The COVID-19 (coronavirus disease-19) pandemic affected more than 180 million people
around the globe, causing more than five million deaths as of January 2022. SARS-CoV-2
(severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2), the new coronavirus, has been
identified as the primary cause of the infection. The number of vaccinated people is
increasing; however, prophylactic drugs are highly demanded to ensure secure social
contact. A number of drug molecules have been repurposed to fight against SARS-CoV-2,
and some of them have been proven to be effective in preventing hospitalization or ICU
admissions. Here, we demonstrated griffithsin (GRFT), a lectin protein, to block the
entry of SARS-CoV-2 and its variants, Delta and Omicron, into the Vero E6 cell lines and
IFNAR
–/–
mouse models by attaching to the spike protein of
SARS-CoV-2. Given the current mutation frequency of SARS-CoV-2, we believe that GRFT
protein-based drugs will have a high impact in preventing the transmission of both the
Wuhan strain as well as any other emerging variants, including Delta and Omicron
variants, causing the high-speed spread of COVID-19.
Biocompatibility assessment of nanomaterials has been of great interest due to their potential toxicity. However, conventional biocompatibility tests fall short of providing a fast toxicity report. We developed a whole cell based biosensor to track biocompatibility of nanomaterials with the aim of providing fast feedback to engineer them with lower toxicity levels. We engineered promoters of four heat shock response (HSR) proteins utilizing synthetic biology approaches. As an initial design, a reporter coding gene was cloned downstream of the selected promoter regions. Initial results indicated that native heat shock protein (HSP) promoter regions were not very promising to generate signals with low background signals. Introducing riboregulators to native promoters eliminated unwanted background signals almost entirely. Yet, this approach also led to a decrease in expected sensor signal upon stress treatment. Thus, a repression based genetic circuit, inspired by the HSR mechanism of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, was constructed. These genetic circuits could report the toxicity of quantum dot nanoparticles in 1 h. Our designed nanoparticle toxicity sensors can provide quick reports, which can lower the demand for additional experiments with more complex organisms.
Glycosylation is a crucial post-translational modification for a wide range of functionalities. Adhesive protein-based biomaterials in nature rely on heavily glycosylated proteins such as spider silk and mussel adhesive proteins....
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