Metabolic characterization of directly reprogrammed renal tubular epithelial cells (iRECs)

Fibroblasts can be directly reprogrammed to induced renal tubular epithelial cells (iRECs) using four transcription factors. These engineered cells may be used for disease modeling, cell replacement therapy or drug and toxicity testing. Direct reprogramming induces drastic changes in the transcriptional landscape, protein expression, morphological and functional properties of cells. However, how the metabolome is changed by reprogramming and to what degree it resembles the target cell type remains unknown. Using untargeted gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and targeted liquid chromatography-MS, we characterized the metabolome of mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs), iRECs, mIMCD-3 cells, and whole kidneys. Metabolic fingerprinting can distinguish each cell type reliably, revealing iRECs are most similar to mIMCD-3 cells and clearly separate from MEFs used for reprogramming. Treatment with the cytotoxic drug cisplatin induced typical changes in the metabolic profile of iRECs commonly occurring in acute renal injury. Interestingly, metabolites in the medium of iRECs, but not of mIMCD-3 cells or fibroblast could distinguish treated and non-treated cells by cluster analysis. In conclusion, direct reprogramming of fibroblasts into renal tubular epithelial cells strongly influences the metabolome of engineered cells, suggesting that metabolic profiling may aid in establishing iRECs as in vitro models for nephrotoxicity testing in the future

Release Note -- Vbfnlo-2.6.0

Vbfnlo is a flexible parton level Monte Carlo program for the simulation of vector boson fusion (VBF), double and triple vector boson (plus jet) production in hadronic collisions at next-to-leading order (NLO) in the strong coupling constant, as well as Higgs boson plus two jet production via gluon fusion at the one-loop level. This note briefly describes the main additional features and processes that have been added in the new release -- Vbfnlo Version 2.6.0. At NLO QCD diboson production (W\gamma, WZ, ZZ, Z\gamma and \gamma\gamma), same-sign W pair production via vector boson fusion and the process W\gamma\gamma j have been implemented (for which one-loop tensor integrals up to six-point functions are included). In addition, gluon induced diboson production can be studied separately at the leading order (one-loop) level. The diboson processes WW, WZ and W\gamma can be run with anomalous gauge boson couplings, and anomalous couplings between a Higgs and a pair of gauge bosons is included in WW, ZZ, Z\gamma and \gamma\gamma diboson production. The code has also been extended to include anomalous gauge boson couplings for single vector boson production via VBF, and a spin-2 model has been implemented for diboson pair production via vector boson fusion.Comment: 14 pages, 6 tables; new code available at http://www-itp.particle.uni-karlsruhe.de/vbfnlo

The role of diatom nanostructures in biasing diffusion to improve uptake in a patchy nutrient environment

Extent: 9 p.BACKGROUND: Diatoms are important single-celled autotrophs that dominate most lit aquatic environments and are distinguished by surficial frustules with intricate designs of unknown function. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We show that some frustule designs constrain diffusion to positively alter nutrient uptake. In nutrient gradients of 4 to 160 times over, 5 cm, the screened-chambered morphology of Coscincodiscus sp. biases the nutrient diffusion towards the cell by at least 3.8 times the diffusion to the seawater. In contrast, the open-chambers of Thalassiosira eccentrica produce at least a 1.3 times diffusion advantage to the membrane over Coscincodiscus sp. when nutrients are homogeneous. SIGNIFICANCE: Diffusion constraint explains the success of particular diatom species at given times and the overall success of diatoms. The results help answer the unresolved question of how adjacent microplankton compete. Furthermore, diffusion constraint by supramembrane nanostructures to alter molecular diffusion suggests that microbes compete via supramembrane topology, a competitive mechanism not considered by the standard smooth-surface equations used for nutrient uptake nor in microbial ecology and cell physiology.James G. Mitchell, Laurent Seuront, Mark J. Doubell, Dusan Losic, Nicolas H. Voelcker, Justin Seymour and Ratnesh La

Apical assemblies of intermediate filament-like protein FilP are highly dynamic and affect polar growth determinant DivIVA in Streptomyces venezuelae

Streptomyces spp. grow as branching hyphae, building the cell wall in restricted zones at hyphal tips. The organization of this mode of polar growth involves three coiled-coil proteins: DivIVA and Scy, which form apical protein complexes referred to as polarisomes; and the intermediate filament-like protein FilP, which influences cell shape and interacts with both Scy and DivIVA. Here, we use live cell imaging of Streptomyces venezuelae to clarify the subcellular localization and dynamics of FilP and its effect on hyphal morphology. By monitoring a FilP-mCherry fusion protein, we show that FilP accumulates in gradient-like zones behind the hyphal tips. The apical gradient pattern of FilP localization is dependent on hyphal tip extension and immediately dissipates upon growth arrest. Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching experiments show that FilP gradients are dynamic and subject to subunit exchange during vegetative growth. Further, the localization of FilP at hyphal tips is not directly dependent on scy, even though the strongly perturbed morphology of most scy mutant hyphae is associated with mislocalization of FilP. Finally, we find that filP has an effect on the size and position of the foci of key polar growth determinant DivIVA. This effect likely contributes to the phenotype of filP mutants