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A certain group of mycotoxins, the ergot alkaloids, has caused countless deaths throughout human history. They are found in rye and other cereals and ingesting contaminated foods can cause serious health problems. To identify contaminated food exceeding the legal limits for ergot alkaloids, a portable and cost-effective test system is of great interest to the food industry. Rapid analysis can be achieved by screening for a marker compound, for which we chose ergometrine. We developed a magnetic bead-based immunoassay for ergometrine with amperometric detection in a flow injection system using a handheld potentiostat and a smartphone. With this assay a limit of detection of 3 nM (1 μg/L) was achieved. In spiked rye flour, ergometrine levels from 25 to 250 μg/kg could be quantified. All results could be verified by optical detection. The developed assay offers great promise to meet the demand for on-site ergometrine detection in the food industry.
Virus-like particles are of great interest. Due to the lack of functional amino acids, they are non-infectious and are widely investigated for their usage in the biomedical field, such as nanomaterials, vaccines, drug delivery.
This thesis is about the engineering of virus-like particles, which are formed by self-assembly of LRV1 capsid proteins. Basis was a publication by Procházková et al. (2021), where the structure of virus-like particles, derived from recombinant LRV1 capsid proteins, was determined using cryo-electron microscopy.
Goal of my work was to investigate, whether it is possible to modify the surface of LRV1 virus-like particles by protein engineering. Next to an LRV1 capsid protein with a C-termini polyhistidine-tag like in the publication, a genetically modified LRV1 capsid protein with an internal polyhistidine-tag was supposed to be expressed. It was supposed to be analyzed, whether it still comes to a self-assembly of the capsid proteins.
The genetical constructs were generated by PCR based on a complementary LRV1 DNA, cloned into an expression vector, and using Sanger sequencing it was shown that the amino acid sequences were like expected. For the recombinant expression different E. coli (BL21 STAR (DE3), BL21 (DE3) pLysS, BL21 STAR (DE3) pRARE3 and T7 express lysY/Iq) strains were used, as well as different expression conditions tested by varying temperature, medium, isopropyl-ß-D-thiogalactoside oncentration, and induction duration. Best results were obtained expressing in T7 express lysY/Iq for 5 hours in Terrific Broth medium at 16 °C and 3 mM Isopropyl ß-D-1thiogalactopyranoside. After that, the recombinant proteins were purified under native conditions by their polyhistidine-tags using nickel affinity chromatography. Overall, a higher yield was obtained for the capsid protein with the C-termini polyhistidine-tag during expression, which was also visible in all following experiments. The expression of both constructs in E. coli was comparably low. Still, it was possible to validate for virus-like particles for both proteins using transmission electron microscopy. Thus, it was demonstrated for the first time that surface-modified LRV1 capsid proteins are able to assemble into virus-like particles. For further experiments and higher yield of soluble LRV1 capsid proteins for virus-like particle production, a different expression system should be used: Therefore, the LEXSY expression system should be optimal, it bases on Leishmania tarenolae, a natural LRV1 host system.
The overarching goal of this project is to develop a predictive model for efflux-mediated antimicrobial tolerance in bacterial multicellular assemblies. Our central hypostasis is that efflux pump activity causes emergent antibiotic tolerance of multicellular bacterial populations, through the interplay of efflux mediated spatial interactions and efflux-linked persistence. To test this hypothesis, we will use a combination of microscopy, microbial killing assays, computational modelling, and data analysis, integrating information from 3 types of multicellular assembly: colonies, cell-to-cell interactions in a monolayer microfluidic device, and 3D flow chamber biofilms. Building on our preliminary observations, we will experimentally characterize the link between colony structure and spatial patterns of efflux gene expression in strains that differ in their levels of efflux. We will develop a mathematical model to test whether local growth inhibition of neighbors due to effluxing cells, coupled with local environment-dependent regulation of efflux, can account qualitatively for these results. By including persister cell formation in our model we will predict, and measure, the emergent function of antimicrobial tolerance in our colonies. To fully understand how tolerance emerges from the interplay between efflux-mediated spatial interactions and efflux-linked persister cell formation, we need quantitative measurements at the single cell level. To this end, we will use a microfluidic setup with cells growing in a monolayer to qualify in detail the dependence of efflux expression and persister cell formation on nutrient conditions, the correlation between efflux and persister formation, and the spatial range of efflux-mediated neighbour growth inhibition. To predict and quantitatively understand the emergent multicellular function of tolerance, we will perform individual-based modelling of biofilm growth, using as input the parameters measured on the single-cell level with our microfluidics experiments. Our simulations will predict biofilm spatial structure development, patterns of efflux and persister formation and, ultimately, tolerance to antimicrobial challenge. These predictions will be directly tested in flow-cell biofilm experiments. We are currently generating acrAB-tolC knockout-strain, without efflux activity, and a strain with an inducible acrAB-tolC efflux pump. To distinguish the different strains under the microscope, they were labeled with genes encoding for different fluorescent proteins. All strains are currently characterized in terms of growth, minimum inhibitory concentration of different antimicrobial substances, colony morphology, and biofilm formation ability. On the theoretical side, we are currently working on modeling the system at various scales and degree of detail, ranging from coarse-grained continuum models to stochastic, individual-based models. Some exploratory work was doe to test existing software for individual-based modelling that may be adapted for our purpose. Furthermore, we are in the process of developing more coarse-grained models. This work involves some physiological modelling and literature search, focusing on working mechanisms of efflux pumps and kinetic models for import and export of antibiotics.