Search results for "Format"

Old meets new: Comparative examination of conventional and innovative RNA-based methods for body fluid identification of laundered seminal fluid stai…

2018

Abstract The knowledge about the type of the body fluid/tissue that contributed to a trace can provide contextual insight into crime scene reconstruction and connect a suspect or a victim to a crime scene. Especially in sexual assault cases, it is important to verify the presence of spermatozoa. Victims often tend to clean their underwear/bedding after a sexual assault. If they later decide to report the crime to the police, in our experience, investigators usually do not send laundered items for DNA examination, since they believe that analysis after washing is no longer promising. As not only the individualization of traces on laundered items could be important in court, but also the type…

Human milk and mucosa-associated disaccharides impact on cultured infant fecal microbiota

2020

Human milk oligosaccharides (HMOs) are a mixture of structurally diverse carbohydrates that contribute to shape a healthy gut microbiota composition. The great diversity of the HMOs structures does not allow the attribution of specific prebiotic characteristics to single milk oligosaccharides. We analyze here the utilization of four disaccharides, lacto-N-biose (LNB), galacto-N-biose (GNB), fucosyl-α1,3-GlcNAc (3FN) and fucosyl-α1,6-GlcNAc (6FN), that form part of HMOs and glycoprotein structures, by the infant fecal microbiota. LNB significantly increased the total levels of bifidobacteria and the species Bifidobacterium breve and Bifidobacterium bifidum. The Lactobacillus genus levels wer…

Lipoproteins in atherosclerosis process

2019

Background:Dyslipidaemias is a recognized risk factor for atherosclerosis, however, new evidence brought to light by trials investigating therapies to enhance HDLcholesterol have suggested an increased atherosclerotic risk when HDL-C is high.Results:Several studies highlight the central role in atherosclerotic disease of dysfunctional lipoproteins; oxidised LDL-cholesterol is an important feature, according to “oxidation hypothesis”, of atherosclerotic lesion, however, there is today a growing interest for dysfunctional HDL-cholesterol. The target of our paper is to review the functions of modified and dysfunctional lipoproteins in atherogenesis.Conclusion:Taking into account the central ro…

Deciphering the functional role of spatial and temporal muscle synergies in whole-body movements

2018

AbstractVoluntary movement is hypothesized to rely on a limited number of muscle synergies, the recruitment of which translates task goals into effective muscle activity. In this study, we investigated how to analytically characterize the functional role of different types of muscle synergies in task performance. To this end, we recorded a comprehensive dataset of muscle activity during a variety of whole-body pointing movements. We decomposed the electromyographic (EMG) signals using a space-by-time modularity model which encompasses the main types of synergies. We then used a task decoding and information theoretic analysis to probe the role of each synergy by mapping it to specific task …

Access to new highly potent antileukemia, antiviral and antimalarial agents via hybridization of natural products (homo)egonol, thymoquinone and arte…

2018

Hybridization of natural products has high potential to further improve their activities and may produce synergistic effects between linked pharmacophores. Here we report synthesis of nine new hybrids of natural products egonol, homoegonol, thymoquinone and artemisinin and evaluation of their activities against P. falciparum 3D7 parasites, human cytomegalovirus, sensitive and multidrug-resistant human leukemia cells. Most of the new hybrids exceed their parent compounds in antimalarial, antiviral and antileukemia activities and in some cases show higher in vitro efficacy than clinically used reference drugs chloroquine, ganciclovir and doxorubicin. Combined, our findings stress the high pot…

2016

We determine knotting probabilities and typical sizes of knots in double-stranded DNA for chains of up to half a million base pairs with computer simulations of a coarse-grained bead-stick model: Single trefoil knots and composite knots which include at least one trefoil as a prime factor are shown to be common in DNA chains exceeding 250,000 base pairs, assuming physiologically relevant salt conditions. The analysis is motivated by the emergence of DNA nanopore sequencing technology, as knots are a potential cause of erroneous nucleotide reads in nanopore sequencing devices and may severely limit read lengths in the foreseeable future. Even though our coarse-grained model is only based on …

Use of deep learning methods to translate drug-induced gene expression changes from rat to human primary hepatocytes

2020

In clinical trials, animal and cell line models are often used to evaluate the potential toxic effects of a novel compound or candidate drug before progressing to human trials. However, relating the results of animal and in vitro model exposures to relevant clinical outcomes in the human in vivo system still proves challenging, relying on often putative orthologs. In recent years, multiple studies have demonstrated that the repeated dose rodent bioassay, the current gold standard in the field, lacks sufficient sensitivity and specificity in predicting toxic effects of pharmaceuticals in humans. In this study, we evaluate the potential of deep learning techniques to translate the pattern of …

Retrospective Proteomic Screening of 100 Breast Cancer Tissues.

2017

The present investigation has been conducted on one hundred tissue fragments of breast cancer, collected and immediately cryopreserved following the surgical resection. The specimens were selected from patients with invasive ductal carcinoma of the breast, the most frequent and potentially aggressive type of mammary cancer, with the objective to increase the knowledge of breast cancer molecular markers potentially useful for clinical applications. The proteomic screening; by 2D-IPG and mass spectrometry; allowed us to identify two main classes of protein clusters: proteins expressed ubiquitously at high levels in all patients; and proteins expressed sporadically among the same patients. Wit…

The MDS and EVI1 complex locus (MECOM) isoforms regulate their own transcription and have different roles in the transformation of hematopoietic stem…

2016

Transcriptional activation of the EVI1 oncogene (3q26) leads to aggressive forms of human acute myeloid leukemia (AML). However, the mechanism of EVI1-mediated leukemogenesis has not been fully elucidated. Previously, by characterizing the EVI1 promoter, we have shown that RUNX1 and ELK1 directly regulate EVI1 transcription. Intriguingly, bioinformatic analysis of the EVI1 promoter region identified the presence of several EVI1 potential binding sites. Thus, we hypothesized that EVI1 could bind to these sites regulating its own transcription. In this study, we show that there is a functional interaction between EVI1 and its promoter, and that the different EVI1 isoforms (EVI1-145kDa, EVI1-Δ…

MiasDB: A Database of Molecular Interactions Associated with Alternative Splicing of Human Pre-mRNAs.

2016

Alternative splicing (AS) is pervasive in human multi-exon genes and is a major contributor to expansion of the transcriptome and proteome diversity. The accurate recognition of alternative splice sites is regulated by information contained in networks of protein-protein and protein-RNA interactions. However, the mechanisms leading to splice site selection are not fully understood. Although numerous databases have been built to describe AS, molecular interaction databases associated with AS have only recently emerged. In this study, we present a new database, MiasDB, that provides a description of molecular interactions associated with human AS events. This database covers 938 interactions …