Biology subjects

Skoryk, V.

Publications and source records attributed to Skoryk, V..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2025

Microplastic Exposure Promotes Amyloid Misfolding and Metabolic Impairment at Sub-Lethal Doses in an In Vitro Cellular Model of Alzheimer's Disease

Microplastics and nanoplastics (MNPs) are ubiquitous environmental pollutants with increasing implications for human health. While their presence in human tissues is established, the molecular mechanisms driving their potential neurotoxicity remain unclear. This study investigates the impact of polystyrene (PS) on amyloid protein misfolding and cellular metabolism using Optical Photothermal Infrared (O-PTIR) spectroscopy, a label-free, sub-diffraction imaging technique. Our results reveal that PS exposure promotes pathological protein misfolding, specifically increasing {beta}-sheet-rich conformations, and disrupts metabolic homeostasis at sub-lethal doses. These suggest that the microplastic surface acts as a catalytic scaffold for amyloid aggregation, driving cellular dysfunction prior to acute toxicity. This identifies a plausible molecular pathway by which environmental MNP pollution contributes to the risk and progression of neurodegenerative diseases, highlighting the need for risk assessments that look beyond simple cell survival.

biochemistry↗

bioRxiv2023

Deep learning for rapid and reproducible histology scoring of lung injury in a porcine model

Acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) is a life-threatening condition with mortality rates between 30-50%. Although in vitro models replicate some aspects of ARDS, small and large animal models remain the primary research tools due to the multifactorial nature of the disease. When using these animal models, histology serves as the gold standard method to confirm lung injury and exclude other diagnoses as high-resolution chest images are often not feasible. Semi-quantitative scoring performed by independent observers is the most common form of histologic analysis in pre-clinical animal models of ARDS. Despite progress in standardizing analysis procedures, objectively comparing histological injuries remains challenging, even for highly-trained pathologists. Standardized scoring simplifies the task and allows better comparisons between research groups and across different injury models, but it is time-consuming, and interobserver variability remains a significant concern. Convolutional neural networks (CNNs), which have emerged as a key tool in image analysis, could automate this process, potentially enabling faster and more reproducible analysis. Here we explored the reproducibility of human standardized scoring for an animal model of ARDS and its suitability for training CNNs for automated scoring at the whole slide level. We found large variations between human scorers, even for pre-clinical experts and board-certified pathologies in evaluating ARDS animal models. We demonstrate that CNNs (VGG16, EfficientNetB4) are suitable for automated scoring and achieve up to 83% F1-score and 78% accuracy. Thus, CNNs for histopathological classification of acute lung injury could help reduce human variability and eliminate a time-consuming manual research task with acceptable performance.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2023

Label-free high-resolution infrared spectroscopy for spatiotemporal analysis of complex living systems

Label-free chemical and structural imaging of complex living tissue and biological systems is the holy grail of biomedical research and clinical diagnostics. The current analysis techniques are time-consuming and/or require extensive sample preparation, often due to the presence of interfering molecules such as water, making them unsuitable for the analysis of such systems. Here, we demonstrate a proof-of-principle study using label-free optical photothermal mid-infrared microspectroscopy (O-PTIR) for fast, direct spatiotemporal chemical analysis of complex living biological systems at submicron resolution. While other analytical methods can provide only static snapshots of molecular structures, our O-PTIR approach enables time-resolved and in situ investigation of chemical and structural changes of diverse biomolecules in their native conditions. This comprises a technological breakthrough in infrared spectroscopy to analyze biomolecules under native conditions over time: in fresh unprocessed biopsies, living brain tissue, and vertebrates without compromising their viability. One-Sentence SummaryProof-of-principle application of non-destructive O-PTIR for high-resolution spatiotemporal chemical and structural analysis of unprocessed biopsies, living brain tissue, and vertebrates.

molecular biology↗