Deletion mapping of the medulloblastoma locus on chromosome 17p

Isochromosome 17q has previously been observed consistently in cytogenetic studies of medulloblastoma, the most common posterior fossa neoplasm in children. We performed a restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) investigation of medulloblastoma which showed a loss of chromosome 17p sequences in 45% of these tumors. This finding was predictive of a poor clinical response to treatment. A contiguous panel of markers permitted mapping of the deletion to 17p12-p13.1, the same chromosomal region for which loss of alleles has been shown in tumor specimens from patients with colon cancer, and the same region to which the p53 gene has been mapped. This suggests that medulloblastoma is associated with a recessive oncogene on chromosome 17p that may be involved in the genesis of several embryologically unrelated neoplasms and that the absence of this gene in tumor tissue has prognostic significance.     

Genetic analysis of cystic fibrosis: linkage of DNA and classical markers in multiplex families

Linkage of cystic fibrosis (CF) to DNA and classical markers was studied in 36 families of two or three generations with at least two living affected children. Among the 79 affected children, no recombinants were detected between the disease and the markers MET and pJ3.11, previously shown to be linked to CF. No linkage between the human trypsin gene family (which appears to include at least 10 members) and CF was found, although not all genes of the trypsin family have been screened yet. In one of the CF families, recombination between MET and pJ3.11 was detected in an unaffected sib. Data from our families suggest that the gene order of markers among chromosome 7q is: (7cen;p8.33)collagen(COL1A2);DOCR1-917;paraoxonase+ ++(PON);(MET-cf-J3.11);T-cell receptor beta chain (TCRB);qter. There was no evidence for (or against) either postzygotic selection or meiotic drive to explain the high frequency of CF in Caucasian populations.     

Flow Behavior of Native Corn and Potato Starch Granules in Aqueous Suspensions

The flow behavior of native corn and potato starch granule suspensions prepared in a concentrated sucrose solution has been investigated. Measurements were performed using a rotational rheometer with a concentric cylinder geometry. Starch suspensions were dilute to semi-concentrated (1 % to 25 % by volume). Shear and dynamic viscosity were measured by shear flow and dynamic oscillatory testing at 20, 50 and 80 °C. The starch suspensions exhibited essentially Newtonian behavior at all solid contents, although at higher solid volume fractions there was evidence of slight shear thickening. The relative viscosity of suspensions increased with increasing starch granule content, and the data conformed well to Maron-Pierce’s equation. An increase in maximum packing fraction and gravitational depletion of the starch granules with increasing temperature resulted in lower relative viscosities at higher temperatures. Also, the relative viscosities of potato starch granule suspensions with bigger, more oval and anisometric particles were lower than those of corn starch suspensions where granules were closer to sphericity but were angular in shape. Oscillatory shear testing results showed the presence of viscoelastic properties at intermediate solid volume fractions at low frequencies; in addition, the relative shear viscosity was higher than the relative dynamic viscosity, probably due to the formation of shear-induced structures during the shear flow test.     

Phylogenetic and cophylogenetic relationships of entomopathogenic nematodes (Heterorhabditis: Rhabditida) and their symbiotic bacteria (Photorhabdus: Enterobacteriaceae)

Mutualistic association between entomopathogenic Photorhabdus bacteria and Heterorhabditis nematodes represents one of the emerging model systems in symbiosis studies, yet little is known about this partnership from a coevolutionary perspective. Herein, we investigated phylogenetic and cophylogenetic relationships of Heterorhabditis and Photorhabdus strains using molecular markers Internal Transcribed Spacer and gyrase B gene sequences, respectively. The phylogenies presented consistent, well supported, monophyletic groups in the parsimonious and likelihood analyses for both the nematode and bacterial strains and supported the placement of currently recognized taxa, from which a potentially new Heterorhabditis species represented by a Thailand strain MP68 was identified. While the nematode strains with distant geographic distributions showed no detectable phylogenetic divergence within H. bacteriophora or H. georgiana monophyletic groups, their respective symbiotic bacteria speciated into two Photorhabdus species: P. luminescens and P. temperata, indicating the occurrence of duplication. Although such evolutionary process reduces the phylogenetic congruence between Heterorhabditis nematodes and Photorhabdus bacteria, global cophylogenetic tests using ParaFit detected a highly significant correlation between the two phylogenies (ParaFitGlobal = 0.001). Further, the associations between H. zealandica, H. indica and H. megidis strains and their symbiotic bacteria exhibited significant contribution to the overall cophylogenetic structure. Overall, this study reveals evidence of coevolution between Photorhabdus bacteria and Heterorhabditis nematodes and provides a framework for further examination of the evolution of these associations.     

Discordance in diagnosis of osteoporosis using spine and hip bone densitometry

BACKGROUND: Diagnostic discordance for osteoporosis is the observation that the T-score of an individual patient varies from one key measurement site to another, falling into two different diagnostic categories identified by the World Health Organization (WHO) classification system. This study was conducted to evaluate the presence and risk factors for this phenomenon in a large sample of Iranian population. METHODS: Demographic data, anthropometric measurements, and risk factors for osteoporosis were derived from a database on 4229 patients referred to a community-based outpatient osteoporosis testing center from 2000 to 2003. Dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry (DXA) was performed on L1-L4 lumbar spine and total hip for all cases. Minor discordance was defined as present when the difference between two sites was no more than one WHO diagnostic class. Major discordance was present when one site is osteoporotic and the other is normal. Subjects with incomplete data were excluded. RESULTS: In 4188 participants (3848 female, mean age 53.4 +/- 11.8 years), major discordance, minor discordance, and concordance of T-scores were seen in 2.7%, 38.9% and 58.3%, respectively. In multivariate logistic regression analysis, older age, menopause, obesity, and belated menopause were recognized as risk factors and hormone replacement therapy as a protective factor against T-score discordance. CONCLUSION: The high prevalence of T-score discordance may lead to problems in interpretation of the densitometry results for some patients. This phenomenon should be regarded as a real and prevalent finding and physicians should develop a particular strategy approaching to these patients.     

Study of DNA-deltamethrin binding by voltammetry, competitive fluorescence, thermal denaturation, circular dichroism, and atomic force microscopy techniques

The interaction of deltamethrin (DM), a synthetic insecticide, with calf thymus DNA was studied. The cyclic voltammetric (CV) results revealed that DM has two irreversible cathodic peaks. The first peak (a) was devoted to reduction of -CN by 4 electrons and the second peak (b) was devoted to reduction of the -C = C- moiety by two electrons. By using non-linear regression analysis of CV data of peak (a), the binding constant, binding site size, and diffusion coefficient for free DM (D(f)) and DNA-DM (D(b)) were calculated as: 2.6 × 10(4), 1.6, 3.2 × 10(-4)Cm(2) S(-1), and 8.5 × 10(-6)Cm(2) S(-1), respectively. The thermal denaturation, competitive fluorescence, and AFM results revealed that the mode of interaction may be non-intercalative. Also the circular dichroism spectra showed that the conformation of CT DNA was converted from right-handed B-DNA to A-DNA due to the destacking of the adjacent guanine bases in pH 7.3 solution.     

Effect of plant growth regulators on indirect shoot organogenesis of Ficus religiosa through seedling derived petiole segments

Ficus religiosa is known as a long-lived multipurpose forest tree. The tree plays an important role for religious, medicinal, and ornamental purposes. However, the propagation rate of Ficus religiosa is low in natural habitat so the plant tissue culture techniques are an applicable method for multiplication of this valuable medicinal plants. Thus, the aim of this study is to understand the effect of different auxin/cytokinin ratios on indirect shoot organogenesis of this plant. According to our results, the maximum callus induction frequency (100%) was obtained on Murashige and Skoog (MS) medium supplemented with 0.5?mg/l 2,4-dichlorophenoxyacetic acid (2,4-D) plus 0.05?mg/l 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP) from petiole segments. For shoot induction purpose, the yellow-brownish, friable, organogenic calli were inoculated on shoot induction medium. On MS medium supplemented with 1.5?mg/l BAP and 0.15?mg/l Indole-3-butyric acid (IBA), 96.66% of the petiole-derived calli responded with an average number of 3.56 shoots per culture. The highest root formation frequency (96.66%), root number (5.5), and root length (4.83?cm) were achieved on MS medium containing 2.0?mg/l IBA plus 0.1?mg/l Naphthaleneacetic acid (NAA). The rooted shoots were successfully transferred to field condition and the substrate with the mixture of cocopeat and perlite (1:1) had the highest survival rate (96.66%). This is the first report of an effective in vitro organogenesis protocol for F. religiosa by indirect shoot organogenesis through axenic seedling derived petiole explants, which can be efficiently employed for conservation of this important medicinal plant species as well as the utilization of active biomolecules.     

Estimation of effective connectivity using multi-layer perceptron artificial neural network

Studies on interactions between brain regions estimate effective connectivity, (usually) based on the causality inferences made on the basis of temporal precedence. In this study, the causal relationship is modeled by a multi-layer perceptron feed-forward artificial neural network, because of the ANN’s ability to generate appropriate input–output mapping and to learn from training examples without the need of detailed knowledge of the underlying system. At any time instant, the past samples of data are placed in the network input, and the subsequent values are predicted at its output. To estimate the strength of interactions, the measure of “Causality coefficient” is defined based on the network structure, the connecting weights and the parameters of hidden layer activation function. Simulation analysis demonstrates that the method, called “CREANN” (Causal Relationship Estimation by Artificial Neural Network), can estimate time-invariant and time-varying effective connectivity in terms of MVAR coefficients. The method shows robustness with respect to noise level of data. Furthermore, the estimations are not significantly influenced by the model order (considered time-lag), and the different initial conditions (initial random weights and parameters of the network). CREANN is also applied to EEG data collected during a memory recognition task. The results implicate that it can show changes in the information flow between brain regions, involving in the episodic memory retrieval process. These convincing results emphasize that CREANN can be used as an appropriate method to estimate the causal relationship among brain signals.