Search results for "specificity"
showing 10 items of 2234 documents
The membrane anchor of microsomal epoxide hydrolase from human, rat, and rabbit displays an unexpected membrane topology.
1997
The microsomal epoxide hydrolase (mEH) and cytochrome P450s catalyze the sequential formation of carcinogenic metabolites. According to one algorithm for predicting the membrane topology of proteins, the human, the rabbit, and the rat mEH should adopt a type II topology. The type II topology is also predicted by a recently established neuronal network which is trained to recognize signal peptides with very high accuracy. In contrast to these predictions we find, based on N-glycosylation analysis in a cell-free and in a cellular system, that the membrane anchor of human, rat, and rabbit mEH displays a type I topology. This result is correctly predicted by the positive inside rule in which ne…
Characterization of a glycosylphosphatidylinositol-bound cell-wall protein (GPI-CWP) in Yarrowia lipolytica.
2004
The structure and composition of the cell wall of yeast has so far been studied mainly in Saccharomyces cerevisiae. It is basically made up of three components: beta-glucans, chitin and mannose-containing glycoproteins, also called mannoproteins. Most covalently bound cell-wall mannoproteins belong to the so-called glycosylphosphatidylinositol cell-wall protein (GPI-CWP) family, cell-wall proteins that are bound through the remnant of a GPI residue to 1,6-beta-glucan. The non-conventional yeast Yarrowia lipolytica shares Generally Regarded As Safe (GRAS) status with S. cerevisiae, has some industrial applications and is increasingly being proposed as a host for the production of recombinant…
Identification and study of a Candida albicans protein homologous to Saccharomyces cerevisiae Ssr1p, an internal cell-wall protein
2003
After screening of aCandida albicansgenome database, the product of an ORF (IPF 3054) that has 62 % homology withSaccharomyces cerevisiaeSsr1p, an internal cell-wall protein, was identified and named CaSsr1p. The deduced amino acid sequence shows that CaSsr1p contains an N-terminal hydrophobic signal peptide, is rich in Ser and Thr amino acids and has a potential glycosylphosphatidylinositol-attachment signal. CaSsr1p is released following degradation of isolated cell walls by zymolyase (mainly a 1,3-β-glucanase) and therefore seems to be covalently linked to theβ-glucan of the cell walls. Both disruption and overexpression of theCaSSR1gene caused an increased sensitivity to calcofluor whit…
A method for quantifying atrial fibrillation organization based on wave-morphology similarity
2002
A new method for quantifying the organization of single bipolar electrograms recorded in the human atria during atrial fibrillation (AF) is presented. The algorithm relies on the comparison between pairs of local activation waves (LAWs) to estimate their morphological similarity, and returns a regularity index (/spl rho/) which measures the extent of repetitiveness over time of the detected activations. The database consisted of endocardial data from a multipolar basket catheter during AF and intraatrial recordings during atrial flutter. The index showed maximum regularity (/spl rho/=1) for all atrial flutter episodes and decreased significantly when increasing AF complexity as defined by W…
An Automatic System for the Analysis and Classification of Human Atrial Fibrillation Patterns from Intracardiac Electrograms
2008
This paper presents an automatic system for the analysis and classification of atrial fibrillation (AF) patterns from bipolar intracardiac signals. The system is made up of: 1) a feature- extraction module that defines and extracts a set of measures potentially useful for characterizing AF types on the basis of their degree of organization; 2) a feature-selection module (based on the Jeffries-Matusita distance and a branch and bound search algorithm) identifying the best subset of features for discriminating different AF types; and 3) a support vector machine technique-based classification module that automatically discriminates the AF types according to the Wells' criteria. The automatic s…
P300-based brain computer interface experimental setup
2009
A Brain-Computer interface (BCI) is a communication system that enables the generation of a control signal from brain signals such as sensorymotor rhythms and evoked potentials; therefore, it constitutes a novel communication option for people with severe motor disabilities (such as Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis patients). This paper presents the development of a P300-based BCI. This prototype uses a homemade six-channel electroencephalograph for the acquisition of the signals, and a visual stimulation matrix; since this matrix contains letters of the alphabet as well as images associated to them, it permits word-writing and the elaboration of messages with the images. To process the signal…
Quantification of synchronization during atrial fibrillation by Shannon entropy: Validation in patients and computer model of atrial arrhythmias
2005
Atrial fibrillation (AF), a cardiac arrhythmia classically described as completely desynchronized, is now known to show a certain amount of synchronized electrical activity. In the present work a new method for quantifying the level of synchronization of the electrical activity recorded in pairs of atrial sites during atrial fibrillation is presented. A synchronization index (Sy) was defined by quantifying the degree of complexity of the distribution of the time delays between sites by Shannon entropy estimation. The capability of Sy to discriminate different AF types in patients was assessed on a database of 60 pairs of endocardial recordings from a multipolar basket catheter. The analysis…
Understanding disease mechanisms with models of signaling pathway activities
2014
Background Understanding the aspects of the cell functionality that account for disease or drug action mechanisms is one of the main challenges in the analysis of genomic data and is on the basis of the future implementation of precision medicine. Results Here we propose a simple probabilistic model in which signaling pathways are separated into elementary sub-pathways or signal transmission circuits (which ultimately trigger cell functions) and then transforms gene expression measurements into probabilities of activation of such signal transmission circuits. Using this model, differential activation of such circuits between biological conditions can be estimated. Thus, circuit activation s…
Timing performance of the silicon PET insert probe
2010
Simulation indicates that PET image could be improved by upgrading a conventional ring with a probe placed close to the imaged object. In this paper, timing issues related to a PET probe using high-resistivity silicon as a detector material are addressed. The final probe will consist of several (four to eight) 1-mm thick layers of silicon detectors, segmented into 1 x 1 mm(2) pads, each pad equivalent to an independent p + nn+ diode. A proper matching of events in silicon with events of the external ring can be achieved with a good timing resolution. To estimate the timing performance, measurements were performed on a simplified model probe, consisting of a single 1-mm thick detector with 2…
Comparison of the exoproducts of gram-negative bacteria by SDS-page
1985
The protein exoproducts released during exponential growth of Gram-negative bacteria were analysed and compared by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-Page). The following bacterial strains were tested: Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Citrobacter freundii, Enterobacter cloacae, Serratia liquefaciens, Serratia rubidaea, Proteus mirabilis, Proteus vulgaris, Salmonella minnesota, Pseudomonas aeruginosa and Pseudomonas fluorescens. It is demonstrated by SDS-Page that members of one species show identical protein pattern, whereas different species show besides comparable protein bands a species characteristic pattern. All members of Enterobacteriaceae were sho…