Investigation of the impact of bacterial microencapsulation on natural product discovery

Developing new effective drugs to treat antibiotic resistant infections and cancer is urgently needed to reduce mortality due to these devastating diseases. Despite the promising potential of environmental microorganisms to produce such drugs, researchers are currently facing the problem of rediscovering known compounds. To address this challenge, the impact of microencapsulation on natural compound production was explored using, Kitasatospora cystarginea NRRL B-16505 which is known to produce cystargamide and the 20S proteasome inhibitory cystargolide. The current work postulates that the stress of microencapsulation process may induce secondary metabolism, potentially leading to the production of novel metabolites. Different microencapsulation techniques, including microfluidics, co-axial air flow printing, and emulsification, were compared in terms of bead size, cell viability, metabolite profile, and metabolite yields. This study has shown promising results that may be leading to the discovery of new bioactive compounds as well as activating the silent pathways for compound production. Nutrition deficiency, reduced Oxygen, presence of salt, heat shock, bead uniformity, and shear stress during microencapsulation are potential reasons for the production of these putatively novel chemicals. © 2023 The Author(s)Open access journalThis item from the UA Faculty Publications collection is made available by the University of Arizona with support from the University of Arizona Libraries. If you have questions, please contact us at [email protected]

Peer‐based comparison and firms' discretionary cost decisions

This study investigates whether firms engage in peer-based benchmarking in their decision-making regarding selling, general and administrative expenses (SG&A) for a large sample of U.S. listed firms. Peer-based comparison relates to comparing own performance against the performance of a meaningful reference group of other firms. SG&A are to a large extent discretionary, but optimal levels of (relative) SG&A are hard to assess. Based on the behavioural theory of the firm and institutional theory, we argue that peer-based comparison is likely to be an important input to managers' SG&A decision processes. Results show that peer-based comparison significantly drives changes in firms' reported SG&A. In addition, the effect of peer-based comparison is found to depend on the firm's life cycle stage. Findings further indicate that peer-based comparison has a significantly stronger effect in reference groups characterised by high(er) SG&A similarity. Results are robust to using several industry classification systems, as well as, multiple approaches to identify firm life cycles