Prakash Masurekar's research while affiliated with Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey and other places

... Nocathiacins and thiazomycins are recent entries in the thiazolyl peptide class with potent activity. 10,13 They are endowed with structural features that are reasonably amenable to chemical modifications; therefore, we undertook semi-synthetic modification of the most abundant of the natural products, nocathiacin I (1) and thiazomycin (4) (Figure 1), leading to the synthesis of a series of highly potent, broad-spectrum Gram-positive agents with improved water solubility and in vivo activity. 6,7 Seven structurally diverse analogs (2-3, 5-9, Figure 1), with modifications on the pyridyl hydroxyl group and/or replacement of the dehydroalanine amide with polar substituents, were selected for this study. ...

... In the last two decades, three cyclic hexapeptides with antifungal properties, caspofungin, micafungin, and anidulafungin, have received approval for clinical use ( Figure 2). All three antifungal agents demonstrated clinical efficacy in treating invasive candidiasis and various types of systemic fungal infections [19]. These three agents target the 1,3-β-glucan synthase involved in the cell wall glucan synthesis. ...

... The fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster has been used as an in vivo model to examine the mechanisms of action underlying 1-octen-3-olinduced deleterious effects in humans Inamdar et al. 2013;Inamdar, Masurekar, andBennett 2010, 2014;Yin et al. 2015). This model of invertebrate presents many characteristics that enable its use for toxicological studies (Alaraby et al. 2016;Demir 2021;Demir et al. 2022). ...

... 11−16 HRMS allows for the prediction of the molecular formula, based on the isotopic distribution pattern of the parent ions and their daughter ions. 17,18 This method also suggests a possible daughter ion chemical formula, which helps with the diagnosis of fragmentation loss in parent to daughter ions. ...

... Optically-active α-amino acids bearing heterocyclic side chains are of great utility in various fields, not only individually, but especially incorporated in more complex structures, such as peptides and proteins, for the creation of new peptide-based pharmaceutical drug candidates [1,2]. The thiazole core frequently appears in many natural peptides, such as the Bleomycin family (anti-cancer glycopeptide antibiotics) [3], Nocathiacins [4], Aeruginazoles [5], and Thiazomycins [6] (a new class of cyclic thiopeptide antibiotics). The biological potential of this heterocyclic ring system is actually exploited for the design of new thiazole-bearing biologically active compounds, many of them being introduced in therapy. ...

... Active strains discovered by high-throughput screening of MTP fermentations usually can be scaled up in shake flasks or static flask cultures in order to isolate and characterize active components (6,21,34). The 96-well or 24-well MTP format permits creative and high-throughput experimentation with fungi that normally is resource limited and cumbersome with conventional shake flask systems (1,6,7,8). ...

... In this study, the effect of frass extract obtained from BSFL reared on the Gainesville diet on the mycelial growth of seven important plant pathogens was evaluated in vitro using the dual culture overlay assay, a well-established technique to test microorganisms for their ability to produce antimicrobial compounds/antibiotics [34]. Dual culture overlay assays clearly showed that the frass extract contained microorganism-producing compound(s) that strongly inhibit(s) the mycelial growth of fungal plant pathogens of the phyla Ascomycota (A. solani, B. cinerea, F. oxysporum, S. sclerotiorum) and Basidiomycota (R. solani), as well as plant pathogens of the class oomycetes (P. ...

... The cyclic lipopeptides pneumocandin A and pneumocandin B produced by the fungus Glarea lozoyensis contain (10S,12R)-10,12-dimethyltetradecanoic acid (331). [492][493][494]. The liquid culture broth of Pseudomonas sp. ...

... While mold spores and particles can be toxic via ingestion or inhalation and can irritate any exposed part of the body, inhaling low molecular weight mold VOCs (mVOCs) may constitute an important initiating exposure that has been largely overlooked [10]. Supporting this possibility is an experiment in which developing fruit flies exposed to mVOCs at levels comparable to those reported in moldy buildings [65] exhibited Parkinson's disease-like symptoms [55,56]. Importantly, when wet, any organic materials such as carpets, fabrics, paper, plywood, compressed wood, and gypsum board can grow mold within 48-72 h. ...

... Thiopeptides are members of the ribosomally synthesized and post-translationally modified peptide family of natural products, which are widely distributed in the genera of Streptomyces, Nocardia, Micromonospora, Micrococcus, Actinoplanes, Amycolatopsis, Planobispora, and so on [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8]. Thiopeptides are well known for their potent antibacterial activities against clinically-problematic Grampositive pathogens such as methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE), penicillin-resistant Streptococcus pneumonia (PRSP), and Clostridium difficile [1,9,10]. ...