Cerebral Metabolic Rate of Glucose and Cognitive Tests in Long COVID Patients

Background: Common long-term sequelae after COVID-19 include fatigue and cognitive impairment. Although symptoms interfere with daily living, the underlying pathology is largely unknown. Previous studies report relative hypometabolism in frontal, limbic and cerebellar regions suggesting focal brain involvement. We aimed to determine whether absolute hypometabolism was present and correlated to same day standardized neurocognitive testing. Methods: Fourteen patients included from a long COVID clinic had cognitive testing and quantitative dynamic [18F]FDG PET of the brain on the same day to correlate cognitive function to metabolic glucose rate. Results: We found no hypometabolism in frontal, limbic and cerebellar regions in cognitively impaired relative to cognitive intact patients. In contrast, the cognitive impaired patients showed higher cerebellar metabolism (p = 0.03), which correlated with more severe deficits in working memory and executive function (p = 0.03). Conclusions: Hypermetabolism in the cerebellum may reflect inefficient brain processing and play a role in cognitive impairments after COVID-19

New Insight into Structure/Function Relationships in Plant .ALPHA.-Amylase Family GH13 Members

Two carbohydrate binding surface sites (SBSs) on barley α-amylase 1 (AMY1) of glycoside hydrolase family 13 (GH13) displayed synergy in interactions with starch granules, thus being pivotal for hydrolysis of supramolecular substrates. Mutational analysis showed that SBS1 is more critical for the conversion of starch granules, while SBS2 has higher affinity than SBS1 for β-cyclodextrin (β-CD). Noticeably, the binding preference of β-CD to SBS2 differed distinctly from that of maltooligosaccharides to the catalytic nucleophile mutant D180A AMY1. Binding energy maps at subsites -8 through +4 of the active site indicated remarkably elevated affinity due to the Y380A mutation at SBS2. The high-yield AMY2 expression variant A42P, made it possible to show that Tyr378—corresponding to Tyr380 in AMY1—has a role in interactions with starch granules, but not in β-CD binding. Besides SBSs, dedicated starch binding domains (SBDs) mediate binding to starch granules. SBDs are currently categorised into 9 carbohydrate binding module (CBM) families. A novel CBM20 subfamily encountered in regulatory enzymes possesses characteristically low affinity for β-CD. Although α-amylase is essential for starch mobilisation in germinating barley seeds, efficient degradation requires the concerted action of α-amylase, β-amylase, limit dextrinase (LD) and possibly α-glucosidase. Limit dextrinase (LD) is encoded by a single gene and represents the sole debranching activity during germination. Recent expression of functional LD in Pichia pastoris makes biochemical and biophysical characterisation of this GH13 enzyme possible. An endogenous limit dextrinase inhibitor was cloned and produced recombinantly and demonstrated to have sub-nanomolar affinity for LD