Biology subjects

Henry, C.

Publications and source records attributed to Henry, C..

42 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

bioRxiv2019

Young Genes are More Responsive to Environmental Stress than Ancient Genes in Budding Yeasts

The Saccharomycotina subphylum (budding yeasts) spans more than 400 million years of evolution and includes species that thrive in many of Earths harsh environments. Characterizing species that grow in harsh conditions could enable the design of more robust yeast strains for biotechnology. However, tolerance to stressful conditions is a multifactorial response, which is difficult to understand since many of the genes involved are as yet uncharacterized. In this work, three divergent yeast species were grown under multiple stressful conditions to identify stress-induced genes. For each condition, duplicated and non-conserved genes were significantly enriched for stress responsiveness compared to single-copy conserved genes. To understand this further, we developed a sorting method that considers evolutionary origin and duplication timing to assign an evolutionary age to each gene. Subsequent analysis of the sets of genes that changed expression revealed a relationship between stress-induced genes and the youngest gene set, regardless of the species or stress in question. These young genes are rarely essential for growth and evolve rapidly, which may facilitate their functionalization for stress tolerance and may explain their stress-induced expression. These findings show that systems-level analyses that consider gene age can expedite the identification of stress tolerance genes.

systems biology↗

bioRxiv2019

Permissive Fatty Acid Incorporation in Host Environments Promotes Staphylococcal Adaptation to FASII Antibiotics

Development of fatty acid synthesis pathway (FASII) inhibitors against the major human pathogen Staphylococcus aureus hinges on the accepted but unproven postulate that an endogenously synthesized branched chain fatty acid is required to complete membrane phospholipids. Evidence for anti-FASII efficacy in animal models supported this view. However, restricted test conditions used previously to show FASII antibiotic efficacy led us to investigate these questions in a broader, host-relevant context. We report that S. aureus rapidly adapts to FASII antibiotics without FASII mutations when exposed to host environments. Treatment with a lead FASII antibiotic upon signs of infection, rather than just after inoculation as commonly practiced, failed to eliminate S. aureus from infected organs in a septicemia model. In vitro, addition of serum facilitated rapid S. aureus FASII bypass by environmental fatty acid (eFA) replacement in phospholipids. Serum lowers membrane stress, leading to increased retention of the two substrates required for exogenous fatty acid (eFA) utilization. In these conditions, eFA occupy both phospholipid positions 1 and 2, regardless of anti-FASII selection. This study revises conclusions on S. aureus fatty acid requirements by disproving the postulate of fatty acid stringency, and reveals an Achilles heel for using FASII antibiotics to treat infection in monotherapy.\n\nSignificance statementAntibiotic discovery to overcome treatment failure has huge socio-medical and economic stakes. The fatty acid synthesis (FASII) pathway is considered an ideal druggable target against the human pathogen Staphylococcus aureus, based on evidence of anti-FASII efficacy in infection models, and the postulate that S. aureus synthesizes an irreplaceable fatty acid. We report that S. aureus alters its behavior in host-relevant conditions. Administering FASII antibiotics upon signs of infection, rather than just after inoculation as frequently practiced, failed to clear septicemic infections. In serum, S. aureus rapidly overcomes FASII antibiotics by incorporating alternative fatty acids. We conclude that previously, premature antibiotic treatments and experimental constraints masked S. aureus antibiotic adaptation capacity. These findings should help streamline future drug development programs.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2019

DNA double-strand breaks induced by reactive oxygenspecies promote DNA polymerase IV activity in Escherichia coli

Under many conditions the killing of bacterial cells by antibiotics is potentiated by DNA damage induced by reactive oxygen species (ROS)1-3. A primary cause of ROS-induced cell death is the accumulation of DNA double-strand breaks (DSBs)1,4-6. DNA polymerase IV (pol IV), an error-prone DNA polymerase produced at elevated levels in cells experiencing DNA damage, has been implicated both in ROS-dependent killing and in DSBR7-15. Here, we show using single-molecule fluorescence microscopy that ROS-induced DSBs promote pol IV activity in two ways. First, exposure to the antibiotics ciprofloxacin and trimethoprim triggers an SOS-mediated increase in intracellular pol IV concentrations that is strongly dependent on both ROS and DSBR. Second, in cells that constitutively express pol IV, treatment with an ROS scavenger dramatically reduces the number of pol IV foci formed upon exposure to antibiotics, indicating a role for pol IV in the repair of ROS-induced DSBs.

molecular biology↗

bioRxiv2018

Microbial and Metabolic Succession on Common Building Materials Under High Humidity Conditions

Despite considerable efforts to characterize the ecology of bacteria and fungi in the built environment (BE), the metabolic mechanisms underpinning their colonization and successional dynamics remain unclear. Here, we applied bacterial/viral particle counting, qPCR, 16S and ITS rRNA amplicon sequencing, and metabolomics to longitudinally characterize the ecological dynamics of four commonly used building materials maintained at high humidity conditions (~94% RH). We varied the natural inoculum provided to each material by placing them in different occupied spaces, and we wet the surface of half of the samples of each material to simulate a flooding event. As expected, different materials showed different bacterial and viral particle abundance, with wet materials having higher growth rates and lower alpha diversity compared to non-wetted materials. Wetting described the majority of the variance in bacterial, fungal and metabolite structure, and material type only influenced bacterial and metabolic diversity, while location of inoculation was only weakly associated with bacterial and fungal beta diversity. Metabolites indicative of microbial activity were identified, as were those that were native to the surface material. Glucose-phosphate was abundant on all materials (except mold-free gypsum) and was correlated with Enterobacteriaceae, which could indicate a potential bacterial nutrient source. A compound consistent with scopoletin, a plant metabolite with antimicrobial activity, was significantly negatively correlated with Bacillus and positively correlated with Pseudomonas and enriched in medium density fiberboard (MDF) materials. In wet samples, the alkaloids nigragillin and fumigaclavine C, both with antimicrobial properties, were significantly positively correlated with the fungal phylum Ascomycota. Nigragillin, was also negatively correlated with Bacillus and Pseudomonas abundance. Thiabendazole and azoxystrobin (anti-fungal compounds) were highly abundant on mold-resistant gypsum wallboard and likely directly influenced the decreased fungal growth observed on this material. The mold-resistant gypsum material also showed a significant increase in bacterial alpha diversity, and bacterial and viral particle abundance, as well as a decrease in metabolite diversity, likely a result of reduced fungal growth. Penicillium taxa were positively correlated with thiabendazole, which suggested the persistence of resistant strains. Also, specific to the wet samples, Bacillus abundance was positively correlated with the azoxystrobin, suggesting bi-directional competitive adaptation, and positively correlated with metabolites known to interfere with Pseudomonas biofilm formation, which could explain the anti-correlation between these taxa. As expected, high moisture conditions enabled faster growth of inoculating microorganisms, whose composition, chemistry, and competition was shaped by surface material, suggesting that both fungal and bacterial growth need to be considered when determining the impact of dampness in built environments.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2018

Hemagglutinin stalk-reactive antibodies interfere with influenza virus neuraminidase activity by steric hindrance

AbstractHemagglutinin (HA) stalk-reactive antibodies are the basis of several current \"one-shot\" universal influenza vaccine efforts because they protect against a wide spectrum of influenza virus strains. The appreciated mechanism of protection by HA-stalk antibodies is to inhibit HA stalk reconfiguration, blocking viral fusion and entry. This study shows that HA stalk-reactive antibodies also inhibit neuraminidase (NA) enzymatic activity, prohibiting viral egress. NA inhibition (NI) is evident for an attached substrate but not for unattached small molecule cleavage of sialic acid. This suggests that the antibodies inhibit NA enzymatic activity through steric hindrance, thus limiting NA access to sialic acids when adjacent to HA on whole virions. Consistently, F(ab)2 fragments that occupy reduced area without loss of avidity or disrupted HA/NA interactions show significantly reduced NI activity. Notably, HA stalk binding antibodies lacking NI activity were unable to neutralize viral infection via microneutralization assays. This work suggests that NI activity is an important component of HA-stalk antibody mediated protection.\n\nSummaryThis study reports a new mechanism of protection that is mediated by influenza hemagglutinin-stalk reactive antibodies: inhibition of neuraminidase activity by steric hindrance, blocking access of neuraminidase to sialic acids when it is abutted next to hemagglutinin on whole virions.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2018

Memote: A community-driven effort towards a standardized genome-scale metabolic model test suite

Several studies have shown that neither the formal representation nor the functional requirements of genome-scale metabolic models (GEMs) are precisely defined. Without a consistent standard, comparability, reproducibility, and interoperability of models across groups and software tools cannot be guaranteed.\n\nHere, we present memote (https://github.com/opencobra/memote) an open-source software containing a community-maintained, standardized set of metabolic model tests. The tests cover a range of aspects from annotations to conceptual integrity and can be extended to include experimental datasets for automatic model validation. In addition to testing a model once, memote can be configured to do so automatically, i.e., while building a GEM. A comprehensive report displays the models performance parameters, which supports informed model development and facilitates error detection.\n\nMemote provides a measure for model quality that is consistent across reconstruction platforms and analysis software and simplifies collaboration within the community by establishing workflows for publicly hosted and version controlled models.

systems biology↗