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Presents upcoming research papers on biochemistry to be published in "European Journal of Biochemistry." Discussion of the molecular cloning and sequencing of a cDNA encoding the acyl carrier protein; Exploration of the primary structure of human thyroglobulin; Examination of the reversible activation of hydrogenase from Escherichia coli.

Presents a list of forthcoming papers to be published in 1980 issues of the "European Journal of Biochemistry." Subjects; Authors.

Lists forthcoming papers to be featured in the "European Journal of Biochemistry."

Presents a list of papers scheduled to be published in the "European Journal of Biochemistry," as of August 15, 1992. Topics; Authors.

Lists the forthcoming papers to be published in the "European Journal of Biochemistry."

Lists research papers scheduled for publication in the "European Journal of Biochemistry," in 1989. Topics; Authors; Data presented.

Lists the forthcoming papers to be published in the "European Journal of Biochemistry."

Presents a list of forthcoming papers scheduled to be pubilshed in the "European Journal of Biochemistry," in 1988. Subjects; Authorship.

Presents a list of forthcoming papers scheduled for publication in the "European Journal of Biochemistry," in 1988. Topics; Authors; Studies and data to be presented.

Lists the forthcoming papers to be published in the "European Journal of Biochemistry."

This journal article provides information about the upcoming 96th National Congress of the Italian Society for Experimental Biology, which will take place in L'Aquila, Italy from April 25-28, 2024. The article includes a table of contents for the journal issue, featuring various topics such as anthropology, aging, environment and health, aquatic environments, biology of reproduction and infertility, regenerative medicine, micro- and nanovesicles, neuroscience, nutrition, oncology, cell stress, and miscellaneous subjects. Additionally, the article includes summaries of three research papers: one on the relationship between comparative anthropology and urban biodiversity in forensic practice, another on the use of infrared spectroscopy in analyzing the preservation state of archaeological remains, and a third on dental morphology and its impact on periodontal disease in primates. The article also discusses two studies on the potential benefits of using probiotic Streptococcus thermophilus and Artemisia absinthium extract as skincare and mouthwash ingredients, respectively. These studies provide insights into the potential applications of probiotics and herbal extracts in improving skin health and oral hygiene. [Extracted from the article]

The authors reflect on the important changes to the board and content of the "Journal of Physiology" in 2011. He says that several new initiatives were announced throughout the year including the journal's new look in April 2011 and the publication of a series of dedicated neuroscience issues in September 2011. He also discusses the evolving content of the journal and the symposium issues published throughout the year.

Lists titles of research papers to be published in the "European Journal of Biochemistry."

Presents a list of forthcoming papers on biochemistry which appeared in the January 1983 issue of the "European Journal of Biochemistry."

Terahertz irradiation and sensing is being applied for the first lime to a wide range of fields outside the traditional niches of space science, molecular line spectroscopy, and plasma diagnostics. This paper surveys some of the terahertz measurements and applications of interest in the biological and medical sciences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The deoxyoctanucleotide (5′-3′)d(A-A-G-G-A-G-G-T), which is complementary to the 3′ end of 16-S RNA, inhibits the formation of the complex between the 30-S subunit and MS2 RNA described in the preceding paper. If the complex is preformed, the octanucleotide cannot prevent entry of the complex into the ribosome cycle upon supplementation with the components for protein synthesis. The subunit · MS2-RNA complex is unable to bind the octanucleotide. It is concluded that in the subunit · phage-RNA initiation precursor the 16-S terminus is base-paired with a complementary MS2 RNA sequence. Edeine, aurintricarboxylic acid and antibodies against ribosomal protein S1 prevent the association of phage RNA with 30-S subunits. These compounds do not, however, inhibit the binding of (5′-3′)d(A-A-G-G-A-G-G-T) to 30-S subunits. It is concluded that the formation of the complex between MS2 RNA and 30-S subunits does not depend solely on the Shine and Dalgarno base-pairing reaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nowadays, brain signals are employed in various scientific and practical fields such as Medical Science, Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, and Brain Computer Interfaces. Hence, the need for robust signal analysis methods with adequate accuracy and generalizability is inevitable. The brain signal analysis is faced with complex challenges including small sample size, high dimensionality and noisy signals. Moreover, because of the non-stationarity of brain signals and the impacts of mental states on brain function, the brain signals are associated with an inherent uncertainty. In this paper, an evidence-based combining classifiers method is proposed for brain signal analysis. This method exploits the power of combining classifiers for solving complex problems and the ability of evidence theory to model as well as to reduce the existing uncertainty. The proposed method models the uncertainty in the labels of training samples in each feature space by assigning soft and crisp labels to them. Then, some classifiers are employed to approximate the belief function corresponding to each feature space. By combining the evidence raised from each classifier through the evidence theory, more confident decisions about testing samples can be made. The obtained results by the proposed method compared to some other evidence-based and fixed rule combining methods on artificial and real datasets exhibit the ability of the proposed method in dealing with complex and uncertain classification problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to make a contribution to the discussion on what clinical work consists of in biomedicine. It draws on the comparison between two clinical practices: (1) cancer genetics of breast/ovarian and colon cancers; and (2) psychiatric genetics of autism and its related syndromes. We argue that the clinic does not reflect genetic reductionism, nor does it entail a straightforward return to the previous clinical tradition. We show that the clinic is affected by three changes in the practices that we studied. The first change concerns clinical settings: clinical work is now performed by 'bioclinical collectives', gathering researchers and clinicians from various disciplines and activities, and conjointly searching biology and pathology. The second change concerns the content of clinical work that we propose to call 'clinic of mutations'. This clinic involves the intense work of collecting and comparing multiple and heterogeneous data to document the biological nature and the clinical relevance of mutations, whose status is ambiguous and whose effects are uncertain. The third change concerns the dynamics of clinical work, which is now overlapping with research. As a consequence, the elaboration of a judgment and a medical decision is no longer a matter of simply making a diagnosis or prognosis. Rather it consists in accounting for nosographic domains and descriptive and interpretive models of diseases, into which mutations may plausibly play a role. We conclude with a discussion of the form of objectivity underlying clinical work in biomedicine. Our contention is that in the current post-genomic era, thinking of genetic markers as objective proofs of a disease or a risk of disease is definitely inappropriate. Rather, the clinic has to constantly produce the meaning and relevance of mutations and biomedical entities that tend to proliferate and regularly invade the clinical settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In these two companion papers, we provide an overview and a brief history of the multiple roots, current developments and recent advances of integrative systems biology and identify multiscale integration as its grand challenge. Then we introduce the fundamental principles and the successive steps that have been followed in the construction of the scale relativity theory, which aims at describing the effects of a non-differentiable and fractal (i.e., explicitly scale dependent) geometry of space–time. The first paper of this series was devoted, in this new framework, to the construction from first principles of scale laws of increasing complexity, and to the discussion of some tentative applications of these laws to biological systems. In this second review and perspective paper, we describe the effects induced by the internal fractal structures of trajectories on motion in standard space. Their main consequence is the transformation of classical dynamics into a generalized, quantum-like self-organized dynamics. A Schrödinger-type equation is derived as an integral of the geodesic equation in a fractal space. We then indicate how gauge fields can be constructed from a geometric re-interpretation of gauge transformations as scale transformations in fractal space–time. Finally, we introduce a new tentative development of the theory, in which quantum laws would hold also in scale space, introducing complexergy as a measure of organizational complexity. Initial possible applications of this extended framework to the processes of morphogenesis and the emergence of prokaryotic and eukaryotic cellular structures are discussed. Having founded elements of the evolutionary, developmental, biochemical and cellular theories on the first principles of scale relativity theory, we introduce proposals for the construction of an integrative theory of life and for the design and implementation of novel macroscopic quantum-type experiments and devices, and discuss their potential applications for the analysis, engineering and management of physical and biological systems and properties, and the consequences for the organization of transdisciplinary research and the scientific curriculum in the context of the SYSTEMOSCOPE Consortium research and development agenda. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper describes the design and micro-assembly process of a low-profile 3-D microelectrode array for mapping the functional organization of targeted areas of the central nervous system and for possible application in neural prostheses. The array consists of multiple planar complimentary metal-oxide-semiconductor stimulating probes and 3-D assembly components. Parylene-encapsulated gold beams supported by etch-stopped silicon braces allow the backends of the probes to be folded over to reduce the height of the array above the cortical surface. A process permitting parylene to be used at wafer level with bulk-silicon wet release has been reported. Spacers are used to fix the microassembled probes in position and are equipped with interlocking structures to facilitate the assembly process and increase yield. Four-probe 256-site 3-D arrays operate from ±5 V with an average per-channel power dissipation of 97 µW at full range stimulation with pulse widths of 100 µs at 500-Hz frequency. Thirty-two sites can be stimulated simultaneously with maximum currents of ±127 µA and a current resolution of ±1 µA. The microassembly techniques allow a variety of 3-D microstructures to be created from planar components. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper we describe the development of a computationally efficient computer-aided detection (CAD) algorithm based on the evaluation of the surface morphology that is employed for the detection of colonic polyps in computed tomography (CT) colonography. Initial polyp candidate voxels were detected using the surface normal intersection values. These candidate voxels were clustered using the normal direction, convexity test, region growing and Gaussian distribution. The local colonic surface was classified as polyp or fold using a feature normalized nearest neighborhood classifier. The main merit of this paper is the methodology applied to select the robust features derived from the colon surface that have a high discriminative power for polyp/fold classification. The devised polyp detection scheme entails a low computational overhead (typically takes 2.20min per dataset) and shows 100% sensitivity for phantom polyps greater than 5mm. It also shows 100% sensitivity for real polyps larger than 10mm and 91.67% sensitivity for polyps between 5 to 10mm with an average of 4.5 false positives per dataset. The experimental data indicates that the proposed CAD polyp detection scheme outperforms other techniques that identify the polyps using features that sample the colon surface curvature especially when applied to low-dose datasets. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Adult bovine aortic endothelial (ABAE) cells, exposed to serum-free medium, specifically bind 125I-labeled human high-density lipoprotein (125I-HDL). Addition of human lipoprotein-deficient serum (LPDS) reduces the specific binding of 125I-HDL in a concentration-dependent manner, such that LPDS at a concentration of 6 mg protein/ml almost completely inhibits the specific binding of 125I-HDL. ABAE cultures exposed to 125I-labeled LPDS (125I-LPDS) specifically bind two peptides, which appear as minor iodinated components in 125I-LPDS. The binding of these two components is abolished in the presence of excess amounts of unlabeled LPDS or HDL. Preincubation of ABAE cells with 25-hydroxycholesterol (25-HC) results in an increase in the binding of the two 125I-LPDS components, similar to the increase observed in 125I-HDL binding in the presence of 25-HC. These two LPDS components comigrate on sodium dodecyl sulfate/polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) with apolipoproteins A-I and A-IV of molecular masses 28 kDa and 43 kDa respectively. Furthermore, these two proteins were transfered from the SDS gel to nitrocellulose paper and interacted specifically with anti-(A-I) and anti-(A-IV) sera respectively. When ABAE cultures, pretreated with 25-HC in the presence of LPDS, are subjected to cell-surface iodination, the A-IV appears as one of the major proteins on the cell surface accessible to iodination. The interaction of A-IV with the cell surface of 25-HC-treated cells is not specific to ABAE cells and appears also in human skin fibroblasts. Analysis of the relative amounts of various apolipoproteins in the 125I-HDL bound to ABAE cells demonstrates a decrease in the relative amount of iodinated A-II concomitant with increase in the relative amounts of the other iodinated apolipoproteins, when compared to the composition of the native 125I-HDL. These changes are similar whether the binding is done in the presence or absence of LPDS. It indicates that the decrease in 125I-HDL binding in the presence of LPDS is not due to displacement of the iodinated apolipoproteins A-I and A-IV in the 125I-HDL by unlabeled A-I and A-IV present in LPDS. The results indicate that free apolipoproteins A-I and A-IV, present in LPDS, can displace HDL on the cell surface of ABAE cells. Thus, free A-I and A-IV, present in plasma, control the binding of HDL to endothelial cells and may regulate the process of cholesterol removal from the cells performed by HDL. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Modem biology is a highly visual science. Some bioscience imagery jumped out of the research arena and now is part of the collective visual memory. A case study on research papers published in Science and Nature shows that also in peer reviewed scientific communication, the visual component is very important. We can argue that visuals are seen as a privileged resource by the authors as they use specific strategies to density, compact and gather information in order to counteract the limit of figures imposed by editorial politics. In the digital age, new visual representations with recovered aesthetic features arise. The future will bring even more visuality. Simulation and the possibility to interact with computational models in real time, as well as interaction with virtual organisms developed by synthetic biology, makes us think that they will not be only images of life, but also images that are alive. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Draft genome sequences of Acidthiobacillus thiooxidans and A. caldus have been annotated and compared to the previously annotated genome of A. ferrooxidans. This has allowed the prediction of metabolic and regulatory models for each species and has provided a unique opportunity to undertake comparative genomic studies of this group of related bioleaching bacteria. In this paper, the presence or absence of predicted genes for eleven metabolic processes, electron transfer pathways and other phenotypic characteristics are reported for the three acidithiobacilli: CO2 fixation, the TCA cycle, sulfur oxidation, sulfur reduction, iron oxidation, iron assimilation, quorum sensing via the acyl homoserine lactone mechanism, hydrogen oxidation, flagella formation, Che signaling (chemotaxis) and nitrogen fixation. Predicted transcriptional and metabolic interplay between pathways pinpoints possible coordinated responses to environmental signals such as energy source, oxygen and nutrient limitations. The predicted pathway for nitrogen fixation in A. ferrooxidans will be described as an example of such an integrated response. Several responses appear to be especially characteristic of autotrophic microorganisms and may have direct implications for metabolic processes of critical relevance to the understanding of how these microorganisms survive and proliferate in extreme environments, including industrial bioleaching operations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Chlamydophila pneumoniae is known to be associated with atherosclerosis. Recent studies have reported that components of Chlamydophila pneumoniae (chlamydophilal antigens) induce foam cell formation in macrophages. However, the mechanism of foam cell formation induced by chlamydophilal antigens has yet to be elucidated. In this paper, we first found that mitogen-activated protein kinases including extracellular signal-regulated kinase, p38 and c-Jun NH2 terminal kinase are phosphorylated after stimulation by chlamydophilal antigens. We then showed that chlamydophilal antigens induce foam cell formation mainly via c-Jun NH2 terminal kinase. Finally, we demonstrated that foam cell formation and phosphorylation of mitogen-activated protein kinases induced by chlamydophilal antigens are mainly recognized through Toll-like receptor 2. These results collectively indicated that chlamydophilal antigens induce foam cell formation mainly via Toll-like receptor 2 and c-Jun NH2 terminal kinase. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Summary: A review of the recent literature on treatment modalities of adult thoracic empyema was conducted in order to expose the controversies and verify where consensus exists. Critical reading filtered through clinical experience was the method followed. The roles of surgical drainage, lavage techniques, debridement via VATS, decortication, thoracoplasty and open window thoracostomy were considered using the Oxford Center of Evidence Based Medicine criteria. The roles of the different therapeutical modalities were interpreted in the light of the triphasic nature of empyema thoracis. The randomised controlled trials came up with conflicting results. With two exceptions all of the papers reviewed provide level (2b) or below evidences. The lack of a single ideal treatment modality or policy reflects the complexity of the diagnosis and staging of this heterogeneous disease. Basic elements of intervention – drainage, different evacuation techniques, decortication, thoracoplasty and open window thoracostomy – are well-established technical modalities; however, neither a universally acceptable primary modality nor the gold standard of their sequence is available. Drainage remains to be the initial treatment modality in Phase I disease. Debridement via VATS is a safe, reliable and efficient method in the fibrinopurulent phase. Organised pleural callus requires formal decortication. Open window thoracostomy is a simple and safe procedure for high-risk patients and results in quick detoxication. Thoracoplasty kept its final role in pleural space management. Acute postoperative bronchial stump insufficiency requires immediate surgery. Evacuation of toxic material is mandatory. No single-stage procedure offers a solution. An optimised agressivity treatment modality should be tailored to the condition of the patient and to the potential of the persisting cavity. Decision-making involves a triad consisting of the aetiology of empyema (i.e. primary vs secondary), general condition of the patient and stage of disease, while considering the triphasic nature of development of thoracic empyema. The current attitudes show that the present concepts are based mainly on expert opinion. Flexibility and patience on behalf of the surgeon and nursing staff, the patient and the hospital management, as well as a good understanding of the complexity of this condition are the cornerstones of the treatment. No exclusive sequence of procedures leading to a uniformly predictable successful outcome is available. Individualised approaches can be recommended based on institutional practice and local protocols. Thoracic empyema in general seems to remain resilient to fit completely into the categories of evidence-based medical approach. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Background: The impact of pneumonectomy as an independent factor on long-term survival after lung resection for centrally or locally advanced non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) remains controversial. The aim of this paper is to study the impact of pneumonectomy, and the influence of side of surgery, on long-term survival in patients with pathologic stage I and II NSCLC. Methods: A retrospective review of a prospective multi-institutional database of patients operated on for lung cancer was undertaken. In all, 1,475 patients with pathologic stage I or II NSCLC were studied (421 underwent pneumonectomy; 1,054 had a lobectomy/bilobectomy). Survival and impact of side of surgery for pneumonectomy and lesser resection groups were analyzed and compared using the Kaplan-Meier method and the Cox proportional hazards model. Results: Median survival was worse after pneumonectomy than after less extensive resections for patients overall (33 versus 57 months) and for those with stage I NSCLC (38 versus 70 months); however, median survival was better after pneumonectomy for stage II left tumors (55 versus 19 months). Pneumonectomy was an independent adverse determinant of survival for both stage I right tumors (p < 0.001) and stage I left tumors (p < 0.001), but was associated with improved survival for stage II left tumors (p = 0.009). Conclusions: Pneumonectomy was found to be an independent determinant of survival in patients with stage I and II NSCLC, but results differed for right- and left-sided tumors. Further studies of survival comparing pneumonectomy with lesser resections should differentiate between right and left procedures. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Positron emission tomography (PET) imaging is rapidly expanding its role in clinical practice for cancer management. The high sensitivity of PET for functional abnormalities associated with cancer can be confounded by the minimal anatomical information it provides for cancer localization. Computed tomography (CT) provides detailed anatomical information but is less sensitive to pathologies than PET. Thus, combining (i.e., registering) PET and CT images would enable both accurate and sensitive cancer localization with respect to detailed patient anatomy. An additional application area of registration is to align CT–CT scans from serial studies on a patient on a PET/CT scanner to facilitate accurate assessment of therapeutic response from the co-aligned PET images. To facilitate image fusion, we are developing a deformable registration software system using mutual information and a B-spline model of the deformation. When applying deformable registration to whole body images, one of the obstacles is that the arms are present in PET images but not in CT images or are in different positions in serial CT images. This feature mismatch requires a preprocessing step to remove the arms where present and thus adds a manual step in an otherwise automatic algorithm. In this paper, we present a simple yet effective method for automatic arm removal. We demonstrate the efficiency and robustness of this algorithm on both clinical PET and CT images. By streamlining the entire registration process, we expect that the fusion technology will soon find its way into clinics, greatly benefiting cancer diagnosis, staging, therapy planning and treatment monitoring. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Retinal fundus photographs are employed as standard diagnostic tools in ophthalmology. Serial photographs of the flow of fluorescein and indocyanine green (ICG) dye are used to determine the areas of the retinal lesions. For objective measurements of features, the registration of the images is a necessity. In this paper, we employ optimization techniques for registration with the help of 2-parameter translational motion model of retinal angiograms, based on non-linear pre-processing (Wiener filtering and morphological gradient) and computation of the similarity criteria for the alignment of the two gradient images for any given rigid transformation. The optimization methods are effectively employed to minimize the similarity criterion. The presence of noise, the variations in the background and the temporal variation of the fluorescence level pose serious problems in obtaining a robust registration of the retinal images. Moreover, local search strategies are not robust in the case of ICG angiograms, even if one uses a multiresolution approach. The present work makes a systematic comparison of different optimization techniques, namely the minimization method derived from the optical flow formulation, the Nelder-Mead local search and the HCIAC ant colony metaheuristic, each optimizing a similarity criterion for the gradient images. The impact of the resolution and median filtering of gradient image is studied and the robustness of the approaches is tested through experimental studies, performed on macular fluorescein and ICG angiographies. Our proposed optimization techniques have shown interesting results especially for high resolution difficult registration problems. Moreover, this approach seems promising for affine (6-parameter motion model) or elastical registrations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper presents a graph-based segmentation method using multiple criteria in successive stages to segment thoracoscopic images acquired during a diskectomy procedure commonly used for thoracoscopic anterior release and fusion for scoliosis treatment. Starting with image pre-processing, including Gaussian smoothing, brightness and contrast enhancement, and histogram thresholding, a standard graph-based method is applied to produce a coarse segmentation of thoracoscopic images. Next, regions are further merged in a multistage graph-based process based on features like grey-level similarity, region size and common edge length. Experimental results show that our approach achieves good spatial coherence, accurate edge location and appropriate segmentation of the regions of interest from a sequence of thoracoscopic images. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

ORAL PRESENTATION ABSTRACTS Lamb1Dendra2 - a new mouse model to study basement membrane dynamics in vivo J. Morgner SP * sp ; K. Hahn SP * sp ; C. L. Iglesias SP ‡ sp ; L. Kroese SP † sp ; C. Pritchard SP † sp ; P. Peters SP ‡ sp ; I. Huijbers SP † sp ; J. van Rheenen SP * sp I SP * sp Department of Molecular Pathology, Oncode Institute, Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; SP † sp Mouse Clinic for Cancer and Aging, The Netherlands Cancer Institute, Amsterdam, The Netherlands; SP ‡ sp The Maastricht Multimodal Molecular Imaging Institute, Maastricht University, Maastricht, The Netherlands i B Introduction: b The basement membrane (BM) maintains tissue architecture by separating epithelia and blood vessels from the surrounding tissue. POSTER ABSTRACTS Production of soluble basement membrane proteins in the cytoplasm of E. coli A. A. Sohail; M. Gaikwad; L. W. Ruddock I University of Oulu, Finland i B Introduction: b Basement membranes (BM) are thin layers of extracellular matrix deposition which surrounds cells of epithelial, muscle, adipose and the endothelium lining. From target identification to disease-modifying therapies for a basement membrane disease A. Nyström I Department of Dermatology, Medical Faculty, Medical Center - University of Freiburg, Hauptstrasse 7, D-79104, Germany i In skin, collagen VII enables firm attachment of the epidermal basement membrane to the superficial papillary dermal extracellular matrix. Report by The 2020 BSMB Autumn meeting was planned as an in-person get-together of matrix biologists with a focus on the important role of basement membranes in health and disease. [Extracted from the article]

The International Association for Intelligent Biology and Medicine (IAIBM) is a nonprofit organization that promotes intelligent biology and medical science. It hosts an annual International Conference on Intelligent Biology and Medicine (ICIBM), which was initially established in 2012. Due to the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the ICIBM 2020 was held for the first time as a virtual online conference on August 9 to 10. The virtual conference had ~ 300 registered participants and featured 41 online real-time presentations. ICIBM 2020 received a total of 75 manuscript submissions, and 12 were selected to be published in this special issue of BMC Bioinformatics. These 12 manuscripts cover a wide range of bioinformatics topics including network analysis, imaging analysis, machine learning, gene expression analysis, and sequence analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hormetic, biphasic dose response, is highly generalizable, being independent of biological model, level of biological organization, endpoint, inducing agent, and mechanisms. It plays a significant role in mediating both constitutive and adaptable responses in essentially all cells and organisms. The present paper provides both a historical overview of the origin of the hormetic concept in the biological and biomedical sciences, and its potential role in ecology, evolution, and development. These integrative findings provide a broad scientific framework to better understand complex evolutionary-based selection strategies, affecting survival, lifespan, fecundity, learning/memory, tissue repair, reproduction and cooperation, and developmental processes, and offering resilience in the presence of numerous challenges. • Hormesis is a biphasic dose-response phenomenon. • We provide an historical overview of the origin of the concept of hormesis. • We summarize how hormesis mediates constitutive and adaptable responses in cells and organisms. • We discuss how hormesis is relevant to evolution and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents some subject related terms that appear in the papers presented in the June 1988 issue of the journal "Clinical & Experimental Immunology." Some of the terms in the list include: actinomycin, activation markers, activity antiidiotypic, AIDS, predictors of progression to, alcoholic cirrhosis, anaesthetic, angiotensin-converting enzyme, bacteria, bioassay, biotin avidin ELISA, blood transfusion, bone marrow, bronchoalveolar lavage, bronchopulmonary dysplasia, cartilage crossreactivity to.

Diabetes is more prevalent and its consequences more severe in African Americans than in Whites. Efforts to understand and eliminate the root causes of disparities in the prediabetic state offer the potential to reduce the tremendous “downstream” costs of diabetes for patients and society. The accompanying study by Schootman et al. (Am J Epidemiol 2007;166:379–387) presents provocative new data on the apparently significant role of an individuals own housing condition in the odds of subsequent diabetes development. Despite methodological limitations in measurement and adjustment for confounding, this paper offers new insights into potential mediators of diabetes development. Efforts to effectively address the problem of disparities in the prediabetic state will require greater interdisciplinary collaboration between unfamiliar disciplines and wider implementation of the randomized clinical trial design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Targeting the first-degree relatives of people with a particular complex disease can offer a powerful approach to building a risk-based cohort for prospective studies of etiologic factors. Such a cohort provides both a sizable increase in the rate of accrual of newly incident cases, enriching for risk factors that are known or even unknown, and a high level of motivation among participants. A nationwide study of breast cancer in the United States and Puerto Rico, the Sister Study, made up of women who are each the sister of a woman with breast cancer, exemplifies this approach. In this paper, the authors provide power calculations to aid in the design of such studies and quantify their benefits for detecting both genetic variants related to risk and interactive effects of genetic and environmental factors. While the risk-based cohort can have markedly increased prevalences of rare causative alleles, most of the power advantages for this design is due to the increased rate of accrual of newly incident cases rather than the increase in any one individual allele. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

B Abstract: b Plasticity of cancer invasion and metastasis depends on the ability of cancer cells to switch between collective and single cell dissemination, under the control of cadherin mediated cell-cell junctions and the organization of the extracellular matrix. Using spatially defined organotypic culture, intravital microscopy in breast cancer in mice and in silico modeling, we here identify cell jamming by 3D tissue boundaries as dominant physical mechanism which supports collective invasion irrespective of the composition and stability of cell-cell junctions. These data reveal that steric hinderance by 3D tissue can substitute for cadherin-dependent cell-cell cooperation and dictates cell jamming and unjamming transitions in complex environments. B Results: b We demonstrate the effect of size (10 nm - 100 nm), coating (+/- polymer) and concentration (up to 50 g/mL) of silver nanoparticles with respect to cytotoxicity (MTT), immunogenicity (ELISA; IL-6), cell motility (scratch assays) and cell proliferation (clonogenic) in human skin fibroblasts and keratinocytes cells in 2D. Upregulation of LaNt 31 in tumour cells did not influence invasion into collagen I, however it did influence the way in which MDA-231 cells invaded into matrigel; instead of the characteristic multi-cellular streaming of control cells, LaNt 31 overexpressing cells invaded as individuals. [Extracted from the article]

The article presents information on industrial scientist Karl H. Beyer. He is from Henderson, Kentucky, and was educated at Kentucky State College. He earned his in doctoral degree in Physiology from the University of Wisconsin. It is stated that many scientific and medical organizations recognized his superiority in the fields of pharmacology and physiology. Beyer has presented more than 150 papers to the scientific and medical literature and represents pharmaceutical research achievements that have led to many of the revolutionary new discoveries in recent times.

Bursting is a phenomenon found in a variety of physical and biological systems. For example, in neuroscience, bursting is believed to play a key role in the way information is transferred in the nervous system. In this work, we propose a model that, appropriately tuned, can display several types of bursting behaviors. The model contains two subsystems acting at different time scales. For the fast subsystem we use the planar unfolding of a high codimension singularity. In its bifurcation diagram, we locate paths that underlie the right sequence of bifurcations necessary for bursting. The slow subsystem steers the fast one back and forth along these paths leading to bursting behavior. The model is able to produce almost all the classes of bursting predicted for systems with a planar fast subsystem. Transitions between classes can be obtained through an ultra-slow modulation of the model's parameters. A detailed exploration of the parameter space allows predicting possible transitions. This provides a single framework to understand the coexistence of diverse bursting patterns in physical and biological systems or in models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Identifying the genetic basis of epilepsy in humans is difficult due to its complexity, thereby underlying the need for preclinical models with specific aspects of seizure susceptibility that are tractable to genetic analyses. In the repeated-flurothyl model, mice are given 8 flurothyl-induced seizures, once per day (the induction phase), followed by a 28-day rest period (incubation phase) and final flurothyl challenge. This paradigm allows for the tracking of multiple phenotypes including: initial generalized seizure threshold, decreases in generalized seizure threshold with repeated flurothyl exposures, and changes in the complexity of seizures over time. Given the responses we previously reported in C57BL/6J mice, we analyzed substrains of the C57BL lineage to determine if any of these phenotypes segregated in these substrains. We found that the generalized seizure thresholds of C57BL/10SNJ and C57BL/10J mice were similar to C57BL/6J mice, whereas C57BL/6NJ and C57BLKS/J mice showed lower generalized seizure thresholds. In addition, C57BL/6J mice had the largest decreases in generalized seizure thresholds over the induction phase, while the other substrains were less pronounced. Notably, we observed only clonic seizures during the induction phase in all substrains, but when rechallenged with flurothyl after a 28-day incubation phase, ∼80% of C57BL/6J and 25% of C57BL/10SNJ and C57BL/10J mice expressed more complex seizures with tonic manifestations with none of the C57BL/6NJ and C57BLKS/J mice having complex seizures with tonic manifestations. These data indicate that while closely related, the C57BL lineage has significant diversity in aspects of epilepsy that are genetically controlled. Such differences further highlight the importance of genetic background in assessing the effects of targeted deletions of genes in preclinical epilepsy models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Evidence regarding the mortality rate after administration of the pandemic influenza A (H1N1) 2009 vaccine on patients with underlying diseases is currently scarce. We conducted a case-control study in Japan to compare the mortality rates of patients with idiopathic interstitial pneumonia after the vaccines were administered and were not administered. Methods: Between October 2009 and March 2010, we collected clinical records in Japan and conducted a 1∶1 matched case-control study. Patients with idiopathic interstitial pneumonia who died during this period were considered case patients, and those who survived were considered control patients. We determined and compared the proportion of each group that received the pandemic influenza A (H1N1) 2009 vaccine and estimated the odds ratio. Finally, we conducted simulations that compensated for the shortcomings of the study associated with adjusted severity of idiopathic interstitial pneumonia. Results: The case and control groups each comprised of 75 patients with idiopathic interstitial pneumonia. The proportion of patients who received the pandemic influenza A (H1N1) 2009 vaccine was 30.7% and 38.7% for the case and control groups, respectively. During that winter, the crude conditional odds ratio of mortality was 0.63 (95% confidence interval, 0.25–1.47) and the adjusted conditional odds ratio was 1.18 (95% confidence interval, 0.33–4.49); neither was significant. The simulation study showed more accurate conditional odds ratios of 0.63–0.71. Conclusions: In our study, we detected no evidence that the influenza A (H1N1) 2009 vaccine increased the mortality rate of patients with idiopathic interstitial pneumonia. The results, however, are limited by the small sample size and low statistical power. A larger-scale study is required. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Multi-atlas segmentation propagation has evolved quickly in recent years, becoming a state-of-the-art methodology for automatic parcellation of structural images. However, few studies have applied these methods to preclinical research. In this study, we present a fully automatic framework for mouse brain MRI structural parcellation using multi-atlas segmentation propagation. The framework adopts the similarity and truth estimation for propagated segmentations (STEPS) algorithm, which utilises a locally normalised cross correlation similarity metric for atlas selection and an extended simultaneous truth and performance level estimation (STAPLE) framework for multi-label fusion. The segmentation accuracy of the multi-atlas framework was evaluated using publicly available mouse brain atlas databases with pre-segmented manually labelled anatomical structures as the gold standard, and optimised parameters were obtained for the STEPS algorithm in the label fusion to achieve the best segmentation accuracy. We showed that our multi-atlas framework resulted in significantly higher segmentation accuracy compared to single-atlas based segmentation, as well as to the original STAPLE framework. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mapping small reads to genome reference is an essential and more common approach to identify microRNAs (miRNAs) in an organism. Using closely related species genomes as proxy references can facilitate miRNA expression studies in non-model species that their genomes are not available. However, the level of error this introduces is mostly unknown, as this is the result of evolutionary distance between the proxy reference and the species of interest. To evaluate the accuracy of miRNA discovery pipelines in non-model organisms, small RNA library data from a mosquito, Aedes aegypti, were mapped to three well annotated insect genomes as proxy references using miRanalyzer with two strict and loose mapping criteria. In addition, another web-based miRNA discovery pipeline (DSAP) was used as a control for program performance. Using miRanalyzer, more than 80% reduction was observed in the number of mapped reads using strict criterion when proxy genome references were used; however, only 20% reduction was recorded for mapped reads to other species known mature miRNA datasets. Except a few changes in ranking, mapping criteria did not make any significant differences in the profile of the most abundant miRNAs in A. aegypti when its original or a proxy genome was used as reference. However, more variation was observed in miRNA ranking profile when DSAP was used as analysing tool. Overall, the results also suggested that using a proxy reference did not change the most abundant miRNAs’ differential expression profiles when infected or non-infected libraries were compared. However, usage of a proxy reference could provide about 67% of the original outcome from more extremely up- or down-regulated miRNA profiles. Although using closely related species genome incurred some losses in the number of miRNAs, the most abundant miRNAs along with their differential expression profile would be acceptable based on the sensitivity level of each project. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background Protein Structure Initiative:Biology (PSI:Biology) is the third phase of PSI where protein structures are determined in high-throughput to characterize their biological functions. The transition to the third phase entailed the formation of PSI:Biology Partnerships which are composed of structural genomics centers and biomedical science laboratories. We present a method to examine the impact of protein structures determined under the auspices of PSI:Biology by measuring their rates of annotations. The mean numbers of annotations per structure and per residue are examined. These are designed to provide measures of the amount of structure to function connections that can be leveraged from each structure. Results One result is that PSI:Biology structures are found to have a higher rate of annotations than structures determined during the first two phases of PSI. A second result is that the subset of PSI:Biology structures determined through PSI:Biology Partnerships have a higher rate of annotations than those determined exclusive of those partnerships. Both results hold when the annotation rates are examined either at the level of the entire protein or for annotations that are known to fall at specific residues within the portion of the protein that has a determined structure. Conclusions We conclude that PSI:Biology determines structures that are estimated to have a higher degree of biomedical interest than those determined during the first two phases of PSI based on a broad array of biomedical annotations. For the PSI:Biology Partnerships, we see that there is an associated added value that represents part of the progress toward the goals of PSI:Biology. We interpret the added value to mean that team-based structural biology projects that utilize the expertise and technologies of structural genomics centers together with biological laboratories in the community are conducted in a synergistic manner. We show that the annotation rates can be used in conjunction with established metrics, i.e. the numbers of structures and impact of publication records, to monitor the progress of PSI:Biology towards its goals of examining structure to function connections of high biomedical relevance. The metric provides an objective means to quantify the overall impact of PSI:Biology as it uses biomedical annotations from external sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]