Brugia malayi Excreted/Secreted Proteins at the Host/Parasite Interface: Stage- and Gender-Specific Proteomic Profiling

Relatively little is known about the filarial proteins that interact with the human host. Although the filarial genome has recently been completed, protein profiles have been limited to only a few recombinants or purified proteins of interest. Here, we describe a large-scale proteomic analysis using microcapillary reverse-phase liquid chromatography-tandem-mass spectrometry to identify the excretory-secretory (ES) products of the L3, L3 to L4 molting ES, adult male, adult female, and microfilarial stages of the filarial parasite Brugia malayi. The analysis of the ES products from adult male, adult female, microfilariae (Mf), L3, and molting L3 larvae identified 852 proteins. Annotation suggests that the functional and component distribution was very similar across each of the stages studied; however, the Mf contributed a higher proportion to the total number of identified proteins than the other stages. Of the 852 proteins identified in the ES, only 229 had previous confirmatory expressed sequence tags (ESTs) in the available databases. Moreover, this analysis was able to confirm the presence of 274 “hypothetical” proteins inferred from gene prediction algorithms applied to the B. malayi (Bm) genome. Not surprisingly, the majority (160/274) of these “hypothetical” proteins were predicted to be secreted by Signal IP and/or SecretomeP 2.0 analysis. Of major interest is the abundance of previously characterized immunomodulatory proteins such as ES-62 (leucyl aminopeptidase), MIF-1, SERPIN, glutathione peroxidase, and galectin in the ES of microfilariae (and Mf-containing adult females) compared to the adult males. In addition, searching the ES protein spectra against the Wolbachia database resulted in the identification of 90 Wolbachia-specific proteins, most of which were metabolic enzymes that have not been shown to be immunogenic. This proteomic analysis extends our knowledge of the ES and provides insight into the host–parasite interaction

Distribution of immunoglobulin classes and IgG subclasses against a culture filtrate antigen of Burkholderia pseudomallei in melioidosis patients

The class and subclass distribution of antibody response to the culture filtrate antigen (CFA) of Burkholderia pseudomallei was examined in the sera of 45 septicaemic and 17 localised melioidosis cases and 40 cases clinically suspected of melioidosis and the results were compared with those from high-risk and healthy control groups. The geometric mean titre index (GMTI) values for all classes and subclasses of immunoglobulins examined were higher for sera from the proven and clinically suspected melioidosis cases than for the control groups. However, the highest response in the three patient groups was that of IgG with GMTIs ranging from 219.4 to 291.6 and the lowest was for IgM with GMTIs of 22.5, 24.3 and 28.7. The IgA response was intermediate with GMTIs ranging from 119.2 to 170. The GMTIs were highest for IgG in septicaemic and localised infections and for IgA and IgM in localised infections. As regards IgG subclass distribution, IgG1 and IgG2 were the predominant subclasses produced against the CFA in contrast to IgG3 and IgG4, which were produced in low amounts. None of the sera from the control groups had any significant titres of antibodies

Wd∗ Wd∗W_{d}^{*}-test: robust distance-based multivariate analysis of variance

Abstract Background Community-wide analyses provide an essential means for evaluation of the effect of interventions or design variables on the composition of the microbiome. Applications of these analyses are omnipresent in microbiome literature, yet some of their statistical properties have not been tested for robustness towards common features of microbiome data. Recently, it has been reported that PERMANOVA can yield wrong results in the presence of heteroscedasticity and unbalanced sample sizes. Findings We develop a method for multivariate analysis of variance, Wd∗ $W_{d}^{*}$, based on Welch MANOVA that is robust to heteroscedasticity in the data. We do so by extending a previously reported method that does the same for two-level independent factor variables. Our approach can accommodate multi-level factors, stratification, and multiple post hoc testing scenarios. An R language implementation of the method is available at https://github.com/alekseyenko/WdStar. Conclusion Our method resolves potential for confounding of location and dispersion effects in multivariate analyses by explicitly accounting for the differences in multivariate dispersion in the data tested. The methods based on Wd∗ $W_{d}^{*}$ have general applicability in microbiome and other ‘omics data analyses

Zwitterionic dye-based conducting polymers. Synthesis and optical properties of pyrrole-derived polysquaraines

This article does not have an abstract