Biology subjects

Babele, P.

Publications and source records attributed to Babele, P..

2 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2022

Prophylactic treatment of Glycyrrhiza glabra mitigates COVID-19 pathology through inhibition of pro-inflammatory cytokines in the hamster model and NETosis.

Severe coronavirus disease (COVID-19) is accompanied with acute respiratory distress syndrome & pulmonary pathology, and is presented mostly with inflammatory cytokine release, dysregulated immune response, skewed neutrophil/ lymphocyte ratio, and hypercoagulable state. Though vaccinations have proved effective in reducing the COVID-19 related mortality, the limitation of use of vaccine against immunocompromised, comorbidity, and emerging variants remains a concern. In the current study we investigate for the first-time the efficacy of Glycyrrhiza glabra (GG) extract, a potent immunomodulator, against SARS-CoV-2 infection in hamsters. Prophylactic treatment with GG showed protection against loss in body weight and 35-40% decrease in lung viral load along with reduced lung pathology in the hamster model. Remarkably, GG reduced the mRNA expression of pro-inflammatory cytokines and Plasminogen activator inhibito-1 (PAI-1). In-vitro, GG acted as potent immunomodulator by reducing Th2 and Th17 differentiation and IL-4 and IL-17A cytokine production. In addition, GG also showed robust potential to suppress ROS, mtROS and NETs generation in a concentration dependent manner in both human polymorphonuclear neutrophils (PMNs) and murine bone marrow derived neutrophils (BMDNs). Taken together, we provide evidence for the protective efficacy of GG against COVID-19 and its putative mechanistic insight, which might be developed as a future immunomodulatory approach against various pathologies with high cytokine production, aberrant neutrophil activation including coronavirus infection.

immunology↗

bioRxiv2021

Accelerating Strain Engineering using Desorption Electrospray Ionization-Imaging Mass Spectrometry and Untargeted Molecular Analysis of Intact Microbial Colonies.

Progress in the fields of genomic and biologic sciences has yielded microbial bioprocesses for the advanced production of chemicals. While biomanufacturing has the potential to address global demands for renewable fuels and chemicals, engineering microbial cell factories that can compete with synthetic chemical processes remains a challenge. Optimizing strains for enhanced chemical production is no longer limited by reading and writing DNA, rather it is impeded by the lack of high-throughput platforms for characterizing the metabolic phenotypes resulting from specific gene editing events. To address this issue, we have developed a desorption electrospray ionization- imaging mass spectrometry (DESI-IMS) screening assay that is conducive to both multiplexed sampling and untargeted analyses. This technology bridges the gap between genomic and metabolomic timescales by simultaneously characterizing the chemical output of various engineered Escherichia coli strains rapidly and directly under ambient conditions. The developed method was used to phenotype four E. coli strains on the basis of measured metabolomes, which were validated via PCR genotyping. Untargeted DESI-IMS phenotyping suggests multiple strategies for future engineering which include: (i) relative amounts of specific biosynthetic products, (ii) identification of secondary products, and (iii) the metabolome of engineered organisms. In sum, we present a workflow to accelerate strain engineering by providing rapid, untargeted, and multiplexed analyses of microbial metabolic phenotypes.

bioengineering↗