Highlights of science journals in October 2019

October 31, 2019 news / BIOON / -- October 2019 is coming to an end What are the highlights of science journals in October worth learning? Xiaobian has sorted this out and shared it with you 1 Science: new research reveals that human microbiome is a potential new antibacterial drug cornucopia doi: 10.1126/science.aax9176 Just as gold miners in the gold rush used to mine this shiny precious metal on the mountains of Northern California, bioprospectors are looking for new awards: potential antimicrobial molecules, and they are looking for them in the human microbiome For nearly two decades, scientists have been unveiling the mystery of these microbial communities that use the human body as their home Today, they see the human microbiome as an untapped source of molecules that could help fight infection and potentially treat other diseases In a new study, Dr Yuki Sugimoto of Princeton University and his colleagues combined bioinformatics with synthetic biology to identify bioactive molecules with similar drug functions By using their new algorithm, they were able to elucidate DNA fingerprints of potentially effective antimicrobial molecules The related research results were recently published in the journal Science The title of the paper is "a metric strategy for harnessing the chemical repertoire of the human organism" The corresponding author is Mohamed Donia, a molecular biologist at Princeton University Sugimoto is a postdoctoral researcher at Donia lab The picture is from cc0 public domain Sugimoto and his colleagues describe the human microbiome as an unparalleled resource for identifying the chemical structure of new drugs "We found that members of a class of clinically used molecules are widely encoded in the human microbiome and play an effective antibacterial role against neighboring microorganisms," they wrote in the paper Our approach paves the way for the systematic discovery of the chemical molecular library encoded by the human microbiome " In the search process, the researchers rely on their customized method, a computer algorithm that allows them to search a large number of molecular fragments This bioinformatics method, known as metabgc (metagenomic biosynthetic gene cluster), enables them to discover molecules from the human microbiome that have never been reported before They focused on samples from the mouth, intestines and skin, which are rich in microbial flora They found a variety of new enzymes in these three sites, namely, type II polyketide synthetase BGC, or tii-pks BGC for short Because a tii-pks enzyme is an important component of adriamycin, an antibiotic active anticancer drug, tii-pks is widely known In addition to its role in cancer treatment, adriamycin is also used as a test method for screening environmental bacteria To test the importance of their discovery of the tii-pks BGC molecule, Sugimoto and his team tested samples from around the world - the United States, Denmark, Spain, Fiji and China They found that people have genes that synthesize these molecules regardless of their geographical location, suggesting that they are common in people 2 Science: new research reveals that mouse cerebellum is quite different from human cerebellum Doi: 10.1126/science.aax7526 in a new research on brain, researchers from the United States, Italy, the United Kingdom, France and Israel found that mouse cerebellum may not be a good model for human cerebellum The relevant research results were published online in the journal Science on October 17, 2019 The paper title is "spatial expansion of primary generator zones in the developing human cerebellum" They described their comparative study of cerebellar development in humans, mice, and macaques Previous studies have shown that mouse cerebellum and human cerebellum are similar enough, so experiments on mouse cerebellum can be used to learn more about how human cerebellum functions The human cerebellum is part of the brain that processes and responds to sensory information In this new study, the researchers are trying to find out whether mouse cerebellum is really enough like human cerebellum to make the results of such experiments useful to humans The new study involves a very close study of the development of small and medium brains in mice, humans and macaques, another animal used in cerebellar research The researchers compared human cerebellar tissue samples from hospitals and other institutions, cerebellar tissue samples from mice in the study, and cerebellar tissue images from macaques from previous studies They found they had enough material and data to compare cerebellar development from 30 days after conception to about 9 months after birth The researchers reported that they found a completely unexpected difference - a group of progenitor cells that had never been seen in the human cerebellum, mouse or macaque brains before Prior to this discovery, only such groups of cells were seen in the human cerebral cortex They also found that some of the progenitors in an area called rhombic lip are the source of cerebellar granule neurons They found that lip development in humans took longer than in mice and macaques - it continued to mature throughout pregnancy They believe that these obvious differences may mean that the comparison of mouse and human cerebellum may not be as enlightening as people hope They also pointed out that this difference may also explain why it is difficult to model human brain defects in animal models 3 Science: by implanting memory into the brain, birds can learn to sing doi: 10.1126/science.aaw4226; doi: 10.1126/science.aaz1552 animals learn by imitating behaviors, such as when a baby animal mimics the voice of its mother, or a young male zebra finch mimics the courtship voice of an older male Tutor (usually its father) In a new study, researchers from the Southwestern Medical Center of the University of Texas in the United States identified the neural circuit that grass finches use to learn the length of singing syllables, and then used photogenetics to manipulate the neural circuit to build a false memory for young birds to use to make their courtship sounds in adulthood The relevant research results were published in the Science Journal on October 4, 2019, with the title of "perception of memories that guide vocal learning in the songbird" Picture from utsw In order to learn from observation, you have to create a memory of someone doing something right, and then use the sensory information to guide your motor system to learn how to perform the behavior We really don't know where and how these memories are formed " The authors "address the first step in the process, which is how you form the memory that will then guide you in carrying out the behavior." 4 Science: it is found that the orphan desaturase doi: 10.1126/science.aay1436, which is used to synthesize human acetaldehyde phospholipid, is an important signal molecule besides the membrane surrounding cells Acetaldehyde phospholipids (plasmalogen), which contain vinyl ether bond, are a kind of lipids which are abundant in animals Acetal phospholipid is a kind of glycerol phospholipid with sn-1 vinyl ether bond These lipids exist in animals and some bacteria, and may play a role in membrane assembly, signal transduction and antioxidation How to synthesize acetaldehyde phospholipid from precursor molecules with alkyl ether bond is a mystery In a new study, researchers from the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) and the University of Murcia found an enzyme called carf in the gregarious bacterium Myxococcus xanthhus, which can produce acetaldehyde phospholipids for singlet oxygen signaling pathway, in which singlet oxygen is a marker of photooxidative stress The relevant research results were published in the Science Journal on October 4, 2019, and the title of the paper was "a biological light response responses an orphan design for human plasma synthesis" The researchers found that the activity of the bacterial enzyme carf, the plasma phospholipid ethanolamine desaturase, is essential for the formation of vinyl ether bonds In Myxococcus flavus, carf mediates the production of carotenoids induced by light, while acetaldehyde phospholipids participate in the perception of photooxidative stress through singlet oxygen As a homolog of carf, human tmem189 and other animal homologues can functionally replace carf in Myxococcus flavus, and knockout tmem189 in human cell line can eliminate the production of acetaldehyde phospholipid They then found that the enzyme's animal homologue could catalyze the final step in the synthesis of glyphosphate in bacteria and human cells, thus solving the problem of the source of animal glyphosphate 5 Science: great progress! It is revealed that the gene shisa7 controls the tranquilizing effect of benzodiazepines Doi: 10.1126/science.aax5719; doi: 10.1126/science.aaz3176 between 1999 and 2017, the number of deaths due to excessive use of Valium (also known as benzodiazepine, or diazepam) and other benzodiazepines in the United States increased tenfold For many years, scientists have believed that these powerful tranquilizers, used to treat anxiety, muscle spasms and sleep disorders, alone play a role in calming nerves Now, in a new study, researchers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in the United States have found that this view of the neural circuits of such drugs and their effects may have to change By studying mice, they found that this might require the help of a "sticky" gene named shisa7 The relevant research results were published in the Science Journal on October 11, 2019 The title of the paper is "shisa7 is a GABAA receiver auxiliary subunit controlling benzodiazepine actions" In the study of mice, NIH researchers found that the protein (green) encoded by gene shisa7 may enhance the neurosedative effect of diazepam and other benzodiazepines by attaching to GABAA receptor The picture is from Lu lab, NIH / NINDS "We found that shisa7 plays a key role in the regulation of inhibitory neural circuits and the sedative effect of some benzodiazepines on the activity of neural circuits," said Wei Lu, Ph.D., co-author of the paper and researcher at the National Institutes of Neurology and stroke (NINDS), National Institutes of health We hope that these results will help scientists design more effective treatments for various neurological and neuropsychiatric diseases caused by problems in these circuits " 6.! In the same research group, two back-to-back articles of science were published: revealing the relationship between sleep and synaptic rhythm doi: 10.1126/science.aav3617; doi: 10.1126/science.aav2642; Doi:10.1126/science.aay5304, a time biologist at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Germany, pointed out in the two articles of Science that sleep wakefulness cycles are crucial to the protein and phosphorylation kinetics regulating the activity of synapses in synapses Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet The biological clock controls almost all the physiological processes of human body and predicts the environmental changes of daily cycle such as day and night How about circadian rhythm and sleep