dr hab. inż. Rafał Piątek | Gdańsk University of Technology

This research paper addresses the hypothesis that powdered milk may contain amyloid fibrils. Amyloids are fibrillar aggregates of proteins. Up to this time, research on the presence of amyloids in food products are scarce. To check the hypothesis we performed thioflavin T fluorescence assay, X-ray powder diffraction, atomic force microscopy and fluorescence microscopy imaging. Our preliminary results show that commercially available...

Low-molecular synthetic fluorophores are convenient tools in bioimaging applications. Several derivatives of Safirinium dyes as well as their reactive N-hydroxysuccinimide (NHS) esters bearing diverse substituents were synthesized and evaluated experimentally in terms of their lipophilicity by means of reverse-phase and immobilized artificial membrane high-performance liquid chromatography. Subsequently, the selected compounds...

Protein fibrillation leads to formation of amyloids—linear aggregates that are hallmarks of many serious diseases, including Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases. In this work, we investigate the fibrillation of a short peptide (K-peptide) from the amyloidogenic core of hen egg white lysozyme in the presence of dimethyl sulfoxide or urea. During the studies, a variety of spectroscopic methods were used: fluorescence spectroscopy...

The constantly growing number of people suffering from bacterial, viral, or fungal infections, parasitic diseases, and cancers prompts the search for innovative methods of disease prevention and treatment, especially based on vaccines and targeted therapy. An additional problem is the global threat to humanity resulting from the increasing resistance of bacteria to commonly used antibiotics. Conventional vaccines based on bacteria...

Zakażenia dróg moczowych (ZUM) stanowią jedne z najczęściej występujących infekcji bakteryjnych, dotykających każdego roku miliony osób na świecie. Problematyka tych zakażeń wynika z ich przewlekłości i nawrotów, pomimo stosowania terapii antybiotykowej oraz ciągle wzrastającej lekooporności uropatogenów je wywołujących. Dominującym czynnikiem etiologicznym ZUM są uropatogenne szczepy E. coli (UPECs), wykazujące zdolność do adhezji,...