A serum-based molecular predictor identifies asymptomatic pregnant women at risk of spontaneous preterm delivery, which may provide utility in identifying women at risk at an early stage of pregnancy to allow for clinical intervention. This early detection would guide enhanced levels of care and accelerate development of clinical strategies to prevent preterm delivery.

Background Bacillus anthracis, Francisella tularensis, and Yersinia pestis are bacterial pathogens that can cause anthrax, lethal acute pneumonic disease, and bubonic plague, respectively, and are listed as NIAID Category A priority pathogens for possible use as biological weapons. However, the interactions between human proteins and proteins in these bacteria remain poorly characterized leading to an incomplete understanding of their pathogenesis and mechanisms of immune evasion.MethodologyIn this study, we used a high-throughput yeast two-hybrid assay to identify physical interactions between human proteins and proteins from each of these three pathogens. From more than 250,000 screens performed, we identified 3,073 human-B. anthracis, 1,383 human-F. tularensis, and 4,059 human-Y. pestis protein-protein interactions including interactions involving 304 B. anthracis, 52 F. tularensis, and 330 Y. pestis proteins that are uncharacterized. Computational analysis revealed that pathogen proteins preferentially interact with human proteins that are hubs and bottlenecks in the human PPI network. In addition, we computed modules of human-pathogen PPIs that are conserved amongst the three networks. Functionally, such conserved modules reveal commonalities between how the different pathogens interact with crucial host pathways involved in inflammation and immunity.SignificanceThese data constitute the first extensive protein interaction networks constructed for bacterial pathogens and their human hosts. This study provides novel insights into host-pathogen interactions.

Identification of the binary interactions between viral and host proteins has become a valuable tool for investigating viral tropism and pathogenesis. Here, we present the first systematic protein interaction screening of the unique variola virus proteome by using yeast 2-hybrid screening against a variety of human cDNA libraries. Several protein-protein interactions were identified, including an interaction between variola G1R, an ankryin/F-box containing protein, and human nuclear factor kappa-B1 (NF-B1)/p105. This represents the first direct interaction between a pathogen-encoded protein and NF-B1/p105. Orthologs of G1R are present in a variety of pathogenic orthopoxviruses, but not in vaccinia virus, and expression of any one of these viral proteins blocks NF-B signaling in human cells. Thus, proteomic screening of variola virus has the potential to uncover modulators of the human innate antiviral responses.ankyrin repeats ͉ Skp1 ͉ yeast 2-hybrid

SUMMARY Development of effective prevention and treatment strategies for pre-eclampsia is limited by the lack of accurate methods for identification of at-risk pregnancies. We performed small RNA sequencing (RNA-seq) of maternal serum extracellular RNAs (exRNAs) to discover and verify microRNAs (miRNAs) differentially expressed in patients who later developed pre-eclampsia. Sera collected from 73 pre-eclampsia cases and 139 controls between 17 and 28 weeks gestational age (GA), divided into separate discovery and verification cohorts, are analyzed by small RNA-seq. Discovery and verification of univariate and bivariate miRNA biomarkers reveal that bivariate biomarkers verify at a markedly higher rate than univariate biomarkers. The majority of verified biomarkers contain miR-155–5p, which has been reported to mediate the pre-eclampsia-associated repression of endothelial nitric oxide synthase (eNOS) by tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α). Deconvolution analysis reveals that several verified miRNA biomarkers come from the placenta and are likely carried by placenta-specific extracellular vesicles.

Vaccinia virus, a large double-stranded DNA virus, is the prototype of the Orthopoxvirus genus, which includes several pathogenic poxviruses of humans, such as monkeypox virus and variola virus. Here, we report a comprehensive yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) screening for the protein−protein interactions between vaccinia and human proteins. A total of 109 novel vaccinia−human protein interactions were detected among 33 viral proteins. To validate subsets of those interactions, we constructed an ORFeome library of vaccinia virus strain WR using the Gateway plasmid cloning system. By co-expressing selected vaccinia and host proteins in a variety of expression systems, we found that at least 17 of the Y2H hits identified between vaccinia and human proteins can be verified by independent methods using GST pull-down assays, representing a 63% validation rate for the Y2H hits examined (17/27). Because the cloned ORFs are conveniently transferable from the entry vectors to various destination expression vectors, the vaccinia ORFeome library will be a useful resource for future high-throughput functional proteomic experiments.