Novel strategies for preventing dysbiosis in the oral cavity

Oral diseases affect over three billion people worldwide, making it one of the most common infections. Recent studies show that one approach to reducing the risk of chronic infections, such as caries, gingivitis, periodontitis, and halitosis, is to control the ecology of the oral microbiome instead of completely removing both the harmful and beneficial microorganisms. This is based on the knowledge that oral diseases are not caused by a single pathogen but rather by a shift in the homeostasis of the entire microbiota, a process known as dysbiosis. Consequently, it is of the utmost importance to implement strategies that are able to prevent and control oral dysbiosis to avoid serious complications, including heart, lung, and other systemic diseases. Conventional treatments include the use of antibiotics, which further disrupt the equilibrium in the oral microbiota, together with the mechanical removal of the decayed cavity area following its formation. Therefore, it is imperative to implement alternative strategies with the potential to overcome the disadvantages of the current therapy, namely, the use of broad-spectrum antibiotics. In this sense, probiotics and postbiotics have received particular attention since they can modulate the oral microbiota and decrease the dysbiosis rate in the oral cavity. However, their mechanisms of action need to be addressed to clarify and drive their possible applications as preventive strategies. In this sense, this review provides an overview of the potential of probiotics and postbiotics, focusing on their antimicrobial and antibiofilm activities as well as their ability to modulate the inflammatory response. Finally, it also showcases the main advantages and disadvantages of orodispersible films—a promising delivery mechanism for both probiotics and postbiotics to target oral dysbiosis.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Simultaneous Separation of Antioxidants and Carbohydrates From Food Wastes Using Aqueous Biphasic Systems Formed by Cholinium-Derived Ionic Liquids

project CICECO-Aveiro Institute of Materials, UID/CTM/50011/2019. Associate Laboratory for Green Chemistry-LAQV, FCT Ref. UID/QUI/50006/2019. POCI-01-0145-FEDER-016403. Investigator FCT project IF/00621/2015. Programa Mais Centro under project CENTRO-07-ST24-FEDER-002008. COMPETE: PEst-C/SAU/UI0709/2011.The food industry produces significant amounts of waste, many of them rich in valuable compounds that could be recovered and reused in the framework of circular economy. The development of sustainable and cost-effective technologies to recover these value added compounds will contribute to a significant decrease of the environmental footprint and economic burden of this industry sector. Accordingly, in this work, aqueous biphasic systems (ABS) composed of cholinium-derived bistriflimide ionic liquids (ILs) and carbohydrates were investigated as an alternative process to simultaneously separate and recover antioxidants and carbohydrates from food waste. Aiming at improving the biocompatible character of the studied ILs and proposed process, cholinium-derived bistriflimide ILs were chosen, which were properly designed by playing with the cation alkyl side chain and the number of functional groups attached to the cation to be able to create ABS with carbohydrates. These ILs were characterized by cytotoxicity assays toward human intestinal epithelial cells (Caco-2 cell line), demonstrating to have a significantly lower toxicity than other well-known and commonly used fluorinated ILs. The capability of these ILs to form ABS with a series of carbohydrates, namely monosaccharides, disaccharides and polyols, was then appraised by the determination of the respective ternary liquid-liquid phase diagrams at 25 degrees C. The studied ABS were finally used to separate carbohydrates and antioxidants from real food waste samples, using an expired vanilla pudding as an example. With the studied systems, the separation of the two products occurs in one-step, where carbohydrates are enriched in the carbohydrate-rich phase and antioxidants are mainly present in the IL-rich phase. Extraction efficiencies of carbohydrates ranging between 89 and 92% to the carbohydrate-rich phase, and antioxidant relative activities ranging between 65 and 75% in the IL-rich phase were obtained. Furthermore, antioxidants from the IL-rich phase were recovered by solid-phase extraction, and the IL was recycled for two more times with no losses on the ABS separation performance. Overall, the obtained results show that the investigated ABS are promising platforms to simultaneously separate carbohydrates and antioxidants from real food waste samples, and could be used in further related applications foreseeing industrial food waste valorization.publishersversionpublishe

Nuclear Accumulation of LAP1:TRF2 Complex during DNA Damage Response Uncovers a Novel Role for LAP1

Lamina-associated polypeptide 1 (LAP1) is a nuclear envelope (NE) protein whose function remains poorly characterized. In a recent LAP1 protein interactome study, a putative regulatory role in the DNA damage response (DDR) has emerged and telomeric repeat-binding factor 2 (TRF2), a protein intimately associated with this signaling pathway, was among the list of LAP1 interactors. To gain insights into LAP1′s physiological properties, the interaction with TRF2 in human cells exposed to DNA-damaging agents was investigated. The direct LAP1:TRF2 binding was validated in vitro by blot overlay and in vivo by co-immunoprecipitation after hydrogen peroxide and bleomycin treatments. The regulation of this protein interaction by LAP1 phosphorylation was demonstrated by co-immunoprecipitation and mass spectrometry following okadaic acid exposure. The involvement of LAP1 and TRF2 in the DDR was confirmed by their increased nuclear protein levels after bleomycin treatment, evaluated by immunoblotting, as well as by their co-localization with DDR factors at the NE and within the nucleoplasm, assessed by immunocytochemistry. Effectively, we showed that the LAP1:TRF2 complex is established during a cellular response against DNA damage. This work proposes a novel functional role for LAP1 in the DDR, revealing a potential biological mechanism that may be disrupted in LAP1-associated pathologies

N-doped cnt as a metal-free catalyst for reduction of nitro-benzene derivatives

Trabajo presentado en el 9º Encontro Nacional de Catálise e Materiais Porosos, celebrado en Oporto (Portugal) del 6 al 7 de mayo de 2013.Nitroaromatic compounds are commonly used in many industrial processes, including the preparation of pesticides, explosives, textiles and paper. Therefore, they are often detected as water pollutants as a result of their release in industrial effluents. Wastewaters remediation containing these pollutants is very problematic, since they are usually resistant to conventional degradation treatrnents. The physical- and chemical properties of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), particularly the basic character, can be tailored by the incorporation of nitrogen atoms in their structure. [2] N-doped CNTs have been proposed as supports for metal catalysts. Besides, these materials have been also used as metal-free catalysts for the selective oxidation of H2 S reaction, the oxygen reduction reaction or base-catalysed reactions.Here, we report the first use of CNT-N as a metal-free catalyst for the reduction of 4-nitrophenol (4NP) and 4-nitroaniline (4NA) in the presence of NaBH4 . Carbon nanotubes (CNT-N) were synthesized in a fluidized-bed reactor, over a Fe/Si02 catalyst, by catalytic chemical vapour decomposition of acetonitrile vapour and were characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), N2 adsorption isotherm determination (BET) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The catalytic experiments were monitored by UV-Vis and the products of the reactions were characterized by 1HNMR.Support for this work was provided by FCT and FEDER through grant PEst­ C/EQB/LA0006/20l1, A95es Integradas Luso-Espanholas E 20/l l and Acciones Integradas AIB20lOPT-00104. MR, BJ and MA thank FCT for their grants.Peer Reviewe