Bakin, E. A. | Search bioRxiv

bioRxiv2023

Comment on 'Connexins evolved after early chordates lost innexin diversity'

Gap junctional (GJ) intercellular channels are an important way of intercellular communication. Currently, two unrelated families of GJ proteins, innexins/pannexins, and connexins, are known, either or both of which are present in most multicellular animals. A striking exception is the echinoderms which have functional GJs but until recently were believed to be lacking both innexins and connexins, which suggests the presence of the third, yet the unknown family of GJ proteins. In the recent work Welzel and Schuster (Welzel and Schuster, 2022) have reported several putative innexins and one connexin from echinoderms, therefore undermining such a hypothesis. Here we provide evidence showing that all reported connexin and innexin sequences from echinoderms are cross-species contaminations, indicating that a search for a third GJ protein family is still a subject of immediate scientific research interest.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2019

Long-term impact of fecal transplantation in healthy volunteers

BackgroundFecal microbiota transplantation (FMT) is now approved for the treatment of refractory recurrent clostridial colitis, but a number of studies are ongoing in inflammatory bowel diseases, i.e., Crohns disease, nonspecific ulcerative colitis, and in other autoimmune conditions. In most cases, the effects of FMT are evaluated on patients with initially altered microbiota. The aim of the present study was to evaluate effects of FMT on the gut microbiota composition in healthy volunteers and to track long-term changes.\n\nResultsWe have performed a combined analysis of three healthy volunteers before and after FMT with frozen capsules, followed by evaluation of their general condition, adverse clinical effects, changes of basic laboratory parameters, and several immune markers. Intestinal microbiota samples were evaluated by 16S rRNA gene sequencing (16S seq) and shotgun sequencing (or whole-genome sequencing - WGS). The data analysis demonstrated the profound shift towards the donor microbiota taxonomic composition in all volunteers. Following FMT, all the volunteers exhibited gut colonization with donor gut bacteria, and persistence of this effect for almost ~1 year of observation. Transient changes of immune parameters were consistent with suppression of T-cell cytotoxicity. FMT was well tolerated with mild gastrointestinal adverse events and systemic inflammatory response in one volunteer.\n\nConclusionsThe FMT procedure leads to significant long-term changes of the gut microbiota in healthy volunteers with the shift towards donor microbiota composition, being relatively safe to the recipients without long-term adverse events.

microbiology↗