Allicin,the Odor of Freshly Crushed Garlic: A Review of Recent Progress in Understanding Allicin’s Effects on Cells

The volatile organic sulfur compound allicin (diallyl thiosulfinate) is produced as a defense substance when garlic (Allium sativum) tissues are damaged, for example by the activities of pathogens or pests. Allicin gives crushed garlic its characteristic odor, is membrane permeable and readily taken up by exposed cells. It is a reactive thiol-trapping sulfur compound that S-thioallylates accessible cysteine residues in proteins and low molecular weight thiols including the cellular redox buffer glutathione (GSH) in eukaryotes and Gram-negative bacteria, as well as bacillithiol (BSH) in Gram-positive firmicutes. Allicin shows dose-dependent antimicrobial activity. At higher doses in eukaryotes allicin can induce apoptosis or necrosis, whereas lower, biocompatible amounts can modulate the activity of redox-sensitive proteins and affect cellular signaling. This review summarizes our current knowledge of how bacterial and eukaryotic cells are specifically affected by, and respond to, allicin.     

Drug Repurposing: A Review of Old and New Antibiotics for the Treatment of Malaria: Identifying Antibiotics with a Fast Onset of Antiplasmodial Action

Malaria is one of the most life-threatening infectious diseases and constitutes a major health problem, especially in Africa. Although artemisinin combination therapies remain efficacious to treat malaria, the emergence of resistant parasites emphasizes the urgent need of new alternative chemotherapies. One strategy is the repurposing of existing drugs. Herein, we reviewed the antimalarial effects of marketed antibiotics, and described in detail the fast-acting antibiotics that showed activity in nanomolar concentrations. Antibiotics have been used for prophylaxis and treatment of malaria for many years and are of particular interest because they might exert a different mode of action than current antimalarials, and can be used simultaneously to treat concomitant bacterial infections.     

Coaxial conducting polymer nanotubes: polypyrrole nanotubes coated with polyaniline or poly(<Emphasis Type="Italic">p</Emphasis>-phenylenediamine) and products of their carbonisation

Polypyrrole nanotubes were prepared by the oxidation of pyrrole with iron(III) chloride in a reaction mixture containing methyl orange. They were subsequently coated with polyaniline or poly(p-phenylenediamine) in situ during the oxidation of respective monomers in their presence. A part of the coaxial nanotubes was deprotonated using ammonia solution. The conductivity of polypyrrole nanotubes of 60 S cm^?1, was reduced after the coating, and again after the deprotonation, but maintained at a level above 10^?4 S cm^?1. Infrared and Raman spectra reflect the presence of the polymer overlayer deposited on the polypyrrole template. Thermogravimetric analysis was used as a tool for the analytical carbonisation of samples in an inert nitrogen atmosphere. The conversion of conducting polymers to nitrogen-containing carbon nanotubes was confirmed using Raman spectra.     

Seasonal variation in alkaloid composition and antiproliferative activity of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Stylophorum lasiocarpum</Emphasis> (Oliv.) Fedde

Stylophorum lasiocarpum (Oliv.) Fedde (Papaveraceae) belongs to traditional Chinese medicine herbs but there was minimal information on the content of alkaloids in this plant. Extracts from the aerial part and roots were examined by liquid chromatography with UV and mass spectrometric detection, with nineteen alkaloids identified. Changes in alkaloid content over the entire vegetation period of a one- and two-year old plant were studied. The protoberberine alkaloids, coptisine and stylopine, were found to be the main substances in extracts of the aerial part irrespective of the plant’s age and time of harvest. Variable amounts of protopine, sanguinarine, chelerythrine, chelirubine, macarpine, chelilutine and berberine were also recorded in the aerial part. The roots contained significantly larger quantities of all alkaloids than the aerial part with the levels of most alkaloids varying from May to October, peaking in the middle of the vegetation period. Coptisine was the dominant alkaloid in all samples. The antiproliferative activities of the root extract and of seven individual alkaloids were tested on A375 human malignant melanoma cells. The significant dose-dependent toxicity of the root extract was attributed largely to the quaternary benzo[c]phenanthridine alkaloids, macarpine and sanguinarine.     

Hydrovisbreaking of vacuum residue from Russian Export Blend: influence of brown coal,light cycle oil,or naphtha addition

Demand for high-value petroleum products is increasing and crude oils and their distillation products are becoming heavier. The thermal cracking of a vacuum residue (VR) from REB (Russian Export Blend) crude oil was carried out in an autoclave. LCO (light cycle oil), naphtha, and brown coal (BC) were added with the aim of studying their effect on the final products composition. The elemental analysis (%C, %N, %H, %S) was performed and dynamic viscosity, density, GC of gases (“Refinery Gas Analysis”), solubility in hexane and toluene, and simulated distillation were examined in raw materials, gaseous, and liquid products. As anticipated, due to its high aromatics content, the addition of LCO proved the best option, obtaining the highest yield of lighter liquids. The naphtha addition resulted in a slight increment of heavier products in the gaseous phase and higher yields to solids. The literature does not contain any extensive studies of the addition of BC to VR in the hydrovisbreaking process. The addition of BC resulted in an increment in the yield of the gaseous product and assumed the highest relative total consumption of hydrogen during the reaction.     

Fragmentation–Rearrangement of Peptide Backbones Mediated by the Air Pollutant NO2.

The fragmentation–rearrangement of peptide backbones mediated by nitrogen dioxide, NO₂^., was explored using di‐, tri‐, and tetrapeptides 8 – 18 as model systems. The reaction, which is initiated through nonradical N‐nitrosation of the peptide bond, shortens the peptide chain by the expulsion of one amino acid moiety with simultaneous fusion of the remaining molecular termini through formation of a new peptide bond. The relative rate of the fragmentation–rearrangement depends on the nature of the amino acids and decreases with increasing steric bulk at the α carbon in the order Gly>Ala>Val. Peptides that possessed consecutive aromatic side chains only gave products that resulted from nitrosation of the sterically less congested N‐terminal amide. Such backbone fragmentation–rearrangement occurs under physiologically relevant conditions and could be an important reaction pathway for peptides, in which sections without readily oxidizable side chains are exposed to the air pollutant NO₂^.. In addition to NO₂^.‐induced radical oxidation processes, this outcome shows that ionic reaction pathways, in particular nitrosation, should be factored in when assessing NO₂^. reactivity in biological systems.     

Application of nanomaterials in microbial-cell biosensor constructions

Microbial cell biosensors, where cells are in direct connection with a transducer enabling quantitative and qualitative detection of an analyte, are very promising analytical tools applied mainly for assays in the environmental field, food industry or biomedicine. Microbial cell biosensors are an excellent alternative to conventional analytical methods due to their specificity, rapid detection and low cost of analysis. Nowadays, nanomaterials are often used in the construction of biosensors to improve their sensitivity and stability. In this review, the combination of microbial and other individual cells with different nanomaterials (carbon nanotubes, graphene, gold nanoparticles, etc.) for the construction of biosensors is described and their applications are provided as well.     

Filter factors of truncated tls regularization with multiple observations

The total least squares (TLS) and truncated TLS (T-TLS) methods are widely known linear data fitting approaches, often used also in the context of very ill-conditioned, rank-deficient, or ill-posed problems. Regularization properties of T-TLS applied to linear approximation problems Ax ≈ b were analyzed by Fierro, Golub, Hansen, and O’Leary (1997) through the so-called filter factors allowing to represent the solution in terms of a filtered pseudoinverse of A applied to b. This paper focuses on the situation when multiple observations b ₁,..., b _d are available, i.e., the T-TLS method is applied to the problem AX ≈ B, where B = [b ₁,..., b _d ] is a matrix. It is proved that the filtering representation of the T-TLS solution can be generalized to this case. The corresponding filter factors are explicitly derived.