Title: Accelerated molecular dynamics simulation, functional sequence space clustering and experimentally guided machine learning as an integrated tool for the customization of enzyme performance for defined industrial applications

Abstract:

Enzymes play an important role in a wide range of industries, such as food and feed, agriculture, personal care, textiles, laundry detergents, fine chemicals, and pharmaceuticals. Some examples where enzymes are crucial include cheese manufacture, beer and winemaking, baking bread, fruit juice extraction and clarification, leather tanning and more recently in the production of biofuels and biopolymers^1,2. Further, due to their high enantio- and regio-selectivity, leading to higher yields of the required enantiomer, enzymes are increasingly used in fine chemical synthesis and in the production of chiral pharmaceutical intermediates and APIs.

The enzymes used for various industrial applications can be harvested from microbial sources or they can be customized for a defined industrial application and overexpressed in heterologous hosts such as bacteria, yeasts and filamentous fungi. This type of enzyme engineering is a powerful way to obtain large amounts of a customized enzyme to replace traditional chemical processes³.

The enormous progress made in recent years in this area is based on new approaches for the screening and identification of novel enzymes, on the development of various protein engineering methods to tailor enzymes with the defined or novel properties, and on the availability of sequence and structural data on a wide range of enzymes that give rise to powerful new machine learning approaches. One recently developed technology making an important contribution to the discovery of novel proteins and engineering of customised enzymes for defined industrial applications involves the application of a proprietary enzyme design platform overcoming key efficiency bottlenecks in statistical structure-dynamics analysis⁴ and enabling the streamlined functional clustering of protein sequence space. This powerful technique allows the fast and reliable identification and subsequent engineering of hotspots in a protein, resulting in a rapid and inexpensive improvement of enzyme properties, such as chirality, catalytic activity, stability, substrate specificity, stereoselectivity. Further, this technology can apply a function to sequences during enzyme discovery, thereby enabling the identification of protein homologues with potentially better properties than the target enzyme and provides outstanding opportunities for the selection and subsequent design of industrial enzymes with the desired properties. This presentation seeks to provide a description of this enzyme design technology in the discovery and design of customized enzymes.

Biography:

Henryk Kalisz obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemistry at Manchester University, has published over 60 papers in reputed scientific journals. He has over 30 years of experience in industrial enzymology and biotechnology. After his Ph.D., he worked as a postdoctorate at the University of Freiburg, Freiburg, Germany, before taking up a senior scientist role at the National Research Institute (Gesellschaft für Biotechnologische Forschung) in Braunschweig, Germany. He subsequently worked as Head of Biochemistry at Pharmacia, Nerviano, Italy, and as Chief Scientific Officer at Eucodis Bioscience in Vienna, Austria. Since October 2011 he has been applying his expertise in industrial enzymology as a consultant and independent representative to provide scientific and technological advice and assistance to various Biotechnology and Pharmaceuticals organizations.

Title: Exploring role of the skin microbiome and host genetics in human attractiveness to mosquitoes

Abstract:

Background: Some people produce specific body odours that make them more attractive than others to mosquitoes, and consequently are at higher risk of contracting vector-borne diseases.

Results: Here, we examined how skin microbiome composition of women differs in relation to level of attractiveness to Anopheles coluzzii mosquitoes, to identify volatiles in body odour and metabolic pathways associated with individuals that tend to be poorly-attractive to mosquitoes. We found differences in skin microbiome composition between the poorly- and highly-attractive groups, particularly eight Amplicon Sequence Variants (ASVs) belonging to the Proteobacteria, Actinobacteria and Firmicutes phyla. Propanoic pathways are enriched in the poorly-attractive participants compared to those found to be highly-attractive. We found attractiveness to mosquitoes and some genera of bacteria to be heritable that suggests a genetic component to mosquito attractiveness.

Conclusions: Our findings suggest that variation in attractiveness of people to mosquitoes is related to the composition of the skin microbiota, knowledge that could improve odour-baited traps or other next generation vector control tools.

Biography:

Alicia Showering is a final year PhD student at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine working on a multi-disciplinary project exploring the role of the skin microbiome in human attractiveness to mosquitoes. Alicia has used 16S sequencing, metabolomics and behavioural studies to investigate the skin microbiome and body odour profile of two cohorts of twins, in the UK and Gambia. Alicia is interested in opportunities to apply her expertise to develop innovative technologies to improve health in the future.

Title: Disturbance of the human gut microbiota in patients with Myotonic Dystrophy type 1

Abstract:

Myotonic dystrophy (MD) is an autosomal dominant genetic disorder found highly prevalent in the province of Québec, Canada. MD type 1 is characterized by an abnormal trinucleotide CTG repeat located in the 3’ untranslated region of DMPK, the gene encoding the DM protein kinase located on chromosome 19q13.3. The core pathogenic feature of MD1 is the intra-nuclear blockage of RNA-binding proteins with the toxic RNA repeat, resulting in a wide array of nonfunctional proteins. Although MD1 is primarily characterized by progressive muscular weakness, there are many multisystemic symptoms: cognitive deficits, cardiac conduction abnormalities, diabetes, and cataracts, as well as endocrine and reproductive problems. Involvement of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract is also frequent and can affect the whole digestive tract from the pharynx to the anal sphincter. However, it is not clear if these GI symptoms are caused by biomechanical problems of the intestine or if the intestinal microbiota is involved. The objective of this study is to assess the role of the gut microbiota in the GI symptoms of MD1 patients. Stool samples from 50 MD1 patients were collected, and their close family members used as controls. These samples were sequenced by 16s MiSeq and analyzed with DADA2 to generate taxonomic signatures. Our analysis indicated that the status of MD1 significantly changes gut bacterial community structure as for the relative abundance of Firmicutes, Bacteroidota, and Actinobacteriota Phylum. These results might help understand how the gut microbiota, in addition to the biomechanics, can affect the gastrointestinal tract of MD1 patients.

Biography:

Manijeh has completed his first PhD in pharmaceutical biotechnology from Isfahan university of medical sciences and started her second PhD in Biochemistry at Universite de Sherbrooke. She works on the gut microbiome and its role in the gastrointestinal manifestations of Myotonic Dystrophy type 1 patients in both mice and human samples. Her H-index is 8 and has published about 24 papers in reputed journals.

Title: Seroprevalence of Bluetongue virus originating among camels from southern Punjab, Pakistan

Abstract:

Bluetongue (BT), caused by bluetongue virus (BTV) is a vector-borne disease of small ruminants such as sheep, goat and also persist in camels. Bluetongue (BT) disease has a prospective to spread across borders. In spite of a large number of populations of susceptible animals and borders with BTV endemic countries, scant is known of disease implication and prevalent serotype in southern Punjab province in Pakistan. We escort a cross-sectional study to determine the seroprevalence of bluetongue virus in selected districts of southern Punjab using a competitive enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (cELISA). Sera (n = 992) were collected from clinically healthy and non-healthy camels originating from the districts of Bahawalpur (n = 30), Dera Ghazi Khan (n = 207), Multan (n = 100), Muzaffargarh (n = 17), Rahim Yar Khan (n = 255), Rajanpur (n = 152), Taunsa (n = 231). At the individual level, the overall prevalence of BTV was 68% (n = 697/992, 95% CI = 33.11- 38.72%). A higher percentage of seroprevalence was seen in district Muzaffargarh 100% (n = 17/17). Odd ratios of seroprevalence for camels were associated with age type (ᵡ² = 139.59, p = .00), body condition (ᵡ² = 40.61, p = .00), breed (ᵡ² = 19.61, p = .00), feeding status (ᵡ² = 7.96, p = 0.19), farming status (ᵡ² = 24.49, p = .00), Education status (ᵡ² = 11.68, p = .00), pregnancy status (ᵡ² = 21.80, p .00). All the risk factors were significant and contribute towards the presence of BT disease. To the best of our knowledge, this study that has been conducted in southern Punjab province and the results of this study designate to instigate intrusion strategies to control the BT disease burden but not only in the area of Pakistan but also in neighboring countries to whom Pakistan share his border India, Iran, Afghanistan.

Biography:

 I am Fariha Altaaf young researcher in the field of Microbiology belongs to Pakistan. I have a passion and learn new expertise in evaluation in improving health and wellbeing. I am very passionate and hardworking to create new pathways for improving healthcare. I have done this research and built this model after years of experience in microbiology research, evaluation, teaching, and administration both from hospital and education institutions. The methodology in this research includes competitive ELISA that illustrates, seroprevalence and association of risk factors. It allows for value-pluralism. This research along with this methodology reveals the presence of BT virus that is transmitted from one region to another and still transmitting. I have done research in bacteriology section that was a project work on Streptococcus pneumoniae from Lahore University of Management Sciences (LUMS). I am very hard working and keen on my fieldwork. In my future, I would like to be work as Microbiologist definitely.