Announcements
16 March 2020
Encyclopedia Outstanding Contributor Awards 2020 - Open for Application
We are pleased to announce that Encyclopedia will be awarding five Outstanding Contributor Awards for researchers in 2020. The nominations and applications will be assessed by an Evaluation Committee consisting of senior scholars from the Encyclopedia Editorial Board.
Prize for Winners
- An official certificate;
- A cash award of 500 CHF or an MDPI discount voucher of 800 CHF.
Application Deadline
31 December, 2020 (Please send your application email with a list of all entries you contributed to our office before the deadline: office@encyclopedia.pub)
Candidate Requirements
- Have a Ph.D. degree;
- Have more than three qualified entries published in Encyclopedia in 2020.
Evaluation Standards
- Number of entries published in Encyclopedia in 2020;
- Quality of entries online (including length, figure quality, and novelty);
- Impact of entries (including the number of likes, discussion contents, views, and downloads).
If you are a researcher and have not yet contribute entries to Encyclopedia, please do not miss this chance to highlight your research results.
25 December 2019
Congratulations to the Winners of the Best Poster Award and the Best Oral Communication Award at the 26th Meeting of the French Society of Toxinology (SFET), Paris, France, 2019 (Sponsored by Toxins)
The editorial team of Toxins would like to congratulate the winner of the Best Poster Award, Ludivine LOPEZ, and the Best Oral Communication Award, Geoffrey MASUYER, at the 26th Meeting of the French Society of Toxinology (SFET).
Here are the titles and abstracts of their work:
Title: High-Throughput Screening of Venom for Identification of Active Compound in Ion Channels
Author: Ludivine LOPEZ 1,2,*, Sébastien NICOLAS 1, Lucie JAQUILLARD 2, Jérôme MONTNACH 1, Rémy BEROUD 2, Michel DE WAARD 1
Affiliation:
1 Institut du thorax, INSERM UMR 1087/CNRS UMR 6291, LabEx “Ion Channels, Science & Therapeutics”, 44007 Nantes, France.
2 Smartox Biotechnology, 6 rue des Platanes, 38120 Saint Egrève, France.
Abstract:
Dysfunctions of voltage-gated sodium channels (Nav) have been associated with many pathological conditions such as cardiac diseases, neuropathic pain, and epilepsy. In order to study the role of these channels in diseases or to restore function, specific molecules targeting ion channels are needed. Highly specific molecules for a given isoform of sodium channel are hard to discover with the usual chemical libraries. Animal venoms, and especially spider venoms, contains about tens of peptides acting on ion channels and therefore represent interesting libraries for drug discovery. By screening spider venoms on Nav, we aimed to identify new toxins targeting specifically one channel isoform with the use of an automated patch-clamp (APC) technique (SyncroPatch364, Nanion). For this purpose, all venoms were preliminary fractionated in libraries of 64 fractions and tested on several stable Nav cell lines. APC allows two venoms to be tested at the same time and accelerate the drug discovery process. Fractions of interest are those that reduce sodium peak current (by at least 30%), slow down inactivation, or increase late sodium current. False-positive fractions were excluded based on detection of material in HPLC or mass spectrometry. Until now, two different Nav lines have been tested: Nav1.5 and Nav1.6. Primary screening allows identification of 28 fractions active in at least one isoform. Among them, 24 are specific for one channel (10 for Nav1.5, 14 for Nav1.6). The majority of positive fractions induce a slowdown in inactivation (5 for Nav1.5, 12 for Nav1.6). The selected fractions were re-fractionated with a complementary purification technique until the isolated peptides were obtained. These molecules were tested again for bioactivity and underwent full de novo sequencing, chemical synthesis, and full pharmacological characterization. This study suggests that among the large number of toxins in venoms, a great variety target sodium channels with specificity for each sodium channel isoform, and illustrates how ACP is essential for screening.
Title: A Clostridial-Like Neurotoxin That Selectively Targets Anopheles Mosquitoes
Author: Geoffrey MASUYER 1,2,*, Estefania CONTRERAS 3, Nadia QURESHI 3, Swati CHAWLA 3, Harpal S. DHILLON 3, Ham Lim LEE 4, Jianwu CHEN 3, Pål STENMARK 2,5, Sarjeet S GILL 3
Affiliation:
1 Department of Pharmacy and Pharmacology, University of Bath, United Kindom.
2 Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Stockholm University, Sweden.
3 Department of Molecular, Cell and Systems Biology, University of California Riverside, USA.
4 Unit of Medical Entomology, Institute for Medical Research, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
5 Department of Experimental Medical Science, Lund University, Sweden.
Abstract:
Clostridial neurotoxins are potent toxins that target the nervous system of vertebrates causing paralytic diseases such as tetanus and botulism. Here, we present a new member of this family of toxins, PMP1, a clostridial-like neurotoxin that selectively targets Anopheles mosquitoes, thus expending the range of host species targeted by this family. PMP11 was isolated from Paraclostridium bifermentans strains collected in geographically varied anopheline endemic areas. PMP1 was showed to use a common mechanism of toxicity that disrupts SNARE-mediated exocytosis by cleavage of syntaxin. Our results suggest PMP1 employs a different receptor recognition strategy, illustrated by the high-resolution structure of the PMP1 binding domain. The discovery of PMP1 has a significant impact on our understanding of the clostridial neurotoxin evolution. Importantly, it provides an exciting opportunity for the development of innovative biotechnological tools that can reduce malaria through anopheline control.
25 December 2019
Congratulations to the Winners of the Student Poster Award and Student Talk Award at 20th IST World Congress, Buenos Aires, Argentina, 2019 (Sponsored by Toxins)
The editorial team of Toxins would like to congratulate the winner of the Student Poster Award, Jonas Jürgensen, and Student Talk Award, Cebrina Nolan, at the 20th IST World Congress.
Here are the titles and abstracts of their work:
Title: Harnessing Monoclonal Antibodies for Development of a Specific Treatment against Naja nigricollis Envenoming
Author: Jonas Jürgensen
Affiliation: Technical University of Denmark
Abstract:
The African black-necked spitting cobra (Naja nigricollis) is one of the most notorious snake species found on the African continent. Its venom consists of a highly potent mixture of cytotoxins which cause severe local tissue damage in victims, who are left with permanent sequalae after a bite. The availability of antivenom is currently scarce throughout the African continent. Furthermore, due to their heterologous origin and low content of therapeutically active antibodies, these antivenoms have a propensity to cause severe adverse reactions, including serum sickness and anaphylaxis, which could lead to death of the patient.
Recombinant antibodies represent a therapeutic alternative. We are presently developing an antivenom based on recombinant human monoclonal immunoglobulin G (IgG) antibodies, which are predicted to be safer, cost-competitive, and more efficacious than the existing treatment. Here, we present a subset of this work: Through the utilization of phage display technology, the possibility of discovering and expressing novel human single-chain variable antibody fragments (scFv) against the five most medically relevant venom toxins from N. nigricollis has been demonstrated, with four being cytotoxins and one being phospholipase A2. Out of the 486 monoclonal scFvs analyzed, 164 were considered good binders. Of these, 94 were sequenced, resulting in the identification of 31 unique scFvs. The binding properties of these scFvs will be evaluated, and the most promising leads will be converted into an immunoglobulin G format and assessed in vivo. It is our hope that the work in this project will help enable radical improvement in the treatment of snakebite envenoming.
Title: Investigating the Neuromodulatory Effects of Corazonin in Emerald Jewel Wasp Venom
Author: Cebrina Nolan
Affiliation: University of California, Riverside
Abstract:
The parasitoid jewel wasp, Ampulex compressa, induces hypokinesia (a sleep-like state) and reduced fecundity in its host, the American cockroach Periplaneta americana, through direct envenomation of its central nervous system. A proteomic screening of the venom identified over 250 protein components, with many not having been previously observed in arthropod venoms nor found to play a role in modulating insect locomotion. Of the multitude of toxins identified, the presence and function of corazonin was investigated as it was able to bind to Rhodnius prolixus corazonin receptors. Corazonin is a highly conserved peptidergic neurohormone found within all insect orders except Coleoptera (beetles). Despite its conserved sequence, its function varies greatly between different insect genera. A recent study revealing the involvement of corazonin in the behavior switching of ponerine gamergates to infertile workers was associated with the involvement of Ampulex corazonin in suppressing fecundity. These findings led us to investigate the function of corazonin in the venom via injecting Ampulex corazonin into the brains of virgin females. Following treatment, changes in fecundity were monitored by measuring the relative gene expression of vitellogenin yolk proteins, average ovariole protein content, and average ovariole volume size in stung and corazonin-injected females. Changes in cockroach fecundity were compared to nontreated and saline-injected controls. Both the sting and corazonin injections resulted in significant decreases in vitellogenin gene expression as well as a reduction in average ovariole protein content and ovariole size in virgin female cockroaches. Thus, it is suggested that the role of corazonin in venom may be to suppress ovary development and preserve energy within females. Our findings reveal alternative mechanisms of how venoms can inhibit reproductive abilities as well as provide further insight on the effects of corazonin in the central nervous system of arthropods.
11 October 2019
Introducing SciProfiles, an Academic Social Network
MDPI is pleased to announce the release of SciProfiles, its social network platform for researchers and scholars.
The purpose of SciProfiles is aligned with MDPI’s broad mission to accelerate discovery and innovation by facilitating immediate access to research results and to serve scholars and communities by providing opportunities for academic networking.
SciProfiles also ambitions to serve as a sustainable, transparent and community-driven research evaluation system aligned with the DORA principles (https://sfdora.org/). Through their scientific profiles, academics can highlight their contribution to research communities, and measure their impact on their field, beyond publication numbers and impact factors. SciProfiles is currently a beta version and will enrich to give researchers the possibility to highlight all of their contributions to science and their scientific communities as authors, reviewers, editors, conference organizers, conference panelists, conference keynote speakers, or even as lecturers or student mentors at their University.
The classic components of popular community social networks, including follower/following, classical metrics, endorsements and recommendations (https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/1690), comments (https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/1397) are or will be very soon highlighted in SciProfiles as open science contributions.
To help increase the impact and visibility of articles and their authors to an appropriate audience, the platform offers a NewsFeed that includes recommendations of relevant content based on interests, publication history, saved searches or colleagues’ recommendations.
SciProfiles’ avatars are now being integrated on several MDPI platforms, meaning that you will directly access researchers’ profiles from any of the MDPI platforms:
MDPI's journal publishing website: www.mdpi.com
MDPI's conference hosting and management website: www.sciforum.net
MDPI's pre-print website : www.preprints.org
MDPI's knowledge sharing website : www.encyclopedia.pub
MDPI's books store: www.mdpi.com/books
MDPI's literature database : www.scilit.com
SciProfiles aims to serve scientific communities at large. It can be embedded into third-party websites and also welcomes integration of data from third-parties.
Dr. Shu-Kun Lin: https://sciprofiles.com/profile/2
Dr. Franck Vazquez: https://sciprofiles.com/profile/FranckVazquez
Dr. Martyn Rittman: https://sciprofiles.com/profile/martynrittman
2 October 2019
Winners of the 2019 MDPI Writing Prize
We are delighted to announce the winners of the 2019 MDPI Writing Prize. Entrants were asked to write on the theme "Judging research: How should research and researchers be evaluated and rewarded?" We received a large number of excellent essays from PhD students and postdocs, and the process of shortlisting and choosing winners was not an easy one. The winners demonstrated excellent writing skills alongside interesting and thought-provoking ideas.
As last year, we will begin the process of collating all entries into a book that will be available in open access format. Alongside promoting good writing skills, we see the prize as a way to promote the voices of early career researchers within broader debates and policy discussions.
Congratulations to all of the participants and especially the winners. The winners are:
1st Prize (500 CHF):
Albin Nilsson (National Centre for Nuclear Research, Warsaw, Poland)
[Read here]
2nd Prize (250 CHF):
Qi Zhang (Shandong University, Jinan, China)
[Read here]
Igor Ogashawara (Indiana University, Indianapolis, US)
[Read here]
3rd Prize (100 CHF):
Margaret Sivapragasam (Universiti Teknologi Petronas, Perak, Malaysia)
[Read here]
Arvind Sharma (The University of Queensland, Gatton, Australia)
[Read here]
Jose Flores-Guerrero (University Medical Center Groningen, Groningen, The Netherlands)
[Read here]
The MDPI Writing Prize is an annual award supported by MDPI Author Services, which provides services including language editing, reformatting, plagiarism checks, and image editing.
20 September 2019
MDPI Now Gives Scholars the Possibility to Endorse and Recommend Articles
MDPI is pleased to announce the release of a new functionality giving the possibility for researchers and scholars to endorse, and formally recommend articles to their colleagues.
MDPI was an early signatory of the San Francisco Declaration on Research Assessment (https://sfdora.org/read/) which calls for improvement in how quality and impact of scholarly research outputs are evaluated, especially in moving beyond journal-based citation metrics (journal Impact Factor, Scopus Citescore, etc.).
MDPI supports the establishment of article-level impact metrics, including citations, views, downloads, and Altmetric scores. These measures serve as an impact indicator for research articles on a case–by-case basis, assessing paper on its own merit. However, these metrics are also subjective and can give a biased picture of the article impact: they do not directly reflect the quality or the intrinsic scientific value of the article.
In our view, community engagement with publications based on community-driven metrics can help to overcome this limitation. We have therefore launched an option for scholars to endorse articles, indicating their own assessment of its content and making a recommendation to their community. This follows our implementation of the open source Hypothesis commenting tool, which has been available for all articles published by MDPI for over a year (https://www.mdpi.com/about/announcements/1397). Both endorsement and commenting are available for all previously published and forthcoming MDPI articles.
In addition to potentially serving as a sustainable solution to article assessment, endorsements will help scientific communities to identify the most relevant articles, independently of the journal in which it was published.
The code for the endorsing functionality, which relies on DOIs and ORCIDs, will be made available on GitHub with an open source license.
Dr. Shu-Kun Lin, President and Founder
Dr. Franck Vazquez, Chief Scientific Officer
Dr. Martyn Rittman, Publishing Director
12 September 2019
ETOX19 Best Paper Awards Sponsored by Toxins
Congratulations to the winners of the Best Poster Award and Best Short Talk Award at the 19th European Workshops on Bacterial Protein Toxins (ETOX19), Davos, Switzerland, 2019, sponsored by Toxins.
The editorial team of Toxins would like to congratulate Charles Ericson—the winner of the Best Poster Award at the 19th European Workshops on Bacterial Protein Toxins (ETOX19).
The title and abstract of Charles Ericson’s work are presented below:
Title: Bacterial Phage Tail-like Structure Harbors Two Effectors with Varying Functions
Author: Charles Ericson
Affiliation: ETH Zürich, Institute of Molecular Biology & Biophysics, 8093 Zürich, Schweiz
Abstract: Many bacteria interact with target organisms using syringe-like structures called contractile injection systems (CIS). CIS structurally resemble headless bacteriophages and share evolutionarily related proteins such as in the tail tube, sheath, and baseplate complex. Recent evidence shows that CIS are specialized in puncturing membranes, and often deliver effectors to target cells. In many cases, CIS mediate trans-kingdom interactions between bacteria and eukaryotes, however, the effectors delivered to these target cells and their mode of action are often uncharacterized. It had been previously shown that an array of extracellular CIS produced by the marine bacteria Pseudoalteromonas luteoviolacea, deemed MACs (metamorphosis associated contractile structures), were able to induce the metamorphosis of the marine tubeworm Hydroides elegans. By cryo-electron tomography imaging and functional assays, we further investigated this interaction between the tubeworms and MACs, and were able to identify an effector protein, termed Mif1, that was found to be sufficient for triggering the metamorphosis. We then established that MACs are able to interact and kill two separate eukaryotic cell lines, fall armyworm Sf9 ovarian cells and J774A.1 murine macrophages. A secondary effector termed Pne1 was found to be responsible for this cell line killing ability. Interestingly, Pne1 was found to not play a role in the metamorphosis of the H. elegans larvae.
We established ex vivo and in vivo models that have identified two separate MAC effectors that interact with different eukaryotic systems. Our insights help to shed light on MACs that appear to have multiple eukaryotic targets. These results also help to define new mechanisms of CIS-mediated bacteria–eukaryote interactions and are a first step toward understanding the roles these structures may be playing in mediating their surrounding environments.
The editorial team of Toxins would like to congratulate Shihono Teruya—the winner of the Best Short Talk Award at the 19th European Workshops on Bacterial Protein Toxins (ETOX19).
The title and abstract of Shihono Teruya’s work are presented below:
Title: Identification of Bordetella Dermonecrotic Toxin Receptor
Author: Shihono Teruya
Affiliation: Department of Molecular Bacteriology, Research Institute for Microbial Diseases, Osaka 565-0871, Japan
Abstract:
Dermonecrotic toxin (DNT), a virulence factor produced by the pathogenic bacteria belonging to the genus Bordetella, is known to exhibit toxin effects by activating Rho small GTPase of target cells. Our research group reported that the toxin was the causative agent for turbinate atrophy in pigs infected with B. bronchiseptica; however, its role in whooping cough—human infection with B. pertussis—is still unknown. In order to address this issue, we attempted to determine DNT-sensitive organs/tissues in host animals through identification of the DNT receptor. As the toxin affects only limited types of animal cells, its receptor is considered to be expressed by a specific tissue with a specific cell function. First, in order to facilitate high-throughput screening for the receptor, we generated a DNT–diphtheria toxin fragment A (DTA) fusion protein that caused cell death on DNT-sensitive cells, but not insensitive cells. Utilizing the combination of DNT–DTA and the CRISPR/Cas9 system, we performed a genome-wide screening for DNT–DTA-resistant cells with loss of function of a gene after introduction of a sgRNA library, and identified Gene X that encodes a transmembrane protein X as a DNT receptor candidate. The cells whose Gene X was specifically knocked out were highly resistant to DNT, and ectopic expression of Gene X restored DNT sensitivity. Furthermore, immunoprecipitation assay and competitive antagonist assays revealed a molecular interaction between X and DNT. These results suggest that X is a receptor for DNT. Since X is highly expressed in neuronal tissues, we consider that DNT may have function as a neurotrophic toxin.
11 September 2019
Create an Entry in Encyclopedia to Get a 100 CHF Voucher in Publishing in MDPI Journals
Encyclopedia is a free online reference created and curated by active scholars. It aims to highlight the latest research results as well as provide a comprehensive record of scientific development. If you have any suggestions or questions, please feel free to contact us via office@encyclopedia.pub.
6 September 2019
Meet us at the 11th Conference of The World Mycotoxin Forum® and the XVth IUPAC International Symposium on Mycotoxins in Belfast, Northern Ireland, 14-16 October 2019
6 August 2019
Preprints Reaches 10,000 Posted Articles Milestone
We are pleased to announce that Preprints has passed the milestone of 10,000 posted preprints. We are delighted to have reached this after just over three years of operation. Our congratulations and thanks go to our authors and advisory board who have supported growth of the platform and been crucial to its operation.
You can find further details at https://www.preprints.org/announcement/show/37.
