In all cases, symptoms subsided within 48-72 h and no further complications were reported. Envenomations by S. nobilis seem to produce symptoms similar (but not identical) to those previously reported from other Steatoda sp. Considering their benign outcome, envenomations by S. nobilis should still be regarded as of moderate medical importance, requiring monitoring and pain management strategies.
The false widow spider Steatoda nobilis is associated with bites which develop bacterial infections that are sometimes unresponsive to antibiotics. These could be secondary infections derived from opportunistic bacteria on the skin or infections directly vectored by the spider. In this study, we investigated whether it is plausible for S. nobilis and other synanthropic European spiders to vector bacteria during a bite, by seeking to identify bacteria with pathogenic potential on the spiders. 11 genera of bacteria were identified through 16S rRNA sequencing from the body surfaces and chelicerae of S. nobilis, and two native spiders: Amaurobius similis and Eratigena atrica. Out of 22 bacterial species isolated from S. nobilis, 12 were related to human pathogenicity among which Staphylococcus epidermidis, Kluyvera intermedia, Rothia mucilaginosa and Pseudomonas putida are recognized as class 2 pathogens. The isolates varied in their antibiotic susceptibility: Pseudomonas putida, Staphylococcus capitis and Staphylococcus edaphicus showed the highest extent of resistance, to three antibiotics in total. On the other hand, all bacteria recovered from S. nobilis were susceptible to ciprofloxacin. Our study demonstrates that S. nobilis does carry opportunistic pathogenic bacteria on its body surfaces and chelicerae. Therefore, some post-bite infections could be the result of vector-borne bacterial zoonoses that may be antibiotic resistant.
The chemical investigation
of marine invertebrates from the deep
Northeastern Atlantic revealed new lipoglycotripeptides named characellides
isolated from the tetractinellid sponge Characella pachastrelloides. This new family of natural products features a central tripeptide
linked to a rare sugar unit and a long alkyl chain ending with a 2,3-dimethyltetrahydropyran.
The configurations of all 13 chiral centers were determined by extensive
use of NMR data and circular dichroism spectra combined with calculations.
Since the introduction of the online open-source GNPS, molecular networking has quickly become a widely applied tool in the field of natural products chemistry, with applications from dereplication, genome mining, metabolomics, and visualization of chemical space. Studies have shown that data dependent acquisition (DDA) parameters affect molecular network topology but are limited in the number of parameters studied. With an aim to optimize LC-MS2 parameters for integrating GNPS-based molecular networking into our marine natural products workflow, a design of experiment (DOE) was used to screen the significance of the effect that eleven parameters have on both Classical Molecular Networking workflow (CLMN) and the new Feature-Based Molecular Networking workflow (FBMN). Our results indicate that four parameters (concentration, run duration, collision energy and number of precursors per cycle) are the most significant data acquisition parameters affecting the network topology. While concentration and the LC duration were found to be the two most important factors to optimize for CLMN, the number of precursors per cycle and collision energy were also very important factors to optimize for FBMN.
Chronic diseases characterized by bone and cartilage loss are associated with a reduced ability of progenitor cells to regenerate new tissues in an inflammatory environment. A promising strategy to treat such diseases is based on tissue repair mediated by human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs), but therapeutic outcomes are hindered by the absence of small molecules to efficiently modulate cell behavior. Here, we applied a high-throughput drug screening technology to bioprospect a large library of extracts from Irish deep-sea organisms to induce hMSC differentiation toward musculoskeletal lineages and reduce inflammation of activated macrophages. The library included extracts from deep-sea corals, sponges and filamentous fungi representing a novel source of compounds for the targeted bioactivity. A validated hit rate of 3.4% was recorded from the invertebrate library, with cold water sea pens (octocoral order Pennatulacea), such as Kophobelemnon sp. and Anthoptilum sp., showing the most promising results in influencing stem cell differentiation toward osteogenic and chondrogenic lineages. Extracts obtained from deep-sea fungi showed no effects on stem cell differentiation, but a 6.8% hit rate in reducing the inflammation of activated macrophages. Our results demonstrate the potential of deep-sea organisms to synthetize pro-differentiation and immunomodulatory compounds that may represent potential drug development candidates to treat chronic musculoskeletal diseases.
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