PRESS-NEWS.org - Press Release Distribution
PRESS RELEASES DISTRIBUTION

Scientists found in marine mold substance that antidotes paraquat

Scientists found in marine mold substance that antidotes paraquat
2021-02-23
(Press-News.org) Biologically active compounds from the marine fungus Penicillium dimorphosporum protect cells from paraquat, the highly toxic herbicide with no remedy, and might enhance the action of some drugs. The fungus was isolated from soft coral collected in the South China Sea during an expedition on the Akademik Oparin research vessel. Scientists of Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) and G. B. Elyakov Pacific Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry reported the results in Marine Drugs. Paraquat a herbicide compound highly toxic for animals and humans. About a hundred countries, including the United States, apply it for crop cultivation and weed control. Dozens of countries, including Russia, have banned the poisonous compound. The problem of paraquat harm to people is widely known in India. Farmers who work in the fields risk dying because of getting a dangerous dose of the substance. FEFU specialists, together with Russian and foreign colleagues, have found out that compounds from the marine-derived fungus Penicillium dimorphosporum might protect the cells against the effects of paraquat. The experiment was carried out on a neuroblastoma cell line. By origin, these are tumor cells adopted for studying the neuroprotective activity of forthcoming drugs. "At a very low concentration, about one micromole per liter, the compounds fortified the viability of cells treated with paraquat by almost 40 percent compared to cells treated with paraquat alone. As a further step, we want to clarify the mode of action of these protecting natural molecules. Perhaps they act as antioxidants, and, probably, they can also secure cells from other toxic substances," said Olesya Zhuravleva, Head of the Laboratory of Biologically Active Compounds at the FEFU School of Natural Sciences. According to the scientist, many active natural compounds have the disadvantage of low production in the host-organism, so their quantity is not enough for the in-depth study. The case of Penicillium dimorphosporum is no exception. The fungus does not synthesize active compounds galore. However, scientists noticed an interesting feature of the fungus metabolism, which might help to get over this limitation. The point is the sea mold produces a broad range of isomeric compounds, as well as their biogenetic precursor. That means they have the same elements in the composition but differently structured. It looks like a kind of natural crooked mirror, where the set of atoms is reflected many times, and in different ways. That provides the compounds with different functions and the scientists with the chance to modify them. Usually, the synthesis of a large number of isomers is not typical for living organisms. "In this regard, we plan to scrutinize not the active natural compound itself, but its precursor synthesized by fungus abundantly, which we can modify up to the active state. That would be a successful step because the minor substance is much more difficult to get from a natural source than to adapt one's major inactive precursor. For example, the fungus produces 200 milligrams of an inactive compound that we can customize and as little as six milligrams of an active natural substance. Many medicinal compounds are obtained in a similar semi-synthetic way, which allows avoiding complex and expensive complete synthesis," said Olesya Zhuravleva. Next, the scientists plan to study in detail the neuroprotective mechanism of the selected active compounds, as well as prospects of using them in a combination with other existing compounds. According to the hypothesis, active molecules of the sea fungus might enhance the effect of some known drugs.

INFORMATION:

The study was supported by the grant of the Russian Science Foundation (project 19-74-10014). In the research took part collaborators from Far Eastern Federal University, G.B. Elyakov Pacific Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry (PIBOC FEB RAS), Institute of Chemistry FEB RAS, University Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (Germany), and the Vietnam Academy of Sciences and Technologies (Nhatrang Institute of Technology Research and Application).


[Attachments] See images for this press release:
Scientists found in marine mold substance that antidotes paraquat

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

School of Community Health Sciences publishes study on sugar-sweetened beverage taxes

2021-02-23
A new research study out of the University of Nevada, Reno's School of Community Health Sciences has just been published by the American Journal of Public Health and addresses state preemption of local sugar-sweetened beverage (SSB) taxes, issuing an emerging public health threat. Assistant Professor Eric Crosbie examines commercial determinants of health and public health policy, specifically in industries like tobacco and food and beverage. "The beverage industry is aggressively attempting to preempt sugar-sweetened beverage taxes at the state level to prevent the diffusion of progressive policies at the local level throughout the United States," Crosbie, an affiliate of the University's Ozmen Institute for Global Studies, said. "Once preemption laws are enacted, ...

Give the heart a ketone? It may be beneficial

2021-02-23
There is growing evidence that ketone bodies may be beneficial to heart disease patients regardless of the method of delivery used to increase ketone delivery to the heart. A Journal of the American College of Cardiology review paper examines emerging evidence regarding ketone bodies' effects on the heart and the potential for ketone therapy as a cardiovascular intervention in heart disease patients. In recent years ketone bodies entered the popular lexicon through the "keto diet," which consists of a very low carbohydrate and high fat diet that endeavors to force the body into ketosis. This is a metabolic ...

Monoclonal antibodies against MERS coronavirus show promise in phase 1 NIH-sponsored trial

Monoclonal antibodies against MERS coronavirus show promise in phase 1 NIH-sponsored trial
2021-02-23
WHAT: A randomized, placebo-controlled Phase 1 clinical trial of two monoclonal antibodies (mAbs) directed against the coronavirus that causes Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS) found that they were well tolerated and generally safe when administered simultaneously to healthy adults. The experimental mAbs, REGN3048 and REGN3051, target the MERS coronavirus (MERS CoV) spike protein used by the virus to attach to and infect target cells. The mAbs were discovered and developed by scientists at the biopharmaceutical company Regeneron, located in Tarrytown, New York. The trial was sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health. The trial was the first to test the experimental antibodies Hyperlink Code ...

New strategy blocks chronic lung disease in mice

New strategy blocks chronic lung disease in mice
2021-02-23
Inflammatory lung diseases such as asthma, COPD and, most recently, COVID-19, have proven difficult to treat. Current therapies reduce symptoms and do little to stop such diseases from continuing to damage the lungs. Much research into treating chronic inflammatory diseases has focused on blocking chemicals called cytokines, which trigger cascades of molecular events that fuel damaging inflammation. Now, scientists at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have found that such cytokines can drive inflammation in more ways than previously understood, perhaps revealing new routes ...

High-throughput screening for Weyl semimetals with S4 symmetry

High-throughput screening for Weyl semimetals with S4 symmetry
2021-02-23
Using the symmetries of the systems, people can define various topological invariants to describe different topological states. The topological materials can be accurately discovered by calculating the topological invariants. Recently, researchers found that irreducible representations and compatibility relationships can be used to determine whether a material is topological nontrivial/trivial insulator (satisfying the compatibility relations) or topological semimetal (violating the compatibility relations), which leads to a large number of topological materials predicted by theoretical calculations. However, Weyl semimetals go beyond this paradigm because the existence of Weyl fermions does not need any symmetry protections (except for lattice translation symmetries). At present, ...

Transforming urban systems: Toward sustainability

Transforming urban systems: Toward sustainability
2021-02-23
Urban areas are on the rise and changing rapidly in form and function, with spillover effects on virtually all areas of the Earth. The UN estimates that by 2050, 68% of the world's population will reside in urban areas. In the inaugural issue of npj Urban Sustainability, a new Nature Partner Journal out today, a team of leading urban ecologists outlines a practical checklist to guide interventions, strategies, and research that better position urban systems to meet urgent sustainability goals. Co-author Steward Pickett of Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies explains, "Urban areas shape demographics, ...

Models to predict dengue, zika and yellow fever outbreaks are developed by researchers

Models to predict dengue, zika and yellow fever outbreaks are developed by researchers
2021-02-23
By Maria Fernanda Ziegler | Agência FAPESP – Yellow fever was the first human disease to have a licensed vaccine and has long been considered important to an understanding of how epidemics happen and should be combated. It was introduced to the Americas in the seventeenth century, and high death rates have resulted from successive outbreaks since then. Epidemics of yellow fever were associated with the slave trade, the US gold rush and settlement of the Old West, the Haitian Revolution, and construction of the Panama Canal, to cite only a few examples. Centuries after the disease was first reported in the Americas, an international team of researchers will embark on a groundbreaking study to develop ...

Managing suicide risk in research study participants

2021-02-23
What should researchers do if they encounter a study participant who reports suicidal thoughts? UIC College of Nursing associate professor Susan Dunn explores this question as lead author of "Suicide Risk Management Protocol for a Randomized Controlled Trial of Cardiac Patients Reporting Hopelessness," a paper published in the January/February edition of Nursing Research. Suicide is ranked as the 10th leading cause of death for all ages in the U.S. and can be identified through clinical research, according to the paper. Although suicide screening tools are widely available for patients in emergency, hospital and primary care settings and ...

Dingo effects on ecosystem visible from space

2021-02-23
The environmental impacts of removing dingoes from the landscape are visible from space, a new UNSW Sydney study shows. The study, recently published in Landscape Ecology, pairs 32 years' worth of satellite imagery with site-based field research on both sides of the Dingo Fence in the Strzelecki Desert. The researchers found that vegetation inside the fence - that is, areas without dingoes - had poorer long-term growth than vegetation in areas with dingoes. "Dingoes indirectly affect vegetation by controlling numbers of kangaroos and small mammals," says Professor Mike Letnic, senior author of the study and researcher at UNSW's Centre ...

Reclusive neutron star may have been found in famous supernova

2021-02-23
Since astronomers captured the bright explosion of a star on February 24, 1987, researchers have been searching for the squashed stellar core that should have been left behind. A group of astronomers using data from NASA space missions and ground-based telescopes may have finally found it. As the first supernova visible with the naked eye in about 400 years, Supernova 1987A (or SN 1987A for short) sparked great excitement among scientists and soon became one of the most studied objects in the sky. The supernova is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small companion galaxy to our own Milky Way, only about 170,000 light-years from Earth. While astronomers watched debris ...

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES:

New CRISPR test could make tuberculosis screening as simple as a mouth swab

Three-sensor overeating detection could reshape obesity treatment

Study provides first evidence that plastic nanoparticles can accumulate in the edible parts of vegetables

AI predicts complications from surgery better than doctors

New personalized risk score could improve ovarian cancer detection

People on Ozempic who eat to regulate emotions less likely to lose weight

AACR Cancer Progress Report highlights lifesaving impact of federal investments in cancer research

Indra's internet

Lymph nodes found to be key to successful cancer immunotherapy

Room-temperature terahertz device opens door to 6G networks

A hard look at geoengineering reveals global risks

When smoke signals danger: How Australian lizards evolved to escape fire

Beyond the surface: Atopic eczema linked to significantly higher risk of suicidal thoughts, major study finds

After weight loss regular exercise rather than GLP-1 weight-loss drug reduces leading cause of heart attack and strokes

EASD launches its first ever clinical practice guideline – the world’s first to focus on diabetes distress

Semaglutide provides powerful protection against diabetic retinopathy, the leading cause of blindness in working-age adults, Greek study suggests

Orforglipron taken orally once daily leads to significant body weight loss (ATTAIN-1 Study)

U of I researchers trace genetic code’s origins to early protein structures

Disease experts team up with Florida Museum of Natural History to create a forecast for West Nile virus

Researchers: Targeted efforts needed to stem fentanyl crisis

New UMaine research could help lower prescription drug costs

Molecular movie shows how mitochondria read their DNA

Loss of key male fertility gene leads to changes in expression of hundreds of other genes

Water’s density is key to sustainable lithium mining

Pioneering research reveals problem gambling quadruples the risk of suicide among young people four years later

New method improves the accuracy of machine-learned potentials for simulating catalysts

Astronomers discover rare Einstein cross with fifth image, revealing hidden dark matter

UCalgary researchers show brain shunts significantly benefit older adults with hydrocephalus

UCalgary researchers pursue new approach to manage deadly lung scarring

Psychotherapy can be readily integrated into brief “med-check” psychiatry visits

[Press-News.org] Scientists found in marine mold substance that antidotes paraquat