Search

In situ hybridization (ISH) plays an important role in the field of molecular diagnostics, especially in an anatomical pathology laboratory. ISH is a technique that can detect the targeted DNA or RNA sequences in tissue sections from frozen or fixed materials with labeled DNA or RNA probes. Radioactive and non-radioactive probes are the two major probes that can be used to label the targeted nucleic acids.Areas covered:Two decades after Human Genome Project, ISH has not only simply been applied to identify the chromosomal location of a human gene but also been extensively applied to gene expressions studies and utilized for clinical diagnosis, especially for the determination of biomarkers for breast and ovarian cancers - human epidermal growth factor receptor 2. Duchenne muscular dystrophy, Cri-du-chat syndrome, Angelman syndrome, Prader-Willi syndrome, cystic fibrosis, and trisomy are diseases that can also be detected by ISH.In this review, the basic principles, historical development, advantages and disadvantages, enhancement in reporting molecules and probes, advancement in detection methods, in situ PCR, clinical applications and novel applications of ISH will be discussed.Expert opinion:With the advancement in ISH technologies and appropriate training, diagnosis can be improved in Anatomical Pathology.

To date, the transmission of Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19) is still uncontrollable with the fact that the numbers of confirmed and death cases are still increasing. Up to 1st October 2020, 33,842,281 confirmed cases and 1,010,634 confirmed deaths have been reported to the World Health Organization from 216 different countries, areas and territories. Despite the urgent demand for effective treatment strategies, there is still no specific antiviral treatment for COVID-19 and the treatment guidelines for COVID-19 vary between countries.In this article, we summarized the current knowledge on COVID-19 and the pandemic worldwide. Moreover, the epidemiology, pathogenesis, prevention and different treatment options will be discussed so that we shall prepare ourselves better to fight with severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).The situation of the COVID-19 pandemic is still unpredictable. There is no effective vaccine or specific anti-viral drug to treat serve COVID-19 patients. Combination therapies have shown promising clinical improvement. Repurposing FDA-approved drugs might be one of possible treatment options. Without specific treatment and vaccines for COVID-19, the most effective way to prevent from being infected is to generate an ecosystem with effective protection, precautions and preventive measures.

The current research aimed to investigate gender-related preferences of youths with different sexual orientations and examine the effects of gender role and sexual attraction. In Study 1, participa...

Empathy for pain in daily life is more complex than in lab settings and involved higher cognitive abilities. In order to investigate the role of executive function in preschoolers’ empathy ...

Creativity plays an important role in human society as well as in individual development, and creativity in the domain of science is a specific form. A body of research had demonstrated the role of...

Introduction: NanoString nCounter technology, a novel molecular assay, is gaining prevalent use in clinical settings as it can overcome some common constraints that are associated with the use of polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Compared to PCR, NanoString technology does not involve any amplification steps, which significantly minimizes the chance of contamination. NanoString measures the number of mRNA transcripts directly by 'molecular counting', as up to 800 colored probes can be run simultaneously in a single reaction. Areas covered: This manuscript reviews the principle of NanoString and covers the main applications of NanoString in companion diagnostics with a focus on cancer immunotherapy and disease prognosis estimation. This review has also taken a step in the direction of personalized medicine, with the application of NanoString on the realm of companion diagnostics. Expert opinion: NanoString is going to take a vital role in companion diagnostics and personalized medicine, owing to its simple and easy to use characteristics. Yet, the use of NanoString requires normalization of expression level, which is represented by the copy number of respective mRNA, with a reference gene. Furthermore, difficulty in probe design, which demands prior knowledge of known sequence, has also been a limitation of NanoString.

The emergence of anovel coronavirus identified in patients with unknown cause of acute respiratory disease in Wuhan, China at the end of 2019 has caused aglobal outbreak. The causative coronavirus was later named as severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) and the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2 was named as Coronavirus Disease-2019 (COVID-19). As of 10 August 2020, more than 19,718,030 confirmed cases and 728,013 deaths have been reported. COVID-19 is spread via respiratory droplets which are inhaled into the lungs.In this article, we summarized the knowledge about the causative pathogen of COVID-19 and various diagnostic methods in this pandemic for better understanding of the limitations and the nuances of virus testing for COVID-19.In this pandemic, rapid and accurate identification of COVID-19 patients are critical to break the chain of infection in the community. RT-PCR provides a rapid and reliable identification of SARS-CoV-2 infection. In the future, molecular diagnostics will still be the gold standard and next-generation sequencing can help us to understand more on the pathogenesis and detect novel mutations. It is believed that more sophisticated detection methods will be introduced to detect SARS-CoV-2 as earliest as possible.

Objective: The aim of this research was to examine how candidates’ spatial working memory (WM) and visual perspective taking (VPT) skills could predict their training success.Background: To make pi...

Based on experimental data collecting and probabilistic and statistical analysis, limit horizontal displacement and its’ probability distribution of rubber bearing of base-isolated structure are presented in this paper. Although some researches on the reliability of vibration-controlling structures have already been conducted in the past studies, the dynamical reliability of rubber bearing isolation structure is seldom involved. In this paper, a bearing limit horizontal displacement formula was obtained by the regression analysis of abundant experimental data of rubber bearing limit horizontal displacement. Through mathematical statistics analysis of the test data, parameters like the skewness and kurtosis of the limit shear strain and the ratio of the limit horizontal displacement and diameter of the bearing were obtained. It is concluded that the data of the limit shear strain of rubber bearings conforms to follow the normal probability distribution, and that of the ratio of the limit horizontal displac...

In 1998, the audit fee standard was abolished by the Fair Trade Commission of Taiwan. This study aims to investigate the effects of the cancellation of the audit fee standard on audit-market competition of public companies during 1994–2002. The results indicate that after the event, the auditor excess entry rate, auditor excess exit rate and audit-market-share mobility all increased, which is consistent with the prediction of enhanced audit-market competition.