From beer to breadboards: yeast as a force for biological innovation.

The history of yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, aka brewer's or baker's yeast, is intertwined with our own. Initially domesticated 8,000 years ago to provide sustenance to our ancestors, for the past 150 years, yeast has served as a model research subject and a platform for technology. In this review, we highlight many ways in which yeast has served to catalyze the fields of functional genomics, genome editing, gene-environment interaction investigation, proteomics, and bioinformatics-emphasizing how yeast has served as a catalyst for innovation. Several possible futures for this model organism in synthetic biology, drug personalization, and multi-omics research are also presented.

Chemical-Genetic Interactions as a Means to Characterize Drug Synergy.

The combination of model organisms and comprehensive genome-wide screens has provided a wealth of data into the structure and regulation of the genome, gene-environment interactions, and more recently, into the mechanism of action of human therapeutics. The success of these studies relies, in part, on the ability to quantify the combined effects of multifactorial biological interactions. In this review, we explore the history and rationale behind genetic and chemical-genetic interactions with an emphasis on the phenomena of drug synergy and then briefly describe the theoretical models that we can leverage to investigate the synergy between compounds. In addition to reviewing the literature, we also provide a reference list including many of the most important studies in this field. The concept of chemical genetics interactions derives from classical studies of synthetic lethality and functional genomics. These techniques have recently graduated from the research lab to the clinic, and a better understanding of the basic principles can help accelerate this translation.

Systematic Prediction of Antifungal Drug Synergy by Chemogenomic Screening in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Since the earliest days of using natural remedies, combining therapies for disease treatment has been standard practice. Combination treatments exhibit synergistic effects, broadly defined as a greater-than-additive effect of two or more therapeutic agents. Clinicians often use their experience and expertise to tailor such combinations to maximize the therapeutic effect. Although understanding and predicting biophysical underpinnings of synergy have benefitted from high-throughput screening and computational studies, one challenge is how to best design and analyze the results of synergy studies, especially because the number of possible combinations to test quickly becomes unmanageable. Nevertheless, the benefits of such studies are clear-by combining multiple drugs in the treatment of infectious disease and cancer, for instance, one can lessen host toxicity and simultaneously reduce the likelihood of resistance to treatment. This study introduces a new approach to characterize drug synergy, in which we extend the widely validated chemogenomic HIP-HOP assay to drug combinations; this assay involves parallel screening of comprehensive collections of barcoded deletion mutants. We identify a class of "combination-specific sensitive strains" that introduces mechanisms for the synergies we observe and further suggest focused follow-up studies.

Electroless-coated magnetic three-dimensional graphene with silver nanoparticles used for the determination of pesticides in fruit samples.

A new type of adsorbent composed of magnetic three-dimensional graphene coated with silver nanoparticles was synthesized by an electroless technique and used in the magnetic solid-phase extraction of selected pesticides (fenitrothion, chlorpyrifos, and hexaconazole) before gas chromatography with a micro-electron capture detector. The adsorbent was characterized using Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction, vibrating sample magnetometry, and field-emission scanning electron microscopy. The important extraction parameters such as pH, adsorbent dose, extraction time, and desorption conditions were investigated. Under the optimal conditions, the analytical figures of merit were obtained as: linear dynamic range of 0.1-5 ng/g with determination coefficients of 0.991-0.996; limit of detection of 0.07-0.13 ng/g; limit of quantification of 0.242-0.448 ng/g; and the intraday and interday relative standard deviations (C = 5 ng/g, n = 3) were 3.8-8.7 and 6.6-8.9%, respectively. The developed method was successfully applied for analysis of the selected pesticides in tomato and grape with extraction recoveries in the range of 72.8-109.6%.

Magnetic graphene coated inorganic-organic hybrid nanocomposite for enhanced preconcentration of selected pesticides in tomato and grape.

The new magnetic graphene based hybrid silica-N-[3-(trimethoxysilyl)propyl]ethylenediamine (MG@SiO2-TMSPED) nanocomposite was synthesized via sol-gel process, and used as an effective adsorbent in magnetic solid phase extraction (MSPE) of three selected pesticides followed by gas chromatography micro-electron capture detection (GC-µECD). The adsorbent was characterized using Fourier transform-infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), Brunauer-Emmett-Teller (BET), Barrett-Joyner-Halenda (BJH), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDXS) techniques. The analytical validity of the developed method was evaluated under optimized conditions and the following figures of merit were obtained: linearity, 1-20µgkg-1 with good determination coefficients (R2=0.995-0.999); limits of detection (LODs), 0.23-0.30µgkg-1 (3×SD/m, n=3); and limits of quantitation (LOQ), 0.76-1.0µgkg-1 (10×SD/m, n=3). The precision (RSD%) of the proposed MSPE method was studied based on intra-day (3.43-8.83%, n=3) and inter-day (6.68-8.37%, n=12) precisions. Finally, the adsorbent was applied to determination of pesticides in tomato and grape samples and good recoveries were obtained in the range from 82 to 113% (RSDs 5.1-8.1%, n=3).

Polyurethane/polystyrene-silica electrospun nanofibrous composite for the headspace solid-phase microextraction of chlorophenols coupled with gas chromatography.

A novel electrospun composite nanofiber-based adsorbent (polyurethane/polystyrene-silica) was fabricated, characterized, and used in the headspace solid-phase microextraction of the acetylated derivatives of chlorophenols in water samples before gas chromatography with micro electron capture detection. The surface morphology, chemical composition, thermal stability, and structure of the fibers were investigated by scanning electron microscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, and Brunauer-Emmett-Teller and Barrett-Joyner-Halenda techniques. The effect of the main parameters influencing the efficiency of the method including extraction temperature, salt concentration, and extraction time was investigated and the optimized conditions were obtained. The linear dynamic ranges were 0.1-800 ng/mL. The relative standard deviations (n = 3) and the limits of detection were 2.64-9.57% and 0.0234-0.830 ng/mL, respectively. The relative recoveries for real samples (river water and sewage of our university campus) were between 90.8 and 111%.