Current Biotechnology - Volume 13, Issue 2, 2024

Inflammation is crucial for maintaining tissue homeostasis and responding to insults, yet dysregulated inflammation can lead to various diseases. Macrophages, central to the immune system, play key roles in initiating, regulating, and resolving inflammation. This review provides an overview of macrophage functions, including activation mechanisms, recruitment to inflamed tissues, interactions with other immune cells and mediators, and their roles in phagocytosis, clearance of apoptotic cells and debris, and secretion of anti-inflammatory cytokines. Additionally, it discusses macrophage-induced regulatory T-cell formation, the impact of pro-inflammatory and anti-inflammatory cytokines on macrophage behavior, and the influence of microbial products and pathogen-associated molecular patterns (PAMPs) on macrophage function. The review also identifies targeting macrophages as a promising strategy for managing inflammatory diseases while acknowledging challenges such as macrophage heterogeneity, limitations of in vitro models, and incomplete understanding of regulatory mechanisms. Finally, it suggests areas for further research, including identifying specific macrophage subsets, understanding macrophage plasticity, exploring resolution signaling pathways, and investigating the role of metabolism and microenvironmental cues in macrophage function, aiming to pave the way for more effective macrophage-targeted therapies in inflammatory diseases.

The efficacy of synthetic drugs in managing disease development and progression has faced challenges amidst shifts in lifestyle and heightened health consciousness. As a result, medicinal plants and seeds, with their constituent compounds, are gaining recognition for their potential in treating various illnesses. Ginger and flaxseed, as long-established herbal remedies, have made notable contributions to culinary and medicinal fields. Their robust flavor and aroma and anti-inflammatory, antioxidant, and analgesic properties extend their use beyond culinary spice to medicinal applications. Furthermore, their capacity to preserve food adds to their appeal, making ginger and flaxseed powerful and multi-functional elements in food production and medicinal contexts. This review highlights the therapeutic advantages of ginger and flaxseed in combating different diseases, focusing on their unique characteristics attributable to bioactive components.

The morbidity and death rates linked to diabetes mellitus are substantially increased by foot ulcers, a prevalent consequence of the disease. Proper wound management is essential for controlling foot ulcers. This includes monitoring the ulcers' healing progress through clinical reviews, changing dressings as needed, treating infections with the right medications, and ensuring that the ulcer is offloaded correctly. Taking pictures of the ulcer was a dependable way to track how diabetic foot ulcers were healing in the past. Images of foot ulcers have recently experienced a tremendous change due to the emergence of digital cameras in cell phones. Artificial intelligence (AI) and other recent developments in digital health technology present a great chance to improve the efficiency of diabetes care, which might reduce the growth in healthcare costs associated with diabetes. Patients with diabetes can alleviate the burden on clinics and patients' transportation demands by electronically sharing photos of their ulcers, which diabetes care providers can remotely monitor. Improved remote monitoring of diabetic foot ulcers using smartphone apps is now possible with the help of a new generation of AI-powered solutions. This clinical update review aims to gather information on this trending topic so that medical professionals can be current on all the latest advancements in the field.

Fungi infections are responsible for more than 1.6 million deaths per year worldwide. Treatment is time-consuming, compromising the kidney and liver functions. In silico analyses have facilitated the discovery of new drugs that may present fewer side effects. In this connection, kinases that phosphorylate the translation initiation factor eIF-2 are candidate proteins for potent new drugs, which have been recognized as important in maintaining protein synthesis. Substances that interfere with the phosphorylation of the eIF2α factor may be the way to inhibit the production of proteins and accelerate the fungi's death. To determine whether this enzyme can be used as a new drug target, this study aimed to perform In silico functional annotation and characterization of eIF2 factor kinase´s three-dimensional structure from three species of black fungi. In addition, inhibitors that could interact and bind to the active site of the enzyme were explored. The hypothetical protein was submitted to the databases and bioinformatics tools for its characterization, whose analysis of protein-protein interactions was modeled and inhibitors anchored. Protein interaction analysis linked the kinases with other molecules in protein translation and ribosome recycling. However, centrality analysis showed only one kinase as a possible drug target. The inhibitors showed coupling with the active site of protein kinases, and these results indicate a possible blockade of the enzymatic function that can accelerate the response to the drugs. This study demonstrates that biochemical characterization and In silico validation studies of potential drugs can be more efficient and yield faster results

Background: The biological function of α-Synuclein (α-Syn), which includes controlling synaptic vesicles, is regulated by phosphorylation at the Tyrosine 39 (pY39) residue. This function can be important for both normal and aberrant functions, and it relies on the interaction of α-Syn with the lipid membrane. pY39 α-Syn is found to form morphologically distinct fibrils relative to wild-type (WT) α-Syn and shows less affinity to negatively charged vesicles. Also, the phosphorylation at position Serine 87 (pS87) is increased in synucleinopathies, which inhibits α- Syn oligomerization and affects the interaction between α-Syn and the membrane. Objective: This work aimed to study the effects of post-translation modifications of α-Syn (pY39 and pS87) using all-atom Molecular Dynamics (MD) simulation. Method: In this computational study, we used all-atom MD simulations to investigate the effects of phosphorylation (pY39 and pS87) on protein-membrane interaction. The MD trajectories obtained were analyzed, and secondary structural content was calculated using YASARA software to perform a salt-bridge interaction study. Also, Principal component analysis was performed to analyze the secondary minima and global minima of the phosphorylated proteins. Results: From the MD study, we observed that phosphorylation at the Tyr 39 position in α-Syn has a marked effect on its interaction with the lipid membrane. The conformational snapshots of α-Syn obtained showed a high degree of fluctuations in the N-terminal region that disrupts the helix- 2 binding region. The secondary structures of pS87 α-Syn were found to be retained and influence the NAC region to immerse into the membrane while inhibiting the potential to interact with other neighbouring molecules. Moreover, it was observed that in the case of pY39 α-Syn as opposed to pS87 α-Syn, there were larger energy disparities between the local and global minima of the overall structure. Conclusion: Therefore, disruption of the helix-2 binding region may affect the binding to the lipid membrane and take over interaction with other proteins or vesicles. In the case of pS87 α-Syn, the structure showed higher stability, but the NAC domain was found to emerge out of the membrane.