Search results for "S5"
showing 10 items of 201 documents
Design and Development of a Multi-Mode, Two-Wheeled, Self-Balancing Service Platform
2019
Master's thesis Mechatronics MAS500 - University of Agder 2019 This thesis covers the design and development of a multi-mode, two-wheeled, self-balancing serviceplatform. The purpose of such a platform is to assist people with transportation tasks in crowdedspaces like airports by consuming as little space as possible and minimizing its overall footprint.This is solved by constructing a robot that can transition between bicycle and differential driveconfigurations and keep its balance in both configurations as well as in the transition processbetween them. A two-wheeled, self-balancing robot is an inherently unstable system that can bebased on the theory of an inverted pendulum. The unstabl…
Prevalence of Single and Multiple Natural NS3, NS5A and NS5B Resistance-Associated Substitutions in Hepatitis C Virus Genotypes 1-4 in Italy
2018
AbstractNatural resistance-associated substitutions (RASs) are reported with highly variable prevalence across different HCV genotypes (GTs). Frequency of natural RASs in a large Italian real-life cohort of patients infected with the 4 main HCV-GTs was investigated. NS3, NS5A and NS5B sequences were analysed in 1445 HCV-infected DAA-naïve patients. Sanger-sequencing was performed by home-made protocols on 464 GT1a, 585 GT1b, 92 GT2c, 199 GT3a, 16 GT4a and 99 GT4d samples. Overall, 20.7% (301/1455) of patients showed natural RASs, and the prevalence of multiclass-resistance was 7.3% (29/372 patients analysed). NS3-RASs were particularly common in GT1a and GT1b (45.2-10.8%, respectively), mai…
Multiclass HCV resistance to direct-acting antiviral failure in real-life patients advocates for tailored second-line therapies
2017
Background & Aims: Despite the excellent efficacy of direct-acting antivirals (DAA) reported in clinical trials, virological failures can occur, often associated with the development of resistance-associated substitutions (RASs). This study aimed to characterize the presence of clinically relevant RASs to all classes in real-life DAA failures. Methods: Of the 200 virological failures that were analyzed in 197 DAA-treated patients, 89 with pegylated-interferon+ribavirin (PegIFN+RBV) and 111 without (HCV-1a/1b/1g/2/3/4=58/83/1/6/24/25; 56.8% treatment experienced; 65.5% cirrhotic) were observed. Sanger sequencing of NS3/NS5A/NS5B was performed by home-made protocols, at failure (N= 200) and w…
NS5A gene analysis by next generation sequencing in HCV nosocomial transmission clusters of HCV genotype 1b infected patients
2019
Background: The aim of the study was to investigate the intra-host variability through next-generation-sequencing (NGS) of the NS5A-gene in nosocomial transmission-clusters observed in two Italian hospitals among hepatitis C virus (HCV)-genotype-1b infected patients. Methods: HCV-sequencing was performed by Sanger-sequencing (NS3 + NS5A + NS5B) and by NGS (NS5A, MiSeq-Illumina) in 15 HCV-1b infected patients [five acute with onco-hematologic-disease and 10 (4/6 acute/chronic) with &beta
Genetic variants associated with human eye size are distinct from those conferring susceptibility to myopia
2021
Purpose: Emmetropization requires coordinated scaling of the major ocular components, corneal curvature and axial length. This coordination is achieved in part through a shared set of genetic variants that regulate eye size. Poorly coordinated scaling of corneal curvature and axial length results in refractive error. We tested the hypothesis that genetic variants regulating eye size in emmetropic eyes are distinct from those conferring susceptibility to refractive error.Methods: A genome-wide association study (GWAS) for corneal curvature in 22,180 adult emmetropic individuals was performed as a proxy for a GWAS for eye size. A polygenic score created using lead GWAS variants was tested for…
The story of endurance:Biogeography and the evolutionary history of four Holarctic butterflies with different habitat requirements
2021
Aim: Biogeographical studies on the entire ranges of widely distributed species can change our perception of species’ range dynamics. We studied the effects of Pleistocene glacial cycles on current butterfly species distributions, aiming to uncover complex biogeographic patterns in the Holarctic, a region dramatically affected by Cenozoic climate change. Location: Eurasia and North America. Taxon: Boloria chariclea, Agriades optilete, Carterocephalus palaemon, Oeneis jutta. Methods: We reconstructed the biogeographic history of four butterfly species differing in habitat preferences (B. chariclea – tundra, A. optilete – bogs, C. palaemon – temperate grasslands, O. jutta – taiga), using one …
Surface and deep water conditions in the Sicily channel (central Mediterranean) at the time of sapropel S5 deposition
2011
New centennial-scale data of benthic foraminifera assemblages and of stable isotopes of foraminifera shells from the Sicily Channel, representative of surface and bottom waters, over the interval between about 140 and 110 kyr BP, are presented. During this period anoxia developed on the eastern Mediterranean basin and sapropel S5 deposited. Although anoxic sediments have not been deposited in the Sicily Channel, this area is strategic to study the character of intermediate waters, whose chemical-physical properties strongly precondition the eastern Mediterranean deep water formation. So far, no data from these water masses have been obtained, apart from the isotopic composition of shells of…
The role of positive selection in hepatitis C virus
2008
Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is a major health problem worldwide, infecting an estimated 170 million people. In this study, we have employed a large data set of sequences (14,654 sequences from between 25 and 100 clone sequences per analyzed region and per patient) from 67 patients infected with HCV genotype 1 (23 subtype 1a and 44 subtype 1b). For all patients, a sample prior to combined therapy with alpha interferon plus ribavirin was available, whereas for some patients additional samples after 6 or 12 months of treatment were also available. Twenty-seven patients responded to treatment (12 subtype 1a and 15 subtype 1b) and forty patients did not respond to treatment (11 subtype 1a vs. 29 sub…
Molecular epidemiology of a hepatitis C virus outbreak in a hemodialysis unit.
2005
ABSTRACT We analyzed a hepatitis C virus (HCV) transmission case in the hemodialysis unit of a private clinic by sequencing two genome regions of virus isolates from a number of patients attending this unit and some external controls. The analysis of 337 nucleotides (nt) in the NS5B region did not provide enough resolution to ascertain which patients were actually involved in the outbreak and the potential source. Nevertheless, this region allowed the exclusion of several patients as putative sources of the transmission case based on their genotypes and phylogenetic relationships. On the other hand, the analysis of several 472-nt-long clone sequences per sample in a more rapidly evolving re…
Candidate Targets for Hepatitis C Virus-Specific Antiviral Therapy
1997
The hepatitis C virus (HCV) was identified as the major causative agent of posttransfusion and community-acquired non-A, non-B hepatitis throughout the world. It is an enveloped virus with a plus-strand RNA genome encoding a polyprotein of about 3,010 amino acids. This polyprotein is cleaved co- and posttranslationally into mature viral proteins by host cell signal peptidases and 2 viral enzymes designated the NS2-3 proteinase and the NS3/4A proteinase complex. It is assumed that virus replication takes place in a membrane-associated complex containing at least 2 viral enzymatic activities: the NS3 nucleoside triphosphatase (NTPase)/helicase and the NS5B RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (RdRp).…