Evolutionary constraints governing flagellar number in bacterial pathogens remain poorly understood. While related species are hyperflagellated, maintains strict monoflagellation through the FleQ-FleN regulatory circuit. Here, we demonstrate that FleN dosage is essential for maintaining monoflagellation and bacterial fitness.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnderwater Remotely Operated Vehicles (ROVs) are crucial for gathering limnological data, yet novice pilots face significant operational hurdles. This pioneering study, the first to focus on inspection-class micro-ROVs, identifies these challenges to improve ROV interfaces through a user-centered design approach. Qualitative data has been collected from 25 novice pilots using Likert scale through an online survey and analysed by modified DEMATEL method.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: Many bacteria utilize the type 9 secretion system (T9SS) for gliding motility, surface colonization, and pathogenesis. This dual-function motor supports both gliding motility and protein secretion, where rotation of the T9SS plays a central role. Fueled by the energy of the stored proton motive force and transmitted through the torque of membrane-anchored stator units, the rotary T9SS propels an adhesin-coated conveyor belt along the bacterial outer membrane like a molecular snowmobile, thereby enabling gliding motion.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBacterial tracking is crucial for understanding the mechanisms governing motility, chemotaxis, cell division, biofilm formation, and pathogenesis. Although modern microscopy and computing have enabled the collection of large datasets, many existing tools struggle with big data processing or with accurately detecting, segmenting, and tracking bacteria of various shapes. To address these issues, we developed RABiTPy, an open-source Python software pipeline that integrates traditional and artificial intelligence-based segmentation with tracking tools within a user-friendly framework.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDysbiosis of the microbiome correlates with many neurological disorders, yet very little is known about the chemistry that controls the production of neuromodulatory molecules by gut microbes. Here, we found that an enzyme glutamate decarboxylase (GAD) of a gut microbe forms multiple neuromodulatory molecules such as γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), hypotaurine, taurine, homotaurine, and β-alanine. We evolved GAD and doubled its taurine productivity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe collective surface motility and swarming behavior of microbes play a crucial role in the formation of polymicrobial communities, shaping ecosystems as diverse as animal and human microbiota, plant rhizospheres, and various aquatic environments. In the human oral microbiota, T9SS-driven gliding bacteria transport non-motile microbes and bacteriophages as cargo, thereby influencing the spatial organization and structural complexity of these polymicrobial communities. However, the physical rules governing the dispersal of T9SS-driven bacterial swarms are barely understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicrobiol Spectr
January 2025
The bacterial Type 9 Secretion System (T9SS) is essential for the development of periodontal diseases and Bacteroidetes gliding motility. T9SS-driven motile bacteria, abundant within the human oral microbiota, transport non-motile oral microbes and bacteriophages as cargo, shaping the spatial structure of polymicrobial communities. However, the physical rules governing the dispersal of T9SS-driven bacterial swarms are barely understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Gastric outlet obstruction (GOO) is a rare but serious condition that can arise from various etiologies, including foreign body ingestion. We present a unique case of GOO in a 14-year-old girl resulting from the accumulation of plastic materials, known as a plastic bezoar, due to pica behavior.
Case Presentation: A 14-year-old girl with a history of pica presented with symptoms suggestive of acute gastric obstruction.
Microb Biotechnol
June 2024
The recently discovered Type 9 Secretion System (T9SS) is present in bacteria of the Fibrobacteres-Bacteroidetes-Chlorobi superphylum, which are key constituents of diverse microbiomes. T9SS is instrumental in the extracellular secretion of over 270,000 proteins, including peptidases, sugar hydrolases, metal ion-binding proteins, and metalloenzymes. These proteins are essential for the interaction of bacteria with their environment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDysbiosis of the microbiome correlates with many neurological disorders, yet very little is known about the chemistry that controls the production of neuromodulatory molecules by gut microbes. Here, we found that an enzyme glutamate decarboxylase (GAD) of a gut microbe forms multiple neuromodulatory molecules such as γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA), hypotaurine, taurine, homotaurine, and β-alanine. We evolved GAD and doubled its taurine productivity.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBone cancer is a severe condition often leading to patient mortality. Diagnosis relies on X-rays, MRIs, or CT scans, which require time-consuming manual review by experts. Thus, developing an automated system is crucial for accurate classification of malignant and healthy bone.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe human oral and nasal microbiota contains approximately 770 cultivable bacterial species. More than 2000 genome sequences of these bacteria can be found in the expanded Human Oral Microbiome Database (eHOMD). We developed HOMDscrape, a freely available Python software tool to programmatically retrieve and process amino acid sequences and sequence identifiers from BLAST results acquired from the eHOMD website.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFClinical empathy is one of the most essential tools of medical practice, and it is an act of correctly acknowledging the emotional state of another without experiencing that state oneself. Empathy comprises four components. Mounting evidence exists to support the use of clinical empathy as a tactic for effective health care.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhysical forces that arise due to bacterial motility and growth play a significant role in shaping the biogeography of the human oral microbiota. Bacteria of the genus are abundant in the human oral microbiota and yet very little is known about their physiology. The human oral isolate Capnocytophaga gingivalis exhibits robust gilding motility that is driven by the rotary type 9 secretion system (T9SS), and cells of transport nonmotile oral microbes as cargo.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground And Aim: Basal insulin combined oral therapy consisting of insulin and oral anti-diabetic drugs (OADs) is recommended for type 2 diabetes uncontrolled on OADs. There is a lack of clear evidence and recommendations on the combined use of basal insulin analogues to more than one OADs (glimepiride plus metformin) in effective control of glycemic parameters and its safety in terms of reduced hypoglycemic events, weight gain and cardiovascular risk. In this context, a group of clinical experts discussed the utility of basal insulin combined oral therapy with metformin and glimepiride in the current era.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe F ATP synthase, the bacterial flagellar motor, and the bacterial type 9 secretion system (T9SS) are the three known proton motive force driven biological rotary motors. In this review, we summarize the current information on the nuts and bolts of T9SS. Torque generation by T9SS, its role in gliding motility of bacteria, and the mechanism which a T9SS-driven swarm shapes the microbiota are discussed.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Phyto-constituents are widely recognized for hepatoprotective effects. Ascorbic acid is extensively studied for the radical scavenging effect. The objective of the present study was to evaluate the hepatoprotective effect of ascorbic acid against isoniazid and rifampicin-induced liver damage in rats.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUnlabelled: LncRNAs (long noncoding RNAs) are 200 bp length crucial RNA molecules, lacking coding potential and having important roles in regulating gene expression, particularly in response to abiotic stresses. In this study, we identified salt stress-induced lncRNAs in chickpea roots and predicted their intricate regulatory roles. A total of 3452 novel lncRNAs were identified to be distributed across all 08 chickpea chromosomes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurr Res Pharmacol Drug Discov
September 2021
Alzheimer's disease is a cerebrovascular disorder characterized by progressive loss of the mental capabilities. The novel therapeutic agent piracetam is a cyclic derivative of γ-aminobutyric acid and one of the oldest recognized synthetic nootropics. Piracetam improves cognitive function without stimulation or sedation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe gliding bacterium is known to have an adhesin, SprB, that moves along the cell surface on a spiral track. Following viscous shear, cells can be tethered by the addition of an anti-SprB antibody, causing spinning at 3 Hz. Labeling the type 9 secretion system (T9SS) with a YFP fusion of GldL showed a yellow fluorescent spot near the rotation axis, indicating that the motor driving the motion is associated with the T9SS.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe present study evaluates the antiarthritic effect of hydroethanolic extract of Pleurotus ostreatus cv. Florida, which was tested against adjuvant induced arthritis in rat models. Arthritis was induced by administration of complete Freund's adjuvant into the subplantar surface of left paw of rats.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Natl Acad Sci U S A
August 2018
The human microbiome is an assemblage of diverse bacteria that interact with one another to form communities. Bacteria in a given community are arranged in a 3D matrix with many degrees of freedom. Snapshots of the community display well-defined structures, but the steps required for their assembly are not understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFinding low-dimensional representation of high-dimensional data sets is an important task in various applications. The fact that data sets often contain clusters embedded in different subspaces poses barrier to this task. Driven by the need in methods that enable clustering and finding each cluster's intrinsic subspace simultaneously, in this paper, we propose a regularized Gaussian mixture model (GMM) for clustering.
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