Project description:Biomineralization is a naturally occurred process, by which microorganism reduced mental ions to minerals. Bacteria-driven biomineralization is most applied in metal recycling or environmental governance, the biomineralized products are rarely used. This probably due to the attachments of microorganism derived components on minerals, such as proteins, which are treated as impurities and hard to remove. However, these microorganism generated molecules are potent in activation of immune systems, suggesting promising potentials of biomineralized products in developing immunotherapeutic strategies. In this research, we analyzed the protein components on DH5a Escherichia coli produced gold nanoparticles, to explored the generation process of gold nanoparticles in bacterial cells, as well as its immune adjuvant potentials.
Project description:Interventions: Case series:N/A
Primary outcome(s): Serum immune cytokines;Blood immune cells;SCFAs of bacterial metabolites;Gut microbial genomics;Metabolic function of intestinal microorganism
Study Design: Sequential
Project description:The present study explores the potential of compound-specific gene-upregulation profiles in the ubiquitous purple nonsulfur bacterium Rhodospirillum rubrum S1H as biomarkers for exposure to surface water contaminants, i.e. high production-volume pharmaceuticals. Even though the pharmaceuticals [i.e., acetylsalicylic acid (ASA), diclofenac (DCF), and 17α-ethinylestradiol (EE2)] did not affect the bacterial growth kinetics at environmentally-relevant concentrations (86nM), whole-genome microarray analyses revealed the upregulation of 128, 49, and 47 genes upon exposure to DCF, ASA, and EE2, respectively. A strong overlap (27-48%) was observed between transcriptional responses, but a total of 93 genes were found to be upregulated in a compound-specific manner. Hence, we were able to identify 74 and 15 potential biomarker genes for DCF and ASA, respectively. DCF specifically induced genes involved mainly in stress response, signal transduction, response regulation, the electron transport chain, and transcription, while ASA specifically induced genes predominantly involved in signal transduction, response regulation, and trans-membrane translocation. Moreover, our findings validated triclosan-specific biomarker genes that were identified previously. As only 4 genes were specifically-upregulated for EE2, no representative biomarker profile was identified. This study illustrates that a pollutant-specific molecular response can be generated in R. rubrum S1H, which could become a relevant model-microorganism to screen for the ecological impact of surface water contaminants in situ. KEYWORDS: environmental impact studies, risk assessment, biosensor, wastewater, micropollutant, aspirin