ABSTRACT: Evaluation of the mercury fate in the environment and its effect on bacterial composition across a transect of the Caqueta River affected by artisanal gold extraction in the Colombian Amazon region
Project description:Effects of mercury contamination on microbial abundance and diversity in Amazon ecosystems disturbed by artisanal and small-scale gold mining
| PRJNA995435 | ENA
Project description:Mercury-resistant bacteria isolated from soil samples contaminated with mercury released from artisanal gold processing sites in Sukabumi, Indonesia
Project description:Epidemiological studies link exposure to mercury with autoimmune disease. Unfortunately, in spite of considerable effort, no generally accepted mechanistic understanding of how mercury actually functions with respect to the etiology of autoimmune disease is currently available. Nevertheless, autoimmune disease often arises because of defective B cell signaling. Because B cell signaling is dependent on phosphorylation cascades, in this report, we have focused on how mercury intoxication alters phosphorylation of B cell proteins in antigen-non stimulated (tonic) mouse splenic B cells. Specifically, we utilized mass spectrometric techniques to conduct a comprehensive unbiased global analysis of the effect of mercury on the entire B cell phosphoproteome. We found that the effects were pleotropic in the sense that large numbers of pathways were impacted. However, confirming our earlier work, we found that the B cell signaling pathway stood out from the rest, in that phosphoproteins which had sites which were affected by mercury, exhibited a much higher degree of connectivity, than components of other pathways. Further analysis showed that many of these BCR pathway proteins had been previously linked to autoimmune disease. Finally, dose response analysis of these BCR pathway proteins showed STIM1_S575, and NFAT2_S259 are the two most mercury sensitive of these sites. Because STIM1_S575 controls the ability of STIM1 to regulate internal Ca2+, we speculate that STIM1 may be the initial point of disruption, where mercury interferes with B cell signaling leading to systemic autoimmunity, with the molecular effects pleiotropically propagated throughout the cell by virtue of Ca2+ dysregulation.
Project description:Proteomic analysis was performed on the proximal tibia head from healhty and BCO-affected broiler (meat-type) chickens using Bruker Daltonics amaZon series Mass Spectrometer. This analysis was undertaken to identify key protein signature involved in BCO, a common cause of lameness.
