Project description:This phase II trial studies the effect of fecal microbiota transplant and re-introduction of anti-PD-1 therapy (pembrolizumab or nivolumab) in treating anti-PD-1 non-responders with colorectal cancer that has spread to other places in the body (metastatic). Fecal microbiota transplants contain the normal bacteria and viruses found in fecal (stool) material. Immunotherapy with monoclonal antibodies, such as pembrolizumab and nivolumab, may help the body’s immune system attack the cancer, and may interfere with the ability of tumor cells to grow and spread. Giving pembrolizumab or nivolumab with fecal microbiota transplants may help to control the disease.
Project description:Morphine causes microbial dysbiosis. In this study we focused on restoration of native microbiota in morphine treated mice and looked at the extent of restoration and immunological consequences of this restoration. Fecal transplant has been successfully used clinically, especially for treating C. difficile infection2528. With our expanding knowledge of the central role of microbiome in maintenance of host immune homeostasis17, fecal transplant is gaining importance as a therapy for indications resulting from microbial dysbiosis. There is a major difference between fecal transplant being used for the treatment of C. difficile infection and the conditions described in our studies. The former strategy is based on the argument that microbial dysbiosis caused by disproportionate overgrowth of a pathobiont can be out-competed by re-introducing the missing flora by way of a normal microbiome transplant. This strategy is independent of host factors and systemic effects on the microbial composition. Here, we show that microbial dysbiosis caused due to morphine can be reversed by transplantation of microbiota from the placebo-treated animals.
Project description:Diurnal temperature cycling is an intrinsic characteristic of many exposed microbial ecosystems. However, its influence on yeast physiology and transcriptome has not been studied in detail. In this study, 24-h sinoidal temperature cycles, oscillating between 12 and 30°C, were imposed on anaerobic, glucose-limited chemostat cultures of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. After three diurnal temperature cycles (DTC), concentrations of glucose, and extracellular metabolites, as well as CO2-production rates showed regular, reproducible circadian rhytms. DTC also led to waves of transcriptional activation and repression, which involved one sixth of the yeast genome. A substantial fraction of these DTC-responsive genes appeared to primarily respond to changes in glucose concentration. Elimination of known glucose-responsive genes revealed overrepresentation of previously identified temperature-responsive genes as well as genes involved in cell cycle and de novo purine biosynthesis. Analyses of budding index and flow cytomery demonstrated that DTC led to a partial synchronization of the cell cycle of the yeast populations in the chemostat cultures, which was lost upon release from DTC. Comparison of DTC results with data from steady-state cultures showed that DTC was sufficiently slow to allow S. cerevisiae chemostat cultures to almost completely acclimatize their transcriptome and physiology at the DTC temperature maximum, and to approach acclimation at the DTC temperature minimum.
Project description:Investigating alterations the intestinal microbiome in a diet induced obesity (DIO) rat model after fecal transplant from rats, which underwent Roux-Y-Gastric-Bypass surgery (RYGB). The microbiomes of the RYGB-donor rats, the DIO rats, and DIO rats after receiving the fecal transplant from the RYGB rats. As controls lean rats as well as lean, RYGB and DIO rats after antibiotics treatment were used.
Project description:Saccharomyces cerevisiae is unique among yeasts for its ability to grow rapidly in the complete absence of oxygen. S. cerevisiae is therefore an ideal eukaryotic model to study physiological adaptation to anaerobiosis. Recent transcriptome analyses have identified hundreds of genes that are transcriptionally regulated by oxygen availability but the relevance of this cellular response has not been systematically investigated at the key control level of the proteome. Therefore, the proteomic response of the S. cerevisiae to anaerobiosis was investigated using metabolic stable isotope labeling in aerobic and anaerobic glucose-limited chemostat cultures, followed by proteome analysis to relatively quantify protein expression. Using independent replicate cultures and stringent statistical filtering, a robust dataset of 474 quantified proteins was generated, of which 249 showed differential expression levels. While some of these changes were consistent with previous transcriptome studies, many responses of S. cerevisiae to oxygen availability were hitherto unreported. Comparison of transcriptome and proteome from identical cultivations yielded strong evidence for post-transcriptional regulation of key cellular processes, including glycolysis, amino-acyl tRNA synthesis, purine-nucleotide synthesis and amino-acid biosynthesis. The use of chemostat cultures provided well-controlled and reproducible culture conditions, which are essential for generating robust datasets at different cellular information levels. Integration of transcriptome and proteome data led to new insights in the physiology of anaerobically growing yeast that would not have been apparent from differential analyses at either the messenger RNA or protein level alone, thus illustrating the power of multi-level studies in yeast systems biology. Protein levels versus transcript level: Systematic analysis of the control levels at which the yeast response to anaerobiosis takes place was performed using previously published transcript data obtained from yeast cultures grown under strictly identical conditions as described for the current proteome analysis. Affymetrix microarrays from five aerobic and four anaerobic independent culture replicates were used for this analysis. These comparison data are summarized in the table below. These array data are publicly available at the gene expression repository Gene Expression Omnibus under accession number GSE4804. Keywords: proteomic, nanoflow-LC-MS/MS
Project description:Physiological effects of carbon dioxide and impact on genome-wide transcript profiles were analysed in chemostat cultures of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In anaerobic, glucose-limited chemostat cultures grown at atmospheric pressure, cultivation under CO2-saturated conditions had only a marginal (<10%) impact on the biomass yield. Conversely, a 25% decrease of the biomass yield was found in aerobic, glucose-limited chemostat cultures aerated with a mixture of 79% CO2 and 21% O2. This observation indicated that respiratory metabolism is more sensitive to CO2 than fermentative metabolism. Consistent with the more pronounced physiological effects of CO2 in respiratory cultures, the number of CO2-responsive transcripts was higher in aerobic cultures than in anaerobic cultures. Many genes involved in mitochondrial functions showed a transcriptional response to elevated CO2 concentrations. This is consistent with an uncoupling effect of CO2 and/or intracellular bicarbonate on the mitochondrial inner membrane. Other transcripts that showed a significant transcriptional response to elevated CO2 included NCE103 (probably encoding carbonic anhydrase), PCK1 (encoding PEP carboxykinase) and members of the IMD gene family (encoding isozymes of inosine monophosphate dehydrogenase Experiment Overall Design: Knowledge on the genome-wide transcriptional response of S. cerevisiae to high CO2 concentrations may provide a deeper insight into the molecular mechanisms of CO2 stress. Such insight is essential to develop metabolic-engineering strategies for improving CO2 tolerance. Furthermore, identification of âsignature transcriptsâ that uniquely respond to CO2 stress may be applicable for diagnosing the CO2 status of industrial fermentations. It has recently been demonstrated that the combination of chemostat cultivation with DNA-microarray-based transcriptome analysis offers a powerful and reproducible approach to identify the transcriptional responses of yeasts to environmental parameters For this reason, in the present study we used chemostat cultures of S. cerevisiae to quantify the effect of CO2 on respiring and fermenting cells, and to determine the genome-wide transcriptional responses of this yeast to high CO2 concentrations.
Project description:Physiological effects of carbon dioxide and impact on genome-wide transcript profiles were analysed in chemostat cultures of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. In anaerobic, glucose-limited chemostat cultures grown at atmospheric pressure, cultivation under CO2-saturated conditions had only a marginal (<10%) impact on the biomass yield. Conversely, a 25% decrease of the biomass yield was found in aerobic, glucose-limited chemostat cultures aerated with a mixture of 79% CO2 and 21% O2. This observation indicated that respiratory metabolism is more sensitive to CO2 than fermentative metabolism. Consistent with the more pronounced physiological effects of CO2 in respiratory cultures, the number of CO2-responsive transcripts was higher in aerobic cultures than in anaerobic cultures. Many genes involved in mitochondrial functions showed a transcriptional response to elevated CO2 concentrations. This is consistent with an uncoupling effect of CO2 and/or intracellular bicarbonate on the mitochondrial inner membrane. Other transcripts that showed a significant transcriptional response to elevated CO2 included NCE103 (probably encoding carbonic anhydrase), PCK1 (encoding PEP carboxykinase) and members of the IMD gene family (encoding isozymes of inosine monophosphate dehydrogenase Keywords: Dose reponse
Project description:The inhibitors hydroxymethylfurfural (HMF) and furfural were added to the feed-medium of carbon-limited anaerobic chemostat cultures. Samples were taken for transcriptome analysis at steady-state from cultures with inhibitors and without inhibitors.