👤 Emhimad A E Abdalla

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is one of the most prevalent neurodegenerative disorders and is also responsible for more than half of all dementia cases. In our ongoing efforts to identify promising phytocompounds as potential modulators of AD-related molecular targets, we studied 53 phytocompounds from Bergenia ciliata, a medicinal plant known for its in vivo anti-Alzheimer activity. Acetylcholinesterase (AChE), GSK-3β, and β-site amyloid precursor protein cleaving enzyme (BACE1) were the target proteins. Molecular docking and 100 ns molecular dynamics (MD) simulations revealed that 3-O-galloylcatechin and 3-O-galloylepicatechin showed favorable interactions with AChE and GSK-3β, as they were able to outperform the positive controls in all of the studied parameters. However, the MM-GBSA binding free energy calculations revealed that only 3-O-galloylepicatechin, but not 3-O-galloylcatechin, outperformed the positive control of GSK-3β. Density functional theory (DFT) studies revealed that 3-O-galloylcatechin and 3-O-galloylepicatechin were stable and chemically reactive at the active sites of AChE and GSK-3β. The in-silico findings suggest that the observed in-vivo anti-Alzheimer activity of B. ciliata may be partly associated with the favorable molecular interactions of 3-O-galloylcatechin and 3-O-galloylepicatechin with AChE and GSK-3β. The current findings highlight the structural and mechanistic relevance of B. ciliata phytocompounds in modulating AD-associated targets. Based on the current findings, medicinal plants that contain 3-O-galloylcatechin and 3-O-galloylepicatechin may also be screened for their interactions with AD-related molecular targets. Show less

The major barrier to eradicate HIV-1 is its persistence in latently infected cells. Inducing deep latency to prevent HIV-1 reactivation in the absence of combined antiretroviral therapy (cART) remains a primary goal. Here, we evaluated the repurposing of lithium as an HIV-1 latency-promoting drug (LPA). We demonstrated that lithium attenuates virus reactivation in three cell models for HIV-1 latency. Lithium induced autophagy in CD4 Show less

The underlying genetic mechanisms affecting turkey growth traits have not been widely investigated. Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) is a powerful approach to identify candidate regions associated with complex phenotypes and diseases in livestock. In the present study, we performed GWAS to identify regions associated with 18-week body weight in a turkey population. The data included body weight observations for 24,989 female turkeys genotyped based on a 65K SNP panel. The analysis was carried out using a univariate mixed linear model with hatch-week-year and the 2 top principal components fitted as fixed effects and the accumulated polygenic effect of all markers captured by the genomic relationship matrix as random. Thirty-three significant markers were observed on 1, 2, 3, 4, 7 and 12 chromosomes, while 26 showed strong linkage disequilibrium extending up to 410 kb. These significant markers were mapped to 37 genes, of which 13 were novel. Interestingly, many of the investigated genes are known to be involved in growth and body weight. For instance, genes AKR1D1, PARP12, BOC, NCOA1, ADCY3 and CHCHD7 regulate growth, body weight, metabolism, digestion, bile acid biosynthetic and development of muscle cells. In summary, the results of our study revealed novel candidate genomic regions and candidate genes that could be managed within a turkey breeding program and adapted in fine mapping of quantitative trait loci to enhance genetic improvement in this species. Show less