Testing the Effects of Catechol and Lemon Juice Components on Differentiation in Adipocytes.

Description
Asphalt is a widely used mixture in the paving and roofing industries and its sales are expected to increase by 57% in the next eight years alone (Mandaokar, 2024). However, it is known to have highly toxic constituents such as

Asphalt is a widely used mixture in the paving and roofing industries and its sales are expected to increase by 57% in the next eight years alone (Mandaokar, 2024). However, it is known to have highly toxic constituents such as benzo[a]pyrene (BaP) and catechol, (National Institute, 1977, Hazard Review, 2000, Neghab et al., 2015, and Rozewski et al., 2023). Lemon juice, which is an inexpensive and easily accessible natural substance that is shown to have health benefits such as increasing insulin sensitivity, aiding with weight loss, and preventing heart disease (Tejpal et al., 2020), may counteract the effects of asphalt. The question of what the biological effects of asphalt, lemon juice, and the combination of the two on adipocytes was tested via computational analysis and experiments. It was predicted that catechol and lemon juice components will show biological effects in adipocytes that could be opposing, additive, or synergistic. A computational analysis involving the docking of fourteen components of asphalt and thirty-five components of lemon juice constituents to a targetome of 7,529 proteins (Ovanessians et al., 2024) suggests that asphalt and lemon juice components have many possible protein targets. Experiments were carried out with 3T3L1 mouse adipocytes to study five different lemon extracts (crude, hexane organic and aqueous, and ether organic and aqueous), and two components of asphalt (catechol and BaP): 1) Thiazolyl Blue Tetrazolium Bromide (MTT) cell viability and toxicity assay, 2) reactive oxygen species fluorescence assay, 3) Nile red staining assay, 4) red oil o staining assay, and a 5) lipidomics analysis on the hexane and ether organic extracts of lemon juice. This study has shown that asphalt components BaP and catechol and lemon juice components combined have the following biological effects on adipocytes: 1) Of the 5 lemon extracts tested, the organic layer of the hexane extract solubilized in DMSO (LE4) decreases differentiation the most. 2) Nile red staining is inhibited by 0.1 mg/mL of LE4, 1 µM BaP, and 20 µM catechol at a similar level. 3) Cell morphology differs between LE4, BaP, and catechol. Future work will include an insulin sensitivity assay to confirm the indicative inhibitory relationship found between lemon juice and asphalt. Expanding upon the lipidomic results of the lemon juices, as well as maximizing the potential of dockings by connecting results with the experiments, may also prove to be useful in future studies.
Date Created
2024-05
Agent

Investigating Suspected Light Sensitivity of Potential Opsin Proteins in Pocillopora damicornis

Description

Model organisms like Homo sapiens, Drosophila, and E. coli, while useful to various fields of study, present a problem to the scientific community: many other organisms’ proteins, metabolic processes, and biochemical mechanisms are not as well understood by comparison. Pocillopora

Model organisms like Homo sapiens, Drosophila, and E. coli, while useful to various fields of study, present a problem to the scientific community: many other organisms’ proteins, metabolic processes, and biochemical mechanisms are not as well understood by comparison. Pocillopora damicornis (Pdam), like many other coral organisms, faces environmental stresses and threats to its survival in ocean ecosystems with limited understanding of its biochemical mechanisms, making it difficult to help preserve. However, upon analyzing the symbiotic relationship of Pdam and photosynthetic algae, it was reasoned that the coral organism is capable of detecting light. Following up with results of prior bioinformatics analysis courtesy of Kumar, L., Klein-Seetharaman, J., Et. Al, it was proposed that light sensitive proteins in corals are the following four candidates: 2270, 12246, 629, 19775. If chromophores form and their opsin shifts can be visualized in the case in any of the coral candidate opsin genes, it supports the hypothesis that the proteins are indeed a light sensitive opsin protein. If a light sensitive opsin protein is identified, it provides a direction by which efforts can be directed towards to understand corals at the biochemical level for their preservation in the face of unprecedented threats to sustainability.

Date Created
2023-05
Agent

Genome to Phenome: From 3-D Structural Analysis to Experimental Validation for the Functional Properties of Pocillopora damicornis Proteins

Description

Oceanic life is facing the deleterious aftermath of coral bleaching. To reverse the damages introduced by anthropological means, it is imperative to study fundamental properties of corals. One way to do so is to understand the metabolic pathways and protein

Oceanic life is facing the deleterious aftermath of coral bleaching. To reverse the damages introduced by anthropological means, it is imperative to study fundamental properties of corals. One way to do so is to understand the metabolic pathways and protein functions of corals that contribute to the resilience of coral reefs. Although genomic sequencing and structural modeling has yielded significant insights for well-studied organisms, more investigation must be conducted for corals. Better yet, quantifiable experiments are far more crucial to the understanding of corals. The objective is to clone, purify, and assess coral proteins from the cauliflower coral species known as Pocillopora damicornis. Presented here is the pipeline for how 3-D structural modeling can help support the experimental data from studying soluble proteins in corals. Using a multi-step selection approach, 25 coral genes were selected and retrieved from the genomic database. Using Escherischia coli and Homo sapiens homologues for sequence alignment, functional properties of each protein were predicted to aid in the production of structural models. Using D-SCRIPT, potential pairwise protein-protein interactions (PPI) were predicted amongst these 25 proteins, and further studied for identifying putative interfaces using the ClusPro server. 10 binding pockets were inferred for each pair of proteins. Standard cloning strategies were applied to express 4 coral proteins for purification and functional assays. 2 of the 4 proteins had visible bands on the Coomassie stained gel and were able to advance to the purification step. Both proteins exhibited a faint band at the expected migration distance for at least one of the elutions. Finally, PPI was carried out by mixing protein samples and running in a native gel, resulting in one potential pair of PPI.

Date Created
2023-05
Agent