Best Practices for Successfully Writing and Publishing a Genome Announcement in Microbiology Resource Announcements

Microbiology Resource Announcements (MRA) provides peer-reviewed announcements of scientific resources for the microbial research community. We describe the best practices for writing an announcement that ensures that these publications are truly useful resources. Adhering to these best practices can lead to successful publication without the need for extensive revisions

Social Media and Political Engagement

Social media is becoming extremely prevalent in people’s day-to-day lives. On these networking sites, people obtain information regarding social news, world news, national news, and more. It appears that politics and government activity are becoming more of an active topic on social media. Scholars are increasingly concerned about the negative effect that social media can have on political knowledge and the creation of divisions in governments. This study investigated whether social media, such as Twitter, impacted political engagement, therefore, having the possible impact on one\u27s political beliefs. The study found that social media use impacts a user’s political engagement

Implications of Brexit: A Divided Kingdom?

In 2016, the United Kingdom (UK) held a referendum on whether or not to leave the European Union, in what is known as Brexit.” By a narrow margin of 51.9% to 48.1%, the people voted to leave. Although the UK in its entirety voted to leave, only 38% of Scotland voted to leave, while 62% voted to remain, and in Northern Ireland, 44.2% voted to leave while 55.8% voted to remain. The focus of my research explores the implications of Brexit, particularly its effect on Northern Ireland and Scotland. The “how” of Brexit could have occurred in one of three ways: – a ‘hard’ deal, a ‘soft’ deal, or a ‘no-deal.\u27 Because of the issues of Ireland’s border and Scotland’s sovereignty, there stood a chance that the UK would become a “divided” kingdom. When considering the political and economic concerns, I recommend a ‘soft’ Brexit

Elaboration of antimicrobial polymeric materials by dispersion of well-defined amphiphilic methacrylic SG1-based copolymers

WOS:000439140100012Bacterial resistance to antibiotics is a major public health problem and there is an urgent need to find new antimicrobial materials to circumvent the development of resistant pathogens. The aim of this work is to propose an efficient and versatile method for the elaboration of antimicrobial polymeric materials based on the simple dispersion of a low amount of high molecular weight (M-n \textgreater 20 000 g mol(-1)) amphiphilic methacrylic copolymers prepared by nitroxide-mediated polymerization in different common organic matrices (here PS and PMMA). More precisely, after studying the influence of different copolymer parameters on their biological activity (the amount and type of comonomer (styrene or acrylonitrile), the architecture (random or diblock), and the type of cationic charge (permanent or not)), some selected candidates were dispersed in PS and PMMA matrices and were shown to efficiently turn these inactive materials into antibacterial ones with out a significant hemolytic character. In particular, only 0.02 wt% of antimicrobial copolymers were sufficient to confer an activity against both Gram positive (B. subtilis) and Gram negative (E. coli) bacteria

Ditopic Chelators of Dicopper Centers for Enhanced Tyrosinases Inhibition

International audienceTyrosinase enzymes (Tys) are involved in the key steps of melanin (protective pigments) biosynthesis and molecules targeting the binuclear copper active site on tyrosinases represent a relevant strategy to regulate enzyme activities. In this work, we studied the possible synergic effect generated by combination of known inhibitors. For this, derivatives containing kojic acid (KA) and 2-Hydroxypyridine-N-oxide (HOPNO) combined with a thiosemicarbazone (TSC) moiety were synthetized. Their inhibition activities were evaluated on purified tyrosinases from different sources (mushroom, bacterial and human) as well as on melanin production by lysates from human melanoma MNT-1 cell line. Results showed significant enhancement of the inhibitory effects compared to the parent compounds, in particular for HOPNO-TSC. In order to elucidate the interaction mode with the dicopper(II) active site, we investigated the binding studies towards a tyrosinase bio-inspired model of the dicopper(II) center. The structure of the isolated adduct between one ditopic inhibitor (KA-TSC) and the model complex reveals that the binding to a dicopper center can occur with both chelating sites. Computational studies on model complexes and docking studies on enzymes led to the identification of KA and HOPNO moieties as interacting groups with the dicopper active site

A versatile and straightforward process to turn plastics into antibacterial materials

International audienceWe demonstrate that antibacterial activity can be conferred to common plastic materials using amphiphilic cationic methacrylate-based block copolymers, specifically quaternized poly(butyl methacrylate)-b-poly(N,N-dimethyl-aminoethyl methacrylate) (PBMA-b-PDMAEMA) with 64 mol% of DMAEMA and Mn close to 20 000 g mol−1. With 0.5–2 wt% of these copolymers simply dispersed in the given matrix by extrusion, the modified materials prove to be active against E. coli, S. aureus, Listeria monocytogenes and enterohemorrhagic E. coli without toxicity against two cell lines, HaCaT and L929 fibroblasts, while keeping the mechanical properties of the materials intact. In addition, the study of the mechanism of action shows that the antibacterial materials target the bacterial membrane, which is expected to avoid antibacterial resistance. Our protocol is a cost-effective solution to generate antibacterial materials for several applications, including packaging or medical devices, without modification of the production process

sRAGE and early signs of cardiac target organ damage in mild hypertensives

Soluble Receptor for Advanced Glycation End Products (sRAGE) may be considered a marker inversely related to inflammation and its participation has been established in patients with advanced atherosclerotic vascular diseases. However, it is still unknown whether sRAGE reduction could be early metabolic change in the first stage of hypertension and initial hypertension-associated cardiac damage. We sought to determine the sRAGE values in otherwise healthy, untreated and recently diagnosed mild hypertensives and evaluate their association with blood pressure (BP) values, metabolic parameters, and with subclinical initial signs of cardiac target organ damage (TOD).Background: Soluble Receptor for Advanced Glycation End Products (sRAGE) may be considered a marker inversely related to inflammation and its participation has been established in patients with advanced atherosclerotic vascular diseases. However, it is still unknown whether sRAGE reduction could be early metabolic change in the first stage of hypertension and initial hypertension-associated cardiac damage. We sought to determine the sRAGE values in otherwise healthy, untreated and recently diagnosed mild hypertensives and evaluate their association with blood pressure (BP) values, metabolic parameters, and with subclinical initial signs of cardiac target organ damage (TOD). Methods: sRAGE were measured in 100 hypertensive and 100 normotensive subjects matched for age, gender and body mass index (BMI), submitted to a clinic visit and both ambulatory BP monitoring and echocardiography to determine the presence of initial cardiac TOD (presence of signs of left ventricular hypertrophy: left ventricular mass indexed for height 2.7 (LVMi) > 48 g/m 2.7 for men and > 44 g/m 2.7 for women and/or increased left atrial volume 4-chamber indexed for body surface area (LAVi) > 34 ml/m 2 ). Results: sRAGE levels were similar between hypertensive and normotensive subjects and were not significantly correlated with office and 24-h BPs values. However, when subgrouping the hypertensive patients in Hyp-TOD and Hyp-withoutTOD, sRAGE was found to be different among the three groups (p = 0.030), being lower in the Hyp-TOD group than the values of both Hyp-withoutTOD (p = 0.038) and normotensives (p = 0.038). In hypertensive patients sRAGE was negatively related with both LVMi (r = 12 0.239, p = 0.034) and LAVi (r = 12 0.315, p = 0.005) and was independently related to cardiac TOD also in multivariable analysis. Conclusions: In this population of mild hypertensives, low circulating sRAGE may be a very early marker of initial TOD, suggesting the possible participation of oxidative stress in initial cardiac changes in human hypertension

2-Hydroxypyridine-N-oxide-Embedded Aurones as Potent Human Tyrosinase Inhibitors

With the aim to develop effective and selective human tyrosinase inhibitors, we investigated aurone derivatives whose B-ring was replaced by a non-oxidizable 2-hydroxypyridine-N-oxide (HOPNO) moiety. These aurones were synthesized and evaluated as inhibitors of purified human tyrosinase. Excellent inhibition activity was revealed and rationalized by theoretical calculations. The aurone backbone was especially found to play a crucial role, as the HOPNO moiety alone provided very modest activity on human tyrosinase. Furthermore, the in vitro activity was confirmed by measuring the melanogenesis suppression ability of the compounds in melanoma cell lysates and whole cells. Our study reveals that HOPNO-embedded 6-hydroxyaurone is to date the most effective inhibitor of isolated human tyrosinase. Owing to its low toxicity and its high inhibition activity, it could represent a milestone on the path toward new valuable agents in dermocosmetics, as well as in medical fields where it was recently suggested that tyrosinase could play key roles