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Papers by Neringa Kuliesiene

Biophotonics—Riga 2017, 2017

Photosensitization based antibacterial treatment is efficient against a broad range of pathogens ... more Photosensitization based antibacterial treatment is efficient against a broad range of pathogens but it utilizes suboptimal dosimetry with an explicit (and very broad range) determination of sensitizer concentration, light dose and fluence rates. In this study we verified the implicit dosimetry approach for pathogen photodynamic treatment, employing protoporphyrin IX (ppIX) photobleaching to assess the killing efficacy against Staphylococcus aureus and Candida albicans cells. The results show that there was an increased kill of S. aureus and C. albicans at higher degree of ppIX fluorescence decay. Therefore ppIX photobleaching can be incorporated into the PDI dose metric offering to predict the pathogen killing efficacy during photodynamic treatment.

The study aimed to test laser speckle contrast imaging for fast and non-invasive assessment of ul... more The study aimed to test laser speckle contrast imaging for fast and non-invasive assessment of ultrasound induced bactericidal effect on C. albicans biofilm. Low frequency sonication applied at 1.1 MPa peak negative pressure for 1 min reduced the number of viable C. albicans cells. The bactericidal effect was related to the spectral contrast decrease resulting from the standard deviation decrease within the speckle pattern as compared to the unchanged mean intensity. C. albicans biofilm recovered completely within 41 h after sonication. The recovery of biofilm was represented by increase of speckle contrast parameter. We foresee that speckle-based technique would be helpful for the efficacy assay of microbial biofilm inactivation.

Waste Management, 2021

Usually, Euro banknotes are made from cotton substrates and their waste is disposed of in landfil... more Usually, Euro banknotes are made from cotton substrates and their waste is disposed of in landfill or is incinerated. In order to valorize the end-of-life euro banknotes (ELEBs), the substrates were used in this research for cellulase production via submerged fungal fermentation (SFF), and the resultant fungal cellulase w s used in ELEBs hydrolysis process for extraction of glucose. The experiments were started by exposing the ELEBs to different types of pretreatments, including milling process, alkali (NaOH/urea solution), and acid leaching to remove any contamination (e.g. dyes) and to decrease the crystallinity of cellulose (the main element in cotton substrate) thus increasing the degradation rate during the fermentation process. The effect of pretreatments on the morphology and chemical composition of ELEBs was observed using Scanning Electron Microscope and Energy Dispersive Spectrometry. Afterwards, Trichoderma reesei-DSM76 was used for cellulase production from the treated ELEBs with high cellulase activity (12.97 FPU/g). The resultant cellulase was upscaled in a bioreactor and used in ELEBs hydrolysis. Finally, the results showed that the optimized pretreatment methods (milling followed by leaching process) significantly improved the cellulase activity and glucose recovery, which was estimated by 96%. According to the obtained results, the developed strategy has a great potential for conversion of ELEBs into a glucose product that could be used in biofuels and bioplastics applications.

Microorganisms, 2021

Anhydrobiosis is the state of life when cells are exposed to waterless conditions and gradually c... more Anhydrobiosis is the state of life when cells are exposed to waterless conditions and gradually cease their metabolism. In this study, we determined the sequence of events in Saccharomyces cerevisiae energy metabolism during processes of dehydration and rehydration. The intensities of respiration and acidification of the medium, the amounts of phenyldicarbaundecaborane (PCB−) bound to yeast membranes, and the capabilities of cells to accumulate K+ were assayed using an electrochemical monitoring system, and the intracellular content of ATP was measured using a bioluminescence assay. Mesophilic, semi-resistant to desiccation S. cerevisiae strain 14 and thermotolerant, very resistant to desiccation S. cerevisiae strain 77 cells were compared. After 22 h of drying, it was possible to restore the respiration activity of very resistant to desiccation strain 77 cells, especially when glucose was available. PCB− binding also indicated considerably higher metabolic activity of dehydrated S....

Chemical Biology & Drug Design, 2020

We synthesized a set of 13 new and earlier described styrylpyridinium compounds (N‐alkyl styrylpy... more We synthesized a set of 13 new and earlier described styrylpyridinium compounds (N‐alkyl styrylpyridinium salts with bromide or tosylate anions) in order to evaluate antifungal activity against C. albicans cells, to assay the possible synergism with fluconazole, and to estimate cytotoxicity to mammalian cells. All compounds were synthesized according to a well‐known two‐step procedure involving alkylation of γ‐picoline with appropriate alkyl bromide and further condensation with substituted benzaldehyde. Compounds with long N‐alkyl chains (C18H37–C20H41) had no antifungal activity against the cells of all tested C. albicans strains. Other styrylpyridinium compounds were able to inhibit yeast growth at the concentrations of 0.06–16 μg/ml. At fungicidal concentrations, the compound with the CN‐ group was least toxic to mammalian cells, showed the most effective synergism with fluconazole, and only slightly inhibited the respiration of C. albicans. The compound with the 4′‐diethylamino...

Background Xylose transport is one of the bottlenecks in the conversion of lignocellulosic biomas... more Background Xylose transport is one of the bottlenecks in the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass to ethanol. Xylose consumption by the wild-type strains of xylose-utilizing yeasts occurs once glucose is depleted resulting in a long fermentation process and overall slow and incomplete conversion of sugars liberated from lignocellulosic hydrolysates. Therefore, the engineering of endogenous transporters for the facilitation of glucose-xylose co-consumption is an important prerequisite for efficient ethanol production from lignocellulosic hydrolysates. Results In this study, several engineering approaches formerly used for the low-affinity glucose transporters in Saccharomyces cerevisiae , were successfully applied for earlier identified transporter Hxt1 in Ogataea polymorpha to improve xylose consumption (engineering involved asparagine substitution to alanine at position 358 and replacement of N-terminal lysine residues predicted to be the target of ubiquitination for arginine resi...

Additional file 2: Table S1. List of primers used in this study.

Additional file 1: Figure S1. Alignment of amino acid sequences of O. polymorpha Hxt1 and S. cere... more Additional file 1: Figure S1. Alignment of amino acid sequences of O. polymorpha Hxt1 and S. cerevisiae Hxt1, Hxt3, Hxt6, Hxt7 transporters. Figure S2. Sequence of O. polymorpha Hxt1 transporter. The lysine residues substituted for arginine are shaded grey. The position of the asparagine residue that was mutated to an alanine to obtain Hxt1-N358A mutant is underlined. Figure S3. Linear schemes of plasmids for overexpression of the modified versions of Hxt1, Gal2 and Hxt7 transporters.

Environmental and Climate Technologies, 2021

Photocatalytic treatment of contaminated aqueous solutions makes use of the specific interaction ... more Photocatalytic treatment of contaminated aqueous solutions makes use of the specific interaction between photocatalysts and ultra-violet or visible light irradiation. This method belongs to the wider class of Advanced Oxidation Processes that generates reactive oxygen species (peroxides, superoxide, hydroxyl radical, singlet oxygen, etc.) and uses them for the non-selective oxidation of various organic and inorganic compounds. In THE current study magnetron sputtering technique was used to deposit carbon-doped TiO2 films which are known to have significant photocatalytic activity in the visible light spectra and can be used for the neutralisation of contaminated solutions. Structural properties of the as-deposited films were analysed by XRD, XPS and AFM techniques, whereas their visible light photocatalytic activity was estimated by analysing Rhodamine B solution bleaching kinetics. When carbon-doped TiO2 photocatalysts were formed on borosilicate glass XRD analysis showed that they...

Environmental and Climate Technologies, 2021

A lot of human activities have negative impact on water quality and sometimes result in the biolo... more A lot of human activities have negative impact on water quality and sometimes result in the biological water contamination. Currently used chemical (chlorine, ozone, and etc.) and physical (UV) water disinfection methods have strong environmental disadvantages or suffers from limited efficiency. To overcome these problems, scientists suggest to use photocatalyst activated advanced oxidation processes. One of the most studied photocatalysts which attracts a lot of research interest is titanium dioxide. TiO2 application for the disinfection of water, air or surfaces is increasingly encouraged by researchers. However, to unlock its full potential it is highly desirable to make it suitable for the visible light activation. In the current study the effect of visible light assisted photocatalytic treatment to the outer membrane permeability of Salmonella enterica bacteria and how it changes under different titanium dioxide concentrations was analysed. The results from the treatment of rel...

Environmental and Climate Technologies, 2020

In current study UV light and visible light activated photocatalytic inactivation treatment was a... more In current study UV light and visible light activated photocatalytic inactivation treatment was applied to the less commonly studied subjects, namely bacteriophages PRD1, T4 and their mixture. By using UV light irradiation and high efficiency P25 TiO2 photocatalyst powders it was demonstrated that individually and in mixture PRD1 bacteriophage is particularly vulnerable to the photocatalytic inactivation and in just approximately 20 min its infectivity is reduced by 100 %. As for the T4 bacteriophage, it has been reported that under UV irradiation T4 triggers self-repair and replication mechanisms therefore under same photocatalytic inactivation conditions infectivity reduction reaches just 60 %. Surprisingly, by studying visible light photocatalytic treatment efficiency of PRD1 and T4 bacteriophage mixture we identified that T4 bacteriophage potentially triggers the same self-repair and replication mechanism as it does under UV light. Moreover, by using two different types of visib...

Environmental and Climate Technologies, 2020

Water contamination by various bacteria, viruses and other pathogens is a great threat to human h... more Water contamination by various bacteria, viruses and other pathogens is a great threat to human health. Amongst other Advanced Oxidation Processes TiO2 photocatalysis is considered as one of the most efficient treatment for the polluted wastewater disinfection. Usually, the wastewater produced by higher risk objects, such as hospitals, implicates diverse contaminants, but efficiency of most of the Advanced Oxidation Processes is tested by using only single pathogens and information on inactivation of bacteria mixtures is still limited. In this study, photocatalytical inactivation of three commonly found bacterial pathogens (gram-positive (Micrococcus luteus) and gram-negative (Salmonella enterica, Escherichia coli)) was investigated. Efficiency of traditional photocatalytic disinfection process using single bacterial pathogens was compared to the one observed for their mixtures. The impact of photocatalytical process parameters and treatment time on bacteria disinfection efficiency ...

Biophotonics—Riga 2017, 2017

Photosensitization based antibacterial treatment is efficient against a broad range of pathogens ... more Photosensitization based antibacterial treatment is efficient against a broad range of pathogens but it utilizes suboptimal dosimetry with an explicit (and very broad range) determination of sensitizer concentration, light dose and fluence rates. In this study we verified the implicit dosimetry approach for pathogen photodynamic treatment, employing protoporphyrin IX (ppIX) photobleaching to assess the killing efficacy against Staphylococcus aureus and Candida albicans cells. The results show that there was an increased kill of S. aureus and C. albicans at higher degree of ppIX fluorescence decay. Therefore ppIX photobleaching can be incorporated into the PDI dose metric offering to predict the pathogen killing efficacy during photodynamic treatment.

The study aimed to test laser speckle contrast imaging for fast and non-invasive assessment of ul... more The study aimed to test laser speckle contrast imaging for fast and non-invasive assessment of ultrasound induced bactericidal effect on C. albicans biofilm. Low frequency sonication applied at 1.1 MPa peak negative pressure for 1 min reduced the number of viable C. albicans cells. The bactericidal effect was related to the spectral contrast decrease resulting from the standard deviation decrease within the speckle pattern as compared to the unchanged mean intensity. C. albicans biofilm recovered completely within 41 h after sonication. The recovery of biofilm was represented by increase of speckle contrast parameter. We foresee that speckle-based technique would be helpful for the efficacy assay of microbial biofilm inactivation.

Waste Management, 2021

Usually, Euro banknotes are made from cotton substrates and their waste is disposed of in landfil... more Usually, Euro banknotes are made from cotton substrates and their waste is disposed of in landfill or is incinerated. In order to valorize the end-of-life euro banknotes (ELEBs), the substrates were used in this research for cellulase production via submerged fungal fermentation (SFF), and the resultant fungal cellulase w s used in ELEBs hydrolysis process for extraction of glucose. The experiments were started by exposing the ELEBs to different types of pretreatments, including milling process, alkali (NaOH/urea solution), and acid leaching to remove any contamination (e.g. dyes) and to decrease the crystallinity of cellulose (the main element in cotton substrate) thus increasing the degradation rate during the fermentation process. The effect of pretreatments on the morphology and chemical composition of ELEBs was observed using Scanning Electron Microscope and Energy Dispersive Spectrometry. Afterwards, Trichoderma reesei-DSM76 was used for cellulase production from the treated ELEBs with high cellulase activity (12.97 FPU/g). The resultant cellulase was upscaled in a bioreactor and used in ELEBs hydrolysis. Finally, the results showed that the optimized pretreatment methods (milling followed by leaching process) significantly improved the cellulase activity and glucose recovery, which was estimated by 96%. According to the obtained results, the developed strategy has a great potential for conversion of ELEBs into a glucose product that could be used in biofuels and bioplastics applications.

Microorganisms, 2021

Anhydrobiosis is the state of life when cells are exposed to waterless conditions and gradually c... more Anhydrobiosis is the state of life when cells are exposed to waterless conditions and gradually cease their metabolism. In this study, we determined the sequence of events in Saccharomyces cerevisiae energy metabolism during processes of dehydration and rehydration. The intensities of respiration and acidification of the medium, the amounts of phenyldicarbaundecaborane (PCB−) bound to yeast membranes, and the capabilities of cells to accumulate K+ were assayed using an electrochemical monitoring system, and the intracellular content of ATP was measured using a bioluminescence assay. Mesophilic, semi-resistant to desiccation S. cerevisiae strain 14 and thermotolerant, very resistant to desiccation S. cerevisiae strain 77 cells were compared. After 22 h of drying, it was possible to restore the respiration activity of very resistant to desiccation strain 77 cells, especially when glucose was available. PCB− binding also indicated considerably higher metabolic activity of dehydrated S....

Chemical Biology & Drug Design, 2020

We synthesized a set of 13 new and earlier described styrylpyridinium compounds (N‐alkyl styrylpy... more We synthesized a set of 13 new and earlier described styrylpyridinium compounds (N‐alkyl styrylpyridinium salts with bromide or tosylate anions) in order to evaluate antifungal activity against C. albicans cells, to assay the possible synergism with fluconazole, and to estimate cytotoxicity to mammalian cells. All compounds were synthesized according to a well‐known two‐step procedure involving alkylation of γ‐picoline with appropriate alkyl bromide and further condensation with substituted benzaldehyde. Compounds with long N‐alkyl chains (C18H37–C20H41) had no antifungal activity against the cells of all tested C. albicans strains. Other styrylpyridinium compounds were able to inhibit yeast growth at the concentrations of 0.06–16 μg/ml. At fungicidal concentrations, the compound with the CN‐ group was least toxic to mammalian cells, showed the most effective synergism with fluconazole, and only slightly inhibited the respiration of C. albicans. The compound with the 4′‐diethylamino...

Background Xylose transport is one of the bottlenecks in the conversion of lignocellulosic biomas... more Background Xylose transport is one of the bottlenecks in the conversion of lignocellulosic biomass to ethanol. Xylose consumption by the wild-type strains of xylose-utilizing yeasts occurs once glucose is depleted resulting in a long fermentation process and overall slow and incomplete conversion of sugars liberated from lignocellulosic hydrolysates. Therefore, the engineering of endogenous transporters for the facilitation of glucose-xylose co-consumption is an important prerequisite for efficient ethanol production from lignocellulosic hydrolysates. Results In this study, several engineering approaches formerly used for the low-affinity glucose transporters in Saccharomyces cerevisiae , were successfully applied for earlier identified transporter Hxt1 in Ogataea polymorpha to improve xylose consumption (engineering involved asparagine substitution to alanine at position 358 and replacement of N-terminal lysine residues predicted to be the target of ubiquitination for arginine resi...

Additional file 2: Table S1. List of primers used in this study.

Additional file 1: Figure S1. Alignment of amino acid sequences of O. polymorpha Hxt1 and S. cere... more Additional file 1: Figure S1. Alignment of amino acid sequences of O. polymorpha Hxt1 and S. cerevisiae Hxt1, Hxt3, Hxt6, Hxt7 transporters. Figure S2. Sequence of O. polymorpha Hxt1 transporter. The lysine residues substituted for arginine are shaded grey. The position of the asparagine residue that was mutated to an alanine to obtain Hxt1-N358A mutant is underlined. Figure S3. Linear schemes of plasmids for overexpression of the modified versions of Hxt1, Gal2 and Hxt7 transporters.

Environmental and Climate Technologies, 2021

Photocatalytic treatment of contaminated aqueous solutions makes use of the specific interaction ... more Photocatalytic treatment of contaminated aqueous solutions makes use of the specific interaction between photocatalysts and ultra-violet or visible light irradiation. This method belongs to the wider class of Advanced Oxidation Processes that generates reactive oxygen species (peroxides, superoxide, hydroxyl radical, singlet oxygen, etc.) and uses them for the non-selective oxidation of various organic and inorganic compounds. In THE current study magnetron sputtering technique was used to deposit carbon-doped TiO2 films which are known to have significant photocatalytic activity in the visible light spectra and can be used for the neutralisation of contaminated solutions. Structural properties of the as-deposited films were analysed by XRD, XPS and AFM techniques, whereas their visible light photocatalytic activity was estimated by analysing Rhodamine B solution bleaching kinetics. When carbon-doped TiO2 photocatalysts were formed on borosilicate glass XRD analysis showed that they...

Environmental and Climate Technologies, 2021

A lot of human activities have negative impact on water quality and sometimes result in the biolo... more A lot of human activities have negative impact on water quality and sometimes result in the biological water contamination. Currently used chemical (chlorine, ozone, and etc.) and physical (UV) water disinfection methods have strong environmental disadvantages or suffers from limited efficiency. To overcome these problems, scientists suggest to use photocatalyst activated advanced oxidation processes. One of the most studied photocatalysts which attracts a lot of research interest is titanium dioxide. TiO2 application for the disinfection of water, air or surfaces is increasingly encouraged by researchers. However, to unlock its full potential it is highly desirable to make it suitable for the visible light activation. In the current study the effect of visible light assisted photocatalytic treatment to the outer membrane permeability of Salmonella enterica bacteria and how it changes under different titanium dioxide concentrations was analysed. The results from the treatment of rel...

Environmental and Climate Technologies, 2020

In current study UV light and visible light activated photocatalytic inactivation treatment was a... more In current study UV light and visible light activated photocatalytic inactivation treatment was applied to the less commonly studied subjects, namely bacteriophages PRD1, T4 and their mixture. By using UV light irradiation and high efficiency P25 TiO2 photocatalyst powders it was demonstrated that individually and in mixture PRD1 bacteriophage is particularly vulnerable to the photocatalytic inactivation and in just approximately 20 min its infectivity is reduced by 100 %. As for the T4 bacteriophage, it has been reported that under UV irradiation T4 triggers self-repair and replication mechanisms therefore under same photocatalytic inactivation conditions infectivity reduction reaches just 60 %. Surprisingly, by studying visible light photocatalytic treatment efficiency of PRD1 and T4 bacteriophage mixture we identified that T4 bacteriophage potentially triggers the same self-repair and replication mechanism as it does under UV light. Moreover, by using two different types of visib...

Environmental and Climate Technologies, 2020

Water contamination by various bacteria, viruses and other pathogens is a great threat to human h... more Water contamination by various bacteria, viruses and other pathogens is a great threat to human health. Amongst other Advanced Oxidation Processes TiO2 photocatalysis is considered as one of the most efficient treatment for the polluted wastewater disinfection. Usually, the wastewater produced by higher risk objects, such as hospitals, implicates diverse contaminants, but efficiency of most of the Advanced Oxidation Processes is tested by using only single pathogens and information on inactivation of bacteria mixtures is still limited. In this study, photocatalytical inactivation of three commonly found bacterial pathogens (gram-positive (Micrococcus luteus) and gram-negative (Salmonella enterica, Escherichia coli)) was investigated. Efficiency of traditional photocatalytic disinfection process using single bacterial pathogens was compared to the one observed for their mixtures. The impact of photocatalytical process parameters and treatment time on bacteria disinfection efficiency ...