Extraction and Fractionation of Polysaccharides from a Selected Mushroom Species, Ganoderma lucidum: A Critical Review

Fractionation plays a big role in most of the sample processing especially in mushroom polysaccharides extraction. This intermediate step will determine further purification process which will lead to the type of polysaccharides that will be obtained. Four types of Ganoderma lucidum cultured medium used in the research papers were randomly chosen. They are spores, mycelia, fruiting body and fermentation broth. For water soluble polysaccharides, hot water extraction is typically applied. The following ethanol precipitation could be appropriate used to sediment the component with OH-group including polysaccharide. The next step of fractionation consist of anion exchange chromatography or gel filtration enhance the purity of polysaccharides. Using these extraction and fractionation techniques, high quality polysaccharides could be successfully obtained from the mushroom that are useful for further studies. This review examined the various extraction and fractionation techniques used in the study of polysaccharides from G. lucidum

Age, Disease Severity and Ethnicity Influence Humoral Responses in a Multi-Ethnic COVID-19 Cohort

The COVID-19 pandemic has affected all individuals across the globe in some way. Despite large numbers of reported seroprevalence studies, there remains a limited understanding of how the magnitude and epitope utilization of the humoral immune response to SARS-CoV-2 viral anti-gens varies within populations following natural infection. Here, we designed a quantitative, multi-epitope protein microarray comprising various nucleocapsid protein structural motifs, including two structural domains and three intrinsically disordered regions. Quantitative data from the microarray provided complete differentiation between cases and pre-pandemic controls (100% sensitivity and specificity) in a case-control cohort (n = 100). We then assessed the influence of disease severity, age, and ethnicity on the strength and breadth of the humoral response in a multi-ethnic cohort (n = 138). As expected, patients with severe disease showed significantly higher antibody titers and interestingly also had significantly broader epitope coverage. A significant increase in antibody titer and epitope coverage was observed with increasing age, in both mild and severe disease, which is promising for vaccine efficacy in older individuals. Additionally, we observed significant differences in the breadth and strength of the humoral immune response in relation to ethnicity, which may reflect differences in genetic and lifestyle factors. Furthermore, our data enabled localization of the immuno-dominant epitope to the C-terminal structural domain of the viral nucleocapsid protein in two independent cohorts. Overall, we have designed, validated, and tested an advanced serological assay that enables accurate quantitation of the humoral response post natural infection and that has revealed unexpected differences in the magnitude and epitope utilization within a population