Search results for "units"

Aromatic and proteomic analyses corroborate the distinction between Mediterranean landraces and modern varieties of durum wheat

2016

AbstractIn this paper volatile organic compounds (VOCs) from durum wheat cultivars and landraces were analyzed using PTR-TOF-MS. The aim was to characterize the VOC’s profile of the wholemeal flour and of the kernel to find out if any VOCs were specific to varieties and sample matrices. The VOC data is accompanied by SDS-PAGE analyses of the storage proteins (gliadins and glutenins). Statistical analyses was carried out both on the signals obtained by MS and on the protein profiles. The difference between the VOC profile of two cultivars or two preparations of the same sample - matrices, in this case kernel vs wholemeal flour - can be very subtle; the high resolution of PTR-TOF-MS - down to…

Outbreak of ST395 KPC-Producing Klebsiella pneumoniae in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in Palermo, Italy

2018

Sample Preservation, DNA or RNA Extraction and Data Analysis for High-Throughput Phytoplankton Community Sequencing

2017

Phytoplankton is the basis for aquatic food webs and mirrors the water quality. Conventionally, phytoplankton analysis has been done using time consuming and partly subjective microscopic observations, but next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies provide promising potential for rapid automated examination of environmental samples. Because many phytoplankton species have tough cell walls, methods for cell lysis and DNA or RNA isolation need to be efficient to allow unbiased nucleic acid retrieval. Here, we analyzed how two phytoplankton preservation methods, three commercial DNA extraction kits and their improvements, three RNA extraction methods, and two data analysis procedures affect…

Efficacy of a coordinated strategy for containment of multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria carriage in a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in the co…

2021

AbstractBackgroundAntimicrobial resistance in neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) patients is a threat, due to the frequent use of antimicrobial treatment and invasive devices in fragile babies. Since 2014 an active surveillance program of multidrug-resistant Gram-negative bacteria (MDR-GNB) carriage has been in place in the five NICUs of Palermo, Italy. In 2017 an increase in the prevalence of MDR-GNB, and in particular of extended-spectrum β-lactamases-producingKlebsiella pneumoniae(ESBL-KP), was observed in “Civico” hospital NICU.AimTo assess the impact of a coordinated intervention strategy in achieving long-lasting reduction of MDR-GNB prevalence in the NICU.MethodsRectal swabs were ob…

Auxiliary α2δ1 and α2δ3 Subunits of Calcium Channels Drive Excitatory and Inhibitory Neuronal Network Development

2020

VGCCs are multisubunit complexes that play a crucial role in neuronal signaling. Auxiliary α2δ subunits of VGCCs modulate trafficking and biophysical properties of the pore-forming α1 subunit and trigger excitatory synaptogenesis. Alterations in the expression level of α2δ subunits were implicated in several syndromes and diseases, including chronic neuropathic pain, autism, and epilepsy. However, the contribution of distinct α2δ subunits to excitatory/inhibitory imbalance and aberrant network connectivity characteristic for these pathologic conditions remains unclear. Here, we show that α2δ1 overexpression enhances spontaneous neuronal network activity in developing and mature cultures of …

DNA methylation links prenatal smoking exposure to later life health outcomes in offspring

2019

Background Maternal smoking during pregnancy is associated with adverse offspring health outcomes across their life course. We hypothesize that DNA methylation is a potential mediator of this relationship. Methods We examined the association of prenatal maternal smoking with offspring blood DNA methylation in 2821 individuals (age 16 to 48 years) from five prospective birth cohort studies and perform Mendelian randomization and mediation analyses to assess whether methylation markers have causal effects on disease outcomes in the offspring. Results We identify 69 differentially methylated CpGs in 36 genomic regions (P value < 1 × 10−7) associated with exposure to maternal smoking in adolesc…

Triclosan-Evoked Neurotoxicity Involves NMDAR Subunits with the Specific Role of GluN2A in Caspase-3-Dependent Apoptosis

2018

Triclosan (TCS) is an antimicrobial agent that is used extensively in personal care and in sanitising products. A number of studies have shown the presence of TCS in different human tissues such as blood, adipose tissue, the liver, brain as well as in breast milk and urine. N-Methyl-D-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) are glutamate-gated ion channels that are widely expressed in the central nervous system and which play key roles in excitatory synaptic transmission. There is, however, no data on the involvement of NMDAR subunits in the apoptotic and neurotoxic effects of TCS. Our experiments are the first to show that TCS used at environmentally relevant concentrations evoked NMDA-dependent effe…

A protein-RNA interaction atlas of the ribosome biogenesis factor AATF

2018

AbstractAATF is a central regulator of the cellular outcome upon p53 activation, a finding that has primarily been attributed to its function as a transcription factor. Recent data showed that AATF is essential for ribosome biogenesis and plays a role in rRNA maturation. AATF has been implicated to fulfil this role through direct interaction with rRNA and was identified in several RNA-interactome capture experiments. Here, we provide a first comprehensive analysis of the RNA bound by AATF using CLIP-sequencing. Interestingly, this approach shows predominant binding of the 45S pre-ribosomal RNA precursor molecules. Furthermore, AATF binds to mRNAs encoding for ribosome biogenesis factors as …

What is the risk of acquiring bacteria from prior intensive care unit bed occupants?

2017

GSaaS: A Service to Cloudify and Schedule GPUs

2018

Cloud technology is an attractive infrastructure solution that provides customers with an almost unlimited on-demand computational capacity using a pay-per-use approach, and allows data centers to increase their energy and economic savings by adopting a virtualized resource sharing model. However, resources such as graphics processing units (GPUs), have not been fully adapted to this model. Although, general-purpose computing on graphics processing units (GPGPU) is becoming more and more popular, cloud providers lack of flexibility to manage accelerators, because of the extended use of peripheral component interconnect (PCI) passthrough techniques to attach GPUs to virtual machines (VMs). F…