotide, species-specific, detection, beer spoilage bacteria
Project description:Carbapenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii (CRAb) is an urgent public health threat, according to the CDC. This pathogen has few treatment options and causes severe nosocomial infections with >50% fatality rate. Although previous studies have examined the proteome of CRAb, there have been no focused analyses of dynamic changes to β-lactamase expression that may occur due to drug exposure. Here, we present our initial proteomic study of variation in β-lactamase expression that occurs in CRAb with different β-lactam antibiotics. Briefly, drug resistance to Ab (ATCC 19606) was induced by the administration of various classes of β-lactam antibiotics, and the cell-free supernatant was isolated, concentrated, separated by SDS-PAGE, digested with trypsin, and identified by label-free LC-MS-based quantitative proteomics. Thirteen proteins were identified and evaluated using a 1789 sequence database of Ab β-lactamases from UniProt, the majority of which were Class C β-lactamases (≥80%). Importantly, different antibiotics, even those of the same class (e.g. penicillin and amoxicillin), induced non-equivalent responses comprising various isoforms of Class C and D serine-β-lactamases, resulting in unique resistomes. These results open the door to a new approach of analyzing and studying the problem of multi-drug resistance in bacteria that rely strongly on β-lactamase expression.
