Both parasitology and stem cell research are important disciplines in their own right.Parasites are a real threat to human health causing a broad spectrum of diseases and significant annual rates morbidity and mortali...Both parasitology and stem cell research are important disciplines in their own right.Parasites are a real threat to human health causing a broad spectrum of diseases and significant annual rates morbidity and mortality globally.Stem cell research,on the other hand,focuses on the potential for regenerative medicine for a range of diseases including cancer and regenerative therapies.Though these two topics might appear distant,there are some“unexpected encounters”.In this review,we summarise the various links between parasites and stem cells.First,we discuss how parasites’own stem cells represent interesting models of regeneration that can be translated to human stem cell regeneration.Second,we explore the interactions between parasites and host stem cells during the course of infection.Third,we investigate from a clinical perspective,how stem cell regeneration can be exploited to help circumvent the damage induced by parasitic infection and its potential to serve as treatment options for parasitic diseases in the future.Finally,we discuss the importance of screening for pathogens during organ transplantation by presenting some clinical cases of parasitic infection following stem cell therapy.展开更多
Genetic variations such as mutations and recombinations arise spontaneously in all cultured organisms.Although it is possible to identify nonneutral mutations by selection or counterselection,the identification of neu...Genetic variations such as mutations and recombinations arise spontaneously in all cultured organisms.Although it is possible to identify nonneutral mutations by selection or counterselection,the identification of neutral mutations in a heterogeneous population usually requires expensive and time-consuming methods such as quantitative or droplet polymerase chain reaction and high-throughput sequencing.Neutral mutations could even become dominant under changing environmental conditions enforcing transitory selection or counterselection.We propose a novel method,which we called qSanger,to quantify DNA using amplitude ratios of aligned electropherogram peaks from mixed Sanger sequencing reads.Plasmids expressing enhanced green fluorescent protein and mCherry fluorescent markers were used to validate qSanger both in vitro and in cotransformed Escherichia coli via quantitative polymerase chain reaction and fluorescence quantifications.We show that qSanger allows the quantification of genetic variants,including single-base natural polymorphisms or de novo mutations,from mixed Sanger sequencing reads,with substantial reduction of labor and costs compared to canonical approaches.展开更多
文摘Both parasitology and stem cell research are important disciplines in their own right.Parasites are a real threat to human health causing a broad spectrum of diseases and significant annual rates morbidity and mortality globally.Stem cell research,on the other hand,focuses on the potential for regenerative medicine for a range of diseases including cancer and regenerative therapies.Though these two topics might appear distant,there are some“unexpected encounters”.In this review,we summarise the various links between parasites and stem cells.First,we discuss how parasites’own stem cells represent interesting models of regeneration that can be translated to human stem cell regeneration.Second,we explore the interactions between parasites and host stem cells during the course of infection.Third,we investigate from a clinical perspective,how stem cell regeneration can be exploited to help circumvent the damage induced by parasitic infection and its potential to serve as treatment options for parasitic diseases in the future.Finally,we discuss the importance of screening for pathogens during organ transplantation by presenting some clinical cases of parasitic infection following stem cell therapy.
基金the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion GeneCircuits++PID2020-118436GB-I00(A.J.)BBSRC BB/P020615/1(A.J.)+1 种基金EU grants EVOPROG 610730 and PhotoSynH2 HORIZON-EIC-2021-PATHFINDERCHALLENGES(grant agreement 101070948)(A.J.)School of Life Sciences departmental allocation,Keele University(R.G.).
文摘Genetic variations such as mutations and recombinations arise spontaneously in all cultured organisms.Although it is possible to identify nonneutral mutations by selection or counterselection,the identification of neutral mutations in a heterogeneous population usually requires expensive and time-consuming methods such as quantitative or droplet polymerase chain reaction and high-throughput sequencing.Neutral mutations could even become dominant under changing environmental conditions enforcing transitory selection or counterselection.We propose a novel method,which we called qSanger,to quantify DNA using amplitude ratios of aligned electropherogram peaks from mixed Sanger sequencing reads.Plasmids expressing enhanced green fluorescent protein and mCherry fluorescent markers were used to validate qSanger both in vitro and in cotransformed Escherichia coli via quantitative polymerase chain reaction and fluorescence quantifications.We show that qSanger allows the quantification of genetic variants,including single-base natural polymorphisms or de novo mutations,from mixed Sanger sequencing reads,with substantial reduction of labor and costs compared to canonical approaches.
