Quadram Institute Bioscience

BENGALURU, India and LONDON, June 13, 2024 /PRNewswire/ -- SKAN Research Trust, promoted by Indian entrepreneur Mr. Ashok Soota, and UK-based Quadram Institute Bioscience today announced that they will apply the cutting-edge TraDIS-Xpress platform to study the action of traditional medical compounds on bacteria, thereby aiding in the reformulation and development of novel antibacterial regimens. Continue Reading SKAN Research Trust and Quadram Institute Bioscience to Develop Novel Microbial Therapies TraDIS-Xpress is Quadram's proprietary genetic sequencing platform that is in the forefront of efforts to uncover new antimicrobial agents and develop better prebiotics and probiotics for health promotion. The joint study titled the Application of TraDIS-Xpress in Microbiology for Healthy Living will be led by Quadram Principal Investigator, Prof. Mark Webber and SKAN's Deputy Director, Dr Yogesh Shouche. The project is part of a larger Comprehensive Partnership Agreement between the two organizations that have ongoing international collaborations focused on gut health and developing gut microbial therapies to alleviate ageing and neurological diseases like Parkinsons. An important aspect of the international collaboration is sharing the latest technologies in the study of the gut microbiome to augment Indian research capabilities. As part of this study, SKAN researchers will be trained on the TraDIS Xpress platform at the Quadram Institute in Norwich Research Park. This will facilitate the generation of data from large Indian cohorts that will aid in the development of India-specific therapies. Such data generation is also expected to hasten the TraDIS-Xpress platform's development and amplify its applications' scope. Prof. Ian Charles, Director of Quadram Institute Bioscience, said, "I'm excited to see the cutting-edge genomic technology and expertise we have here in Quadram supporting our valued partners at the SKAN Research Trust to benefit the health of the people of India, and also further our fundamental understanding of the links between microbes and human wellbeing." Mr. Ashok Soota, Chairman & Managing Trustee of SKAN, said, "The research on novel microbial therapies raises our collaboration with QIB to a whole new level. We are grateful to Ian Charles for including SKAN as a partner in this transformational initiative." Prof. Mark Webber, Group Leader, Quadram Institute Bioscience, said, "This project highlights the potential of the TraDIS Xpress platform for identifying and understanding the genetic basis behind bacteria's enormous capacity to adapt for survival. I'm looking forward to helping our colleagues in India deploy it to support their research." Dr. Yogesh Shouche, Deputy Director, SKAN, said, "The three-year project will also study the mechanisms of drug resistance for key pathogens relevant to India and the action of selected food additives used in India on the growth of selected gut microbes." About SKAN Research Trust SKAN is a Bengaluru-based not-for-profit medical research trust that leverages transformational technologies to develop new therapies for ageing and neurological ailments, cardiovascular diseases, diabetes remission and lifestyle related disorders. SKAN applies its expertise in gut microbiome, genomics, stem cells, molecular biology, biomarkers, immunotherapies, nutrition, and alternate therapies to uncover kinder and gentler treatment protocols for ailments. Bioinformatics at SKAN vigorously pursues cutting edge, artificial intelligence, machine learning and other advanced technologies to predict, pre-empt, diagnose, treat, and facilitate remission of medical disorders. The Mission statement of SKAN is "Transform the future of medicine. Impacting millions of lives". Media contact: [email protected] Careers: [email protected] About Quadram Institute Bioscience Quadram Institute Bioscience is a UK national science capability, and its mission is to deliver healthier lives through innovation in gut health, microbiology and food and its vision is focused on understanding how food and microbes interact to promote health and prevent disease. Interconnected research themes at the Quadram Institute on the Norwich Research Park, UK, deliver a pipeline of research in plants, microbiology, food, and health: microbes and food safety; the gut microbiome; and food innovation. About TraDIS-Xpress TraDIS-Xpress (transposon-directed insertion-site sequencing) is a high-resolution whole-genome assay that identifies which genes are likely to affect bacterial fitness in any given condition. This uses extremely dense, highly saturated mutant libraries to identify fitness differences at base pair resolution. TraDIS-Xpress improves upon conventional transposon mutagenesis approaches through the use of outward-facing promoters. This allows the investigation of how gene expression, as well as gene deletion, affects bacterial fitness under a given growth condition. Additionally, it allows the investigation of essential genes that cannot be inactivated and therefore cannot be assayed by other approaches. Photo: Logo: SOURCE SKAN Research Trust

Changing the structure of a dietary fiber commonly found in a range of food products has been found to promote healthy gut bacteria and reduce gas formation, a finding that could help people with intolerances to fiber and irritable bowel conditions. Changing the structure of a dietary fibre commonly found in a range of food products has been found to promote healthy gut bacteria and reduce gas formation, a finding that could help people with intolerances to fibre and irritable bowel conditions. A team of scientists from the University of Nottingham, Quadram Institute Biosciences and the University of East Anglia examined psyllium, a type of natural dietary fibre that is used in a range of products including cereals and yoghurts. They showed that the physical state of the fibre has a major impact on gas production which often is linked to bowel discomfort. The findings have been published in Food Hydrocolloids. The team performed in vitro fermentation experiments seeded with human stool. They conducted analysis of fermentation products and evaluated the impact of different structures on the broad categories of microorganisms. Dr Gleb Yakubov, Associate Professor in Food Physics at the University of Nottingham was one of the lead researchers on the study, he explains: "Although fibre is an important part of any diet, for many people it can cause bowel discomfort and for people with IBS or IBD fibre can be a trigger. This is because some foods cause bacterial interactions in the gut that create gas that can lead to pain or discomfort. Our study shows that the physical state of the fibre has a major impact on gas production by creating beneficial compounds that promote the creation of the good bacteria in the gut." Psyllium fibre comes from the seeds of Plantago ovata plants, known by many common names such as blond plantain. These seeds produce a jelly-like material called mucilage, which comes in a variety of shapes and forms and these feature long-chain sugars, called polysaccharides. It is these polysaccharides that lead to the production of beneficial short-chain fatty acids that positively contribute to gut health and systemic metabolism. This study shows that different physical states of fibre impact the way dietary fibre breaks down and that microbes 'colonise fibre' during fermentation. Professor Yakubov continues: "These findings show that there are new opportunities for designing targeted structures using psyllium, either through seed processing or selective breeding, to achieve new fibre materials with clear clinical benefit above that of unrefined psyllium powders aiding in the treatment of gastrointestinal discomfort." Research is already underway at the University if Nottingham with the School of Medicine to use this new knowledge to create and test psyllium-mimicking materials as medical nutrition which could provide a source of fibre for people with some bowel conditions and trials will be starting in the Spring.

Under the partnership, the companies will manufacture and supply Tecan’s 96-well filter plates, for use with RevoluGen’s automated Fire Monkey High Molecular Weight (HMW)-DNA extraction kits RevoluGen’s automated Fire Monkey HMW-DNA extraction using Tecan’s Resolvex A200 robot. (Credit: Revolugen Ltd) UK-based genomics company RevoluGen has teamed up with Swiss laboratory instruments and solutions provider Tecan, for the latter’s 96-well filter plates. Under the partnership, the companies will manufacture and supply Tecan’s 96-well filter plates, for use with RevoluGen’s automated Fire Monkey High Molecular Weight (HMW)-DNA extraction kits. The partnership will facilitate automated DNA extraction using the Tecan’s 96-well plates, incorporating the unique Fire Monkey extraction technology. The 96-well filter plates are optimised for use on Tecan’s Resolvex A200 positive pressure automation robot. The approach will speed up the preparatory workflow required for high throughput of both short and long read DNA sequencing applications, at reduced costs, said RevoluGen. Revolugen CEO Pieter Haitsma Mulier said: “The 96-well plate supply agreement announced today is a culmination of two years’ successful development of one of the first automated extraction of library ready, HMW-DNA in a laboratory standard format multi-well plate. Tecan SP division marketing head Shang Tsai said: “We are pleased to be Revolugen’s partner of choice for the supply of the 96-well plates optimised to work on our instruments for automated DNA extraction. “Rapid growth of sequencing worldwide is driving the need for automation to handle the volume of samples needed for applications such as population genomics, epidemiological mutation screening and antibiotic microbial resistance gene monitoring research.” Both Tecan and RevoluGen have initially partnered in 2020, to jointly work on validating an automated DNA extraction workflow. The current partnership enables the commercial launch of an automated version of the Fire Monkey HMW-DNA extraction kits, which is expected to be commercialised early 2023. RevoluGen has developed the patent-protected technology based on a spin-column based protocol to extract HMW-DNA using a high g-force. Fire Monkey provides DNA fragments with an average length of 100kb, which are considered not too short nor not too long, in a relatively tightly defined range of lengths. The technology also allows for size tuning to produce DNA fragments in very tight bands of smaller lengths below its standard 100kb average DNA extract length. In addition, Fire Monkey technology combines sample preparation for both short-read and long-read DNA sequencing. The Tecan A200 has already been installed at the Quadram Institute Bioscience (QIB) in the UK, to run the Fire Monkey automated HMW DNA extraction workflow. RevoluGen CSO and Fire Monkey technology inventor Georgios Patsos said: “With traditional manual protocols only a handful of biological samples can be processed in parallel. “This is a significant issue for the multiplexed sequencing runs routinely used in areas such as antimicrobial resistance surveillance. “Our validated Fire Monkey process for automated HMW-DNA extraction will further lower the overall cost of multiplexed sequencing and accelerate the uptake of sequencing in many high-volume dependent applications.”