In Cystic Fibrosis (CF), mutations of the CFTR gene result in defective Cl- secretion and Na+ hyperabsorption by epithelia which leads to airway lumen dehydration and mucus plugging and favours chronic bacterial colonization, persistent inflammation and progressive lung destruction. Beyond…

Directed evolution has become a well-established tool for improving proteins and biological systems. A critical aspect of directed evolution is the selection of a suitable host organism for achieving functional expression of the target gene. To date, most directed evolution…

Small world network concepts provide many new opportunities to investigate the complex three dimensional structures of protein molecules.  This mini-review explores the published literature on using small-world network approaches to study protein structure, with emphasis on the different combinations of…

Recently, a wide range of nanotechnologies has been approached for material modification by realizing the fact that the extracellular matrix (ECM) consists of nanoscale components and exhibits nanoscale architectures. Moreover, cell-cell and cell-ECM interactions actively occur on the nanoscale and…

This mini-review describes the evolution of different algorithms dedicated to the automated discovery of chemical fragments associated to (eco)toxicological endpoints. These structural alerts correspond to one of the most interesting approach of in silico toxicology due to their direct link…

This mini-review discusses the current state of experimental and computational microbial consortia engineering with a focus on cellular factories. A discussion of promising ecological theories central to community resource usage is presented to facilitate interpretation of consortial designs. Recent case…

Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) is a coenzyme for hydride transfer reactions and a substrate for sirtuins and other NAD+-consuming enzymes. The abundance of NAD +, NAD+ biosynthetic intermediates, and related nucleotides reflects the metabolic state of cells and tissues. High…

The influence of mitochondria in human health and disease is a rapidly expanding topic in the scientific literature due to their integral roles in cellular death and survival. Mitochondrial biology and alterations in function were first linked to cancer in…

A general strategy for the isolation of catalysts for given chemical reactions was designed. A first link between genes and their corresponding proteins was established by phage display: using Darwin’s principles on evolution based on selection and amplification, rare protein…

Data fusion is the name given to a range of methods for combining multiple sources of evidence.  This mini-review summarizes the use of one such class of methods for combining the rankings obtained when similarity searching is used for ligand-based…