Project description:Mucormycosis is an increasingly common, life-threatening fungal infection caused by fungi belonging to the subphylum Mucormycotina, order Mucorales. The major risk factors for mucormycosis include uncontrolled diabetes mellitus, treatment with corticosteroids, organ or bone marrow transplantation, neutropenia, trauma and burns, malignant hematological disorders, and deferoxamine-therapy in patients receiving hemodialysis. Amphotericin B (AmB) remains the only antifungal agent approved for the treatment of invasive mucormycosis. Because fungi belonging to the mucorales order are relatively resistant to AmB, high doses are required, which frequently causes nephrotoxicity and other adverse effects. In the absence of surgical removal of the infected focus (such as excision of the eye in patients with rhinocerebral mucormycosis), antifungal therapy alone is rarely curative. Even when surgical debridement is combined with high-dose AmB, the mortality associated with mucor¬mycosis is >50%. In patients with prolonged neutropenia or disseminated disease, mortality is 90-100%. Rhizopus oryzae is by far the most common organism isolated from patients with mucormycosis, and is responsible for approximately 70% of all cases of mucormycosis. Recent epidemiological data collected from transplant centers have demonstrated a striking increase in the number of reported cases of mucormycosis. Furthermore, mucormycosis outbreaks are also known to follow natural disasters as was the case following the tsunami that devastated Indonesia in 2004 and the tornadoes that destroyed Joplin, Missouri in June 2011. Hence, there exists a large impetus to identify particular virulence factors and biomarkers associated with mucormycosis, which would lead to a rational approach to develop new antifungals and vaccines to prevent deaths specifically due to mucormycosis. In order to better understand the complex nature of the host pathogen interaction during mucormycosis, we performed dual species RNA-seq on 5 different Mucorales strains during in vitro infection of endothelial or epithelial cells.
Project description:The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) is associated with secondary bacterial and fungal infections globally. In India, inappropriate use of glucocorticoids, high prevalence of diabetes mellitus and a conducive environment for fungal growth are considered as the main factors for increased incidence of COVID-19 associated mucormycosis (CAM). Few cases of CAM without steroid abuse and normal blood glucose levels were also reported during the pandemic. This study was designed to explore whether altered immune responses due to severe COVID-19 infection predisposes towards development of mucormycosis. The global transcriptome profiling of monocytes and granulocytic cells derived from CAM, Mucormycosis, COVID-19 and healthy control groups were performed to identify the differentially expressed genes (DEGs) involved in dysregulated host immune response towards respective diseased and healthy conditions.
Project description:Rhizopus delemar is an invasive fungal pathogen, responsible for the frequently fatal disease mucormycosis. Germination, a crucial mechanism by which spores of Rhizopus delemar infect and cause disease, is a key developmental process that transforms the dormant spore state into a vegetative one. Understanding the molecular mechanisms which underpin this transformation may be key to controlling mucormycosis; however, the regulation of germination remains poorly understood. This study describes the transcriptional changes which take place over the course of germination.
Project description:Mucormycosis is a life-threatening disease especially in immunocompromised patients that was caused my mucoralean fungi. The rate of mortality is tremendously increased in the last decades due to the lack of appropriate diagnostic tools, insufficient knowledge about the immune response toward the mucormycosis and unavailability of specific antifungal drugs. Several species of mucoralean fungi cause mucormycosis such as Lichtheimia, Rhizopus, and Mucor. Lichtheimia species ranks the second and third cause of mucormycosis in Europe and the USA, respectively. In this study, we investigated the receptors present on the surface of immune cells that bind to the spores of Lichtheimia. We focus on two strains of L. corymbifera (FSU:9682 and FSU:10164) using resting and heat-killed spores. Additionally, we choose alveolar macrophages (MH-S) to carry out our experiment. MH-S is the first line of defense in the lung and the major component in the innate immune system. MH-S surface proteins were biotinylated and incubated with Lichtheimia spores. The surface proteins and putative binding partners were enriched by streptavidin. LC-MS/MS analysis showed that several proteins are highly expressed in presence of Lichtheimia spores, of which the heat shock protein family A (HSPA8) was one of the most abundant proteins. FACS analysis and immunofluorescence examination confirmed that HSPA8 is highly abundant on the surface of the MH-S, but not on the surface of Lichtheimia spores. Moreover, our study showed that the intensity of HSPA8 on the surface of MH-S depends on the multiplicity of infection (MOI). Additionally, the blocking with anti-HSPA8 antibody reduced the capability of MH-S to engulf the Lichtheimia spores, but not Aspergillus fumigatus spores. This confirms that HSPA8 is specific to Lichtheimia. THis is the first study addressing the determination of surface receptors of alveolar macrophages that in the context of Mucoralean fungi.
Project description:Comprehensive expression profiling of disseminated neuroblastoma with favorable and unfavorable outcome using SAGE. Results provide insight into the molecular pathogenesis of spontaneous regression and progression of metastatic neuroblastoma and may be used for improving risk estimation of patients with disseminated neuroblastoma. Keywords: gene expression SAGE-based, neuroblastoma, primary tumor, disseminated disease Samples analyzed: 9 (stage 4S neuroblastoma: n=5, stage 4 neuroblastoma: n=3, neuroblastoma cell line: n=1)
Project description:Disseminated epithelial cells can be isolated from the bone marrow of a far greater frac-tion of prostate-cancer patients than the fraction of patients who progress to metastatic disease. To provide a better understanding of these cells, we have characterized their genomic altera-tions. We first present an array comparative genomic hybridization method capable of detecting genomic changes in the small number of disseminated cells (10-20) that can typically be ob-tained from bone-marrow aspirates of prostate-cancer patients. We show multiple regions of copy-number change, including alterations common in prostate cancer, such as 8p loss, 8q gain, and gain encompassing the androgen-receptor gene on Xq, in the disseminated cell pools from 11 metastatic patients. We found fewer and less striking genomic alterations in the 48 pools of disseminated cells from patients with organ-confined disease. However, we identify changes shared by these samples with their corresponding primary tumors and prostate-cancer altera-tions reported in the literature, evidence that these cells, like those in advanced disease, are disseminated tumor cells (DTCs). We also demonstrate that DTCs from patients with advanced and localized disease share several abnormalities, including losses containing cell-adhesion genes and alterations reported to associate with progressive disease. These shared alterations might confer the capability to disseminate or establish secondary disease. Overall, the spectrum of genomic deviations is evidence for metastatic capacity in advanced-disease DTCs and varia-tion in that capacity in DTCs from localized disease. Our analysis lays the foundation for eluci-dation of the relationship between DTC genomic alterations and progressive prostate cancer. Keywords: array comparative genomic hybridization, prostate cancer, disseminated cells
Project description:Most proteogenomic approaches for mapping single amino acid polymorphisms (SAPs) require construction of a sample-specific database containing protein variants predicted from the next-generation sequencing (NGS) data. We present a new strategy for direct SAP detection without relying on NGS data. Among the 348 putative SAP peptides identified in an industrial yeast strain, 85.6% of SAP sites were validated by genomic sequencing.
Project description:Comprehensive expression profiling of disseminated neuroblastoma with favorable and unfavorable outcome using SAGE. Results provide insight into the molecular pathogenesis of spontaneous regression and progression of metastatic neuroblastoma and may be used for improving risk estimation of patients with disseminated neuroblastoma. Keywords: gene expression SAGE-based, neuroblastoma, primary tumor, disseminated disease