A high throughput screening method for endocrine disrupting chemicals in tap water and milk samples based on estrogen receptor α and gold nanoparticles

2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 200-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mengyue Liu ◽  
Shengqiang Zhang ◽  
Shuyuan Du ◽  
Shuxue Pang ◽  
Xiaoyu Liu ◽  
...  

Increasing concern over endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in environmental and food samples has created the demand for rapid and high throughput screening methods to evaluate their estrogenic effects.

2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-50 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hong-Chang Zhang ◽  
Ting Xu ◽  
Xia-lin Hu ◽  
Wei-hai Pang ◽  
Da-Qiang Yin

The distributions and effects of 31 selected endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) in two drinking water factories were analyzed in this study. The distributions of EDCs were analyzed by solid phase extraction (SPE) combined with liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). The concentrations of these EDCs were from lower than the LOD (limit of detection) to 23.13 ng L − 1 in the samples; most of them were lower than 1 ng L − 1. The highest concentration (23.13 ± 1.45 ng L − 1) was detected in the raw water. Twenty-six chemicals were found in the raw water and only five in the finished water of drinking water factory A, while 25 chemicals were detected in the raw water and two in the finished water of drinking water factory B. The results indicate that most of the EDCs can be removed by the water treatment process. In the advanced treatment process, the ozonation processes have the highest removal efficiency. Separate analyses in May and September show similar results. Apart from the chemical analysis, yeast strain transformed when the estrogen receptor α (ERα) gene was employed to test the estrogenic effects of the water samples. Due to the low concentrations of these EDCs, no significant estrogenic effects were found from the samples.


2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Luis E Contreras-Llano ◽  
Cheemeng Tan

Abstract The incorporation of cell-free transcription and translation systems into high-throughput screening applications enables the in situ and on-demand expression of peptides and proteins. Coupled with modern microfluidic technology, the cell-free methods allow the screening, directed evolution and selection of desired biomolecules in minimal volumes within a short timescale. Cell-free high-throughput screening applications are classified broadly into in vitro display and on-chip technologies. In this review, we outline the development of cell-free high-throughput screening methods. We further discuss operating principles and representative applications of each screening method. The cell-free high-throughput screening methods may be advanced by the future development of new cell-free systems, miniaturization approaches, and automation technologies.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Huifang Xu ◽  
Weinan Liang ◽  
Linlin Ning ◽  
Yuanyuan Jiang ◽  
Wenxia Yang ◽  
...  

P450 fatty acid decarboxylases (FADCs) have recently been attracting considerable attention owing to their one-step direct production of industrially important 1-alkenes from biologically abundant feedstock free fatty acids under mild conditions. However, attempts to improve the catalytic activity of FADCs have met with little success. Protein engineering has been limited to selected residues and small mutant libraries due to lack of an effective high-throughput screening (HTS) method. Here, we devise a catalase-deficient <i>Escherichia coli</i> host strain and report an HTS approach based on colorimetric detection of H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub>-consumption activity of FADCs. Directed evolution enabled by this method has led to effective identification for the first time of improved FADC variants for medium-chain 1-alkene production from both DNA shuffling and random mutagenesis libraries. Advantageously, this screening method can be extended to other enzymes that stoichiometrically utilize H<sub>2</sub>O<sub>2</sub> as co-substrate.


2016 ◽  
Vol 19 (8) ◽  
pp. 616-626 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorena Ramírez-Velasco ◽  
Mariana Armendáriz-Ruiz ◽  
Jorge Alberto Rodríguez-González ◽  
Marcelo Müller-Santos ◽  
Ali Asaff-Torres ◽  
...  

2011 ◽  
Vol 16 (8) ◽  
pp. 869-877 ◽  
Author(s):  
Duncan I. Mackie ◽  
David L. Roman

In this study, the authors used AlphaScreen technology to develop a high-throughput screening method for interrogating small-molecule libraries for inhibitors of the Gαo–RGS17 interaction. RGS17 is implicated in the growth, proliferation, metastasis, and the migration of prostate and lung cancers. RGS17 is upregulated in lung and prostate tumors up to a 13-fold increase over patient-matched normal tissues. Studies show RGS17 knockdown inhibits colony formation and decreases tumorigenesis in nude mice. The screen in this study uses a measurement of the Gαo–RGS17 protein–protein interaction, with an excellent Z score exceeding 0.73, a signal-to-noise ratio >70, and a screening time of 1100 compounds per hour. The authors screened the NCI Diversity Set II and determined 35 initial hits, of which 16 were confirmed after screening against controls. The 16 compounds exhibited IC50 <10 µM in dose–response experiments. Four exhibited IC50 values <6 µM while inhibiting the Gαo–RGS17 interaction >50% when compared to a biotinylated glutathione-S-transferase control. This report describes the first high-throughput screen for RGS17 inhibitors, as well as a novel paradigm adaptable to many other RGS proteins, which are emerging as attractive drug targets for modulating G-protein-coupled receptor signaling.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuru Wang ◽  
Christopher D Katanski ◽  
Christopher Watkins ◽  
Jessica N Pan ◽  
Qing Dai ◽  
...  

Abstract AlkB is a DNA/RNA repair enzyme that removes base alkylations such as N1-methyladenosine (m1A) or N3-methylcytosine (m3C) from DNA and RNA. The AlkB enzyme has been used as a critical tool to facilitate tRNA sequencing and identification of mRNA modifications. As a tool, AlkB mutants with better reactivity and new functionalities are highly desired; however, previous identification of such AlkB mutants was based on the classical approach of targeted mutagenesis. Here, we introduce a high-throughput screening method to evaluate libraries of AlkB variants for demethylation activity on RNA and DNA substrates. This method is based on a fluorogenic RNA aptamer with an internal modified RNA/DNA residue which can block reverse transcription or introduce mutations leading to loss of fluorescence inherent in the cDNA product. Demethylation by an AlkB variant eliminates the blockage or mutation thereby restores the fluorescence signals. We applied our screening method to sites D135 and R210 in the Escherichia coli AlkB protein and identified a variant with improved activity beyond a previously known hyperactive mutant toward N1-methylguanosine (m1G) in RNA. We also applied our method to O6-methylguanosine (O6mG) modified DNA substrates and identified candidate AlkB variants with demethylating activity. Our study provides a high-throughput screening method for in vitro evolution of any demethylase enzyme.


2021 ◽  
Vol 22 (6) ◽  
pp. 3041
Author(s):  
Gheorghita Menghiu ◽  
Vasile Ostafe ◽  
Radivoje Prodanović ◽  
Rainer Fischer ◽  
Raluca Ostafe

Chitinases catalyze the degradation of chitin, a polymer of N-acetylglucosamine found in crustacean shells, insect cuticles, and fungal cell walls. There is great interest in the development of improved chitinases to address the environmental burden of chitin waste from the food processing industry as well as the potential medical, agricultural, and industrial uses of partially deacetylated chitin (chitosan) and its products (chito-oligosaccharides). The depolymerization of chitin can be achieved using chemical and physical treatments, but an enzymatic process would be more environmentally friendly and more sustainable. However, chitinases are slow-acting enzymes, limiting their biotechnological exploitation, although this can be overcome by molecular evolution approaches to enhance the features required for specific applications. The two main goals of this study were the development of a high-throughput screening system for chitinase activity (which could be extrapolated to other hydrolytic enzymes), and the deployment of this new method to select improved chitinase variants. We therefore cloned and expressed the Bacillus licheniformis DSM8785 chitinase A (chiA) gene in Escherichia coli BL21 (DE3) cells and generated a mutant library by error-prone PCR. We then developed a screening method based on fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) using the model substrate 4-methylumbelliferyl β-d-N,N′,N″-triacetyl chitotrioside to identify improved enzymes. We prevented cross-talk between emulsion compartments caused by the hydrophobicity of 4-methylumbelliferone, the fluorescent product of the enzymatic reaction, by incorporating cyclodextrins into the aqueous phases. We also addressed the toxicity of long-term chiA expression in E. coli by limiting the reaction time. We identified 12 mutants containing 2–8 mutations per gene resulting in up to twofold higher activity than wild-type ChiA.


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