Trlin HJF, Bennie RZ, Ogilvie OJ, Oh JK, Jin A, et al.
Journal of agricultural and food chemistry •
Cellular agriculture combines cell culture and tissue engineering techniques to produce animal-derived food products. While cell culture is routinely reported in the medical literature to affect protein expression in primary mammalian cells, the impact of these changes has yet to be established in the context of food production and allergenicity. To address this, primary bovine myoblasts were cultured for short-, medium-, and long-durations and then compared to native tissue. Proteomic and immunoblotting analyses identified cumulative changes at increasing passage numbers, with significant differences between cultured cells and native tissue. While allergens Bos d 6 and Bos d 13 were less abundant in cultured cells, an increase in immunoglobulin E interactions with Galα1-3Galβ1-4GlcNAc-R (α-Gal) in cultured cells indicates that α-Gal may be more abundant. Results demonstrate that the relative abundance of allergens in cultivated beef products will likely differ from that of traditional meat, highlighting a need for further investigation.
An efficient chemo-enzymatic synthesis of alpha Gal-conjugated peptide T20 as novel HIV-immuno-targeting agent is described. The synthesis involves chemo-enzymatic preparation of maleimide-functionalized alpha Gal epitope and its chemoselective ligation with the peptide T20. The title compound contains two functional domains: the trisaccharide alpha Gal epitope that binds to human natural anti-Gal antibodies and the 36-amino acid gp41 peptide (T20) that recognizes the gp41 N-terminal ectodomain of the HIV envelope. Biological assays demonstrated that the synthetic conjugate could readily bind to natural anti-Gal antibodies (both IgG and IgM type) in normal human serum and exhibited potent anti-HIV activity even in the absence of human antibodies and complement system. The experimental data suggest that the synthetic alpha Gal-T20 might be valuable for in vivo HIV-immuno-targeting via antibody-mediated cytotoxicity and/or antibody-dependent, complement-mediated lysis of HIV particles and HIV-infected cells, thus providing an additional dimension of HIV intervention.