Accidents with venomous animals are a public health issue worldwide. Among the species involved in these accidents are scorpions, spiders, bees, wasps, and other members of the phylum Arthropoda. The knowledge of the function of proteins present in these venoms is important to guide diagnosis, therapeutics, besides being a source of a large variety of biotechnological active molecules. Although our understanding about the characteristics and function of arthropod venoms has been evolving in the last decades, a major aspect crucial for the function of these proteins remains poorly studied, the posttranslational modifications (PTMs). Comprehension of such modifications can contribute to better understanding the basis of envenomation, leading to improvements in the specificities of potential therapeutic toxins. Therefore, in this review, we bring to light protein/toxin PTMs in arthropod venoms by accessing the information present in the UniProtKB/Swiss-Prot database, including experimental and putative inferences. Then, we concentrate our discussion on the current knowledge on protein phosphorylation and glycosylation, highlighting the potential functionality of these modifications in arthropod venom. We also briefly describe general approaches to study "PTM-functional-venomics", herein referred to the integration of PTM-venomics with a functional investigation of PTM impact on venom biology. Furthermore, we discuss the bottlenecks in toxinology studies covering PTM investigation. In conclusion, through the mining of PTMs in arthropod venoms, we observed a large gap in this field that limits our understanding on the biology of these venoms, affecting the diagnosis and therapeutics development. Hence, we encourage community efforts to draw attention to a better understanding of PTM in arthropod venom toxins.
Next-generation sequencing technologies revolutionize our understanding of immunoglobulin (Ig) profiles in different immune states. Clonotyping (grouping Ig sequences into B cell clones) allows the investigation of the diversity of repertoires and how they change upon antigen exposure. Despite its importance, there is no consensus on the best method for clonotyping, and the methods developed for that are computationally intractable for large sequencing datasets. This is the case of Change-O, which compares sequences through hamming distance and uses hierarchical clustering for this task. We propose implementing an approach to identify B cell clones from Ig repertoire data, named Yclon, that makes an alignment-free comparison of the sequences, focusing on reducing the runtime and computer memory usage. Overall, we find that a hierarchical clustering approach grouped Ig sequences into B cell clones similarly to Change-O. However, we observed that Yclon was around 35 times faster and even was able to process larger than 2 million sequences Ig repertoire, which is a critical part of repertoire studies and enables understanding antibody repertoire structure and affinity maturation. YClon is written in Python3 and is available on GitHub (https://github.com/jao321/YClon.git) .
The capybara (Hydrochoerus hydrochaeris) is a South American native rodent with an outstanding capacity to colonize urban environments. In Curitiba, a city worldwide known for its urban planning, the capybara adaptation comprises an interesting case to better understand the challenges in addressing Aichi targets at the local level. Specialized literature, official data and interviews indicate that this species is spreading throughout parks interconnected by rivers. This study illustrates an intricate relationship between capybaras and the urban socio-ecological environment, suggesting that the city only partially addresses Aichi targets. Local authorities are likely to face several challenges for adopting a global agenda on biodiversity. Producing robust knowledge on the urban biota is one fundamental step towards this goal.
Learning synthetic biology is often seen as a far distant possibility, restricted to those who have the privilege of an academic career. We propose a student‐centered discussion group around synthetic biology, aimed at people from high school onwards with different backgrounds to interact and learn about synthetic biology. We developed a 14‐week long program with three modules: “Leveling,” “Introducing,” and “Discussion.” By completing the first two modules, the members should be more comfortable with biological names, structures, concepts, and techniques. The modules developed are available in Portuguese, Spanish, and English via the Open Lab Idea Real website (https://ideareal.org/clube-de-biologia-sintetica/) and can be used to implement the Club either in place or virtually around the world. We put it to practice at Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) creating the Club named BioSin. There are programs such as the International Genetically Engineered Machine (iGEM) competition focused on disseminating synthetic biology. Although iGEM is one fantastic way of learning about synthetic biology, there is a high cost. Because of that, a study and discussion Club is a tool to spread knowledge and engage with the study area.
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