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This book collates the latest trends and technological advancements in bioremediation, especially for its monitoring and assessment.Divided into 18 chapters, the book summarizes basic concepts of waste management and bioremediation, describes advancements of the existing technologies, and highlights the role of modern instrumentation and analytical methods, for environmental clean-up and sustainability.The chapters cover topics such as the role of microbial fuel cells in waste management, microbial biosensors for real-time monitoring of bioremediation processes, genetically modified microorganisms for bioremediation, application of immobilized enzyme reactors, spectroscopic techniques, and in-silico approaches in bioremediation monitoring and assessment. The book will be advantageous not only to researchers and scholars interested in bioremediation and sustainability but also to professionals and policymakers.

This monograph contains six chapters, each of which provides details about recent advancements in the field of medicine and biology. Chapter One describes the discovery of AZQ, a drug specifically designed to shut off genes that cause brain cancer. Chapter Two analyzes the structure, stability, adaptation to extreme environments and the catalytic mechanism of α-helical membrane proteins. Chapter Three provides an up-to-date overview of artificial intelligence (AI) in assisted reproductive treatment (ART) clinics and explores how AI learns and develops a dataset to provide clinical guidance. Chapter Four consists of a study focused on the etiopathogenesis of primary open angle glaucoma using laboratory mice. Chapter Five presents and comments on the current evidence regarding diagnostics in patients with metastatic breast cancer based on circulating tumor cells (CTCs). Lastly, Chapter Six reviews the pathogenetic and clinical features of inner ear involvement in congenital cytomegalovirus (cCMV), the most frequent non-genetic cause of permanent sensorineural hearing loss in childhood.

Genome Plasticity in Health and Disease provides a fully up-to-date overview on genome plasticity and its role in human physiology and disease. Following an introduction to the field, a diverse range of chapters cover genomic and epigenomic analysis and the use of model organisms and genomic databases in studies. Specific molecular and biochemical mechanisms of genome plasticity are examined, including somatic variants, De Novo variants, founder variations, isolated populations dynamics, copy-number variations, mobile elements, DNA methylation, histone modifications, transcription factors, non-coding RNAs, telomere dynamics and RNA editing. Later chapters explore disease relevance for cancer, as well as cardiovascular, neuropsychiatric, inflammatory, and endocrine disease, and associated pathways for drug discovery. - Examines the role of genome plasticity across a range of disease types, from cardiovascular disease, to cancer and neuropsychiatric disorders - Adopts an interdisciplinary approach, with expert contributions across the spectrum of basic science and disease relevance to drug discovery

Comprehensive Biotechnology, Third Edition, Six Volume Set unifies, in a single source, a huge amount of information in this growing field. The book covers scientific fundamentals, along with engineering considerations and applications in industry, agriculture, medicine, the environment and socio-economics, including the related government regulatory overviews. This new edition builds on the solid basis provided by previous editions, incorporating all recent advances in the field since the second edition was published in 2011. - Offers researchers a one-stop shop for information on the subject of biotechnology - Provides in-depth treatment of relevant topics from recognized authorities, including the contributions of a Nobel laureate - Presents the perspective of researchers in different fields, such as biochemistry, agriculture, engineering, biomedicine and environmental science

This book provides up-to-date multidisciplinary information regarding microbial physiological groups in terms of their role in the Antarctic ecology. How do microorganisms shape the Antarctic environment? The book presents a thorough overview of the most important physiological microbial groups or microbial systems that shape the Antarctic environment. Each microbial model is described in terms of their physiology and metabolism, and their role in the Antarctic environmental sustainability. The individual chapters prepare readers for understanding the relevance of the microbial models from both an historical perspective, and considering the latest developments. This book will appeal to researchers and teachers interested in the Antarctic science, but also to students who want to understand the role of microbes in the ecology of extreme environments.

Resistance to therapies, both targeted and systemic, and metastases to distant organs are the underlying causes of breast cancer-associated mortality. The second edition of Breast Cancer Metastasis and Drug Resistance brings together some of the leading experts to comprehensively understand breast cancer: the factors that make it lethal, and current research and clinical progress. This volume covers the following core topics: basic understanding of breast cancer (statistics, epidemiology, racial disparity and heterogeneity), metastasis and drug resistance (bone metastasis, trastuzumab resistance, tamoxifen resistance and novel therapeutic targets, including non-coding RNAs, inflammatory cytokines, cancer stem cells, ubiquitin ligases, tumor microenvironment and signaling pathways such as TRAIL, JAK-STAT and mTOR) and recent developments in the field (epigenetic regulation, microRNAs-mediated regulation, novel therapies and the clinically relevant 3D models). Expertsalso discuss the advances in laboratory research along with their translational and clinical implications with an overarching goal to improve the diagnosis and prognosis, particularly that of breast cancer patients with advanced disease.

What's the Deal with Biosimilars?Biosimilars are gaining momentum as new protein therapeutic candidates that can help fill a vital need in the healthcare industry. The biological drugs are produced by recombinant DNA technology that allows for large-scale production and an overall reduction time in costs and development. Part of a two-volume set th

This volume presents the proceedings of the CLAIB 2014, held in Paraná, Entre Ríos, Argentina 29, 30 & 31 October 2014. The proceedings, presented by the Regional Council of Biomedical Engineering for Latin America (CORAL) offer research findings, experiences and activities between institutions and universities to develop Bioengineering, Biomedical Engineering and related sciences.The conferences of the American Congress of Biomedical Engineering are sponsored by the International Federation for Medical and Biological Engineering (IFMBE), Society for Engineering in Biology and Medicine (EMBS) and the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO), among other organizations and international agencies and bringing together scientists, academics and biomedical engineers in Latin America and other continents in an environment conducive to exchange and professional growth.The Topics include:- Bioinformatics and Computational Biology- Bioinstrumentation; Sensors, Micro and Nano Technologies- Biomaterials, Tissue Engineering and Artificial Organs- Biomechanics, Robotics and Motion Analysis- Biomedical Images and Image Processing- Biomedical Signal Processing- Clinical Engineering and Electromedicine- Computer and Medical Informatics- Health and home care, telemedicine- Modeling and Simulation- Radiobiology, Radiation and Medical Physics- Rehabilitation Engineering and Prosthetics- Technology, Education and Innovation

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 11th European Conference on Evolutionary Computation, Machine Learning and Data Mining in Bioinformatics, EvoBIO 2013, held in Vienna, Austria, in April 2013, colocated with the Evo• 2013 events EuroGP, EvoCOP, EvoMUSART and EvoApplications. The 10 revised full papers presented together with 9 poster papers were carefully reviewed and selected from numerous submissions. The papers cover a wide range of topics in the field of biological data analysis and computational biology. They address important problems in biology, from the molecular and genomic dimension to the individual and population level, often drawing inspiration from biological systems in oder to produce solutions to biological problems.

Growth in the pharmaceutical market has slowed down – almost to a standstill. One reason is that governments and other payers are cutting costs in a faltering world economy. But a more fundamental problem is the failure of major companies to discover, develop and market new drugs. Major drugs losing patent protection or being withdrawn from the market are simply not being replaced by new therapies – the pharmaceutical market model is no longer functioning effectively and most pharmaceutical companies are failing to produce the innovation needed for success. This multi-authored new book looks at a vital strategy which can bring innovation to a market in need of new ideas and new products: Systems Biology (SB). Modeling is a significant task of systems biology. SB aims to develop and use efficient algorithms, data structures, visualization and communication tools to orchestrate the integration of large quantities of biological data with the goal of computer modeling. It involves the use of computer simulations of biological systems, such as the networks of metabolites comprise signal transduction pathways and gene regulatory networks to both analyze and visualize the complex connections of these cellular processes. SB involves a series of operational protocols used for performing research, namely a cycle composed of theoretical, analytic or computational modeling to propose specific testable hypotheses about a biological system, experimental validation, and then using the newly acquired quantitative description of cells or cell processes to refine the computational model or theory.

Computational methodologies and modeling play a growing role for investigating mechanisms, and for the diagnosis and therapy of human diseases. This progress gave rise to computational medicine, an interdisciplinary field at the interface of computer science and medicine. The main focus of computational medicine lies in the development of data analysis methods and mathematical modeling as well as computational simulation techniques specifically addressing medical problems. In this book, we present a number of computational medicine topics at several scales: from molecules to cells, organs, and organisms. At the molecular level, tools for the analysis of genome variations as well as cloud computing resources for medical genetics are reviewed. Then, an analysis of gene expression data and the application to the characterization of microbial communities are highlighted. At the protein level, two types of analyses for mass spectrometry data are reviewed: labeled quantitative proteomics and lipidomics, followed by protein sequence analysis and a 3D structure and drug design chapter. Finally, three chapters on clinical applications focus on the integration of biomolecular and clinical data for cancer research, biomarker discovery, and network-based methods for computational diagnostics.

First introduced to biomedical research in 1980, the term biomarker has taken on a life of its own in recent years and has come to mean a number of things. In biomedical science, biomarker has evolved to most commonly mean a characteristic that can be used either as a diagnostic or a prognostic, but most significantly as a screening indicator for p

The premiere two-volume reference on revelations from studying complex microbial communities in many distinct habitats Metagenomics is an emerging field that has changed the way microbiologists study microorganisms. It involves the genomic analysis of microorganisms by extraction and cloning of DNA from a group of microorganisms, or the direct use of the purified DNA or RNA for sequencing, which allows scientists to bypass the usual protocol of isolating and culturing individual microbial species. This method is now used in laboratories across the globe to study microorganism diversity and for isolating novel medical and industrial compounds. Handbook of Molecular Microbial Ecology is the first comprehensive two-volume reference to cover unculturable microorganisms in a large variety of habitats, which could not previously have been analyzed without metagenomic methodology. It features review articles as well as a large number of case studies, based largely on original publications and written by international experts. This first volume, Metagenomics and Complementary Approaches, covers such topics as: Background information on DNA reassociation and use of 16 rRNA and other DNA fingerprinting approaches Species designation in microbiology Metagenomics: Introduction to the basic tools with examples Consortia and databases Bioinformatics Computer-assisted analysis Complementary approaches—microarrays, metatranscriptomics, metaproteomics, metabolomics, and single cell analysis A special feature of this volume is the highlighting of the databases and computer programs used in each study; they are listed along with their sites in order to facilitate the computer-assisted analysis of the vast amount of data generated by metagenomic studies. Handbook of Molecular Microbial Ecology I is an invaluable reference for researchers in metagenomics, microbiology, and environmental microbiology; those working on the Human Microbiome Project; microbial geneticists; molecular microbial ecologists; and professionals in molecular microbiology and bioinformatics.

The second edition of Comprehensive Biotechnology, Six Volume Set continues the tradition of the first inclusive work on this dynamic field with up-to-date and essential entries on the principles and practice of biotechnology. The integration of the latest relevant science and industry practice with fundamental biotechnology concepts is presented with entries from internationally recognized world leaders in their given fields. With two volumes covering basic fundamentals, and four volumes of applications, from environmental biotechnology and safety to medical biotechnology and healthcare, this work serves the needs of newcomers as well as established experts combining the latest relevant science and industry practice in a manageable format. It is a multi-authored work, written by experts and vetted by a prestigious advisory board and group of volume editors who are biotechnology innovators and educators with international influence. - All six volumes are published at the same time, not as a series; this is not a conventional encyclopedia but a symbiotic integration of brief articles on established topics and longer chapters on new emerging areas. - Hyperlinks provide sources of extensive additional related information; material authored and edited by world-renown experts in all aspects of the broad multidisciplinary field of biotechnology - Scope and nature of the work are vetted by a prestigious International Advisory Board including three Nobel laureates - Each article carries a glossary and a professional summary of the authors indicating their appropriate credentials - An extensive index for the entire publication gives a complete list of the many topics treated in the increasingly expanding field

System Biology encompasses the knowledge from diverse fields such as Molecular Biology, Immunology, Genetics, Computational Biology, Mathematical Biology, etc. not only to address key questions that are not answerable by individual fields alone, but also to help in our understanding of the complexities of biological systems. Whole genome expression studies have provided us the means of studying the expression of thousands of genes under a particular condition and this technique had been widely used to find out the role of key macromolecules that are involved in biological signaling pathways. However, making sense of the underlying complexity is only possible if we interconnect various signaling pathways into human and computer readable network maps. These maps can then be used to classify and study individual components involved in a particular phenomenon. Apart from transcriptomics, several individual gene studies have resulted in adding to our knowledge of key components that are involved in a signaling pathway. It therefore becomes imperative to take into account of these studies also, while constructing our network maps to highlight the interconnectedness of the entire signaling pathways and the role of that particular individual protein in the pathway. This collection of articles will contain a collection of pioneering work done by scientists working in regulatory signaling networks and the use of large scale gene expression and omics data. The distinctive features of this book would be: Act a single source of information to understand the various components of different signaling network (roadmap of biochemical pathways, the nature of a molecule of interest in a particular pathway, etc.), Serve as a platform to highlight the key findings in this highly volatile and evolving field, and Provide answers to various techniques both related to microarray and cell signaling to the readers.

The biological sciences are now in the midst of a true life sciences revolution akin to what physics experienced just after the turn of the last century. We are now in a phase of unparalleled growth that is reflected by the amount of data generated from each experiment. At the time of this writing, the rate of data acquisition was approaching 2 terabytes over the course of 5 days with first pass analysis proceeding over the following 2-3 week period. This fundamental shift has provided unprecedented opportunities that for the first time afford us the ability, i.e., means, breadth, and depth of data, to truly address human biology at the systems level. This wealth of information from seemingly disparate datasets and its integration is being realized through bioinformatics. It is with this philosophy that the text Bioinformatics for Systems Biology was born. This revolution has spawned true personalized medicine that encompasses diagnostics and treatment through to cure. For the physical and computer scientist, this text provides an introduction to the basic biological principles governing a cell. This quickly moves from the fundamentals to exploring the underlying genetic processes. While providing a rudimentary and necessary overview for the life scientist, the physical and computer scientist will be apprised of various nuances within the field reflecting the reality of'wet-bench'science. For those in the life sciences, it I rapidly becoming appreciated that we now progressing from examining our favorite'pet'gene to the system. Statistics is now an essential component to understand the vast datasets and this is emphasized throughout the text. The majority of the text is devoted to the common ground that these groups share. It provides rich examples of tools, databases, and strategies to mine the databases to reveal novel insights. A host of examples of parsing the data into a series of overlays that use various presentation systems are reviewed. The goal is to provide a representation most comfortable to the user to enable the user to thoroughly explore the data. The text concludes with examples of how the systems information is used to inform personalized medicine in a true'bench to bedside'manner. Bioinformatics for Systems Biology bridges and unifies many disciplines. It presents the life scientist, computational biologist, and mathematician with a common framework. Only by linking the groups together may the true life sciences revolution move forward in the mostly uncharted and emerging field of Systems Biology.

Early characterization of toxicity and efficacy would significantly impact the overall productivity of pharmaceutical R&D and reduce drug candidate attrition and failure. By describing the available platforms and weighing their relative advantages and disadvantages, including microarray data analysis, Genomics in Drug Discovery and Development introduces readers to the biomarker, pharmacogenomic, and toxicogenomics toolbox. The authors provide a valuable resource for pharmaceutical discovery scientists, preclinical drug safety department personnel, regulatory personnel, discovery toxicologists, and safety scientists, drug development professionals, and pharmaceutical scientists.

The field of genetics is rapidly evolving and new medical breakthroughs are occuring as a result of advances in knowledge of genetics. This series continually publishes important reviews of the broadest interest to geneticists and their colleagues in affiliated disciplines. - Five sections on the latest advances in complex traits - Methods for testing with ethical, legal, and social implications - Hot topics include discussions on systems biology approach to drug discovery; using comparative genomics for detecting human disease genes; computationally intensive challenges, and more

The field of genetics is rapidly evolving and new medical breakthroughs are occurring as a result of advances in knowledge gained from genetics research. This series continually publishes important reviews of the broadest interest to geneticists and their colleagues in affiliated disciplines.

As natural phenomena are being probed and mapped in ever-greater detail, scientists in genomics and proteomics are facing an exponentially growing vol­ ume of increasingly complex-structured data, information, and knowledge. Ex­ amples include data from microarray gene expression experiments, bead-based and microfluidic technologies, and advanced high-throughput mass spectrom­ etry. A fundamental challenge for life scientists is to explore, analyze, and interpret this information effectively and efficiently. To address this challenge, traditional statistical methods are being complemented by methods from data mining, machine learning and artificial intelligence, visualization techniques, and emerging technologies such as Web services and grid computing. There exists a broad consensus that sophisticated methods and tools from statistics and data mining are required to address the growing data analysis and interpretation needs in the life sciences. However, there is also a great deal of confusion about the arsenal of available techniques and how these should be used to solve concrete analysis problems. Partly this confusion is due to a lack of mutual understanding caused by the different concepts, languages, methodologies, and practices prevailing within the different disciplines.

Microarray Technology Through Applications provides the reader with an understanding, from an applications perspective, of the diverse range of concepts required to master the experimental and data analysis aspects of microarray technology. The first chapter is a concise introduction to the technology and provides the theoretical background required to understand the subsequent sections. The following chapters are a series of case studies representative of the most general and important applications of microarray technology, including CGH, analysis of gene expression, SNP arrays and protein arrays. The case studies are written by experts in the field and describe prototypic projects, indicating how to generalize the approach to similar studies. There are detailed step-by-step protocols describing the specific experimental and data analysis protocols mentioned in the case study section. There is also information on printing glass DNA microarray slides and data interpretation. Colour figures and data sets are provided on the website at http://www.garlandscience.com/9780415378536

Since its establishment in Hong Kong in 1998,the international Intelligent Data Engineering and Automated Learning (IDEAL) conference has become a r- erence for researchers in both theoretical and practical aspects of learning and information processing, data mining, retrieval and management, bioinformatics and bio-inspired models, agents and hybrid systems and?nancial engineering. The purpose of IDEAL conferences has been to provide a broad and interd- ciplinary forum for scientists, researchers, and practitioners in these areas from around the world. A special feature of IDEAL conferences is cross-disciplinary exchange of ideas in emerging topics and application in these areas. Data ana- sis and engineering and associated learning paradigms are playing increasingly important roles in an increasing number of applications and?elds. The mul- disciplinary nature of contemporary research is pushing the boundaries and one of the principal aims of the IDEAL conferences is to promote interactions and collaborations across disciplines. This volume of Lecture Notes in Computer Science contains accepted - pers presented at IDEAL 2006 held at the University of Burgos, Spain, during, September 20–23, 2006. The conference received 557 submissions from over 40 countriesaroundtheworld,whichweresubsequentlyrefereedbytheProgramme Committeeandmanyadditionalreviewers.Afterrigorousreview,170top-quality papers were accepted and included in the proceedings. The acceptance rate was only 30%, which ensured an extremely high-quality standard of the conference. The buoyant number of submitted papers is a clear proof of the vitality and increased importance of the?elds related to IDEAL, and is also an indication of the rising popularity of the IDEAL conferences.