Creative Bios

  R ecent research conducted by researchers from Yale University is published in  Applied and Environmental Microbiology , suggesting  that natural bacteriophage, or phage, can kill dysentery-causing bacteria and reduce virulence in surviving bacteria. It's a piece   of  inspiring news as  treating dysentery has become a challenge with the rising antibiotic resistance.   Background   Shigella flexneri , the culprit causing contagious infection marked by inflammatory diarrhea and dysentery in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia, kills about 160,000 people globally every year. The World Health Organization (WHO) takes priority to this pathogen in terms of increasing cases, antimicrobial resistance, and limited treatment options.   S. flexneri  is active primarily in low-income countries, like southern Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. In these places, dirty drinking water is a concern causing dysentery, while antibiotics are expensive and unav...

  Bacteria  are covered by polysaccharides  at the outer surface   in the form of capsules, glycoproteins ,  or glycolipids.  Such a bacterial sugar coat constitutes the principal antigens in most pathogenic bacteria and plays an important role in host-pathogen interactions. With more understanding of polysaccharide biosynthesis and its interplay with polymer modification and synthesis, scientists have recognized the research potential of polysaccharides  in developing novel antibacterial strategies and novel applications like epidemiological markers.   Bacterial polysaccharides  mainly are carbohydrates like capsular polysaccharides (CPS) and lipopolysaccharides (LPS). Capsular polysaccharides are highly-hydrated homo- or hetero-polymers that are composed of repeating sugar units joined by glycosidic linkages. They usually are inserted into the cell surface of bacteria by covalent attachments to either phospholipid or lipid-A molecules. Lipo...

  The recognition and advancement of precision oncology are heavily attributed  to cancer genomics that can provide cancer molecular information, allowing researchers to tailor treatments and improve the outcome for a spectrum of cancer and other indications. To realize the promise of precision oncology, researchers take efforts to identify and discover relevant biomarkers using genomic profilin g , either for functional, diagnostic, predictive, or prognostic purposes.   The FDA's approval of two companion diagnostics  (CDx)—the Guardant360 CDx assay and the FoundationOne Liquid CDx test in 2020 led the testing of multi-gene mutations and biomarker profiling to a new level. Prior to the approval of these two companion diagnostics that involve a combination of liquid biopsy and next-generation sequencing (NGS) technology, researchers ha d been stuck with the low meaningful mutation frequency and the difficulty in finding biospecimens with specific mutations.   Tu...

  Antibodies (or immunoglobulins) are Y -shaped glycoproteins released by the immune system  to detect and bind to "foreign" substances , known as " antigens ", triggering a cascade of actions to destroy these foreign invaders. Scientists would develop different antibodies for research use, which basically can be classified into primary and secondary antibodies . However, how to choose the right type of antibodies for different immunoassays in experiment procedures, such as western blotting (WB), enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (ELISA), and immunoprecipitation (IP), is one of the most common questions for green hands in the laboratory.   P rimary A ntibod y vs. Secondary Antibody   Antibodies could be categorized into two types based on the binding capability and experimental applications— primary   antibodies   and  secondary antibodies.   The main difference between these two types of antibodies is that primary antibody binds specifically to ...

  I nfection of β-herpesvirus h uman cytomegalovirus (HCMV) could be life-threatening or cause life-long suffering in the majority of humans. Moreover, the viral vertical transmission during pregnancy leads to most congenital birth defects. However, treatment and prevention options currently available are extremely   limited.   Challenges  in Studying HCMV–host Cell Interactions   More than 235 kbp of double-stranded DNA (dsDNA)  in HCMV make s the largest known genome of human herpesviruses. Besides, HCMV is similar to other herpesviruses with complicated transcriptional architecture, including alternative transcription start sites, alternative splicing events, and polycistronic transcripts. The complex transcriptional architecture enables strict temporal control of gene expression and the possibility of generating multiple distinct proteins from a single genomic locus. The complexity is further increased by host cellular heterogeneity and differences in i...

  Cancer is a condition characterized by uncontrollable cell growth or reproduction in a specific part of the body, which will ultimately invade surrounding tissues and metastasize to distant sites. Most of the time, cancer has been advanced and possibly spread throughout the body by the time it's diagnosed. Therefore, cancer diagnosis and treatment is a competition against time, for which efforts have been made to find informative biomarkers, such as mutated nucleic acids, secreted proteins, and tumor cells, that can indicate cancer at the relatively early stage.   Researchers at the Concordia University recently published a study in the journal Biosensors and Bioelectronics , which introduced a new liquid biopsy approach using lab-on-a-chip  technology, aiming at detecting cancer prior to the forming of a tumor.   M icrofluidic Chip to  Capture Cancer Biomarkers   Th is liquid biopsy method is developed on the basis of a microfluidic chip targeting extrac...

  I t's  widely accepted that  HIV, Hepatitis C, Ebola, and the ongoing coronavirus have acquired a bad reputation for viruses due to their aggressive and infectious nature. But actually, there are nice guys in the virology world, microscopic bacteriophages . Different from dreadful bad viruses that will invade the host cell to tak e  over the cellular machinery, release more infectious viral particles, and finally cause illness, phages are protective viruses that can attack and destroy bacteria.   About Phages   Bacteriophage, or known as phage, whose name is derived from the Greek word phagein , indicating the eater of bacteria. These spidery-looking viruses have  a population of over 10 31 , larger than the total number of all other organisms, including bacteria, remaining the most abundant life-form on the planet. They could be found almost everywhere bacteria exist , including water, air, soil, the mucous membrane lining of digestive, respiratory,...