Biology subjects

Moura, G.

Publications and source records attributed to Moura, G..

3 recordsLinked to original sources

bioRxiv2024

Analysis of iPLA2-VIA Gene Expression in The CNS of Larvae and Adult Drosophila Melanogaster Flies

1This study aimed to investigate the expression levels of the iPLA2-VIA gene (FlyBase: FBgn0035800) in the nervous tissue of Drosophila melanogaster (FlyBase: FBsp00000008) larvae and adults. The gene was identified using the FlyBase database and the HGNC database. The results of our experiments indicated that the expression levels of the gene were consistent between the larval and adult stages, with higher expression of Larvae than of Adult. We also found that the gene was expressed in the CNS, digestive system, fat body, salivary glands, ovaries, and accessory glands. Furthermore, PLA2G6 (Gene ID: 8398) knockout resulted in lethality, fertility problems, tissue formation defects, and neurological abnormalities, highlighting its essential biological roles in neural health and disease. Our findings could inform future studies focused on the genes involvement in neural development and its potential as a therapeutic target for neurodegenerative diseases.

bioinformatics↗

bioRxiv2023

A proteogenomic pipeline for the analysis of protein biosynthesis errors in the human pathogen Candida albicans.

Candida albicans is a diploid pathogen known for its ability to live as a commensal fungus in healthy individuals, but causing both superficial infections and disseminated candidiasis in immunocompromised patients where it is associated with high morbidity and mortality. Its success in colonizing the human host is attributed to a wide range of virulence traits that modulate interactions between the host and the pathogen, such as optimal growth rate at 37{degrees}C, the ability to switch between yeast and hyphal forms and a remarkable genomic and phenotypic plasticity. A fascinating aspect of its biology is a prominent heterogeneous proteome that arises from frequent genomic rearrangements, high allelic variation, and high levels of amino acid misincorporations in proteins. The latter leads to increased morphological and physiological phenotypic diversity of high adaptive potential, but the scope of such protein mistranslation is poorly understood due to technical difficulties in detecting and quantifying amino acid misincorporation events in complex proteomic samples. To address this question, we have developed and optimized mass spectrometry and bioinformatics pipelines capable of identifying low-level amino acid misincorporation events at the proteome level. We have also analysed the proteomic profile of an engineered C. albicans strain that exhibits high level of leucine misincorporation at protein CUG sites and employed an in vivo quantitative gain-of-function fluorescence reporter system to validate our MS/MS data. The data show that C. albicans misincorporates amino acids above the background level at protein sites of diverse codons, particularly at CUG sites, confirming our previous data on the quantification of leucine incorporation at single CUG sites of recombinant reporter proteins. The study also demonstrates that increasing misincorporation of Leucine at CUG sites does not alter the translational fidelity of the other codons. These findings advance existing knowledge on amino acid misincorporations in C. albicans and add a new dimension to the remarkable capacity of this fungus to diversify its proteome.

microbiology↗

bioRxiv2021

Integration of differential gene expression with weighted gene correlation network analysis identifies genes whose expression is remodeled throughout physiological aging in mouse tissues

Gene expression alterations occur in all mouse tissues during aging, but recent works highlight minor rather than major dysregulation amplitude for most genes, questioning whether differentially expressed genes on their own provide deep insight into aging biology. To clarify this issue, we have combined differential gene expression with weighted gene correlation network analysis (WGCNA) to identify expression signatures accounting for the pairwise relations between gene expression profiles and the cumulative effect of genes with small fold- changes during aging in the brain, heart, liver, skeletal muscle, and pancreas of C57BL/6 mice. Functional enrichment analysis of the overlap of genes identified in both approaches showed that immunity-related responses, mitochondrial energy metabolism, tissue regeneration and detoxification are prominently altered in the brain, heart, muscle, and liver, respectively, reflecting an age-related global loss of tissue function. While data showed little overlap among the age-dysregulated genes between tissues, aging triggered common biological processes in distinct tissues, particularly proteostasis-related pathways, which we highlight as important features of murine tissue physiological aging.

genetics↗