Ultra-performance liquid chromatography fingerprint combined with chemometrics as an effective strategy for Dianbaizhu species discrimination

Dianbaizhu a folk medicine used for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis is made from different species of Gaultheria. The main species is Gaultheria leucocarpa var. yunnanensis but other species are being used as substitutes. The objective was to develop a precise and reproducible method to differentiate among these species. A method was developed by using ultra-performance liquid chromatography in combination with chemometric. The method was validated with relative standard deviations of less than 1.96%.     

Three-way interaction model with switching mechanism as an effective strategy for tracing functionally-related genes

Introduction: Identification of functionally-related genes is an important step in understanding biological systems. The most popular strategy to infer functional dependence is to study pairwise correlations between gene expression levels. However, certain functionally-related genes may have a low expression correlation due to their nonlinear interactions. The use of a three-way interaction (3WI) model with switching mechanism (SM) is a relatively new strategy to trace functionally-related genes. The 3WI model traces the dynamic and nonlinear nature of the co-expression relationship of two genes by introducing their link to the expression level of a third gene.

Areas covered: In this paper, we reviewed a variety of existing methods for tracing the 3WIs. Furthermore, we provide a comprehensive review of the previous biological studies based on 3WI models.

Expert commentary: Comparison of features of these methods indicates that the modified liquid association algorithm has the best efficiency for tracing 3WI between others. The limited number of biological studies based on the 3WI suggests that high computational demand of the available algorithms is a major challenge to apply this approach for analyzing high-throughput omics data.     

Sporulation as an effective strategy for the survival of bacteria in a biofilter with discontinuous operation

The microbial population of the biofilter developed for the treatment of air contaminated by solvent vapours was evaluated using plate count techniques. The number of total heterotrophic bacteria and bacteria utilizing contaminant as the only source of carbon and energy was estimated during the exchange of the filter-bed material and start-up of its operation. Spore-forming bacteria (Bacillus spp.) occupied a significant part of the filter-bed niche. It is proposed that sporulation helps bacteria to survive during the breaks in operation of the biofilter.     

Partial monosomy 21 (q11.2→q21.3) combined with 3p25.3→pter monosomy due to an unbalanced translocation in a patient presenting dysmorphic features and developmental delay

We describe a female patient of 1 year and 5 months-old, referred for genetic evaluation due to neuropsychomotor delay, hearing impairment and dysmorphic features. The patient presents a partial chromosome 21 monosomy (q11.2→q21.3) in combination with a chromosome 3p terminal monosomy (p25.3→pter) due to an unbalanced de novo translocation. The translocation was confirmed by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) and the breakpoints were mapped with high resolution array. After the combined analyses with these techniques the final karyotype was defined as 45,XX,der(3)t(3;21)(p25.3;q21.3)dn,-21.ish der(3)t(3;21)(RP11-329A2-,RP11-439F4-,RP11-95E11-,CTB-63H24 +).arr 3p26.3p25.3(35,333-10,888,738)) × 1,21q11.2q21.3(13,354,643-27,357,765) × 1. Analysis of microsatellite DNA markers pointed to a paternal origin for the chromosome rearrangement. This is the first case described with a partial proximal monosomy 21 combined with a 3p terminal monosomy due to a de novo unbalanced translocation.