Biology subjects

Kamenetzky, L.

Publications and source records attributed to Kamenetzky, L..

4 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Placental transcriptome profiling in congenital Chagas disease: gene networks associated with transmission

Chagas disease, caused by Trypanosoma cruzi, affects over seven million people globally. Vertical transmission during pregnancy significantly contributes to the urban spread of the disease, even in non-endemic areas. The placental barrier plays a key role in preventing fetal infection, although the molecular mechanisms underlying congenital transmission remain unclear. To identify placental factors associated with transmission, we conducted a transcriptomic study comparing placental tissues from deliveries of congenitally infected (M+B+), exposed but uninfected (M+B-), and unexposed/uninfected (M-B-) newborns. Differential gene expression analysis of transmitting placentas revealed that ENSG00000304767, a novel lncRNA sense intronic to CEMIP was overexpressed as well as CGB5, while CEMIP, CADM3, CADH11 and PRXX1 were underexpressed. In non-transmitting placentas, the long non-coding RNA MIR4300 was overexpressed while CGB5 was underexpressed. These results suggest that cell adhesion and the extracellular matrix integrity are altered in transmitting placentas. Additionally, gene set enrichment analysis using the GO library revealed immune-related terms underrepresented in both infected mother groups, and confirmed that extracellular matrix processes, particularly collagen organization and metabolism, constitute important factors in transmission events. Analysis using the Cell Type library showed that extravillous trophoblasts were overrepresented in M+B+, but the opposite in M+B-. In contrast, syncytiotrophoblasts and villous cytotrophoblasts were overrepresented in non-transmitting vs. control cases. Immune-related placental cell types were consistently reduced in both M+ groups when compared to controls. The co-expression network analysis confirmed that the placental signaling and structural integrity were compromised in transmitting cases. ENPP1 and SLC16A10 emerged as hub genes with pivotal roles in the pathways altered during congenital infection. These findings highlight key placental transcriptional alterations linked to congenital T. cruzi transmission and provide insight into potential molecular mechanisms of fetal protection or susceptibility. Author summaryChagas disease, caused by the parasite Trypanosoma cruzi, can be passed from mother to baby during pregnancy, constituting the main transmission way in urban and non-endemic areas. The placenta normally acts as a barrier to protect the fetus, but how this barrier fails in congenitally transmitted cases is still not well understood. Thus, we analyzed the gene expression in placental tissues from three groups: infected mothers that transmitted the parasite, infected mothers that did not transmit it, and uninfected mothers. We found that certain genes involved in immune response, hormone regulation, and the structure of the placenta showed clear differences among these groups. In particular, CGB5, involved in the production of pregnancy hormones, showed opposite activity patterns depending on whether the mother transmitted the parasite or not. We also found that specific placental cell types that help anchor the placenta or form its protective outer layer changed their expression pattern in transmitting cases. These shifts suggest that both the physical structure and immune system of the placenta may be altered in a way that allows the parasite to reach the fetus. Our findings reveal important molecular clues that could help predict congenital transmission of Chagas disease.

molecular biology↗

bioRxiv2020

HextractoR: an R package for automatic extraction of hairpins from genome-wide data

Extracting stem-loop sequences (hairpins) from genome-wide data is very important nowadays for some data mining tasks in bioinformatics. The genome preprocessing is very important because it has a strong influence on the later steps and the final results. For example, for novel miRNA prediction, all well-known hairpins must be properly located. Although there are some scripts that can be adapted and put together to achieve this task, they are outdated, none of them guarantees finding correspondence to well-known structures in the genome under analysis, and they do not take advantage of the latest advances in secondary structure prediction. We present here an R package for automatic extraction of hairpins from genome-wide data (HextractorR). HextractoR makes an exhaustive and smart analysis of the genome in order to obtain a very good set of short sequences for further processing. Moreover, genomes can be processed in parallel and with low memory requirements. Results obtained showed that HextractoR has effectively outperformed other methods. HextractoR it is freely available at CRAN and Sourceforge.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2020

Structural and Functional Comparison of SARS-CoV-2-Spike Receptor Binding Domain Produced in Pichia pastoris and Mammalian Cells

The yeast Pichia pastoris is a cost-effective and easily scalable system for recombinant protein production. In this work we compared the conformation of the receptor binding domain (RBD) from SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein expressed in P. pastoris and in the well established HEK-293T mammalian cell system. RBD obtained from both yeast and mammalian cells was properly folded, as indicated by UV-absorption, circular dichroism and tryptophan fluorescence. They also had similar stability, as indicated by temperature-induced unfolding (observed Tm were 50 {degrees}C and 52 {degrees}C for RBD produced in P. pastoris and HEK-293T cells, respectively). Moreover, the stability of both variants was similarly reduced when the ionic strength was increased, in agreement with a computational analysis predicting that a set of ionic interactions may stabilize RBD structure. Further characterization by HPLC, size-exclusion chromatography and mass spectrometry revealed a higher heterogeneity of RBD expressed in P. pastoris relative to that produced in HEK-293T cells, which disappeared after enzymatic removal of glycans. The production of RBD in P. pastoris was scaled-up in a bioreactor, with yields above 45 mg/L of 90% pure protein, thus potentially allowing large scale immunizations to produce neutralizing antibodies, as well as the large scale production of serological tests for SARS-CoV-2.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2020

Molecular features similarities between SARS-CoV-2, SARS, MERS and key human genes could favour the viral infections and trigger collateral effects

In December 2019 rising pneumonia cases caused by a novel {beta}-coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) occurred in Wuhan, China, which has rapidly spread worldwide causing thousands of deaths. The WHO declared the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak as a public health emergency of international concern therefore several scientists are dedicated to the study of the new virus. Since human viruses have codon usage biases that match highly expressed proteins in the tissues they infect and depend on host cell machinery for replication and co-evolution, we selected the genes that are highly expressed in the tissue of human lungs to perform computational studies that permit to compare their molecular features with SARS, SARS-CoV-2 and MERS genes. In our studies, we analysed 91 molecular features for 339 viral genes and 463 human genes that consisted of 677873 codon positions. Hereby, we found that A/T bias in viral genes could propitiate the viral infection favoured by a host dependant specialization using the host cell machinery of only some genes. The envelope protein E, the membrane glycoprotein M and ORF7 could have been further benefited by a high rate of A/T in the third codon position. Thereby, the mistranslation or de-regulation of protein synthesis could produce collateral effects, as a consequence of viral occupancy of the host translation machinery due tomolecular similarities with viral genes. Furthermore, we provided a list of candidate human genes whose molecular features match those of SARS-CoV-2, SARSand MERS genes, which should be considered to be incorporated into genetic population studies to evaluate thesusceptibility to respiratory viral infections caused by these viruses. The results presented here, settle the basis for further research in the field of human genetics associated with the new viral infection, COVID-19, caused by SARS-CoV-2 and for the development of antiviral preventive methods.

genomics↗