Biological Tools to Deal with Pollution : Selected Advances and Novel Perspectives

Pollution  represents  a  problem  common  to economy and  public  health. Indeed, the public health, because of the  divers’  type of pollutions, is facing divers challenges for which urgent solutions are required.The biology provides approaches not only to deal with the pollution, but also to  obtain  economic  benefits. Some living  organisms  have  particular metabolisms  that allow  them  to  assimilate  and  metabolite  the polluting agents  and thus reduce the  impact  they have on both environment  and public health.  On  the other  hand,  the  metabolic  properties  of  specific organisms make  the  polluting  elements raw materials to  synthesize  other elements that are benefits  for  economy  and  non-toxic  for  the  ecology and  the  biohealth. Yet, other options such as the regulations and laws are  required  to improve the efficiency of these approaches

Rapid and concomitant gut microbiota and endocannabinoidome response to diet-induced obesity in mice

The intestinal microbiota and the expanded endocannabinoid (eCB) system, or endocannabinoidome (eCBome), have both been implicated in diet-induced obesity and dysmetabolism. These systems were recently suggested to interact during the development of obesity. We aimed at identifying the potential interactions between gut microbiota composition and the eCBome during the establishment of diet-induced obesity and metabolic complications. Male mice were fed a high-fat, high-sucrose (HFHS) diet for 56 days to assess jejunum, ileum, and cecum microbiomes by 16S rRNA gene metataxonomics as well as ileum and plasma eCBome by targeted liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). The HFHS diet induced early (3 days) and persistent glucose intolerance followed by weight gain and hyperinsulinemia. Concomitantly, it induced the elevation of the two eCBs, anandamide, in both ileum and plasma, and 2-arachidonoyl-glycerol, in plasma, as well as alterations in several other N-acylethanolamines and 2-acylglycerols. It also promoted segment-specific changes in the relative abundance of several genera in intestinal microbiota, some of which were observed as early as 3 days following HFHS diet. Weight-independent correlations were found between the relative abundances of, among others, Barnesiella, Eubacterium, Adlercreutzia, Parasutterella, Propionibacterium, Enterococcus, and Methylobacterium and the concentrations of anandamide and the anti-inflammatory eCBome mediator N-docosahexaenoyl-ethanolamine. This study highlights for the first time the existence of potential interactions between the eCBome, an endogenous system of multifunctional signaling lipids, and several intestinal genera during early and late HFHS-induced dysmetabolic events, with potential impact on the host capability of adapting to increased intake of fat and sucrose

Spotlight on Neuroimmunology: Illustrations from Neurodegenerative Diseases

The immune system plays key roles in the defense of the organism. However, the effects of the immune system are not limited to the immune functions and have impacts beyond the anti-pathogenes role. Indeed, neuroimmunology is a representative field of how the immune system affects non-immune biological and physio-pathological functions. Herein, we have selected a number of neurodegenerative diseases as illustrative examples to put a spotlight on this important field. Importantly, clarifying the links and interactions between the immune system and the nervous system represents key elements for the understanding neurodegenerative diseases since it will lead to new theories about the pathogenesis and the mechanisms underlying the related processes and thus, provide us with new data and novel tools to both describe the related pathways and develop new therapeutic approaches as well as diagnostic approaches and research methodologies based on such new discoveries

Biological Tools to Deal with Pollution : Selected Advances and Novel Perspectives

Pollution  represents  a  problem  common  to economy and  public  health. Indeed, the public health, because of the  divers’  type of pollutions, is facing divers challenges for which urgent solutions are required.The biology provides approaches not only to deal with the pollution, but also to  obtain  economic  benefits. Some living  organisms  have  particular metabolisms  that allow  them  to  assimilate  and  metabolite  the polluting agents  and thus reduce the  impact  they have on both environment  and public health.  On  the other  hand,  the  metabolic  properties  of  specific organisms make  the  polluting  elements raw materials to  synthesize  other elements that are benefits  for  economy  and  non-toxic  for  the  ecology and  the  biohealth. Yet, other options such as the regulations and laws are  required  to improve the efficiency of these approaches

Obesity: The Fat Tissue Disease Version of Cancer

Obesity is a disease with high potential for fatality. It perfectly fits the disease definition, as cancer does. This is because it damages body structure and functions, both mechanically and biologically, and alters physical, mental, and social health. In addition, it shares many common morbid characteristics with the most feared disease, cancer. For example, it is influenced by a sophisticated interaction between a person’s genetics, the environment, and an increasing number of other backgrounds. Furthermore, it displays abnormal cell growth and proliferation events, only limited to white fat, resulting in adipose tissue taking up an increasing amount of space within the body. This occurs through fat “metastases” and via altered signaling that further aggravates the pathology of obesity by inducing ubiquitous dishomeostasis. These metastases can be made graver by angiogenesis, which might boost diseased tissue growth. More common features with cancer include its progressive escalation through different levels of severity and its possibility of re-onset after recovery. Despite all these similarities with cancer, obesity is substantially less agitating for most people. Thus, the ideas proposed herein could have utility to sensitize the public opinion about the hard reality of obesity. This is increasingly needed, as the obesity pandemic has waged a fierce war against our bodies and society in general, while there is still doubt about whether it is a real disease or not. Hence, raising public consciousness to properly face health issues is crucial to improving our health instead of gaining weight unhealthily. It is obviously illogical to fight cancer extremely seriously on the one hand and to consider dying with obesity as self-inflicted on the other. In fact, obesity merits a top position among the most lethal diseases besides cancer

A Spotlight on Chemical Constituents and Pharmacological Activities of Nigella glandulifera Freyn et Sint Seeds

Plants belonging to the Ranunculaceae family, and particularly their seeds, have been a hot research topic in numerous pharmacognosy laboratories. Nigella glandulifera Freyn et Sint (NG) is one of the promising, but relatively insufficiently studied, plants from this family. In this review, we summarize the recently isolated chemical constituents from the seeds of this plant including alkaloids, flavonol glycosides, isobenzofuranone derivatives, saponins, terpenes, terpenoids, and fatty acids. We put also a spotlight on the recently studied therapeutic potentials of such amazing herb seeds as antidiabetes, melanogenesis inhibition, anticancer, anti-inflammatory, antithrombosis, and antiplatelet aggregation effects. Herein, we illustrate certain properties and potentials via selected examples, and thus we suggest more studies to confirm the therapeutic hypotheses, find out new compounds, and eventually to discover novel properties

Germ-free mice exhibit profound gut microbiota-dependent alterations of intestinal endocannabinoidome signaling.

The gut microbiota is a unique ecosystem of microorganisms interacting with the host through several biochemical mechanisms. The endocannabinoidome (eCBome), a complex signaling system including the endocannabinoid system, approximately 50 receptors and metabolic enzymes, and more than 20 lipid mediators with important physiopathologic functions, modulates gastrointestinal tract function and may mediate host cell-microbe communications there. Germ-free (GF) mice, which lack an intestinal microbiome and so differ drastically from conventionally raised (CR) mice, offer a unique opportunity to explore the eCBome in a microbe-free model and in the presence of a reintroduced functional gut microbiome through fecal microbiota transplant (FMT). We aimed to gain direct evidence for a link between the microbiome and eCBome systems by investigating eCBome alterations in the gut in GF mice before and after FMT. Basal eCBome gene expression and lipid profiles were measured in various segments of the intestine of GF and CR mice at juvenile and adult ages using targeted quantitative PCR transcriptomics and LC-MS/MS lipidomics. GF mice exhibited age-dependent modifications in intestinal eCBome gene expression and lipid mediator levels. FMT from CR donor mice to age-matched GF male mice reversed several of these alterations, particularly in the ileum and jejunum, after only 1 week, demonstrating that the gut microbiome directly impacts the host eCBome and providing a cause-effect relationship between the presence or absence of intestinal microbes and eCBome signaling. These results open the way to new studies investigating the mechanisms through which intestinal microorganisms exploit eCBome signaling to exert some of their physiopathologic functions