Sodium nitroprusside: its beneficial role in drought stress tolerance of “Mexican lime” (Citrus aurantifolia (Christ.) Swingle) under in vitro conditions

In Vitro Cellular & Developmental Biology - Plant - As a novel antioxidant, sodium nitroprusside (SNP) can be used to reduce the adverse effects of various abiotic stresses, especially drought...     

microRNAs: New prognostic,diagnostic, and therapeutic biomarkers in cervical cancer

Cervical cancer is as a kind of cancer beginning from the cervix. Given that cervical cancer could be observed in women who infected with papillomavirus, regular oral contraceptives, and multiple pregnancies. Early detection of cervical cancer is one of the most important aspects of the therapy of this malignancy. Despite several efforts, finding and developing new biomarkers for cervical cancer diagnosis are required. Among various prognostic, diagnostic, and therapeutic biomarkers, miRNA have been emerged as powerful biomarkers for detection, treatment, and monitoring of response to therapy in cervical cancer. Here, we summarized various miRNAs as an employable platform for prognostic, diagnostic, and therapeutic biomarkers in the treatment of cervical cancer.     

Stress inhibits psychomotor performance differently in simple and complex open field environments

Stress affects psychomotor profiles and exploratory behavior in response to environmental features. Here we investigated psychomotor and exploratory patterns induced by stress in a simple open-field arena and a complex, multi-featured environment. Groups of rats underwent seven days of restraint stress or no-stress conditions and were individually tested in three versions of the ziggurat task (ZT) that varied according to environmental complexity. The hyperactivity of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis due to stress procedure was evaluated by the pre- and post-stress levels of circulating corticosterone (CORT). Horizontal activity, exploration, and motivation were measured by the number of fields entered, the time spent in the central fields, path length and speed, and stop duration. In addition, vertical exploratory behavior was measured by the times rats climbed onto ziggurats. Stress-induced psychomotor changes were indicated by reduced path length and path speed and increased duration of stops only within the complex arena of the ZT. Rats in stress groups also showed a significant decline in the vertical movements as measured by the number of climbing onto ziggurats. No stress-induced changes were revealed by the simple open-field arena. The exploratory patterns of stressed animals suggest psychomotor inhibition and reduced novelty-seeking behaviors in an environment-dependent manner. Thus, multi-featured arenas that require complex behavioral strategies are ideally suited to reveal the inhibitory effects of stress on psychomotor capabilities in rodents.     

Exploring the generality of associations between plant functional traits: evidence within ecological groups along an altitudinal gradient in Hyrcanian forest

We hypothesized that associations among plant functional traits may differ within different ecological assemblages and plant communities. Association among plant traits including plant maximum height, seed weight, fruit type, pollination mode, mean leaf area, and leaf type were explored within life forms, plant strategy groups along with lowland and montane forest vegetation. In total, 83 sampling plots of 400 m² were placed along a 2400 m altitudinal gradient in Hyrcanian forest. Importance‐values of species within vegetation types were used for weighting data and trait associations were explored using categorical principal component analysis. A G‐test and Fisher's exact test of independence were used to retest significance of the correlations. Different paired trait associations (association lines) including height–leaf, height–seed, height–pollination, leaf–seed, seed–fruit and fruit–pollination were observed and their ecological or physiological basis was discussed. Life forms, strategy types and vegetation types differed based on association lines. Some of the well‐known trade‐offs appear by increasing scale from ecological groups to vegetation types in Hyrcanian forest. The observed patterns of trait associations in Hyrcanian forest and several other ecosystems of the world call the generality of previously accepted trait correlations into question.     

Technical reproducibility of genotyping SNP arrays used in genome-wide association studies

During the last several years, high-density genotyping SNP arrays have facilitated genome-wide association studies (GWAS) that successfully identified common genetic variants associated with a variety of phenotypes. However, each of the identified genetic variants only explains a very small fraction of the underlying genetic contribution to the studied phenotypic trait. Moreover, discordance observed in results between independent GWAS indicates the potential for Type I and II errors. High reliability of genotyping technology is needed to have confidence in using SNP data and interpreting GWAS results. Therefore, reproducibility of two widely genotyping technology platforms from Affymetrix and Illumina was assessed by analyzing four technical replicates from each of the six individuals in five laboratories. Genotype concordance of 99.40% to 99.87% within a laboratory for the sample platform, 98.59% to 99.86% across laboratories for the same platform, and 98.80% across genotyping platforms was observed. Moreover, arrays with low quality data were detected when comparing genotyping data from technical replicates, but they could not be detected according to venders' quality control (QC) suggestions. Our results demonstrated the technical reliability of currently available genotyping platforms but also indicated the importance of incorporating some technical replicates for genotyping QC in order to improve the reliability of GWAS results. The impact of discordant genotypes on association analysis results was simulated and could explain, at least in part, the irreproducibility of some GWAS findings when the effect size (i.e. the odds ratio) and the minor allele frequencies are low.     

A fuzzy-genetic model for estimating forces from electromyographical activity of antagonistic muscles due to planar lower arm movements: the effect of nonlinear muscle properties

The aim of this paper is to create a model for mapping the surface electromyogram (EMG) signals to the force that generated by human arm muscles. Because the parameters of each person's muscle are individual, the model of the muscle must have two characteristics: (1) The model must be adjustable for each subject. (2) The relationship between the input and output of model must be affected by the force-length and the force-velocity behaviors are proven through Hill's experiments. Hill's model is a kinematic mechanistic model with three elements, i.e. one contractile component and two nonlinear spring elements.In this research, fuzzy systems are applied to improve the muscle model. The advantages of using fuzzy system are as follows: they are robust to noise, they prove an adjustable nonlinear mapping, and are able to model the uncertainties of the muscle.Three fuzzy coefficients have been added to the relationships of force-length (active and passive) and force-velocity existing in Hill's model. Then, a genetic algorithm (GA) has been used as a biological search method that can adjust the parameters of the model in order to achieve the optimal possible fit.Finally, the accuracy of the fuzzy genetic implementation Hill-based muscle model (FGIHM) is invested as following: the FGIHM results have 12.4% RMS error (in worse case) in comparison to the experimental data recorded from three healthy male subjects. Moreover, the FGIHM active force-length relationship which is the key characteristics of muscles has been compared to virtual muscle (VM) and Zajac muscle model. The sensitivity of the FGIHM has been evaluated by adding a white noise with zero mean to the input and FGIHM has proved to have lower sensitivity to input noise than the traditional Hill's muscle model.     

A new species of Leopoldia (Asparagaceae Scilloideae formerly Hyacinthaceae) from Iran

Leopoldia tabriziana Jafari (Hyacinthaceae) from northwest of Iran (East Azarbaijan province) is described here and illustrated by a line‐drawing. It is similar to L. comosa Parl . but differs in having violet (not cream) pedicels in the fresh fertile flowers, oblong‐campanulate (not oblong‐urceolate) fertile flowers, triangular‐obovate (not globose‐obovate) sterile flowers, dark violet (not beige) fertile flowers and dark violet (not pale violet) sterile flowers with much shorter pedicels. (© 2014 WILEY‐VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

The proteomes of human parotid and submandibular/sublingual gland salivas collected as the ductal secretions

Saliva is a body fluid with important functions in oral and general health. A consortium of three research groups catalogued the proteins in human saliva collected as the ductal secretions: 1166 identifications--914 in parotid and 917 in submandibular/sublingual saliva--were made. The results showed that a high proportion of proteins that are found in plasma and/or tears are also present in saliva along with unique components. The proteins identified are involved in numerous molecular processes ranging from structural functions to enzymatic/catalytic activities. As expected, the majority mapped to the extracellular and secretory compartments. An immunoblot approach was used to validate the presence in saliva of a subset of the proteins identified by mass spectrometric approaches. These experiments focused on novel constituents and proteins for which the peptide evidence was relatively weak. Ultimately, information derived from the work reported here and related published studies can be used to translate blood-based clinical laboratory tests into a format that utilizes saliva. Additionally, a catalogue of the salivary proteome of healthy individuals allows future analyses of salivary samples from individuals with oral and systemic diseases, with the goal of identifying biomarkers with diagnostic and/or prognostic value for these conditions; another possibility is the discovery of therapeutic targets.