Microbiome to Brain:Unravelling the Multidirectional Axes of Communication

The gut microbiome plays a crucial role in host physiology. Disruption of its community structure and function can have wide-ranging effects making it critical to understand exactly how the interactive dialogue between the host and its microbiota is regulated to maintain homeostasis. An array of multidirectional signalling molecules is clearly involved in the host-microbiome communication. This interactive signalling not only impacts the gastrointestinal tract, where the majority of microbiota resides, but also extends to affect other host systems including the brain and liver as well as the microbiome itself. Understanding the mechanistic principles of this inter-kingdom signalling is fundamental to unravelling how our supraorganism function to maintain wellbeing, subsequently opening up new avenues for microbiome manipulation to favour desirable mental health outcome

Atomic force microscopic and theoretical studies of poly-ubiquitin proteins

In this Letter, a theoretical model for the force-extension experiment applied to protein folding-unfolding is presented. This model explicitly takes into account the interplay between the mechanical energy and chemical energy. It can treat the effect of denaturing agents (like pH GdnHCl, urea, etc.) and temperature on the force-extension experiment of protein folding-unfolding. We further apply the model to analyze our own force-extension experiment on ubiquitin tetramers and to the experimental data of other protein systems reported in literature. The current model can predict the quantities like the values of equilibrium constant, chemical potential and mote fraction of unfolded state involved in protein folding-unfolding and we have found that the proteins adsorbed on gold surfaces are partially unfolded in comparison with the bulk state. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved