Biology subjects

Aguiyi, J. C.

Publications and source records attributed to Aguiyi, J. C..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2023

Silymarin Inhibits In Vitro SARS-CoV-2 Infection In Vero E6 Cells

The study evaluated the invitro ability of Silymarin to inhibit SARS-COV-2 infection on Vero Cells. We set out to evaluate the hypothesis that Silymarin has both preventive and curative against SARS-COV-2. To study this, we first evaluated the safety profile of Silymarin using the Drosophila melanogaster(Harwich strain) model. Silymarin tablet film coated 140mg(Silybon-140) was used for the study. We evaluated the fly for acute toxicity, Locomotor performance, estimation of total thiol level, determination of Acetylcholinesterases (AchE) activity, Catalase activity, Glutathion-S-transferase(GST) activity and fecundity assay. To evaluate the invitro activity of Silymarin against SARS-COV-2, SARS-COV-2 isolates from oropharyngeal swabs and confirmed using qRT-PCR were cultured in Vero E6 monolayer cells. Different concentrations of silymarin concentration were used to determine pre- or post-exposure activity. The result showed that daily exposure to silymarin dose between 50% to 2000% adult dose showed no adverse effect after 28 days. Treatment of Vero cells with silymarin at the concentration 250-500ug/ml all revealed a pre-treatment effect to SARS-COV-2 in vitro and no inhibition effect was observed when the virus was first added before the addition of Silymarin. Silymarin had no adverse effect on D. melanogaster and can be used a preventive drug against SARS-COV-2

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2022

Genome-wide translocation events drive the evolution of Candida africana

Candida africana is emerging as an organism of interest. It is evolutionarily divergent from Candida albicans but has reduced virulence with a restricted ecological niche. This study aimed at comparing in silico the genome level to detect variations in the two species. Raw Illumina Hiseq data were downloaded from the European Nucleotide Archive (https://www.ebi.ac.uk/ena) with the accession number SRR6669859 and assembled using shovill (v. 1.0.9) the resulting genome was mapped against the haploid reference Candida albicans SC5314_A22 strain using the D-GENIES webtool and contigs were reordered based on the reference, then gap-filled using GapFiller (v1-10), and annotated using MAKER-P. Synima and progressive Mauve were used to compare the annotated genomes of Candida africana and Candida albicans for synteny. OrthoVenn2 webserver was used for the identification and comparison of orthologous clusters. Microsynteny variations within the genomes were determined using the GEvo. The study revealed the presence of insertions, deletions, and hypervariable regions within the genome of Candidia africana, showing a high level of synteny with Candida albicans. The genome of Candida africana is 14.04Mbp with a BUSCO score of 99.66%. The two species form a total of 5146 orthologous protein clusters and shared a total of 5124 protein, C. africana has a unique cluster protein cluster while C. albicans have 18 unique Protein clusters. The genome of C. africana has lots of structural variations and the presence of gene losses and gains. These genetic variations possibly play a role in the reduced virulence potential observed in C. africana.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2020

Molecular Docking Analysis Of Some Phytochemicals On Two SARS-CoV-2 Targets

COV spike (S) glycoprotein and Mpro are two key targets that have been identified for vaccines and drug development against the COVID-19 disease. Virtual screening of some compounds of plants origin that have shown antiviral activities were carried out on the two targets, 6lu7 and 6vsb by docking with the PyRx software. The binding affinities were compared with other compounds and drugs already identified as potential ligands for 6lu7 and 6vsb as well as Chloroquine and hydroxychloroquine. The docked compounds with best binding affinities were also filtered for drug likeness using the SwissADME and PROTOX platforms on the basis of Physicochemical properties and toxicity respectively. The docking results revealed that scopodulcic acid and dammarenolic acid had the best binding affinity on the s-glycoprotein and Mpro protein targets respectively. Silybinin also demonstrated a good binding affinity to both protein targets making it a potential candidate for further evaluation as repurposed candidate for SARS COV2 with likelihood of having a multitarget activity.

bioinformatics↗