Cholesterol Accumulation as a Driver of Hepatic Inflammation Under Translational Dietary Conditions Can Be Attenuated by a Multicomponent Medicine

Background: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a complex multifactorial disorder that is characterised by dysfunctional lipid metabolism and cholesterol homeostasis, and a related chronic inflammatory response. NAFLD has become the most common cause of chronic liver disease in many countries, and its prevalence continues to rise in...

Krill Oil Treatment Increases Distinct PUFAs and Oxylipins in Adipose Tissue and Liver and Attenuates Obesity-Associated Inflammation via Direct and Indirect Mechanisms

The development of obesity is characterized by the metabolic overload of tissues and subsequent organ inflammation. The health effects of krill oil (KrO) on obesity-associated inflammation remain largely elusive, because long-term treatments with KrO have not been performed to date. Therefore, we examined the putative health effects of 28 weeks...

Dentistry and OMICS: Transcriptome Dynamics of an Oral Ecosystem as Measured by Changes in Oral Polymorphonuclear Neutrophils in Experimental Gingivitis

Oral health and dentistry are essential components of systems medicine, which has received lesser attention in comparison to other medical fields, such as cancer biology. In this context, oral polymorphonuclear neutrophils (oPMNs) play an important role in the maintenance of oral health. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to...

Dose-dependent impact of oxytetracycline on the veal calf microbiome and resistome

Background: Antibiotic therapy is commonly used in animal agriculture. Antibiotics excreted by the animals can contaminate farming environments, resulting in long term exposure of animals to sub-inhibitory levels of antibiotics. Little is known on the effect of this exposure on antibiotic resistance. In this study, we aimed to investigate the...

Rewiring a secondary metabolite pathway towards itaconic acid production in Aspergillus niger

Background: The industrially relevant filamentous fungus Aspergillus niger is widely used in industry for its secretion capabilities of enzymes and organic acids. Biotechnologically produced organic acids promise to be an attractive alternative for the chemical industry to replace petrochemicals. Itaconic acid (IA) has been identified as one of...

A systems biology approach for the identification of target genes for the improvement of itaconic acid production in Aspergillus species

Background: In this paper, a clone based transcriptome analysis towards the identification of genes related to itaconic acid production in Aspergillus terreus was carried out as an extension of a previously published a clone-based transcriptome analysis from a set of batch fermentation experiments. Also a publically available A. niger...

Multiparameter viability assay for stress profiling applied to the food pathogen Listeria monocytogenes F2365

A novel generic approach for stress profiling was applied to Listeria monocytogenes strain F2365. This food-borne pathogen was exposed to gradients of five different stresses of increasing intensity, typically ranging from moderate to lethal conditions. The stress factors included heat, acidic pH, a detergent disinfectant, an oxidant, and...

A clone-based transcriptomics approach for the identification of genes relevant for itaconic acid production in Aspergillus

Several Aspergillus species are well-known for the production of a variety of organic acids. In this study, a cloned based transcriptomics approach was used to identify genes crucial in the biosynthesis pathway for one of these acids, itaconic acid. From a number of different Aspergillus terreus controlled batch fermentations, those cultures...

Challenges and advances in systems biology analysis of Bacillus spore physiology; molecular differences between an extreme heat resistant spore forming Bacillus subtilis food isolate and a laboratory strain

Bacterial spore formers are prime organisms of concern in the food industry. Spores from the genus Bacillus are extremely stress resistant, most notably exemplified by high thermotolerance. This sometimes allows surviving spores to germinate and grow out to vegetative cells causing food spoilage and possible intoxication. Similar issues though...

cDNA array analysis of stress-induced gene expression in barley androgenesis

Different aspects of androgenesis induction have been studied in detail, but little is known about the molecular mechanisms associated with this developmental switch. We have employed macroarrays containing 1421 expressed sequence tags covering the early stages of barley zygotic embryogenesis to compare the gene expression profiles of stress...

Manipulation of starch granule size distribution in potato tubers by modulation of plastid division

Starch granule size is an important parameter for starch applications in industry. Starch granules are formed in amyloplasts, which are, like chloroplasts, derived from proplastids. Division processes and associated machinery are likely to be similar for all plastids. Essential roles for FtsZ proteins in plastid division in land plants have been...

Functional association between malting quality trait component and cDNA array based expression patterns in barley (Hordeum vulgare L.)

We developed an approach for relating differences in gene expression to the phenotypic variation of a trait of interest. This allows the identification of candidate genes for traits that display quantitative variation. To validate the principle, gene expression was monitored on a cDNA array with 1400 ESTs to identify genes involved in the...

Functional genomics bei Gerste: Vom Erkenntnisgewinn zur züchterischen Nutzung

Malting quality of barley cultivars in terms of gene expression

Association genomics: Gene expression & malting quality in barley