WorldWideScience

Sample records for number processing pathways

  1. Impact of constitutional copy number variants on biological pathway evolution.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Poptsova, Maria; Banerjee, Samprit; Gokcumen, Omer; Rubin, Mark A; Demichelis, Francesca

    2013-01-23

    Inherited Copy Number Variants (CNVs) can modulate the expression levels of individual genes. However, little is known about how CNVs alter biological pathways and how this varies across different populations. To trace potential evolutionary changes of well-described biological pathways, we jointly queried the genomes and the transcriptomes of a collection of individuals with Caucasian, Asian or Yoruban descent combining high-resolution array and sequencing data. We implemented an enrichment analysis of pathways accounting for CNVs and genes sizes and detected significant enrichment not only in signal transduction and extracellular biological processes, but also in metabolism pathways. Upon the estimation of CNV population differentiation (CNVs with different polymorphism frequencies across populations), we evaluated that 22% of the pathways contain at least one gene that is proximal to a CNV (CNV-gene pair) that shows significant population differentiation. The majority of these CNV-gene pairs belong to signal transduction pathways and 6% of the CNV-gene pairs show statistical association between the copy number states and the transcript levels. The analysis suggested possible examples of positive selection within individual populations including NF-kB, MAPK signaling pathways, and Alu/L1 retrotransposition factors. Altogether, our results suggest that constitutional CNVs may modulate subtle pathway changes through specific pathway enzymes, which may become fixed in some populations.

  2. Binocular depth processing in the ventral visual pathway.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Verhoef, Bram-Ernst; Vogels, Rufin; Janssen, Peter

    2016-06-19

    One of the most powerful forms of depth perception capitalizes on the small relative displacements, or binocular disparities, in the images projected onto each eye. The brain employs these disparities to facilitate various computations, including sensori-motor transformations (reaching, grasping), scene segmentation and object recognition. In accordance with these different functions, disparity activates a large number of regions in the brain of both humans and monkeys. Here, we review how disparity processing evolves along different regions of the ventral visual pathway of macaques, emphasizing research based on both correlational and causal techniques. We will discuss the progression in the ventral pathway from a basic absolute disparity representation to a more complex three-dimensional shape code. We will show that, in the course of this evolution, the underlying neuronal activity becomes progressively more bound to the global perceptual experience. We argue that these observations most probably extend beyond disparity processing per se, and pertain to object processing in the ventral pathway in general. We conclude by posing some important unresolved questions whose answers may significantly advance the field, and broaden its scope.This article is part of the themed issue 'Vision in our three-dimensional world'. © 2016 The Author(s).

  3. TEGS-CN: A Statistical Method for Pathway Analysis of Genome-wide Copy Number Profile.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, Yen-Tsung; Hsu, Thomas; Christiani, David C

    2014-01-01

    The effects of copy number alterations make up a significant part of the tumor genome profile, but pathway analyses of these alterations are still not well established. We proposed a novel method to analyze multiple copy numbers of genes within a pathway, termed Test for the Effect of a Gene Set with Copy Number data (TEGS-CN). TEGS-CN was adapted from TEGS, a method that we previously developed for gene expression data using a variance component score test. With additional development, we extend the method to analyze DNA copy number data, accounting for different sizes and thus various numbers of copy number probes in genes. The test statistic follows a mixture of X (2) distributions that can be obtained using permutation with scaled X (2) approximation. We conducted simulation studies to evaluate the size and the power of TEGS-CN and to compare its performance with TEGS. We analyzed a genome-wide copy number data from 264 patients of non-small-cell lung cancer. With the Molecular Signatures Database (MSigDB) pathway database, the genome-wide copy number data can be classified into 1814 biological pathways or gene sets. We investigated associations of the copy number profile of the 1814 gene sets with pack-years of cigarette smoking. Our analysis revealed five pathways with significant P values after Bonferroni adjustment (number data, and causal mechanisms of the five pathways require further study.

  4. Modelling and performance analysis of clinical pathways using the stochastic process algebra PEPA.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yang, Xian; Han, Rui; Guo, Yike; Bradley, Jeremy; Cox, Benita; Dickinson, Robert; Kitney, Richard

    2012-01-01

    Hospitals nowadays have to serve numerous patients with limited medical staff and equipment while maintaining healthcare quality. Clinical pathway informatics is regarded as an efficient way to solve a series of hospital challenges. To date, conventional research lacks a mathematical model to describe clinical pathways. Existing vague descriptions cannot fully capture the complexities accurately in clinical pathways and hinders the effective management and further optimization of clinical pathways. Given this motivation, this paper presents a clinical pathway management platform, the Imperial Clinical Pathway Analyzer (ICPA). By extending the stochastic model performance evaluation process algebra (PEPA), ICPA introduces a clinical-pathway-specific model: clinical pathway PEPA (CPP). ICPA can simulate stochastic behaviours of a clinical pathway by extracting information from public clinical databases and other related documents using CPP. Thus, the performance of this clinical pathway, including its throughput, resource utilisation and passage time can be quantitatively analysed. A typical clinical pathway on stroke extracted from a UK hospital is used to illustrate the effectiveness of ICPA. Three application scenarios are tested using ICPA: 1) redundant resources are identified and removed, thus the number of patients being served is maintained with less cost; 2) the patient passage time is estimated, providing the likelihood that patients can leave hospital within a specific period; 3) the maximum number of input patients are found, helping hospitals to decide whether they can serve more patients with the existing resource allocation. ICPA is an effective platform for clinical pathway management: 1) ICPA can describe a variety of components (state, activity, resource and constraints) in a clinical pathway, thus facilitating the proper understanding of complexities involved in it; 2) ICPA supports the performance analysis of clinical pathway, thereby assisting

  5. Optimal processing pathway for the production of biodiesel from microalgal biomass: A superstructure based approach

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rizwan, Muhammad; Lee, Jay H.; Gani, Rafiqul

    2013-01-01

    In this study, we propose a mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) model for superstructure based optimization of biodiesel production from microalgal biomass. The proposed superstructure includes a number of major processing steps for the production of biodiesel from microalgal biomass......, such as the harvesting of microalgal biomass, pretreatments including drying and cell disruption of harvested biomass, lipid extraction, transesterification, and post-transesterfication purification. The proposed model is used to find the optimal processing pathway among the large number of potential pathways that exist...... for the production of biodiesel from microalgae. The proposed methodology is tested by implementing on a specific case with different choices of objective functions. The MINLP model is implemented and solved in GAMS using a database built in Excel. The results from the optimization are analyzed...

  6. Phonemic awareness as a pathway to number transcoding

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Júlia Beatriz Lopes-Silva

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Although verbal and numerical abilities have a well-established interaction, the impact of phonological processing on numeric abilities remains elusive. The aim of this study is to investigate the role of phonemic awareness in number processing and to explore its association with other functions such as working memory and magnitude processing. One hundred seventy-two children in 2nd grade to 4th grade were evaluated in terms of their intelligence, number transcoding, phonemic awareness, verbal and visuospatial working memory and number sense (nonsymbolic magnitude comparison performance. All of the children had normal intelligence. Among these measurements of magnitude processing, working memory and phonemic awareness, only the last was retained in regression and path models predicting transcoding ability. Phonemic awareness mediated the influence of verbal working memory on number transcoding. The evidence suggests that phonemic awareness significantly affects number transcoding. Such an association is robust and should be considered in cognitive models of both dyslexia and dyscalculia.

  7. Estimation of the number of extreme pathways for metabolic networks

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Thiele Ines

    2007-09-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The set of extreme pathways (ExPa, {pi}, defines the convex basis vectors used for the mathematical characterization of the null space of the stoichiometric matrix for biochemical reaction networks. ExPa analysis has been used for a number of studies to determine properties of metabolic networks as well as to obtain insight into their physiological and functional states in silico. However, the number of ExPas, p = |{pi}|, grows with the size and complexity of the network being studied, and this poses a computational challenge. For this study, we investigated the relationship between the number of extreme pathways and simple network properties. Results We established an estimating function for the number of ExPas using these easily obtainable network measurements. In particular, it was found that log [p] had an exponential relationship with log⁡[∑i=1Rd−id+ici] MathType@MTEF@5@5@+=feaafiart1ev1aaatCvAUfKttLearuWrP9MDH5MBPbIqV92AaeXatLxBI9gBaebbnrfifHhDYfgasaacH8akY=wiFfYdH8Gipec8Eeeu0xXdbba9frFj0=OqFfea0dXdd9vqai=hGuQ8kuc9pgc9s8qqaq=dirpe0xb9q8qiLsFr0=vr0=vr0dc8meaabaqaciaacaGaaeqabaqabeGadaaakeaacyGGSbaBcqGGVbWBcqGGNbWzdaWadaqaamaaqadabaGaemizaq2aaSbaaSqaaiabgkHiTmaaBaaameaacqWGPbqAaeqaaaWcbeaakiabdsgaKnaaBaaaleaacqGHRaWkdaWgaaadbaGaemyAaKgabeaaaSqabaGccqWGJbWydaWgaaWcbaGaemyAaKgabeaaaeaacqWGPbqAcqGH9aqpcqaIXaqmaeaacqWGsbGua0GaeyyeIuoaaOGaay5waiaaw2faaaaa@4414@, where R = |Reff| is the number of active reactions in a network, d−i MathType@MTEF@5@5@+=feaafiart1ev1aaatCvAUfKttLearuWrP9MDH5MBPbIqV92AaeXatLxBI9gBaebbnrfifHhDYfgasaacH8akY=wiFfYdH8Gipec8Eeeu0xXdbba9frFj0=OqFfea0dXdd9vqai=hGuQ8kuc9pgc9s8qqaq=dirpe0xb9q8qiLsFr0=vr0=vr0dc8meaabaqaciaacaGaaeqabaqabeGadaaakeaacqWGKbazdaWgaaWcbaGaeyOeI0YaaSbaaWqaaiabdMgaPbqabaaaleqaaaaa@30A9@ and d+i MathType@MTEF@5@5@+=feaafiart1ev1aaatCvAUfKttLearuWrP9MDH5MBPbIqV92AaeXatLxBI9gBaebbnrfifHhDYfgasaacH8akY=wiFfYdH8Gipec8Eeeu0xXdbba9frFj0=OqFfea0dXdd9vqai=hGuQ8kuc9pgc9s8qqaq=dirpe0xb

  8. DNA double-strand-break complexity levels and their possible contributions to the probability for error-prone processing and repair pathway choice.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schipler, Agnes; Iliakis, George

    2013-09-01

    Although the DNA double-strand break (DSB) is defined as a rupture in the double-stranded DNA molecule that can occur without chemical modification in any of the constituent building blocks, it is recognized that this form is restricted to enzyme-induced DSBs. DSBs generated by physical or chemical agents can include at the break site a spectrum of base alterations (lesions). The nature and number of such chemical alterations define the complexity of the DSB and are considered putative determinants for repair pathway choice and the probability that errors will occur during this processing. As the pathways engaged in DSB processing show distinct and frequently inherent propensities for errors, pathway choice also defines the error-levels cells opt to accept. Here, we present a classification of DSBs on the basis of increasing complexity and discuss how complexity may affect processing, as well as how it may cause lethal or carcinogenic processing errors. By critically analyzing the characteristics of DSB repair pathways, we suggest that all repair pathways can in principle remove lesions clustering at the DSB but are likely to fail when they encounter clusters of DSBs that cause a local form of chromothripsis. In the same framework, we also analyze the rational of DSB repair pathway choice.

  9. Lifecycle assessment of microalgae to biofuel: Comparison of thermochemical processing pathways

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Bennion, Edward P.; Ginosar, Daniel M.; Moses, John; Agblevor, Foster; Quinn, Jason C.

    2015-01-01

    Highlights: • Well to pump environmental assessment of two thermochemical processing pathways. • NER of 1.23 and GHG emissions of −11.4 g CO 2-eq (MJ) −1 for HTL pathway. • HTL represents promising conversion pathway based on use of wet biomass. • NER of 2.27 and GHG emissions of 210 g CO 2-eq (MJ) −1 for pyrolysis pathway. • Pyrolysis pathway: drying microalgae feedstock dominates environmental impact. - Abstract: Microalgae is being investigated as a renewable transportation fuel feedstock based on various advantages that include high annual yields, utilization of poor quality land, does not compete with food, and can be integrated with various waste streams. This study focuses on directly assessing the environmental impact of two different thermochemical conversion technologies for the microalgae-to-biofuel process through life cycle assessment. A system boundary of “well to pump” (WTP) is defined and includes sub-process models of the growth, dewatering, thermochemical bio-oil recovery, bio-oil stabilization, conversion to renewable diesel, and transport to the pump. Models were validated with experimental and literature data and are representative of an industrial-scale microalgae-to-biofuel process. Two different thermochemical bio-oil conversion systems are modeled and compared on a systems level, hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) and pyrolysis. The environmental impact of the two pathways were quantified on the metrics of net energy ratio (NER), defined here as energy consumed over energy produced, and greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Results for WTP biofuel production through the HTL pathway were determined to be 1.23 for the NER and GHG emissions of −11.4 g CO 2-eq (MJ renewable diesel) −1 . Biofuel production through the pyrolysis pathway results in a NER of 2.27 and GHG emissions of 210 g CO 2-eq (MJ renewable diesel) −1 . The large environmental impact associated with the pyrolysis pathway is attributed to feedstock drying

  10. Signaling Pathways in Cardiac Myocyte Apoptosis

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xia, Peng; Liu, Yuening

    2016-01-01

    Cardiovascular diseases, the number 1 cause of death worldwide, are frequently associated with apoptotic death of cardiac myocytes. Since cardiomyocyte apoptosis is a highly regulated process, pharmacological intervention of apoptosis pathways may represent a promising therapeutic strategy for a number of cardiovascular diseases and disorders including myocardial infarction, ischemia/reperfusion injury, chemotherapy cardiotoxicity, and end-stage heart failure. Despite rapid growth of our knowledge in apoptosis signaling pathways, a clinically applicable treatment targeting this cellular process is currently unavailable. To help identify potential innovative directions for future research, it is necessary to have a full understanding of the apoptotic pathways currently known to be functional in cardiac myocytes. Here, we summarize recent progress in the regulation of cardiomyocyte apoptosis by multiple signaling molecules and pathways, with a focus on the involvement of these pathways in the pathogenesis of heart disease. In addition, we provide an update regarding bench to bedside translation of this knowledge and discuss unanswered questions that need further investigation. PMID:28101515

  11. Pathways of topological rank analysis (PoTRA): a novel method to detect pathways involved in hepatocellular carcinoma.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Chaoxing; Liu, Li; Dinu, Valentin

    2018-01-01

    Complex diseases such as cancer are usually the result of a combination of environmental factors and one or several biological pathways consisting of sets of genes. Each biological pathway exerts its function by delivering signaling through the gene network. Theoretically, a pathway is supposed to have a robust topological structure under normal physiological conditions. However, the pathway's topological structure could be altered under some pathological condition. It is well known that a normal biological network includes a small number of well-connected hub nodes and a large number of nodes that are non-hubs. In addition, it is reported that the loss of connectivity is a common topological trait of cancer networks, which is an assumption of our method. Hence, from normal to cancer, the process of the network losing connectivity might be the process of disrupting the structure of the network, namely, the number of hub genes might be altered in cancer compared to that in normal or the distribution of topological ranks of genes might be altered. Based on this, we propose a new PageRank-based method called Pathways of Topological Rank Analysis (PoTRA) to detect pathways involved in cancer. We use PageRank to measure the relative topological ranks of genes in each biological pathway, then select hub genes for each pathway, and use Fisher's exact test to test if the number of hub genes in each pathway is altered from normal to cancer. Alternatively, if the distribution of topological ranks of gene in a pathway is altered between normal and cancer, this pathway might also be involved in cancer. Hence, we use the Kolmogorov-Smirnov test to detect pathways that have an altered distribution of topological ranks of genes between two phenotypes. We apply PoTRA to study hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and several subtypes of HCC. Very interestingly, we discover that all significant pathways in HCC are cancer-associated generally, while several significant pathways in subtypes

  12. Elucidating dominant pathways of the nano-particle self-assembly process.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zeng, Xiangze; Li, Bin; Qiao, Qin; Zhu, Lizhe; Lu, Zhong-Yuan; Huang, Xuhui

    2016-09-14

    Self-assembly processes play a key role in the fabrication of functional nano-structures with widespread application in drug delivery and micro-reactors. In addition to the thermodynamics, the kinetics of the self-assembled nano-structures also play an important role in determining the formed structures. However, as the self-assembly process is often highly heterogeneous, systematic elucidation of the dominant kinetic pathways of self-assembly is challenging. Here, based on mass flow, we developed a new method for the construction of kinetic network models and applied it to identify the dominant kinetic pathways for the self-assembly of star-like block copolymers. We found that the dominant pathways are controlled by two competing kinetic parameters: the encounter time Te, characterizing the frequency of collision and the transition time Tt for the aggregate morphology change from rod to sphere. Interestingly, two distinct self-assembly mechanisms, diffusion of an individual copolymer into the aggregate core and membrane closure, both appear at different stages (with different values of Tt) of a single self-assembly process. In particular, the diffusion mechanism dominates the middle-sized semi-vesicle formation stage (with large Tt), while the membrane closure mechanism dominates the large-sized vesicle formation stage (with small Tt). Through the rational design of the hydrophibicity of the copolymer, we successfully tuned the transition time Tt and altered the dominant self-assembly pathways.

  13. Residual number processing in dyscalculia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cappelletti, Marinella; Price, Cathy J

    2014-01-01

    Developmental dyscalculia - a congenital learning disability in understanding numerical concepts - is typically associated with parietal lobe abnormality. However, people with dyscalculia often retain some residual numerical abilities, reported in studies that otherwise focused on abnormalities in the dyscalculic brain. Here we took a different perspective by focusing on brain regions that support residual number processing in dyscalculia. All participants accurately performed semantic and categorical colour-decision tasks with numerical and non-numerical stimuli, with adults with dyscalculia performing slower than controls in the number semantic tasks only. Structural imaging showed less grey-matter volume in the right parietal cortex in people with dyscalculia relative to controls. Functional MRI showed that accurate number semantic judgements were maintained by parietal and inferior frontal activations that were common to adults with dyscalculia and controls, with higher activation for participants with dyscalculia than controls in the right superior frontal cortex and the left inferior frontal sulcus. Enhanced activation in these frontal areas was driven by people with dyscalculia who made faster rather than slower numerical decisions; however, activation could not be accounted for by response times per se, because it was greater for fast relative to slow dyscalculics but not greater for fast controls relative to slow dyscalculics. In conclusion, our results reveal two frontal brain regions that support efficient number processing in dyscalculia.

  14. Residual number processing in dyscalculia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marinella Cappelletti

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available Developmental dyscalculia – a congenital learning disability in understanding numerical concepts – is typically associated with parietal lobe abnormality. However, people with dyscalculia often retain some residual numerical abilities, reported in studies that otherwise focused on abnormalities in the dyscalculic brain. Here we took a different perspective by focusing on brain regions that support residual number processing in dyscalculia. All participants accurately performed semantic and categorical colour-decision tasks with numerical and non-numerical stimuli, with adults with dyscalculia performing slower than controls in the number semantic tasks only. Structural imaging showed less grey-matter volume in the right parietal cortex in people with dyscalculia relative to controls. Functional MRI showed that accurate number semantic judgements were maintained by parietal and inferior frontal activations that were common to adults with dyscalculia and controls, with higher activation for participants with dyscalculia than controls in the right superior frontal cortex and the left inferior frontal sulcus. Enhanced activation in these frontal areas was driven by people with dyscalculia who made faster rather than slower numerical decisions; however, activation could not be accounted for by response times per se, because it was greater for fast relative to slow dyscalculics but not greater for fast controls relative to slow dyscalculics. In conclusion, our results reveal two frontal brain regions that support efficient number processing in dyscalculia.

  15. Residual number processing in dyscalculia☆

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cappelletti, Marinella; Price, Cathy J.

    2013-01-01

    Developmental dyscalculia – a congenital learning disability in understanding numerical concepts – is typically associated with parietal lobe abnormality. However, people with dyscalculia often retain some residual numerical abilities, reported in studies that otherwise focused on abnormalities in the dyscalculic brain. Here we took a different perspective by focusing on brain regions that support residual number processing in dyscalculia. All participants accurately performed semantic and categorical colour-decision tasks with numerical and non-numerical stimuli, with adults with dyscalculia performing slower than controls in the number semantic tasks only. Structural imaging showed less grey-matter volume in the right parietal cortex in people with dyscalculia relative to controls. Functional MRI showed that accurate number semantic judgements were maintained by parietal and inferior frontal activations that were common to adults with dyscalculia and controls, with higher activation for participants with dyscalculia than controls in the right superior frontal cortex and the left inferior frontal sulcus. Enhanced activation in these frontal areas was driven by people with dyscalculia who made faster rather than slower numerical decisions; however, activation could not be accounted for by response times per se, because it was greater for fast relative to slow dyscalculics but not greater for fast controls relative to slow dyscalculics. In conclusion, our results reveal two frontal brain regions that support efficient number processing in dyscalculia. PMID:24266008

  16. Pathways of topological rank analysis (PoTRA: a novel method to detect pathways involved in hepatocellular carcinoma

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chaoxing Li

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available Complex diseases such as cancer are usually the result of a combination of environmental factors and one or several biological pathways consisting of sets of genes. Each biological pathway exerts its function by delivering signaling through the gene network. Theoretically, a pathway is supposed to have a robust topological structure under normal physiological conditions. However, the pathway’s topological structure could be altered under some pathological condition. It is well known that a normal biological network includes a small number of well-connected hub nodes and a large number of nodes that are non-hubs. In addition, it is reported that the loss of connectivity is a common topological trait of cancer networks, which is an assumption of our method. Hence, from normal to cancer, the process of the network losing connectivity might be the process of disrupting the structure of the network, namely, the number of hub genes might be altered in cancer compared to that in normal or the distribution of topological ranks of genes might be altered. Based on this, we propose a new PageRank-based method called Pathways of Topological Rank Analysis (PoTRA to detect pathways involved in cancer. We use PageRank to measure the relative topological ranks of genes in each biological pathway, then select hub genes for each pathway, and use Fisher’s exact test to test if the number of hub genes in each pathway is altered from normal to cancer. Alternatively, if the distribution of topological ranks of gene in a pathway is altered between normal and cancer, this pathway might also be involved in cancer. Hence, we use the Kolmogorov–Smirnov test to detect pathways that have an altered distribution of topological ranks of genes between two phenotypes. We apply PoTRA to study hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC and several subtypes of HCC. Very interestingly, we discover that all significant pathways in HCC are cancer-associated generally, while several

  17. Rare Copy Number Variations in Adults with Tetralogy of Fallot Implicate Novel Risk Gene Pathways

    Science.gov (United States)

    Costain, Gregory; Merico, Daniele; Migita, Ohsuke; Liu, Ben; Yuen, Tracy; Rickaby, Jessica; Thiruvahindrapuram, Bhooma; Marshall, Christian R.; Scherer, Stephen W.; Bassett, Anne S.

    2012-01-01

    Structural genetic changes, especially copy number variants (CNVs), represent a major source of genetic variation contributing to human disease. Tetralogy of Fallot (TOF) is the most common form of cyanotic congenital heart disease, but to date little is known about the role of CNVs in the etiology of TOF. Using high-resolution genome-wide microarrays and stringent calling methods, we investigated rare CNVs in a prospectively recruited cohort of 433 unrelated adults with TOF and/or pulmonary atresia at a single centre. We excluded those with recognized syndromes, including 22q11.2 deletion syndrome. We identified candidate genes for TOF based on converging evidence between rare CNVs that overlapped the same gene in unrelated individuals and from pathway analyses comparing rare CNVs in TOF cases to those in epidemiologic controls. Even after excluding the 53 (10.7%) subjects with 22q11.2 deletions, we found that adults with TOF had a greater burden of large rare genic CNVs compared to controls (8.82% vs. 4.33%, p = 0.0117). Six loci showed evidence for recurrence in TOF or related congenital heart disease, including typical 1q21.1 duplications in four (1.18%) of 340 Caucasian probands. The rare CNVs implicated novel candidate genes of interest for TOF, including PLXNA2, a gene involved in semaphorin signaling. Independent pathway analyses highlighted developmental processes as potential contributors to the pathogenesis of TOF. These results indicate that individually rare CNVs are collectively significant contributors to the genetic burden of TOF. Further, the data provide new evidence for dosage sensitive genes in PLXNA2-semaphorin signaling and related developmental processes in human cardiovascular development, consistent with previous animal models. PMID:22912587

  18. 40 CFR 80.1416 - Petition process for evaluation of new renewable fuels pathways.

    Science.gov (United States)

    2010-07-01

    ... renewable fuels pathways. 80.1416 Section 80.1416 Protection of Environment ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY... Petition process for evaluation of new renewable fuels pathways. (a) Pursuant to this section, a party may... fuel pathway has not been evaluated by EPA to determine if it qualifies for a D code pursuant to § 80...

  19. Auditory pathways and processes: implications for neuropsychological assessment and diagnosis of children and adolescents.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bailey, Teresa

    2010-01-01

    Neuroscience research on auditory processing pathways and their behavioral and electrophysiological correlates has taken place largely outside the field of clinical neuropsychology. Deviations and disruptions in auditory pathways in children and adolescents result in a well-documented range of developmental and learning impairments frequently referred for neuropsychological evaluation. This review is an introduction to research from the last decade. It describes auditory cortical and subcortical pathways and processes and relates recent research to specific conditions and questions neuropsychologists commonly encounter. Auditory processing disorders' comorbidity with ADHD and language-based disorders and research addressing the challenges of assessment and differential diagnosis are discussed.

  20. Simulation and estimation of gene number in a biological pathway using almost complete saturation mutagenesis screening of haploid mouse cells.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tokunaga, Masahiro; Kokubu, Chikara; Maeda, Yusuke; Sese, Jun; Horie, Kyoji; Sugimoto, Nakaba; Kinoshita, Taroh; Yusa, Kosuke; Takeda, Junji

    2014-11-24

    Genome-wide saturation mutagenesis and subsequent phenotype-driven screening has been central to a comprehensive understanding of complex biological processes in classical model organisms such as flies, nematodes, and plants. The degree of "saturation" (i.e., the fraction of possible target genes identified) has been shown to be a critical parameter in determining all relevant genes involved in a biological function, without prior knowledge of their products. In mammalian model systems, however, the relatively large scale and labor intensity of experiments have hampered the achievement of actual saturation mutagenesis, especially for recessive traits that require biallelic mutations to manifest detectable phenotypes. By exploiting the recently established haploid mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs), we present an implementation of almost complete saturation mutagenesis in a mammalian system. The haploid ESCs were mutagenized with the chemical mutagen N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea (ENU) and processed for the screening of mutants defective in various steps of the glycosylphosphatidylinositol-anchor biosynthetic pathway. The resulting 114 independent mutant clones were characterized by a functional complementation assay, and were shown to be defective in any of 20 genes among all 22 known genes essential for this well-characterized pathway. Ten mutants were further validated by whole-exome sequencing. The predominant generation of single-nucleotide substitutions by ENU resulted in a gene mutation rate proportional to the length of the coding sequence, which facilitated the experimental design of saturation mutagenesis screening with the aid of computational simulation. Our study enables mammalian saturation mutagenesis to become a realistic proposition. Computational simulation, combined with a pilot mutagenesis experiment, could serve as a tool for the estimation of the number of genes essential for biological processes such as drug target pathways when a positive selection of

  1. [Dual process in large number estimation under uncertainty].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Matsumuro, Miki; Miwa, Kazuhisa; Terai, Hitoshi; Yamada, Kento

    2016-08-01

    According to dual process theory, there are two systems in the mind: an intuitive and automatic System 1 and a logical and effortful System 2. While many previous studies about number estimation have focused on simple heuristics and automatic processes, the deliberative System 2 process has not been sufficiently studied. This study focused on the System 2 process for large number estimation. First, we described an estimation process based on participants’ verbal reports. The task, corresponding to the problem-solving process, consisted of creating subgoals, retrieving values, and applying operations. Second, we investigated the influence of such deliberative process by System 2 on intuitive estimation by System 1, using anchoring effects. The results of the experiment showed that the System 2 process could mitigate anchoring effects.

  2. Lepton number violating processes and Majorana neutrinos

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Dib, C.; Schmidt, I.; Gribanov, V.; Kovalenko, S.

    2001-01-01

    Some generic properties of lepton number violating processes and their relation to different entries of the Majorana neutrino mass matrix are discussed. Present and near future experiments searching for these processes, except the neutrinoless double beta decay, are unable to probe light (eV mass region) and heavy (hundred GeV mass region) neutrinos. On the other hand, due to the effect of a resonant enhancement, some of lepton number violating decays can be very sensitive to the intermediate-mass neutrinos with typical masses in the hundred MeV region. These neutrinos may appear as admixtures of the three active and an arbitrary number of sterile neutrino species. The experimental constraints on these massive neutrino states are analyzed and their possible cosmological and astrophysical implications are discussed

  3. Residual number processing in dyscalculia ?

    OpenAIRE

    Cappelletti, Marinella; Price, Cathy J.

    2013-01-01

    Developmental dyscalculia – a congenital learning disability in understanding numerical concepts – is typically associated with parietal lobe abnormality. However, people with dyscalculia often retain some residual numerical abilities, reported in studies that otherwise focused on abnormalities in the dyscalculic brain. Here we took a different perspective by focusing on brain regions that support residual number processing in dyscalculia. All participants accurately performed semantic and ca...

  4. Neglect Impairs Explicit Processing of the Mental Number Line

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zorzi, Marco; Bonato, Mario; Treccani, Barbara; Scalambrin, Giovanni; Marenzi, Roberto; Priftis, Konstantinos

    2012-01-01

    Converging evidence suggests that visuospatial attention plays a pivotal role in numerical processing, especially when the task involves the manipulation of numerical magnitudes. Visuospatial neglect impairs contralesional attentional orienting not only in perceptual but also in numerical space. Indeed, patients with left neglect show a bias toward larger numbers when mentally bisecting a numerical interval, as if they were neglecting its leftmost part. In contrast, their performance in parity judgments is unbiased, suggesting a dissociation between explicit and implicit processing of numerical magnitude. Here we further investigate the consequences of these visuospatial attention impairments on numerical processing and their interaction with task demands. Patients with right hemisphere damage, with and without left neglect, were administered both a number comparison and a parity judgment task that had identical stimuli and response requirements. Neglect patients’ performance was normal in the parity task, when processing of numerical magnitude was implicit, whereas they showed characteristic biases in the number comparison task, when access to numerical magnitude was explicit. Compared to patients without neglect, they showed an asymmetric distance effect, with slowing of the number immediately smaller than (i.e., to the left of) the reference and a stronger SNARC effect, particularly for large numbers. The latter might index an exaggerated effect of number-space compatibility after ipsilesional (i.e., rightward) orienting in number space. Thus, the effect of neglect on the explicit processing of numerical magnitude can be understood in terms of both a failure to orient to smaller (i.e., contralesional) magnitudes and a difficulty to disengage from larger (i.e., ipsilesional) magnitudes on the number line, which resembles the disrupted pattern of attention orienting in visual space. PMID:22661935

  5. Wood ethanol and synthetic natural gas pathways

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    NONE

    2006-11-30

    This report provided details of updates to the wood ethanol pathway recently added to the GHGenius model, an analytical tool used to analyze emissions from conventional and alternative fuel combustion processes. The pathway contains data developed by the United States Department of Energy. A number of co-products were added to the wood and agricultural residue pathways, including furfural, xylitol, lignin, and glycerol. New chemical inputs included nitrogen gas, ammonia, enzymes and yeast. Biological ethanol pathways were reviewed, and separate inputs for wood, agricultural residues, corn ethanol, and wheat ethanol were added. The model was updated to reflect current research conducted on the gasification of wood and the upgrading of the gas to produce pipeline quality natural gas. New process developments in producing pipeline quality gas from coal were also added. The ability to model enzyme consumption was added to all ethanol pathways. 25 refs., 41 tabs., 8 figs.

  6. Wood ethanol and synthetic natural gas pathways

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    2006-01-01

    This report provided details of updates to the wood ethanol pathway recently added to the GHGenius model, an analytical tool used to analyze emissions from conventional and alternative fuel combustion processes. The pathway contains data developed by the United States Department of Energy. A number of co-products were added to the wood and agricultural residue pathways, including furfural, xylitol, lignin, and glycerol. New chemical inputs included nitrogen gas, ammonia, enzymes and yeast. Biological ethanol pathways were reviewed, and separate inputs for wood, agricultural residues, corn ethanol, and wheat ethanol were added. The model was updated to reflect current research conducted on the gasification of wood and the upgrading of the gas to produce pipeline quality natural gas. New process developments in producing pipeline quality gas from coal were also added. The ability to model enzyme consumption was added to all ethanol pathways. 25 refs., 41 tabs., 8 figs

  7. Of colored numbers and numbered colors: interactive processes in grapheme-color synesthesia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gebuis, Titia; Nijboer, Tanja C W; van der Smagt, Maarten J

    2009-01-01

    Grapheme-color synesthetes experience a specific color when they see a grapheme but they do not report to perceive a grapheme when a color is presented. In this study, we investigate whether color can still evoke number-processes even when a vivid number experience is absent. We used color-number and number-color priming, both revealing faster responses in congruent compared to incongruent conditions. Interestingly, the congruency effect was of similar magnitude for both conditions, and a numerical distance effect was present only in the color-number priming task. In addition, a priming task in which synesthetes had to judge the parity of a colored number revealed faster responses in parity congruent than in parity incongruent trials. These combined results demonstrate that synesthesia is indeed bi-directional and of similar strength in both directions. Furthermore, they illustrate the precise nature of these interactions and show that the direction of these interactions is determined by task demands, not by the more vividly experienced aspect of the stimulus.

  8. The number processing and calculation system: evidence from cognitive neuropsychology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Salguero-Alcañiz, M P; Alameda-Bailén, J R

    2015-04-01

    Cognitive neuropsychology focuses on the concepts of dissociation and double dissociation. The performance of number processing and calculation tasks by patients with acquired brain injury can be used to characterise the way in which the healthy cognitive system manipulates number symbols and quantities. The objective of this study is to determine the components of the numerical processing and calculation system. Participants consisted of 6 patients with acquired brain injuries in different cerebral localisations. We used Batería de evaluación del procesamiento numérico y el cálculo, a battery assessing number processing and calculation. Data was analysed using the difference in proportions test. Quantitative numerical knowledge is independent from number transcoding, qualitative numerical knowledge, and calculation. Recodification is independent from qualitative numerical knowledge and calculation. Quantitative numerical knowledge and calculation are also independent functions. The number processing and calculation system comprises at least 4 components that operate independently: quantitative numerical knowledge, number transcoding, qualitative numerical knowledge, and calculation. Therefore, each one may be damaged selectively without affecting the functioning of another. According to the main models of number processing and calculation, each component has different characteristics and cerebral localisations. Copyright © 2013 Sociedad Española de Neurología. Published by Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved.

  9. Cortical areas involved in Arabic number reading.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Roux, F-E; Lubrano, V; Lauwers-Cances, V; Giussani, C; Démonet, J-F

    2008-01-15

    Distinct functional pathways for processing words and numbers have been hypothesized from the observation of dissociated impairments of these categories in brain-damaged patients. We aimed to identify the cortical areas involved in Arabic number reading process in patients operated on for various brain lesions. Direct cortical electrostimulation was prospectively used in 60 brain mappings. We used object naming and two reading tasks: alphabetic script (sentences and number words) and Arabic number reading. Cortical areas involved in Arabic number reading were identified according to location, type of interference, and distinctness from areas associated with other language tasks. Arabic number reading was sustained by small cortical areas, often extremely well localized (area (Brodmann area 45), the anterior part of the dominant supramarginal gyrus (Brodmann area 40; p area (Brodmann area 37; p areas.

  10. The PINK1-Parkin pathway is involved in the regulation of mitochondrial remodeling process

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Park, Jeehye; Lee, Gina; Chung, Jongkyeong

    2009-01-01

    The two Parkinson's disease (PD) genes, PTEN-induced kinase 1 (PINK1) and parkin, are linked in a common pathway which affects mitochondrial integrity and function. However, it is still not known what this pathway does in the mitochondria. Therefore, we investigated its physiological function in Drosophila. Because Drosophila PINK1 and parkin mutants show changes in mitochondrial morphology in both indirect flight muscles and dopaminergic neurons, we here investigated whether the PINK1-Parkin pathway genetically interacts with the regulators of mitochondrial fusion and fission such as Drp1, which promotes mitochondrial fission, and Opa1 or Marf, which induces mitochondrial fusion. Surprisingly, DrosophilaPINK1 and parkin mutant phenotypes were markedly suppressed by overexpression of Drp1 or downregulation of Opa1 or Marf, indicating that the PINK1-Parkin pathway regulates mitochondrial remodeling process in the direction of promoting mitochondrial fission. Therefore, we strongly suggest that mitochondrial fusion and fission process could be a prominent therapeutic target for the treatment of PD.

  11. Insights into numerical cognition: considering eye-fixations in number processing and arithmetic.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mock, J; Huber, S; Klein, E; Moeller, K

    2016-05-01

    Considering eye-fixation behavior is standard in reading research to investigate underlying cognitive processes. However, in numerical cognition research eye-tracking is used less often and less systematically. Nevertheless, we identified over 40 studies on this topic from the last 40 years with an increase of eye-tracking studies on numerical cognition during the last decade. Here, we review and discuss these empirical studies to evaluate the added value of eye-tracking for the investigation of number processing. Our literature review revealed that the way eye-fixation behavior is considered in numerical cognition research ranges from investigating basic perceptual aspects of processing non-symbolic and symbolic numbers, over assessing the common representational space of numbers and space, to evaluating the influence of characteristics of the base-10 place-value structure of Arabic numbers and executive control on number processing. Apart from basic results such as reading times of numbers increasing with their magnitude, studies revealed that number processing can influence domain-general processes such as attention shifting-but also the other way round. Domain-general processes such as cognitive control were found to affect number processing. In summary, eye-fixation behavior allows for new insights into both domain-specific and domain-general processes involved in number processing. Based thereon, a processing model of the temporal dynamics of numerical cognition is postulated, which distinguishes an early stage of stimulus-driven bottom-up processing from later more top-down controlled stages. Furthermore, perspectives for eye-tracking research in numerical cognition are discussed to emphasize the potential of this methodology for advancing our understanding of numerical cognition.

  12. Vaccination and the TAP-independent antigen processing pathways.

    Science.gov (United States)

    López, Daniel; Lorente, Elena; Barriga, Alejandro; Johnstone, Carolina; Mir, Carmen

    2013-09-01

    The cytotoxic CD8(+) T lymphocyte-mediated cellular response is important for the elimination of virus-infected cells and requires the prior recognition of short viral peptide antigens previously translocated to the endoplasmic reticulum by the transporter associated with antigen processing (TAP). However, individuals with nonfunctional TAP complexes or infected cells with TAP molecules blocked by specific viral proteins, such as the cowpoxvirus, a component of the first source of early empirical vaccination against smallpox, are still able to present several HLA class I ligands generated by the TAP-independent antigen processing pathways to specific cytotoxic CD8(+) T lymphocytes. Currently, bioterrorism and emerging infectious diseases have renewed interest in poxviruses. Recent works that have identified HLA class I ligands and epitopes in virus-infected TAP-deficient cells have implications for the study of both the effectiveness of early empirical vaccination and the analysis of HLA class I antigen processing in TAP-deficient subjects.

  13. Revealing complex function, process and pathway interactions with high-throughput expression and biological annotation data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Singh, Nitesh Kumar; Ernst, Mathias; Liebscher, Volkmar; Fuellen, Georg; Taher, Leila

    2016-10-20

    The biological relationships both between and within the functions, processes and pathways that operate within complex biological systems are only poorly characterized, making the interpretation of large scale gene expression datasets extremely challenging. Here, we present an approach that integrates gene expression and biological annotation data to identify and describe the interactions between biological functions, processes and pathways that govern a phenotype of interest. The product is a global, interconnected network, not of genes but of functions, processes and pathways, that represents the biological relationships within the system. We validated our approach on two high-throughput expression datasets describing organismal and organ development. Our findings are well supported by the available literature, confirming that developmental processes and apoptosis play key roles in cell differentiation. Furthermore, our results suggest that processes related to pluripotency and lineage commitment, which are known to be critical for development, interact mainly indirectly, through genes implicated in more general biological processes. Moreover, we provide evidence that supports the relevance of cell spatial organization in the developing liver for proper liver function. Our strategy can be viewed as an abstraction that is useful to interpret high-throughput data and devise further experiments.

  14. PathwaySplice: An R package for unbiased pathway analysis of alternative splicing in RNA-Seq data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yan, Aimin; Ban, Yuguang; Gao, Zhen; Chen, Xi; Wang, Lily

    2018-04-24

    Pathway analysis of alternative splicing would be biased without accounting for the different number of exons or junctions associated with each gene, because genes with higher number of exons or junctions are more likely to be included in the "significant" gene list in alternative splicing. We present PathwaySplice, an R package that (1) Performs pathway analysis that explicitly adjusts for the number of exons or junctions associated with each gene; (2) Visualizes selection bias due to different number of exons or junctions for each gene and formally tests for presence of bias using logistic regression; (3) Supports gene sets based on the Gene Ontology terms, as well as more broadly defined gene sets (e.g. MSigDB) or user defined gene sets; (4) Identifies the significant genes driving pathway significance and (5) Organizes significant pathways with an enrichment map, where pathways with large number of overlapping genes are grouped together in a network graph. https://bioconductor.org/packages/release/bioc/html/PathwaySplice.html. lily.wangg@gmail.com, xi.steven.chen@gmail.com.

  15. Pathway-based analysis of genome-wide siRNA screens reveals the regulatory landscape of APP processing.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Luiz Miguel Camargo

    Full Text Available The progressive aggregation of Amyloid-β (Aβ in the brain is a major trait of Alzheimer's Disease (AD. Aβ is produced as a result of proteolytic processing of the β-amyloid precursor protein (APP. Processing of APP is mediated by multiple enzymes, resulting in the production of distinct peptide products: the non-amyloidogenic peptide sAPPα and the amyloidogenic peptides sAPPβ, Aβ40, and Aβ42. Using a pathway-based approach, we analyzed a large-scale siRNA screen that measured the production of different APP proteolytic products. Our analysis identified many of the biological processes/pathways that are known to regulate APP processing and have been implicated in AD pathogenesis, as well as revealing novel regulatory mechanisms. Furthermore, we also demonstrate that some of these processes differentially regulate APP processing, with some mechanisms favouring production of certain peptide species over others. For example, synaptic transmission having a bias towards regulating Aβ40 production over Aβ42 as well as processes involved in insulin and pancreatic biology having a bias for sAPPβ production over sAPPα. In addition, some of the pathways identified as regulators of APP processing contain genes (CLU, BIN1, CR1, PICALM, TREM2, SORL1, MEF2C, DSG2, EPH1A recently implicated with AD through genome wide association studies (GWAS and associated meta-analysis. In addition, we provide supporting evidence and a deeper mechanistic understanding of the role of diabetes in AD. The identification of these processes/pathways, their differential impact on APP processing, and their relationships to each other, provide a comprehensive systems biology view of the "regulatory landscape" of APP.

  16. Age-dependent brain gene expression and copy number anomalies in autism suggest distinct pathological processes at young versus mature ages.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chow, Maggie L; Pramparo, Tiziano; Winn, Mary E; Barnes, Cynthia Carter; Li, Hai-Ri; Weiss, Lauren; Fan, Jian-Bing; Murray, Sarah; April, Craig; Belinson, Haim; Fu, Xiang-Dong; Wynshaw-Boris, Anthony; Schork, Nicholas J; Courchesne, Eric

    2012-01-01

    Autism is a highly heritable neurodevelopmental disorder, yet the genetic underpinnings of the disorder are largely unknown. Aberrant brain overgrowth is a well-replicated observation in the autism literature; but association, linkage, and expression studies have not identified genetic factors that explain this trajectory. Few studies have had sufficient statistical power to investigate whole-genome gene expression and genotypic variation in the autistic brain, especially in regions that display the greatest growth abnormality. Previous functional genomic studies have identified possible alterations in transcript levels of genes related to neurodevelopment and immune function. Thus, there is a need for genetic studies involving key brain regions to replicate these findings and solidify the role of particular functional pathways in autism pathogenesis. We therefore sought to identify abnormal brain gene expression patterns via whole-genome analysis of mRNA levels and copy number variations (CNVs) in autistic and control postmortem brain samples. We focused on prefrontal cortex tissue where excess neuron numbers and cortical overgrowth are pronounced in the majority of autism cases. We found evidence for dysregulation in pathways governing cell number, cortical patterning, and differentiation in young autistic prefrontal cortex. In contrast, adult autistic prefrontal cortex showed dysregulation of signaling and repair pathways. Genes regulating cell cycle also exhibited autism-specific CNVs in DNA derived from prefrontal cortex, and these genes were significantly associated with autism in genome-wide association study datasets. Our results suggest that CNVs and age-dependent gene expression changes in autism may reflect distinct pathological processes in the developing versus the mature autistic prefrontal cortex. Our results raise the hypothesis that genetic dysregulation in the developing brain leads to abnormal regional patterning, excess prefrontal neurons

  17. Age-dependent brain gene expression and copy number anomalies in autism suggest distinct pathological processes at young versus mature ages.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Maggie L Chow

    Full Text Available Autism is a highly heritable neurodevelopmental disorder, yet the genetic underpinnings of the disorder are largely unknown. Aberrant brain overgrowth is a well-replicated observation in the autism literature; but association, linkage, and expression studies have not identified genetic factors that explain this trajectory. Few studies have had sufficient statistical power to investigate whole-genome gene expression and genotypic variation in the autistic brain, especially in regions that display the greatest growth abnormality. Previous functional genomic studies have identified possible alterations in transcript levels of genes related to neurodevelopment and immune function. Thus, there is a need for genetic studies involving key brain regions to replicate these findings and solidify the role of particular functional pathways in autism pathogenesis. We therefore sought to identify abnormal brain gene expression patterns via whole-genome analysis of mRNA levels and copy number variations (CNVs in autistic and control postmortem brain samples. We focused on prefrontal cortex tissue where excess neuron numbers and cortical overgrowth are pronounced in the majority of autism cases. We found evidence for dysregulation in pathways governing cell number, cortical patterning, and differentiation in young autistic prefrontal cortex. In contrast, adult autistic prefrontal cortex showed dysregulation of signaling and repair pathways. Genes regulating cell cycle also exhibited autism-specific CNVs in DNA derived from prefrontal cortex, and these genes were significantly associated with autism in genome-wide association study datasets. Our results suggest that CNVs and age-dependent gene expression changes in autism may reflect distinct pathological processes in the developing versus the mature autistic prefrontal cortex. Our results raise the hypothesis that genetic dysregulation in the developing brain leads to abnormal regional patterning, excess

  18. Age-Dependent Brain Gene Expression and Copy Number Anomalies in Autism Suggest Distinct Pathological Processes at Young Versus Mature Ages

    Science.gov (United States)

    Winn, Mary E.; Barnes, Cynthia Carter; Li, Hai-Ri; Weiss, Lauren; Fan, Jian-Bing; Murray, Sarah; April, Craig; Belinson, Haim; Fu, Xiang-Dong; Wynshaw-Boris, Anthony; Schork, Nicholas J.; Courchesne, Eric

    2012-01-01

    Autism is a highly heritable neurodevelopmental disorder, yet the genetic underpinnings of the disorder are largely unknown. Aberrant brain overgrowth is a well-replicated observation in the autism literature; but association, linkage, and expression studies have not identified genetic factors that explain this trajectory. Few studies have had sufficient statistical power to investigate whole-genome gene expression and genotypic variation in the autistic brain, especially in regions that display the greatest growth abnormality. Previous functional genomic studies have identified possible alterations in transcript levels of genes related to neurodevelopment and immune function. Thus, there is a need for genetic studies involving key brain regions to replicate these findings and solidify the role of particular functional pathways in autism pathogenesis. We therefore sought to identify abnormal brain gene expression patterns via whole-genome analysis of mRNA levels and copy number variations (CNVs) in autistic and control postmortem brain samples. We focused on prefrontal cortex tissue where excess neuron numbers and cortical overgrowth are pronounced in the majority of autism cases. We found evidence for dysregulation in pathways governing cell number, cortical patterning, and differentiation in young autistic prefrontal cortex. In contrast, adult autistic prefrontal cortex showed dysregulation of signaling and repair pathways. Genes regulating cell cycle also exhibited autism-specific CNVs in DNA derived from prefrontal cortex, and these genes were significantly associated with autism in genome-wide association study datasets. Our results suggest that CNVs and age-dependent gene expression changes in autism may reflect distinct pathological processes in the developing versus the mature autistic prefrontal cortex. Our results raise the hypothesis that genetic dysregulation in the developing brain leads to abnormal regional patterning, excess prefrontal neurons

  19. An Automated Pipeline for Engineering Many-Enzyme Pathways: Computational Sequence Design, Pathway Expression-Flux Mapping, and Scalable Pathway Optimization.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Halper, Sean M; Cetnar, Daniel P; Salis, Howard M

    2018-01-01

    Engineering many-enzyme metabolic pathways suffers from the design curse of dimensionality. There are an astronomical number of synonymous DNA sequence choices, though relatively few will express an evolutionary robust, maximally productive pathway without metabolic bottlenecks. To solve this challenge, we have developed an integrated, automated computational-experimental pipeline that identifies a pathway's optimal DNA sequence without high-throughput screening or many cycles of design-build-test. The first step applies our Operon Calculator algorithm to design a host-specific evolutionary robust bacterial operon sequence with maximally tunable enzyme expression levels. The second step applies our RBS Library Calculator algorithm to systematically vary enzyme expression levels with the smallest-sized library. After characterizing a small number of constructed pathway variants, measurements are supplied to our Pathway Map Calculator algorithm, which then parameterizes a kinetic metabolic model that ultimately predicts the pathway's optimal enzyme expression levels and DNA sequences. Altogether, our algorithms provide the ability to efficiently map the pathway's sequence-expression-activity space and predict DNA sequences with desired metabolic fluxes. Here, we provide a step-by-step guide to applying the Pathway Optimization Pipeline on a desired multi-enzyme pathway in a bacterial host.

  20. Racial and Socioeconomic Differences Manifest in Process Measure Adherence for Enhanced Recovery After Surgery Pathway.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Leeds, Ira L; Alimi, Yewande; Hobson, Deborah R; Efron, Jonathan E; Wick, Elizabeth C; Haut, Elliott R; Johnston, Fabian M

    2017-10-01

    Adherence to care processes and surgical outcomes varies by population subgroups for the same procedure. Enhanced recovery after surgery pathways are intended to standardize care, but their effect on process adherence and outcomes for population subgroups is unknown. This study aims to demonstrate the association between recovery pathway implementation, process measures, and short-term surgical outcomes by population subgroup. This study is a pre- and post-quality improvement implementation cohort study. This study was conducted at a tertiary academic medical center. A modified colorectal enhanced recovery after surgery pathway was implemented. Patients were included who had elective colon and rectal resections before (2013) and following (2014-2016) recovery pathway implementation. Thirty-day outcomes by race and socioeconomic status were analyzed using a difference-in-difference approach with correlation to process adherence. We identified 639 cases (199 preimplementation, 440 postimplementation). In these cases, 75.2% of the patients were white, and 91.7% had a high socioeconomic status. Groups were similar in terms of other preoperative characteristics. Following pathway implementation, median lengths of stay improved in all subgroups (-1.0 days overall, p ≤ 0.001), but with no statistical difference by race or socioeconomic status (p = 0.89 and p = 0.29). Complication rates in both racial and socioeconomic groups were no different (26.4% vs 28.8%, p = 0.73; 27.3% vs 25.0%, p = 0.86) and remained unchanged with implementation (p = 0.93, p = 0.84). By race, overall adherence was 31.7% in white patients and 26.5% in nonwhite patients (p = 0.32). Although stratification by socioeconomic status demonstrated decreased overall adherence in the low-status group (31.8% vs 17.1%, p = 0.05), white patients were more likely to have regional pain therapy (57.1% vs 44.1%, p = 0.02) with a similar trend seen with socioeconomic status. Data were collected primarily for

  1. Toward a model framework of generalized parallel componential processing of multi-symbol numbers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huber, Stefan; Cornelsen, Sonja; Moeller, Korbinian; Nuerk, Hans-Christoph

    2015-05-01

    In this article, we propose and evaluate a new model framework of parallel componential multi-symbol number processing, generalizing the idea of parallel componential processing of multi-digit numbers to the case of negative numbers by considering the polarity signs similar to single digits. In a first step, we evaluated this account by defining and investigating a sign-decade compatibility effect for the comparison of positive and negative numbers, which extends the unit-decade compatibility effect in 2-digit number processing. Then, we evaluated whether the model is capable of accounting for previous findings in negative number processing. In a magnitude comparison task, in which participants had to single out the larger of 2 integers, we observed a reliable sign-decade compatibility effect with prolonged reaction times for incompatible (e.g., -97 vs. +53; in which the number with the larger decade digit has the smaller, i.e., negative polarity sign) as compared with sign-decade compatible number pairs (e.g., -53 vs. +97). Moreover, an analysis of participants' eye fixation behavior corroborated our model of parallel componential processing of multi-symbol numbers. These results are discussed in light of concurrent theoretical notions about negative number processing. On the basis of the present results, we propose a generalized integrated model framework of parallel componential multi-symbol processing. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

  2. New methods for clinical pathways-Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) and Tangible Business Process Modeling (t.BPM).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Scheuerlein, Hubert; Rauchfuss, Falk; Dittmar, Yves; Molle, Rüdiger; Lehmann, Torsten; Pienkos, Nicole; Settmacher, Utz

    2012-06-01

    Clinical pathways (CP) are nowadays used in numerous institutions, but their real impact is still a matter of debate. The optimal design of a clinical pathway remains unclear and is mainly determined by the expectations of the individual institution. The purpose of the here described pilot project was the development of two CP (colon and rectum carcinoma) according to Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN) and Tangible Business Process Modeling (t.BPM). BPMN is an established standard for business process modelling in industry and economy. It is, in the broadest sense, a computer programme which enables the description and a relatively easy graphical imaging of complex processes. t.BPM is a modular construction system of the BPMN symbols which enables the creation of an outline or raw model, e.g. by placing the symbols on a spread-out paper sheet. The thus created outline can then be transferred to the computer and further modified as required. CP for the treatment of colon and rectal cancer have been developed with support of an external IT coach. The pathway was developed in an interdisciplinary and interprofessional manner (55 man-days over 15 working days). During this time, necessary interviews with medical, nursing and administrative staffs were conducted as well. Both pathways were developed parallel. Subsequent analysis was focussed on feasibility, expenditure, clarity and suitability for daily clinical practice. The familiarization with BPMN was relatively quick and intuitive. The use of t.BPM enabled the pragmatic, effective and results-directed creation of outlines for the CP. The development of both CP was finished from the diagnostic evaluation to the adjuvant/neoadjuvant therapy and rehabilitation phase. The integration of checklists, guidelines and important medical or other documents is easily accomplished. A direct integration into the hospital computer system is currently not possible for technical reasons. BPMN and t.BPM are sufficiently

  3. Cognitive mechanisms underlying third graders' arithmetic skills: Expanding the pathways to mathematics model.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Träff, Ulf; Olsson, Linda; Skagerlund, Kenny; Östergren, Rickard

    2018-03-01

    A modified pathways to mathematics model was used to examine the cognitive mechanisms underlying arithmetic skills in third graders. A total of 269 children were assessed on tasks tapping the four pathways and arithmetic skills. A path analysis showed that symbolic number processing was directly supported by the linguistic and approximate quantitative pathways. The direct contribution from the four pathways to arithmetic proficiency varied; the linguistic pathway supported single-digit arithmetic and word problem solving, whereas the approximate quantitative pathway supported only multi-digit calculation. The spatial processing and verbal working memory pathways supported only arithmetic word problem solving. The notion of hierarchical levels of arithmetic was supported by the results, and the different levels were supported by different constellations of pathways. However, the strongest support to the hierarchical levels of arithmetic were provided by the proximal arithmetic skills. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  4. Effects of EPSPS Copy Number Variation (CNV and Glyphosate Application on the Aromatic and Branched Chain Amino Acid Synthesis Pathways in Amaranthus palmeri

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Manuel Fernández-Escalada

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available A key enzyme of the shikimate pathway, 5-enolpyruvylshikimate-3-phosphate synthase (EPSPS; EC 2.5.1.19, is the known target of the widely used herbicide glyphosate. Glyphosate resistance in Amaranthus palmeri, one of the most troublesome weeds in agriculture, has evolved through increased EPSPS gene copy number. The aim of this work was to study the pleiotropic effects of (i EPSPS increased transcript abundance due to gene copy number variation (CNV and of (ii glyphosate application on the aromatic amino acid (AAA and branched chain amino acid (BCAA synthesis pathways. Hydroponically grown glyphosate sensitive (GS and glyphosate resistant (GR plants were treated with glyphosate 3 days after treatment. In absence of glyphosate treatment, high EPSPS gene copy number had only a subtle effect on transcriptional regulation of AAA and BCAA pathway genes. In contrast, glyphosate treatment provoked a general accumulation of the transcripts corresponding to genes of the AAA pathway leading to synthesis of chorismate in both GS and GR. After chorismate, anthranilate synthase transcript abundance was higher while chorismate mutase transcription showed a small decrease in GR and remained stable in GS, suggesting a regulatory branch point in the pathway that favors synthesis toward tryptophan over phenylalanine and tyrosine after glyphosate treatment. This was confirmed by studying enzyme activities in vitro and amino acid analysis. Importantly, this upregulation was glyphosate dose dependent and was observed similarly in both GS and GR populations. Glyphosate treatment also had a slight effect on the expression of BCAA genes but no general effect on the pathway could be observed. Taken together, our observations suggest that the high CNV of EPSPS in A. palmeri GR populations has no major pleiotropic effect on the expression of AAA biosynthetic genes, even in response to glyphosate treatment. This finding supports the idea that the fitness cost associated

  5. Solution-Processed Carbon Nanotube True Random Number Generator.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gaviria Rojas, William A; McMorrow, Julian J; Geier, Michael L; Tang, Qianying; Kim, Chris H; Marks, Tobin J; Hersam, Mark C

    2017-08-09

    With the growing adoption of interconnected electronic devices in consumer and industrial applications, there is an increasing demand for robust security protocols when transmitting and receiving sensitive data. Toward this end, hardware true random number generators (TRNGs), commonly used to create encryption keys, offer significant advantages over software pseudorandom number generators. However, the vast network of devices and sensors envisioned for the "Internet of Things" will require small, low-cost, and mechanically flexible TRNGs with low computational complexity. These rigorous constraints position solution-processed semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) as leading candidates for next-generation security devices. Here, we demonstrate the first TRNG using static random access memory (SRAM) cells based on solution-processed SWCNTs that digitize thermal noise to generate random bits. This bit generation strategy can be readily implemented in hardware with minimal transistor and computational overhead, resulting in an output stream that passes standardized statistical tests for randomness. By using solution-processed semiconducting SWCNTs in a low-power, complementary architecture to achieve TRNG, we demonstrate a promising approach for improving the security of printable and flexible electronics.

  6. Making assessments while taking repeated risks: a pattern of multiple response pathways.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pleskac, Timothy J; Wershbale, Avishai

    2014-02-01

    Beyond simply a decision process, repeated risky decisions also require a number of cognitive processes including learning, search and exploration, and attention. In this article, we examine how multiple response pathways develop over repeated risky decisions. Using the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) as a case study, we show that 2 different response pathways emerge over the course of the task. The assessment pathway is a slower, more controlled pathway where participants deliberate over taking a risk. The 2nd pathway is a faster, more automatic process where no deliberation occurs. Results imply the slower assessment pathway is taken as choice conflict increases and that the faster automatic response is a learned response. Based on these results, we modify an existing formal cognitive model of decision making during the BART to account for these dual response pathways. The slower more deliberative response process is modeled with a sequential sampling process where evidence is accumulated to a threshold, while the other response is given automatically. We show that adolescents with conduct disorder and substance use disorder symptoms not only evaluate risks differently during the BART but also differ in the rate at which they develop the more automatic response. More broadly, our results suggest cognitive models of judgment decision making need to transition from treating observed decisions as the result of a single response pathway to the result of multiple response pathways that change and develop over time.

  7. A peer review process as part of the implementation of clinical pathways in radiation oncology: Does it improve compliance?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gebhardt, Brian J; Heron, Dwight E; Beriwal, Sushil

    Clinical pathways are patient management plans that standardize evidence-based practices to ensure high-quality and cost-effective medical care. Implementation of a pathway is a collaborative process in our network, requiring the active involvement of physicians. This approach promotes acceptance of pathway recommendations, although a peer review process is necessary to ensure compliance and to capture and approve off-pathway selections. We investigated the peer review process and factors associated with time to completion of peer review. Our cancer center implemented radiation oncology pathways for every disease site throughout a large, integrated network. Recommendations are written based upon national guidelines, published literature, and institutional experience with evidence evaluated hierarchically in order of efficacy, toxicity, and then cost. Physicians enter decisions into an online, menu-driven decision support tool that integrates with medical records. Data were collected from the support tool and included the rate of on- and off-pathway selections, peer review decisions performed by disease site directors, and time to complete peer review. A total of 6965 treatment decisions were entered in 2015, and 605 (8.7%) were made off-pathway and were subject to peer review. The median time to peer review decision was 2 days (interquartile range, 0.2-6.8). Factors associated with time to peer review decision >48 hours on univariate analysis include disease site (P peer review (P 48 hours. Clinical pathways are an integral tool for standardizing evidence-based care throughout our large, integrated network, with 91.3% of all treatment decisions being made as per pathway. The peer review process was feasible, with peer review of treatment decisions encourages compliance with clinical pathway recommendations. Copyright © 2017 American Society for Radiation Oncology. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  8. RNase MRP is required for entry of 35S precursor rRNA into the canonical processing pathway.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lindahl, Lasse; Bommankanti, Ananth; Li, Xing; Hayden, Lauren; Jones, Adrienne; Khan, Miriam; Oni, Tolulope; Zengel, Janice M

    2009-07-01

    RNase MRP is a nucleolar RNA-protein enzyme that participates in the processing of rRNA during ribosome biogenesis. Previous experiments suggested that RNase MRP makes a nonessential cleavage in the first internal transcribed spacer. Here we report experiments with new temperature-sensitive RNase MRP mutants in Saccharomyces cerevisiae that show that the abundance of all early intermediates in the processing pathway is severely reduced upon inactivation of RNase MRP. Transcription of rRNA continues unabated as determined by RNA polymerase run-on transcription, but the precursor rRNA transcript does not accumulate, and appears to be unstable. Taken together, these observations suggest that inactivation of RNase MRP blocks cleavage at sites A0, A1, A2, and A3, which in turn, prevents precursor rRNA from entering the canonical processing pathway (35S > 20S + 27S > 18S + 25S + 5.8S rRNA). Nevertheless, at least some cleavage at the processing site in the second internal transcribed spacer takes place to form an unusual 24S intermediate, suggesting that cleavage at C2 is not blocked. Furthermore, the long form of 5.8S rRNA is made in the absence of RNase MRP activity, but only in the presence of Xrn1p (exonuclease 1), an enzyme not required for the canonical pathway. We conclude that RNase MRP is a key enzyme for initiating the canonical processing of precursor rRNA transcripts, but alternative pathway(s) might provide a backup for production of small amounts of rRNA.

  9. Romantic Relationships and Criminal Desistance: Pathways and Processes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wyse, Jessica JB; Harding, David J.; Morenoff, Jeffrey D.

    2014-01-01

    In dominant theories of criminal desistance, marital relationship formation is understood to be a key “turning point” away from deviant behavior. Empirical studies supporting this claim have largely focused on the positive role of marriage in men's desistance from crime, and relatively few studies have examined the role that non-marital relationships may play in desistance. Drawing on 138 longitudinal in-depth interviews with 22 men and women reentering society from prison, this paper extends the scope of desistance research by additionally considering the significance of more fleeting and fluid relationships, and the diverse processes through which romantic relationships of all sorts are linked with criminal behaviors. We present an empirically-based typology detailing six processes, grouped within three conceptual categories, through which romantic relationships had their effects. These pathways include material circumstances, social bonds and interactions, and emotional supports and stressors. We also consider gender differences in these processes. While more tenuous bonds to marginally conventional partners would seem to exert little effect, as one of the few relationships and social roles available to many former prisoners, we found that they wielded important influence, if not always in a positive direction. PMID:25484489

  10. fMRI and DTI in delayed development of number processing

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Krick, C.M.; Neuhaus, A.; Klewin, C.; Woerner, T.; Kreis, S.; Reith, W.

    2015-01-01

    The neuronal correlate of the current cultural performance arose from developmental processes that can be observed by functional and anatomical magnetic resonance imaging. The velocity of these maturation processes occurs differently between adolescents, causing implications for both school career and academic performance. Regarding spatial-numerical cognition the myelinization of the superior longitudinal bundle appears to be crucial because this fiber connection intermediates between the linguistic nature of number words and conception of their spatial-numerical magnitude. The neuroscientific observation of anatomical brain maturation and its influence on school-relevant number processing may be helpful for educational purposes as well as for school psychology. (orig.) [de

  11. First-Pass Processing of Value Cues in the Ventral Visual Pathway.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sasikumar, Dennis; Emeric, Erik; Stuphorn, Veit; Connor, Charles E

    2018-02-19

    Real-world value often depends on subtle, continuously variable visual cues specific to particular object categories, like the tailoring of a suit, the condition of an automobile, or the construction of a house. Here, we used microelectrode recording in behaving monkeys to test two possible mechanisms for category-specific value-cue processing: (1) previous findings suggest that prefrontal cortex (PFC) identifies object categories, and based on category identity, PFC could use top-down attentional modulation to enhance visual processing of category-specific value cues, providing signals to PFC for calculating value, and (2) a faster mechanism would be first-pass visual processing of category-specific value cues, immediately providing the necessary visual information to PFC. This, however, would require learned mechanisms for processing the appropriate cues in a given object category. To test these hypotheses, we trained monkeys to discriminate value in four letter-like stimulus categories. Each category had a different, continuously variable shape cue that signified value (liquid reward amount) as well as other cues that were irrelevant. Monkeys chose between stimuli of different reward values. Consistent with the first-pass hypothesis, we found early signals for category-specific value cues in area TE (the final stage in monkey ventral visual pathway) beginning 81 ms after stimulus onset-essentially at the start of TE responses. Task-related activity emerged in lateral PFC approximately 40 ms later and consisted mainly of category-invariant value tuning. Our results show that, for familiar, behaviorally relevant object categories, high-level ventral pathway cortex can implement rapid, first-pass processing of category-specific value cues. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  12. Functional Dissociations within the Ventral Object Processing Pathway: Cognitive Modules or a Hierarchical Continuum?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cowell, Rosemary A.; Bussey, Timothy J.; Saksida, Lisa M.

    2010-01-01

    We examined the organization and function of the ventral object processing pathway. The prevailing theoretical approach in this field holds that the ventral object processing stream has a modular organization, in which visual perception is carried out in posterior regions and visual memory is carried out, independently, in the anterior temporal…

  13. On the usefulness of 'what' and 'where' pathways in vision.

    Science.gov (United States)

    de Haan, Edward H F; Cowey, Alan

    2011-10-01

    The primate visual brain is classically portrayed as a large number of separate 'maps', each dedicated to the processing of specific visual cues, such as colour, motion or faces and their many features. In order to understand this fractionated architecture, the concept of cortical 'pathways' or 'streams' was introduced. In the currently prevailing view, the different maps are organised hierarchically into two major pathways, one involved in recognition and memory (the ventral stream or 'what' pathway) and the other in the programming of action (the dorsal stream or 'where' pathway). In this review, we question this heuristically influential but potentially misleading linear hierarchical pathway model and argue instead for a 'patchwork' or network model. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  14. Global investigation of RNA 3'end processing and transcription termination pathways

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Molska, Ewa

    2018-01-01

    . For example, contrary to prediction, a subset of protein-coding genes utilise the machinery used by genes encoding U snRNAs. This same machinery is predominantly used by a class of lncRNA genes, encoding so-called PROMPTs, despite the presence of sequence elements predicted to guide the usage of the pathway......RNA polymerases transcribe diverse classes of genes and the produced RNAs need to be targeted to their appropriate cognate biochemical maturation pathways. The vast majority of the human transcriptome consists of long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs), which is a heterogeneous group of RNAs...... that is inadequately divided into classes based e.g. on length, stability and association with protein-coding genes. We reasoned that further classification based on biochemical properties, in this case transcription termination and the mechanistically coupled RNA 3’-end processing, would enable a better understanding...

  15. Development of magnitude processing in children with developmental dyscalculia: Space, time and number

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kenny eSkagerlund

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available Developmental dyscalculia (DD is a learning disorder associated with impairments in a preverbal non-symbolic approximate number system (ANS pertaining to areas in and around the intraparietal sulcus (IPS. The current study sought to enhance our understanding of the developmental trajectory of the ANS and symbolic number processing skills, thereby getting insight into whether a deficit in the ANS precedes or is preceded by impaired symbolic and exact number processing. Recent work has also suggested that humans are endowed with a shared magnitude system (beyond the number domain in the brain. We therefore investigated whether children with DD demonstrated a general magnitude deficit, stemming from the proposed magnitude system, rather than a specific one limited to numerical quantity. Fourth graders with DD were compared to age-matched controls and a group of ability-matched second graders, on a range of magnitude processing tasks pertaining to space, time, and number. Children with DD displayed difficulties across all magnitude dimensions compared to age-matched peers and showed impaired ANS acuity compared to the younger, ability-matched control group, while exhibiting intact symbolic number processing. We conclude that (1 children with DD suffer from a general magnitude-processing deficit, (2 a shared magnitude system likely exists, and (3 a symbolic number-processing deficit in DD tends to be preceded by an ANS deficit.

  16. Development of magnitude processing in children with developmental dyscalculia: space, time, and number.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Skagerlund, Kenny; Träff, Ulf

    2014-01-01

    Developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a learning disorder associated with impairments in a preverbal non-symbolic approximate number system (ANS) pertaining to areas in and around the intraparietal sulcus (IPS). The current study sought to enhance our understanding of the developmental trajectory of the ANS and symbolic number processing skills, thereby getting insight into whether a deficit in the ANS precedes or is preceded by impaired symbolic and exact number processing. Recent work has also suggested that humans are endowed with a shared magnitude system (beyond the number domain) in the brain. We therefore investigated whether children with DD demonstrated a general magnitude deficit, stemming from the proposed magnitude system, rather than a specific one limited to numerical quantity. Fourth graders with DD were compared to age-matched controls and a group of ability-matched second graders, on a range of magnitude processing tasks pertaining to space, time, and number. Children with DD displayed difficulties across all magnitude dimensions compared to age-matched peers and showed impaired ANS acuity compared to the younger, ability-matched control group, while exhibiting intact symbolic number processing. We conclude that (1) children with DD suffer from a general magnitude-processing deficit, (2) a shared magnitude system likely exists, and (3) a symbolic number-processing deficit in DD tends to be preceded by an ANS deficit.

  17. PathwayAccess: CellDesigner plugins for pathway databases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Van Hemert, John L; Dickerson, Julie A

    2010-09-15

    CellDesigner provides a user-friendly interface for graphical biochemical pathway description. Many pathway databases are not directly exportable to CellDesigner models. PathwayAccess is an extensible suite of CellDesigner plugins, which connect CellDesigner directly to pathway databases using respective Java application programming interfaces. The process is streamlined for creating new PathwayAccess plugins for specific pathway databases. Three PathwayAccess plugins, MetNetAccess, BioCycAccess and ReactomeAccess, directly connect CellDesigner to the pathway databases MetNetDB, BioCyc and Reactome. PathwayAccess plugins enable CellDesigner users to expose pathway data to analytical CellDesigner functions, curate their pathway databases and visually integrate pathway data from different databases using standard Systems Biology Markup Language and Systems Biology Graphical Notation. Implemented in Java, PathwayAccess plugins run with CellDesigner version 4.0.1 and were tested on Ubuntu Linux, Windows XP and 7, and MacOSX. Source code, binaries, documentation and video walkthroughs are freely available at http://vrac.iastate.edu/~jlv.

  18. Symbolic Number Comparison Is Not Processed by the Analog Number System: Different Symbolic and Non-symbolic Numerical Distance and Size Effects

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Attila Krajcsi

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available HIGHLIGHTSWe test whether symbolic number comparison is handled by an analog noisy system.Analog system model has systematic biases in describing symbolic number comparison.This suggests that symbolic and non-symbolic numbers are processed by different systems.Dominant numerical cognition models suppose that both symbolic and non-symbolic numbers are processed by the Analog Number System (ANS working according to Weber's law. It was proposed that in a number comparison task the numerical distance and size effects reflect a ratio-based performance which is the sign of the ANS activation. However, increasing number of findings and alternative models propose that symbolic and non-symbolic numbers might be processed by different representations. Importantly, alternative explanations may offer similar predictions to the ANS prediction, therefore, former evidence usually utilizing only the goodness of fit of the ANS prediction is not sufficient to support the ANS account. To test the ANS model more rigorously, a more extensive test is offered here. Several properties of the ANS predictions for the error rates, reaction times, and diffusion model drift rates were systematically analyzed in both non-symbolic dot comparison and symbolic Indo-Arabic comparison tasks. It was consistently found that while the ANS model's prediction is relatively good for the non-symbolic dot comparison, its prediction is poorer and systematically biased for the symbolic Indo-Arabic comparison. We conclude that only non-symbolic comparison is supported by the ANS, and symbolic number comparisons are processed by other representation.

  19. Alterations in white matter pathways underlying phonological and morphological processing in Chinese developmental dyslexia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mengmeng Su

    2018-06-01

    Full Text Available Chinese is a logographic language that is different from alphabetic languages in visual and semantic complexity. Thus far, it is still unclear whether Chinese children with dyslexia show similar disruption of white matter pathways as in alphabetic languages. The present study focused on the alteration of white matter pathways in Chinese children with dyslexia. Using diffusion tensor imaging tractography, the bilateral arcuate fasciculus (AF-anterior, AF-posterior and AF-direct segments, inferior fronto-occipital fasciculus (IFOF and inferior longitudinal fasciculus (ILF were delineated in each individual’s native space. Compared with age-matched controls, Chinese children with dyslexia showed reduced fractional anisotropy in the left AF-direct and the left ILF. Further regression analyses revealed a functional dissociation between the left AF-direct and the left ILF. The AF-direct tract integrity was associated with phonological processing skill, an ability important for reading in all writing systems, while the ILF integrity was associated with morphological processing skill, an ability more strongly recruited for Chinese reading. In conclusion, the double disruption locus in Chinese children with dyslexia, and the functional dissociation between dorsal and ventral pathways reflect both universal and specific properties of reading in Chinese.

  20. Caveat emptor: limitations of the automated reconstruction of metabolic pathways in Plasmodium.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ginsburg, Hagai

    2009-01-01

    The functional reconstruction of metabolic pathways from an annotated genome is a tedious and demanding enterprise. Automation of this endeavor using bioinformatics algorithms could cope with the ever-increasing number of sequenced genomes and accelerate the process. Here, the manual reconstruction of metabolic pathways in the functional genomic database of Plasmodium falciparum--Malaria Parasite Metabolic Pathways--is described and compared with pathways generated automatically as they appear in PlasmoCyc, metaSHARK and the Kyoto Encyclopedia for Genes and Genomes. A critical evaluation of this comparison discloses that the automatic reconstruction of pathways generates manifold paths that need an expert manual verification to accept some and reject most others based on manually curated gene annotation.

  1. Reduction of Interhemispheric Functional Connectivity in Sensorimotor and Visual Information Processing Pathways in Schizophrenia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xu Lang

    2016-01-01

    Conclusions: Interhemispheric functional connectivity in the sensorimotor and visual processing pathways was reduced in patients with schizophrenia, but this reduction was unrelated to the disease state; thus, this reduction may serve as a trait marker of schizophrenia.

  2. Resource Planning for Massive Number of Process Instances

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xu, Jiajie; Liu, Chengfei; Zhao, Xiaohui

    Resource allocation has been recognised as an important topic for business process execution. In this paper, we focus on planning resources for a massive number of process instances to meet the process requirements and cater for rational utilisation of resources before execution. After a motivating example, we present a model for planning resources for process instances. Then we design a set of heuristic rules that take both optimised planning at build time and instance dependencies at run time into account. Based on these rules we propose two strategies, one is called holistic and the other is called batched, for resource planning. Both strategies target a lower cost, however, the holistic strategy can achieve an earlier deadline while the batched strategy aims at rational use of resources. We discuss how to find balance between them in the paper with a comprehensive experimental study on these two approaches.

  3. Graph-representation of oxidative folding pathways

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kaján László

    2005-01-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The process of oxidative folding combines the formation of native disulfide bond with conformational folding resulting in the native three-dimensional fold. Oxidative folding pathways can be described in terms of disulfide intermediate species (DIS which can also be isolated and characterized. Each DIS corresponds to a family of folding states (conformations that the given DIS can adopt in three dimensions. Results The oxidative folding space can be represented as a network of DIS states interconnected by disulfide interchange reactions that can either create/abolish or rearrange disulfide bridges. We propose a simple 3D representation wherein the states having the same number of disulfide bridges are placed on separate planes. In this representation, the shuffling transitions are within the planes, and the redox edges connect adjacent planes. In a number of experimentally studied cases (bovine pancreatic trypsin inhibitor, insulin-like growth factor and epidermal growth factor, the observed intermediates appear as part of contiguous oxidative folding pathways. Conclusions Such networks can be used to visualize folding pathways in terms of the experimentally observed intermediates. A simple visualization template written for the Tulip package http://www.tulip-software.org/ can be obtained from V.A.

  4. Experimental application of Business Process Management technology to manage clinical pathways: a pediatric kidney transplantation follow up case.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Andellini, Martina; Fernandez Riesgo, Sandra; Morolli, Federica; Ritrovato, Matteo; Cosoli, Piero; Petruzzellis, Silverio; Rosso, Nicola

    2017-11-03

    To test the application of Business Process Management technology to manage clinical pathways, using a pediatric kidney transplantation as case study, and to identify the benefits obtained from using this technology. Using a Business Process Management platform, we implemented a specific application to manage the clinical pathway of pediatric patients, and monitored the activities of the coordinator in charge of the case management during a 6-month period (from June 2015 to November 2015) using two methodologies: the traditional procedure and the one under study. The application helped physicians and nurses to optimize the amount of time and resources devoted to management purposes. In particular, time reduction was close to 60%. In addition, the reduction of data duplication, the integrated event management and the efficient data collection improved the quality of the service. The use of Business Process Management technology, usually related to well-defined processes with high management costs, is an established procedure in multiple environments; its use in healthcare, however, is innovative. The use of already accepted clinical pathways is known to improve outcomes. The combination of these two techniques, well established in their respective areas of application, could represent a revolution in clinical pathway management. The study has demonstrated that the use of this technology in a clinical environment, using a proper architecture and identifying a well-defined process, leads to real benefits in terms of resources optimization and quality improvement.

  5. Pathways to Medical Home Recognition: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis of the PCMH Transformation Process.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mendel, Peter; Chen, Emily K; Green, Harold D; Armstrong, Courtney; Timbie, Justin W; Kress, Amii M; Friedberg, Mark W; Kahn, Katherine L

    2017-12-15

    To understand the process of practice transformation by identifying pathways for attaining patient-centered medical home (PCMH) recognition. The CMS Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC) Advanced Primary Care Practice Demonstration was designed to help FQHCs achieve NCQA Level 3 PCMH recognition and improve patient outcomes. We used a stratified random sample of 20 (out of 503) participating sites for this analysis. We developed a conceptual model of structural, cultural, and implementation factors affecting PCMH transformation based on literature and initial qualitative interview themes. We then used conventional cross-case analysis, followed by qualitative comparative analysis (QCA), a cross-case method based on Boolean logic algorithms, to systematically identify pathways (i.e., combinations of factors) associated with attaining-or not attaining-Level 3 recognition. Site-level indicators were derived from semistructured interviews with site leaders at two points in time (mid- and late-implementation) and administrative data collected prior to and during the demonstration period. The QCA results identified five distinct pathways to attaining PCMH recognition and four distinct pathways to not attaining recognition by the end of the demonstration. Across these pathways, one condition (change leader capacity) was common to all pathways for attaining recognition, and another (previous improvement or recognition experience) was absent in all pathways for not attaining recognition. In general, sites could compensate for deficiencies in one factor with capacity in others, but they needed a threshold of strengths in cultural and implementation factors to attain PCMH recognition. Future efforts at primary care transformation should take into account multiple pathways sites may pursue. Sites should be assessed on key cultural and implementation factors, in addition to structural components, in order to differentiate interventions and technical assistance. © Health

  6. Neural activation patterns and connectivity in visual attention during Number and Non-number processing: An ERP study using the Ishihara pseudoisochromatic plates.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Al-Marri, Faraj; Reza, Faruque; Begum, Tahamina; Hitam, Wan Hazabbah Wan; Jin, Goh Khean; Xiang, Jing

    2017-10-25

    Visual cognitive function is important to build up executive function in daily life. Perception of visual Number form (e.g., Arabic digit) and numerosity (magnitude of the Number) is of interest to cognitive neuroscientists. Neural correlates and the functional measurement of Number representations are complex occurrences when their semantic categories are assimilated with other concepts of shape and colour. Colour perception can be processed further to modulate visual cognition. The Ishihara pseudoisochromatic plates are one of the best and most common screening tools for basic red-green colour vision testing. However, there is a lack of study of visual cognitive function assessment using these pseudoisochromatic plates. We recruited 25 healthy normal trichromat volunteers and extended these studies using a 128-sensor net to record event-related EEG. Subjects were asked to respond by pressing Numbered buttons when they saw the Number and Non-number plates of the Ishihara colour vision test. Amplitudes and latencies of N100 and P300 event related potential (ERP) components were analysed from 19 electrode sites in the international 10-20 system. A brain topographic map, cortical activation patterns and Granger causation (effective connectivity) were analysed from 128 electrode sites. No major significant differences between N100 ERP components in either stimulus indicate early selective attention processing was similar for Number and Non-number plate stimuli, but Non-number plate stimuli evoked significantly higher amplitudes, longer latencies of the P300 ERP component with a slower reaction time compared to Number plate stimuli imply the allocation of attentional load was more in Non-number plate processing. A different pattern of asymmetric scalp voltage map was noticed for P300 components with a higher intensity in the left hemisphere for Number plate tasks and higher intensity in the right hemisphere for Non-number plate tasks. Asymmetric cortical activation

  7. Uranium redox transition pathways in acetate-amended sediments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bargar, John R.; Williams, Kenneth H.; Campbell, Kate M.; Long, Philip E.; Stubbs, Joanne E.; Suvorova, Elenal I.; Lezama-Pacheco, Juan S.; Alessi, Daniel S.; Stylo, Malgorzata; Webb, Samuel M.; Davis, James A.; Giammar, Daniel E.; Blue, Lisa Y.; Bernier-Latmani, Rizlan

    2013-01-01

    Redox transitions of uranium [from U(VI) to U(IV)] in low-temperature sediments govern the mobility of uranium in the environment and the accumulation of uranium in ore bodies, and inform our understanding of Earth’s geochemical history. The molecular-scale mechanistic pathways of these transitions determine the U(IV) products formed, thus influencing uranium isotope fractionation, reoxidation, and transport in sediments. Studies that improve our understanding of these pathways have the potential to substantially advance process understanding across a number of earth sciences disciplines. Detailed mechanistic information regarding uranium redox transitions in field sediments is largely nonexistent, owing to the difficulty of directly observing molecular-scale processes in the subsurface and the compositional/physical complexity of subsurface systems. Here, we present results from an in situ study of uranium redox transitions occurring in aquifer sediments under sulfate-reducing conditions. Based on molecular-scale spectroscopic, pore-scale geochemical, and macroscale aqueous evidence, we propose a biotic–abiotic transition pathway in which biomass-hosted mackinawite (FeS) is an electron source to reduce U(VI) to U(IV), which subsequently reacts with biomass to produce monomeric U(IV) species. A species resembling nanoscale uraninite is also present, implying the operation of at least two redox transition pathways. The presence of multiple pathways in low-temperature sediments unifies apparently contrasting prior observations and helps to explain sustained uranium reduction under disparate biogeochemical conditions. These findings have direct implications for our understanding of uranium bioremediation, ore formation, and global geochemical processes.

  8. Optimal processing pathway selection for microalgae-based biorefinery under uncertainty

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Rizwan, Muhammad; Zaman, Muhammad; Lee, Jay H.

    2015-01-01

    We propose a systematic framework for the selection of optimal processing pathways for a microalgaebased biorefinery under techno-economic uncertainty. The proposed framework promotes robust decision making by taking into account the uncertainties that arise due to inconsistencies among...... and shortage in the available technical information. A stochastic mixed integer nonlinear programming (sMINLP) problem is formulated for determining the optimal biorefinery configurations based on a superstructure model where parameter uncertainties are modeled and included as sampled scenarios. The solution...... the accounting of uncertainty are compared with respect to different objectives. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved....

  9. The European quality of care pathways (EQCP study on the impact of care pathways on interprofessional teamwork in an acute hospital setting: study protocol: for a cluster randomised controlled trial and evaluation of implementation processes

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Deneckere Svin

    2012-05-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Although care pathways are often said to promote teamwork, high-level evidence that supports this statement is lacking. Furthermore, knowledge on conditions and facilitators for successful pathway implementation is scarce. The objective of the European Quality of Care Pathway (EQCP study is therefore to study the impact of care pathways on interprofessional teamwork and to build up understanding on the implementation process. Methods/design An international post-test-only cluster Randomised Controlled Trial (cRCT, combined with process evaluations, will be performed in Belgium, Ireland, Italy, and Portugal. Teams caring for proximal femur fracture (PFF patients and patients hospitalized with an exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD will be randomised into an intervention and control group. The intervention group will implement a care pathway for PFF or COPD containing three active components: a formative evaluation of the actual teams’ performance, a set of evidence-based key interventions, and a training in care pathway-development. The control group will provide usual care. A set of team input, process and output indicators will be used as effect measures. The main outcome indicator will be relational coordination. Next to these, process measures during and after pathway development will be used to evaluate the implementation processes. In total, 132 teams have agreed to participate, of which 68 were randomly assigned to the intervention group and 64 to the control group. Based on power analysis, a sample of 475 team members per arm is required. To analyze results, multilevel analysis will be performed. Discussion Results from our study will enhance understanding on the active components of care pathways. Through this, preferred implementation strategies can be defined. Trail registration NCT01435538

  10. A Bayesian method for identifying missing enzymes in predicted metabolic pathway databases

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Karp Peter D

    2004-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The PathoLogic program constructs Pathway/Genome databases by using a genome's annotation to predict the set of metabolic pathways present in an organism. PathoLogic determines the set of reactions composing those pathways from the enzymes annotated in the organism's genome. Most annotation efforts fail to assign function to 40–60% of sequences. In addition, large numbers of sequences may have non-specific annotations (e.g., thiolase family protein. Pathway holes occur when a genome appears to lack the enzymes needed to catalyze reactions in a pathway. If a protein has not been assigned a specific function during the annotation process, any reaction catalyzed by that protein will appear as a missing enzyme or pathway hole in a Pathway/Genome database. Results We have developed a method that efficiently combines homology and pathway-based evidence to identify candidates for filling pathway holes in Pathway/Genome databases. Our program not only identifies potential candidate sequences for pathway holes, but combines data from multiple, heterogeneous sources to assess the likelihood that a candidate has the required function. Our algorithm emulates the manual sequence annotation process, considering not only evidence from homology searches, but also considering evidence from genomic context (i.e., is the gene part of an operon? and functional context (e.g., are there functionally-related genes nearby in the genome? to determine the posterior belief that a candidate has the required function. The method can be applied across an entire metabolic pathway network and is generally applicable to any pathway database. The program uses a set of sequences encoding the required activity in other genomes to identify candidate proteins in the genome of interest, and then evaluates each candidate by using a simple Bayes classifier to determine the probability that the candidate has the desired function. We achieved 71% precision at a

  11. An Intelligent Complex Event Processing with D Numbers under Fuzzy Environment

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fuyuan Xiao

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available Efficient matching of incoming mass events to persistent queries is fundamental to complex event processing systems. Event matching based on pattern rule is an important feature of complex event processing engine. However, the intrinsic uncertainty in pattern rules which are predecided by experts increases the difficulties of effective complex event processing. It inevitably involves various types of the intrinsic uncertainty, such as imprecision, fuzziness, and incompleteness, due to the inability of human beings subjective judgment. Nevertheless, D numbers is a new mathematic tool to model uncertainty, since it ignores the condition that elements on the frame must be mutually exclusive. To address the above issues, an intelligent complex event processing method with D numbers under fuzzy environment is proposed based on the Technique for Order Preferences by Similarity to an Ideal Solution (TOPSIS method. The novel method can fully support decision making in complex event processing systems. Finally, a numerical example is provided to evaluate the efficiency of the proposed method.

  12. Process mining routinely collected electronic health records to define real-life clinical pathways during chemotherapy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baker, Karl; Dunwoodie, Elaine; Jones, Richard G; Newsham, Alex; Johnson, Owen; Price, Christopher P; Wolstenholme, Jane; Leal, Jose; McGinley, Patrick; Twelves, Chris; Hall, Geoff

    2017-07-01

    There is growing interest in the use of routinely collected electronic health records to enhance service delivery and facilitate clinical research. It should be possible to detect and measure patterns of care and use the data to monitor improvements but there are methodological and data quality challenges. Driven by the desire to model the impact of a patient self-test blood count monitoring service in patients on chemotherapy, we aimed to (i) establish reproducible methods of process-mining electronic health records, (ii) use the outputs derived to define and quantify patient pathways during chemotherapy, and (iii) to gather robust data which is structured to be able to inform a cost-effectiveness decision model of home monitoring of neutropenic status during chemotherapy. Electronic Health Records at a UK oncology centre were included if they had (i) a diagnosis of metastatic breast cancer and received adjuvant epirubicin and cyclosphosphamide chemotherapy or (ii) colorectal cancer and received palliative oxaliplatin and infusional 5-fluorouracil chemotherapy, and (iii) were first diagnosed with cancer between January 2004 and February 2013. Software and a Markov model were developed, producing a schematic of patient pathways during chemotherapy. Significant variance from the assumed care pathway was evident from the data. Of the 535 patients with breast cancer and 420 with colorectal cancer there were 474 and 329 pathway variants respectively. Only 27 (5%) and 26 (6%) completed the planned six cycles of chemotherapy without having unplanned hospital contact. Over the six cycles, 169 (31.6%) patients with breast cancer and 190 (45.2%) patients with colorectal cancer were admitted to hospital. The pathways of patients on chemotherapy are complex. An iterative approach to addressing semantic and data quality issues enabled the effective use of routinely collected patient records to produce accurate models of the real-life experiences of chemotherapy patients and

  13. Identification of a novel trafficking pathway exporting a replication protein, Orc2 to nucleus via classical secretory pathway in Plasmodium falciparum.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sharma, Rahul; Sharma, Bhumika; Gupta, Ashish; Dhar, Suman Kumar

    2018-05-01

    Malaria parasites use an extensive secretory pathway to traffic a number of proteins within itself and beyond. In higher eukaryotes, Endoplasmic Reticulum (ER) membrane bound transcription factors such as SREBP are reported to get processed en route and migrate to nucleus under the influence of specific cues. However, a protein constitutively trafficked to the nucleus via classical secretory pathway has not been reported. Herein, we report the presence of a novel trafficking pathway in an apicomplexan, Plasmodium falciparum where a homologue of an Origin Recognition Complex 2 (Orc2) goes to the nucleus following its association with the ER. Our work highlights the unconventional role of ER in protein trafficking and reports for the first time an ORC homologue getting trafficked through such a pathway to the nucleus where it may be involved in DNA replication and other ancillary functions. Such trafficking pathways may have a profound impact on the cell biology of a malaria parasite and have significant implications in strategizing new antimalarials. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  14. Small molecule screening identifies targetable zebrafish pigmentation pathways

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Colanesi, Sarah; Taylor, Kerrie L; Temperley, Nicholas D

    2012-01-01

    Small molecules complement genetic mutants and can be used to probe pigment cell biology by inhibiting specific proteins or pathways. Here, we present the results of a screen of active compounds for those that affect the processes of melanocyte and iridophore development in zebrafish and investig......Small molecules complement genetic mutants and can be used to probe pigment cell biology by inhibiting specific proteins or pathways. Here, we present the results of a screen of active compounds for those that affect the processes of melanocyte and iridophore development in zebrafish...... and investigate the effects of a few of these compounds in further detail. We identified and confirmed 57 compounds that altered pigment cell patterning, number, survival, or differentiation. Additional tissue targets and toxicity of small molecules are also discussed. Given that the majority of cell types...

  15. High-Performance Pseudo-Random Number Generation on Graphics Processing Units

    OpenAIRE

    Nandapalan, Nimalan; Brent, Richard P.; Murray, Lawrence M.; Rendell, Alistair

    2011-01-01

    This work considers the deployment of pseudo-random number generators (PRNGs) on graphics processing units (GPUs), developing an approach based on the xorgens generator to rapidly produce pseudo-random numbers of high statistical quality. The chosen algorithm has configurable state size and period, making it ideal for tuning to the GPU architecture. We present a comparison of both speed and statistical quality with other common parallel, GPU-based PRNGs, demonstrating favourable performance o...

  16. Human protein secretory pathway genes are expressed in a tissue-specific pattern to match processing demands of the secretome

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Feizi, Amir; Gatto, Francesco; Uhlén, Mathias

    2017-01-01

    Protein secretory pathway in eukaryal cells is responsible for delivering functional secretory proteins. The dysfunction of this pathway causes a range of important human diseases from congenital disorders to cancer. Despite the piled-up knowledge on the molecular biology and biochemistry level...... in specific gene families of the secretory pathway. We also inspected the potential functional link between detected extreme genes and the corresponding tissues enriched secretome. As a result, the detected extreme genes showed correlation with the enrichment of the nature and number of specific post......-translational modifications in each tissue's secretome. Our findings conciliate both the housekeeping and tissue-specific nature of the protein secretory pathway, which we attribute to a fine-tuned regulation of defined gene families to support the diversity of secreted proteins and their modifications....

  17. Quadrupolar transfer pathways

    Science.gov (United States)

    Antonijevic, Sasa; Bodenhausen, Geoffrey

    2006-06-01

    A set of graphical conventions called quadrupolar transfer pathways is proposed to describe a wide range of experiments designed for the study of quadrupolar nuclei with spin quantum numbers I = 1, 3/2, 2, 5/2, etc. These pathways, which inter alea allow one to appreciate the distinction between quadrupolar and Zeeman echoes, represent a generalization of the well-known coherence transfer pathways. Quadrupolar transfer pathways not merely distinguish coherences with different orders -2 I ⩽ p ⩽ +2 I, but allow one to follow the fate of coherences associated with single transitions that have the same coherence orderp=mIr-mIs but can be distinguished by a satellite orderq=(mIr)2-(mIs)2.

  18. A novel genetic score approach using instruments to investigate interactions between pathways and environment: application to air pollution.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marie-Abele Bind

    Full Text Available Air pollution has been associated with increased systemic inflammation markers. We developed a new pathway analysis approach to investigate whether gene variants within relevant pathways (oxidative stress, endothelial function, and metal processing modified the association between particulate air pollution and fibrinogen, C-reactive protein (CRP, intercellular adhesion molecule-1 (ICAM-1, and vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1. Our study population consisted of 822 elderly participants of the Normative Aging Study (1999-2011. To investigate the role of biological mechanisms and to reduce the number of comparisons in the analysis, we created pathway-specific scores using gene variants related to each pathway. To select the most appropriate gene variants, we used the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (Lasso to relate independent outcomes representative of each pathway (8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine for oxidative stress, augmentation index for endothelial function, and patella lead for metal processing to gene variants. A high genetic score corresponds to a higher allelic risk profile. We fit mixed-effects models to examine modification by the genetic score of the weekly air pollution association with the outcome. Among participants with higher genetic scores within the oxidative stress pathway, we observed significant associations between particle number and fibrinogen, while we did not find any association among participants with lower scores (p(interaction = 0.04. Compared to individuals with low genetic scores of metal processing gene variants, participants with higher scores had greater effects of particle number on fibrinogen (p(interaction = 0.12, CRP (p(interaction = 0.02, and ICAM-1 (pinteraction = 0.08. This two-stage penalization method is easy to implement and can be used for large-scale genetic applications.

  19. Testing a model of componential processing of multi-symbol numbers-evidence from measurement units.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huber, Stefan; Bahnmueller, Julia; Klein, Elise; Moeller, Korbinian

    2015-10-01

    Research on numerical cognition has addressed the processing of nonsymbolic quantities and symbolic digits extensively. However, magnitude processing of measurement units is still a neglected topic in numerical cognition research. Hence, we investigated the processing of measurement units to evaluate whether typical effects of multi-digit number processing such as the compatibility effect, the string length congruity effect, and the distance effect are also present for measurement units. In three experiments, participants had to single out the larger one of two physical quantities (e.g., lengths). In Experiment 1, the compatibility of number and measurement unit (compatible: 3 mm_6 cm with 3 mm) as well as string length congruity (congruent: 1 m_2 km with m 2 characters) were manipulated. We observed reliable compatibility effects with prolonged reaction times (RT) for incompatible trials. Moreover, a string length congruity effect was present in RT with longer RT for incongruent trials. Experiments 2 and 3 served as control experiments showing that compatibility effects persist when controlling for holistic distance and that a distance effect for measurement units exists. Our findings indicate that numbers and measurement units are processed in a componential manner and thus highlight that processing characteristics of multi-digit numbers generalize to measurement units. Thereby, our data lend further support to the recently proposed generalized model of componential multi-symbol number processing.

  20. A Pathway-Centered Analysis of Pig Domestication and Breeding in Eurasia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jordi Leno-Colorado

    2017-07-01

    Full Text Available Ascertaining the molecular and physiological basis of domestication and breeding is an active area of research. Due to the current wide distribution of its wild ancestor, the wild boar, the pig (Sus scrofa is an excellent model to study these processes, which occurred independently in East Asia and Europe ca. 9000 yr ago. Analyzing genome variability patterns in terms of metabolic pathways is attractive since it considers the impact of interrelated functions of genes, in contrast to genome-wide scans that treat genes or genome windows in isolation. To that end, we studied 40 wild boars and 123 domestic pig genomes from Asia and Europe when metabolic pathway was the unit of analysis. We computed statistical significance for differentiation (Fst and linkage disequilibrium (nSL statistics at the pathway level. In terms of Fst, we found 21 and 12 pathways significantly differentiated at a q-value 10 significant pathways (in terms of Fst, comprising genes involved in the transduction of a large number of signals, like phospholipase PCLB1, which is expressed in the brain, or ITPR3, which has an important role in taste transduction. In terms of nSL, significant pathways were mainly related to reproductive performance (ovarian steroidogenesis, a similarly important target trait during domestication and modern animal breeding. Different levels of recombination cannot explain these results, since we found no correlation between Fst and recombination rate. However, we did find an increased ratio of deleterious mutations in domestic vs. wild populations, suggesting a relaxed functional constraint associated with the domestication and breeding processes. Purifying selection was, nevertheless, stronger in significantly differentiated pathways than in random pathways, mainly in Europe. We conclude that pathway analysis facilitates the biological interpretation of genome-wide studies. Notably, in the case of pig, behavior played an important role, among other

  1. A Pathway-Centered Analysis of Pig Domestication and Breeding in Eurasia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Leno-Colorado, Jordi; Hudson, Nick J; Reverter, Antonio; Pérez-Enciso, Miguel

    2017-07-05

    Ascertaining the molecular and physiological basis of domestication and breeding is an active area of research. Due to the current wide distribution of its wild ancestor, the wild boar, the pig ( Sus scrofa ) is an excellent model to study these processes, which occurred independently in East Asia and Europe ca. 9000 yr ago. Analyzing genome variability patterns in terms of metabolic pathways is attractive since it considers the impact of interrelated functions of genes, in contrast to genome-wide scans that treat genes or genome windows in isolation. To that end, we studied 40 wild boars and 123 domestic pig genomes from Asia and Europe when metabolic pathway was the unit of analysis. We computed statistical significance for differentiation (Fst) and linkage disequilibrium (nSL) statistics at the pathway level. In terms of Fst, we found 21 and 12 pathways significantly differentiated at a q -value 10 significant pathways (in terms of Fst), comprising genes involved in the transduction of a large number of signals, like phospholipase PCLB1, which is expressed in the brain, or ITPR3, which has an important role in taste transduction. In terms of nSL, significant pathways were mainly related to reproductive performance (ovarian steroidogenesis), a similarly important target trait during domestication and modern animal breeding. Different levels of recombination cannot explain these results, since we found no correlation between Fst and recombination rate. However, we did find an increased ratio of deleterious mutations in domestic vs. wild populations, suggesting a relaxed functional constraint associated with the domestication and breeding processes. Purifying selection was, nevertheless, stronger in significantly differentiated pathways than in random pathways, mainly in Europe. We conclude that pathway analysis facilitates the biological interpretation of genome-wide studies. Notably, in the case of pig, behavior played an important role, among other physiological

  2. A preference for mathematical processing outweighs the selectivity for Arabic numbers in the inferior temporal gyrus.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Grotheer, Mareike; Jeska, Brianna; Grill-Spector, Kalanit

    2018-03-28

    A region in the posterior inferior temporal gyrus (ITG), referred to as the number form area (NFA, here ITG-numbers) has been implicated in the visual processing of Arabic numbers. However, it is unknown if this region is specifically involved in the visual encoding of Arabic numbers per se or in mathematical processing more broadly. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during experiments that systematically vary tasks and stimuli, we find that mathematical processing, not preference to Arabic numbers, consistently drives both mean and distributed responses in the posterior ITG. While we replicated findings of higher responses in ITG-numbers to numbers than other visual stimuli during a 1-back task, this preference to numbers was abolished when participants engaged in mathematical processing. In contrast, an ITG region (ITG-math) that showed higher responses during an adding task vs. other tasks maintained this preference for mathematical processing across a wide range of stimuli including numbers, number/letter morphs, hands, and dice. Analysis of distributed responses across an anatomically-defined posterior ITG expanse further revealed that mathematical task but not Arabic number form can be successfully and consistently decoded from these distributed responses. Together, our findings suggest that the function of neuronal regions in the posterior ITG goes beyond the specific visual processing of Arabic numbers. We hypothesize that they ascribe numerical content to the visual input, irrespective of the format of the stimulus. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  3. The logical syntax of number words: theory, acquisition and processing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Musolino, Julien

    2009-04-01

    Recent work on the acquisition of number words has emphasized the importance of integrating linguistic and developmental perspectives [Musolino, J. (2004). The semantics and acquisition of number words: Integrating linguistic and developmental perspectives. Cognition93, 1-41; Papafragou, A., Musolino, J. (2003). Scalar implicatures: Scalar implicatures: Experiments at the semantics-pragmatics interface. Cognition, 86, 253-282; Hurewitz, F., Papafragou, A., Gleitman, L., Gelman, R. (2006). Asymmetries in the acquisition of numbers and quantifiers. Language Learning and Development, 2, 76-97; Huang, Y. T., Snedeker, J., Spelke, L. (submitted for publication). What exactly do numbers mean?]. Specifically, these studies have shown that data from experimental investigations of child language can be used to illuminate core theoretical issues in the semantic and pragmatic analysis of number terms. In this article, I extend this approach to the logico-syntactic properties of number words, focusing on the way numerals interact with each other (e.g. Three boys are holding two balloons) as well as with other quantified expressions (e.g. Three boys are holding each balloon). On the basis of their intuitions, linguists have claimed that such sentences give rise to at least four different interpretations, reflecting the complexity of the linguistic structure and syntactic operations involved. Using psycholinguistic experimentation with preschoolers (n=32) and adult speakers of English (n=32), I show that (a) for adults, the intuitions of linguists can be verified experimentally, (b) by the age of 5, children have knowledge of the core aspects of the logical syntax of number words, (c) in spite of this knowledge, children nevertheless differ from adults in systematic ways, (d) the differences observed between children and adults can be accounted for on the basis of an independently motivated, linguistically-based processing model [Geurts, B. (2003). Quantifying kids. Language

  4. Pathway Interaction Network Analysis Identifies Dysregulated Pathways in Human Monocytes Infected by Listeria monocytogenes

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wufeng Fan

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available In our study, we aimed to extract dysregulated pathways in human monocytes infected by Listeria monocytogenes (LM based on pathway interaction network (PIN which presented the functional dependency between pathways. After genes were aligned to the pathways, principal component analysis (PCA was used to calculate the pathway activity for each pathway, followed by detecting seed pathway. A PIN was constructed based on gene expression profile, protein-protein interactions (PPIs, and cellular pathways. Identifying dysregulated pathways from the PIN was performed relying on seed pathway and classification accuracy. To evaluate whether the PIN method was feasible or not, we compared the introduced method with standard network centrality measures. The pathway of RNA polymerase II pretranscription events was selected as the seed pathway. Taking this seed pathway as start, one pathway set (9 dysregulated pathways with AUC score of 1.00 was identified. Among the 5 hub pathways obtained using standard network centrality measures, 4 pathways were the common ones between the two methods. RNA polymerase II transcription and DNA replication owned a higher number of pathway genes and DEGs. These dysregulated pathways work together to influence the progression of LM infection, and they will be available as biomarkers to diagnose LM infection.

  5. Processing the Order of Symbolic Numbers: A Reliable and Unique Predictor of Arithmetic Fluency

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Stephan E. Vogel

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available A small but growing body of evidence suggests a link between individual differences in processing the order of numerical symbols (e.g., deciding whether a set of digits is arranged in ascending/descending order or not and arithmetic achievement. However, the reliability of behavioral correlates measuring symbolic and non-symbolic numerical order processing and their relationship to arithmetic abilities remain poorly understood. The present study aims to fill this knowledge gap by examining the behavioral correlates of numerical and non-numerical order processing and their unique associations with arithmetic fluency at two different time points within the same sample of individuals. Thirty-two right-handed adults performed three order judgment tasks consisting of symbolic numbers (i.e., digits, non-symbolic numbers (i.e., dots, and letters of the alphabet. Specifically, participants had to judge as accurately and as quickly as possible whether stimuli were ordered correctly (in ascending/descending order, e.g., 2-3-4; ●●●●-●●●-●●; B-C-D or not (e.g., 4-5-3; ●●●●-●●●●●-●●●; D-E-C. Results of this study demonstrate that numerical order judgments are reliable measurements (i.e., high test-retest reliability, and that the observed relationship between symbolic number processing and arithmetic fluency accounts for a unique and reliable portion of variance over and above the non-symbolic number and the letter conditions. The differential association of symbolic and non-symbolic numbers with arithmetic support the view that processing the order of symbolic and non-symbolic numbers engages different cognitive mechanisms, and that the ability to process ordinal relationships of symbolic numbers is a reliable and unique predictor of arithmetic fluency.

  6. Embodied Numerosity: Implicit Hand-Based Representations Influence Symbolic Number Processing across Cultures

    Science.gov (United States)

    Domahs, Frank; Moeller, Korbinian; Huber, Stefan; Willmes, Klaus; Nuerk, Hans-Christoph

    2010-01-01

    In recent years, a strong functional relationship between finger counting and number processing has been suggested. Developmental studies have shown specific effects of the structure of the individual finger counting system on arithmetic abilities. Moreover, the orientation of the mental quantity representation ("number line") seems to be…

  7. Research fellowship programs as a pathway for training independent clinical pharmacy scientists.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mueller, Eric W; Bishop, Jeffrey R; Kanaan, Abir O; Kiser, Tyree H; Phan, Hanna; Yang, Katherine Y

    2015-03-01

    The American College of Clinical Pharmacy (ACCP) Research Affairs Committee published a commentary in 2013 on training clinical pharmacy scientists in the context of changes in economic, professional, political, and research environments. The commentary centered on the opportunities for pharmacists in clinical/translational research including strategies for ACCP, colleges of pharmacy, and the profession to increase the number and impact of clinical pharmacy scientists. A postdoctoral fellowship is cited as a current training pathway, capable of producing independent and productive pharmacy researchers. However, a decline in the number of programs, decreased funding availability, and variability in fellowship program activities and research focus have brought into question the relevance of this research training pathway to meet demand and opportunities. In response to these points, this commentary examines the state of research fellowship training including the current ACCP research fellowship review process, the need for standardization of research fellowship programs, and strategies to strengthen and promote research fellowships as relevant researcher training pathways. © 2015 Pharmacotherapy Publications, Inc.

  8. Process evaluation determines the pathway of success for a health center-delivered, nutrition education intervention for infants in Trujillo, Peru.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Robert, Rebecca C; Gittelsohn, Joel; Creed-Kanashiro, Hilary M; Penny, Mary E; Caulfield, Laura E; Narro, M Rocio; Black, Robert E

    2006-03-01

    Process evaluation was used to explain the success of a randomized, controlled trial of an educational intervention to improve the feeding behaviors of caregivers and the nutritional status of infants in Trujillo, Peru. Health personnel delivered a multicomponent intervention within the environment of usual care at government health centers. We created a model of the expected intervention pathway to successful outcomes. Process data were then collected on health center implementation of the intervention and caregiver reception to it. Using multivariate models, we found that variables of health center implementation, caregiver exposure, and caregiver message recall were all significant determinants in the pathway leading to improved feeding behaviors. These outcomes were consistent with our original intervention model. Further support for our model arose from the differences in caregiver reception between intervention and control centers. Process data allowed us to characterize the pathway through which an effective nutrition intervention operated. This study underscores the importance of including process evaluation, which will lead to the development and implementation of more effective nutrition interventions.

  9. Signaling Pathways in Pathogenesis of Diamond Blackfan Anemia

    Science.gov (United States)

    2015-12-01

    AWARD NUMBER: W81XWH-12-1-0590 TITLE: SIGNALING PATHWAYS IN PATHOGENESIS OF DIAMOND BLACKFAN ANEMIA PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: KATHLEEN M...SUBTITLE 5a. CONTRACT NUMBER W81XWH-12-1-0590 SIGNALING PATHWAYS IN PATHOGENESIS OF DIAMOND BLACKFAN ANEMIA 5b. GRANT NUMBER 5c. PROGRAM ELEMENT NUMBER...Unlimited 13. SUPPLEMENTARY NOTES None 14. ABSTRACT: Diamond Blackfan Anemia (DBA) is a disorder that results in pure red cell aplasia, congenital

  10. Identifying pathways affected by cancer mutations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Iengar, Prathima

    2017-12-16

    Mutations in 15 cancers, sourced from the COSMIC Whole Genomes database, and 297 human pathways, arranged into pathway groups based on the processes they orchestrate, and sourced from the KEGG pathway database, have together been used to identify pathways affected by cancer mutations. Genes studied in ≥15, and mutated in ≥10 samples of a cancer have been considered recurrently mutated, and pathways with recurrently mutated genes have been considered affected in the cancer. Novel doughnut plots have been presented which enable visualization of the extent to which pathways and genes, in each pathway group, are targeted, in each cancer. The 'organismal systems' pathway group (including organism-level pathways; e.g., nervous system) is the most targeted, more than even the well-recognized signal transduction, cell-cycle and apoptosis, and DNA repair pathway groups. The important, yet poorly-recognized, role played by the group merits attention. Pathways affected in ≥7 cancers yielded insights into processes affected. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  11. Phylogenetic origin and diversification of RNAi pathway genes in insects

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Dowling, Daniel; Pauli, Thomas; Donath, Alexander

    2016-01-01

    RNAinterference (RNAi) refers tothe set ofmolecular processes foundin eukaryotic organisms in which smallRNAmolecules mediate the silencing or down-regulation of target genes. In insects, RNAi serves a number of functions, including regulation of endogenous genes, anti-viral defense, and defense...... against transposable elements. Despite being well studied in model organisms, such as Drosophila, the distribution of core RNAi pathway genes and their evolution in insects is not well understood. Here we present the most comprehensive overview of the distribution and diversity of core RNAi pathway genes...... across 100 insect species, encompassing all currently recognized insect orders. We inferred the phylogenetic origin of insect-specific RNAi pathway genes and also identified several hitherto unrecorded gene expansions using whole-body transcriptome data from the international 1KITE (1000 Insect...

  12. Effects of clinical pathways in the joint replacement: a meta-analysis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Faggiano F

    2009-07-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background A meta-analysis was performed to evaluate the use of clinical pathways for hip and knee joint replacements when compared with standard medical care. The impact of clinical pathways was evaluated assessing the major outcomes of in-hospital hip and knee joint replacement processes: postoperative complications, number of patients discharged at home, length of in-hospital stay and direct costs. Methods Medline, Cinahl, Embase and the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials were searched. The search was performed from 1975 to 2007. Each study was assessed independently by two reviewers. The assessment of methodological quality of the included studies was based on the Jadad methodological approach and on the New Castle Ottawa Scale. Data analysis abided by the guidelines set out by The Cochrane Collaboration regarding statistical methods. Meta-analyses were performed using RevMan software, version 4.2. Results Twenty-two studies met the study inclusion criteria and were included in the meta-analysis for a total sample of 6,316 patients. The aggregate overall results showed significantly fewer patients suffering postoperative complications in the clinical pathways group when compared with the standard care group. A shorter length of stay in the clinical pathway group was also observed and lower costs during hospital stay were associated with the use of the clinical pathways. No significant differences were found in the rates of discharge to home. Conclusion The results of this meta-analysis show that clinical pathways can significantly improve the quality of care even if it is not possible to conclude that the implementation of clinical pathways is a cost-effective process, because none of the included studies analysed the cost of the development and implementation of the pathways. Based on the results we assume that pathways have impact on the organisation of care if the care process is structured in a standardised way

  13. Exploring the relation between process design and efficiency in high-volume cataract pathways from a lean thinking perspective

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    van Vliet, Ellen J.; Bredenhoff, E.; Bredenhoff, Eelco; Sermeus, Walter; Kop, Lucas M.; Sol, Johannes C.A.; van Harten, Willem H.

    2011-01-01

    Objective: To compare process designs of three high-volume cataract pathways in a lean thinking framework and to explore how efficiency in terms of lead times, hospital visits and costs is related to process design. Design: International retrospective comparative benchmark study with a mixed-method

  14. Early development of the circumferential axonal pathway in mouse and chick spinal cord.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Holley, J A

    1982-03-10

    The early development of the circumferential axonal pathway in the brachial and lumbar spinal cord of mouse and chick embryos was studied by scanning and transmission electron microscopy. The cellular processes which comprise this pathway grow in the transverse plane and along the lateral margin of the marginal zone (i.e., circumferentially oriented), as typified by the early embryonic commissural axons. The first formative event observed was in the ventrolateral margin of the primitive spinal cord ventricular zone. Cellular processes were found near the external limiting membrane that appeared to grow a variable distance either dorsally or ventrally. Later in development, presumptive motor column neurons migrated into the ventrolateral region, distal to these early circumferentially oriented processes. Concurrently, other circumferentially oriented perikarya and processes appeared along the dorsolateral margin. Due to their aligned sites of origin and parallel growth, the circumferential processes formed a more or less continuous line or pathway, which in about 10% of the scanned specimens could be followed along the entire lateral margin of the embryonic spinal cord. Several specimens later in development had two sets of aligned circumferential processes in the ventral region. Large numbers of circumferential axons were then found to follow the preformed pathway by fasciculation, after the primitive motor column had become established. Since the earliest circumferential processes appeared to differentiate into axons and were found nearly 24 hours prior to growth of most circumferential axons, their role in guidance as pioneering axons was suggested.

  15. Crystallization Pathways in Biomineralization

    Science.gov (United States)

    Weiner, Steve; Addadi, Lia

    2011-08-01

    A crystallization pathway describes the movement of ions from their source to the final product. Cells are intimately involved in biological crystallization pathways. In many pathways the cells utilize a unique strategy: They temporarily concentrate ions in intracellular membrane-bound vesicles in the form of a highly disordered solid phase. This phase is then transported to the final mineralization site, where it is destabilized and crystallizes. We present four case studies, each of which demonstrates specific aspects of biological crystallization pathways: seawater uptake by foraminifera, calcite spicule formation by sea urchin larvae, goethite formation in the teeth of limpets, and guanine crystal formation in fish skin and spider cuticles. Three representative crystallization pathways are described, and aspects of the different stages of crystallization are discussed. An in-depth understanding of these complex processes can lead to new ideas for synthetic crystallization processes of interest to materials science.

  16. Chiropractic Integrated Care Pathway for Low Back Pain in Veterans: Results of a Delphi Consensus Process.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lisi, Anthony J; Salsbury, Stacie A; Hawk, Cheryl; Vining, Robert D; Wallace, Robert B; Branson, Richard; Long, Cynthia R; Burgo-Black, A Lucille; Goertz, Christine M

    2018-02-01

    The purpose of this study was to develop an integrated care pathway for doctors of chiropractic, primary care providers, and mental health professionals who manage veterans with low back pain, with or without mental health comorbidity, within Department of Veterans Affairs health care facilities. The research method used was a consensus process. A multidisciplinary investigative team reviewed clinical guidelines and Veterans Affairs pain and mental health initiatives to develop seed statements and care algorithms to guide chiropractic management and collaborative care of veterans with low back pain. A 5-member advisory committee approved initial recommendations. Veterans Affairs-based panelists (n = 58) evaluated the pathway via e-mail using a modified RAND/UCLA methodology. Consensus was defined as agreement by 80% of panelists. The modified Delphi process was conducted in July to December 2016. Most (93%) seed statements achieved consensus during the first round, with all statements reaching consensus after 2 rounds. The final care pathway addressed the topics of informed consent, clinical evaluation including history and examination, screening for red flags, documentation, diagnostic imaging, patient-reported outcomes, adverse event reporting, chiropractic treatment frequency and duration standards, tailored approaches to chiropractic care in veteran populations, and clinical presentation of common mental health conditions. Care algorithms outlined chiropractic case management and interprofessional collaboration and referrals between doctors of chiropractic and primary care and mental health providers. This study offers an integrative care pathway that includes chiropractic care for veterans with low back pain. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Inc.

  17. Benchmarking pathway interaction network for colorectal cancer to identify dysregulated pathways

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Q. Wang

    Full Text Available Different pathways act synergistically to participate in many biological processes. Thus, the purpose of our study was to extract dysregulated pathways to investigate the pathogenesis of colorectal cancer (CRC based on the functional dependency among pathways. Protein-protein interaction (PPI information and pathway data were retrieved from STRING and Reactome databases, respectively. After genes were aligned to the pathways, each pathway activity was calculated using the principal component analysis (PCA method, and the seed pathway was discovered. Subsequently, we constructed the pathway interaction network (PIN, where each node represented a biological pathway based on gene expression profile, PPI data, as well as pathways. Dysregulated pathways were then selected from the PIN according to classification performance and seed pathway. A PIN including 11,960 interactions was constructed to identify dysregulated pathways. Interestingly, the interaction of mRNA splicing and mRNA splicing-major pathway had the highest score of 719.8167. Maximum change of the activity score between CRC and normal samples appeared in the pathway of DNA replication, which was selected as the seed pathway. Starting with this seed pathway, a pathway set containing 30 dysregulated pathways was obtained with an area under the curve score of 0.8598. The pathway of mRNA splicing, mRNA splicing-major pathway, and RNA polymerase I had the maximum genes of 107. Moreover, we found that these 30 pathways had crosstalks with each other. The results suggest that these dysregulated pathways might be used as biomarkers to diagnose CRC.

  18. KeyPathwayMinerWeb

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    List, Markus; Alcaraz, Nicolas; Dissing-Hansen, Martin

    2016-01-01

    , for instance), KeyPathwayMiner extracts connected sub-networks containing a high number of active or differentially regulated genes (proteins, metabolites) in the molecular profiles. The web interface at (http://keypathwayminer.compbio.sdu.dk) implements all core functionalities of the KeyPathwayMiner tool set......We present KeyPathwayMinerWeb, the first online platform for de novo pathway enrichment analysis directly in the browser. Given a biological interaction network (e.g. protein-protein interactions) and a series of molecular profiles derived from one or multiple OMICS studies (gene expression...... such as data integration, input of background knowledge, batch runs for parameter optimization and visualization of extracted pathways. In addition to an intuitive web interface, we also implemented a RESTful API that now enables other online developers to integrate network enrichment as a web service...

  19. WikiPathways: a multifaceted pathway database bridging metabolomics to other omics research.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Slenter, Denise N; Kutmon, Martina; Hanspers, Kristina; Riutta, Anders; Windsor, Jacob; Nunes, Nuno; Mélius, Jonathan; Cirillo, Elisa; Coort, Susan L; Digles, Daniela; Ehrhart, Friederike; Giesbertz, Pieter; Kalafati, Marianthi; Martens, Marvin; Miller, Ryan; Nishida, Kozo; Rieswijk, Linda; Waagmeester, Andra; Eijssen, Lars M T; Evelo, Chris T; Pico, Alexander R; Willighagen, Egon L

    2018-01-04

    WikiPathways (wikipathways.org) captures the collective knowledge represented in biological pathways. By providing a database in a curated, machine readable way, omics data analysis and visualization is enabled. WikiPathways and other pathway databases are used to analyze experimental data by research groups in many fields. Due to the open and collaborative nature of the WikiPathways platform, our content keeps growing and is getting more accurate, making WikiPathways a reliable and rich pathway database. Previously, however, the focus was primarily on genes and proteins, leaving many metabolites with only limited annotation. Recent curation efforts focused on improving the annotation of metabolism and metabolic pathways by associating unmapped metabolites with database identifiers and providing more detailed interaction knowledge. Here, we report the outcomes of the continued growth and curation efforts, such as a doubling of the number of annotated metabolite nodes in WikiPathways. Furthermore, we introduce an OpenAPI documentation of our web services and the FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable and Reusable) annotation of resources to increase the interoperability of the knowledge encoded in these pathways and experimental omics data. New search options, monthly downloads, more links to metabolite databases, and new portals make pathway knowledge more effortlessly accessible to individual researchers and research communities. © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

  20. Updating the Wnt pathways

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yu, Jia; Virshup, David M.

    2014-01-01

    In the three decades since the discovery of the Wnt1 proto-oncogene in virus-induced mouse mammary tumours, our understanding of the signalling pathways that are regulated by the Wnt proteins has progressively expanded. Wnts are involved in an complex signalling network that governs multiple biological processes and cross-talk with multiple additional signalling cascades, including the Notch, FGF (fibroblast growth factor), SHH (Sonic hedgehog), EGF (epidermal growth factor) and Hippo pathways. The Wnt signalling pathway also illustrates the link between abnormal regulation of the developmental processes and disease manifestation. Here we provide an overview of Wnt-regulated signalling cascades and highlight recent advances. We focus on new findings regarding the dedicated Wnt production and secretion pathway with potential therapeutic targets that might be beneficial for patients with Wnt-related diseases. PMID:25208913

  1. Baryon- and lepton-number non-conserving processes and intermediate mass scales

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Nieves, J.F.

    1981-01-01

    An analysis of the possible mechanisms to mediate various baryon- and lepton-number non-conserving processes is presented. Processes considered include the Δ(B+L) = 0 proton decay, ΔB = 2 neutron-antineutron oscillations and neutrino Majorana masses. Among our results we find that, in the absence of elementary scalars and exotic fermions, all the renormalizable interactions of vector bosons and ordinary fermions conserve B-L. Therefore, the observation of Δ(B-L) not equal 0 processes would imply the existence of elementary scalars and/or exotic fermions. (orig.)

  2. Degradation mechanisms of Microcystin-LR during UV-B photolysis and UV/H2O2 processes: Byproducts and pathways.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moon, Bo-Ram; Kim, Tae-Kyoung; Kim, Moon-Kyung; Choi, Jaewon; Zoh, Kyung-Duk

    2017-10-01

    The removal and degradation pathways of microcystin-LR (MC-LR, [M+H] +  = 995.6) in UV-B photolysis and UV-B/H 2 O 2 processes were examined using liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometry. The UV/H 2 O 2 process was more efficient than UV-B photolysis for MC-LR removal. Eight by-products were newly identified in the UV-B photolysis ([M+H] +  = 414.3, 417.3, 709.6, 428.9, 608.6, 847.5, 807.4, and 823.6), and eleven by-products were identified in the UV-B/H 2 O 2 process ([M+H] +  = 707.4, 414.7, 429.3, 445.3, 608.6, 1052.0, 313.4, 823.6, 357.3, 245.2, and 805.7). Most of the MC-LR by-products had lower [M+H] + values than the MC-LR itself during both processes, except for the [M+H] + value of 1052.0 during UV-B photolysis. Based on identified by-products and peak area patterns, we proposed potential degradation pathways during the two processes. Bond cleavage and intramolecular electron rearrangement by electron pair in the nitrogen atom were the major reactions during UV-B photolysis and UV-B/H 2 O 2 processes, and hydroxylation by OH radical and the adduct formation reaction between the produced by-products were identified as additional pathways during the UV-B/H 2 O 2 process. Meanwhile, the degradation by-products identified from MC-LR during UV-B/H 2 O 2 process can be further degraded by increasing H 2 O 2 dose. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  3. Environmental and energy system analysis of bio-methane production pathways: A comparison between feedstocks and process optimizations

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Pierie, F.; Someren, C.E.J. van; Benders, R.M.J.; Bekkering, J.; Gemert, W.J.Th. van; Moll, H.C.

    2015-01-01

    Highlights: • Using local waste feedstock and optimization improves environmental sustainability. • Optimization favors waste feedstocks. • Transport distances should not exceed 150 km. • The produced energy should be used for powering the green gas process first. • The AD process should be used primarily for local waste treatment. - Abstract: The energy efficiency and sustainability of an anaerobic green gas production pathway was evaluated, taking into account five biomass feedstocks, optimization of the green gas production pathway, replacement of current waste management pathways by mitigation, and transport of the feedstocks. Sustainability is expressed by three main factors: efficiency in (Process) Energy Returned On Invested (P)EROI, carbon footprint in Global Warming Potential GWP(100), and environmental impact in EcoPoints. The green gas production pathway operates on a mass fraction of 50% feedstock with 50% manure. The sustainability of the analyzed feedstocks differs substantially, favoring biomass waste flows over, the specially cultivated energy crop, maize. The use of optimization, in the shape of internal energy production, green gas powered trucks, and mitigation can significantly improve the sustainability for all feedstocks, but favors waste materials. Results indicate a possible improvement from an average (P)EROI for all feedstocks of 2.3 up to an average of 7.0 GJ/GJ. The carbon footprint can potentially be reduced from an average of 40 down to 18 kgCO_2eq/GJ. The environmental impact can potentially be reduced from an average of 5.6 down to 1.8 Pt/GJ. Internal energy production proved to be the most effective optimization. However, the use of optimization aforementioned will result in les green gas injected into the gas grid as it is partially consumed internally. Overall, the feedstock straw was the most energy efficient, where the feedstock harvest remains proved to be the most environmentally sustainable. Furthermore, transport

  4. Formation and magic number characteristics of clusters formed during solidification processes

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Liu Rangsu; Dong Kejun; Tian Zean; Liu Hairong; Peng Ping; Yu Aibing

    2007-01-01

    A molecular dynamics simulation study has been performed for a large-sized system consisting of 10 6 liquid metal Al atoms to investigate the formation and magic number characteristics of various clusters formed during solidification processes. The cluster-type index method (CTIM) is adopted to describe various types of cluster by basic clusters. It is demonstrated that the icosahedral cluster (12 0 12 0) is the most important basic cluster, and that it plays a critical role in the microstructure transition. A new statistical method has been proposed to classify the clusters as some group levels according to the numbers of basic clusters contained in each cluster. The magic numbers can be determined by the respective peak value positions of different group levels of clusters, and the magic number sequence in the system is 13, 19, 25(27), 31(33), 38(40), 42(45), 48(51), 55(59), 61(65), 67,... the numbers in the brackets are the second magic number of the corresponding group levels of clusters. This magic number sequence is in good agreement with the experimental results obtained by Schriver and Harris et al, and the experimental results can be reasonably well explained

  5. How Effective Are Clinical Pathways With and Without Online Peer-Review? An Analysis of Bone Metastases Pathway in a Large, Integrated National Cancer Institute-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center Network

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Beriwal, Sushil, E-mail: beriwals@upmc.edu [Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, Pittsburgh, PA (United States); Rajagopalan, Malolan S.; Flickinger, John C.; Rakfal, Susan M. [Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, Pittsburgh, PA (United States); Rodgers, Edwin [Via Oncology, Pittsburgh, PA (United States); Heron, Dwight E. [Department of Radiation Oncology, University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute, Pittsburgh, PA (United States)

    2012-07-15

    Purpose: Clinical pathways are an important tool used to manage the quality in health care by standardizing processes. This study evaluated the impact of the implementation of a peer-reviewed clinical pathway in a large, integrated National Cancer Institute-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center Network. Methods: In 2003, we implemented a clinical pathway for the management of bone metastases with palliative radiation therapy. In 2009, we required the entry of management decisions into an online tool that records pathway choices. The pathway specified 1 or 5 fractions for symptomatic bone metastases with the option of 10-14 fractions for certain clinical situations. The data were obtained from 13 integrated sites (3 central academic, 10 community locations) from 2003 through 2010. Results: In this study, 7905 sites were treated with 64% of courses delivered in community practice and 36% in academic locations. Academic practices were more likely than community practices to treat with 1-5 fractions (63% vs. 23%; p < 0.0001). The number of delivered fractions decreased gradually from 2003 to 2010 for both academic and community practices (p < 0.0001); however, greater numbers of fractions were selected more often in community practices (p < 0.0001). Using multivariate logistic regression, we found that a significantly greater selection of 1-5 fractions developed after implementation online pathway monitoring (2009) with an odds ratio of 1.2 (confidence interval, 1.1-1.4) for community and 1.3 (confidence interval, 1.1-1.6) for academic practices. The mean number of fractions also decreased after online peer review from 6.3 to 6.0 for academic (p = 0.07) and 9.4 to 9.0 for community practices (p < 0.0001). Conclusion: This is one of the first studies to examine the efficacy of a clinical pathway for radiation oncology in an integrated cancer network. Clinical pathway implementation appears to be effective in changing patterns of care, particularly with online clinical

  6. How Effective Are Clinical Pathways With and Without Online Peer-Review? An Analysis of Bone Metastases Pathway in a Large, Integrated National Cancer Institute–Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center Network

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Beriwal, Sushil; Rajagopalan, Malolan S.; Flickinger, John C.; Rakfal, Susan M.; Rodgers, Edwin; Heron, Dwight E.

    2012-01-01

    Purpose: Clinical pathways are an important tool used to manage the quality in health care by standardizing processes. This study evaluated the impact of the implementation of a peer-reviewed clinical pathway in a large, integrated National Cancer Institute–Designated Comprehensive Cancer Center Network. Methods: In 2003, we implemented a clinical pathway for the management of bone metastases with palliative radiation therapy. In 2009, we required the entry of management decisions into an online tool that records pathway choices. The pathway specified 1 or 5 fractions for symptomatic bone metastases with the option of 10–14 fractions for certain clinical situations. The data were obtained from 13 integrated sites (3 central academic, 10 community locations) from 2003 through 2010. Results: In this study, 7905 sites were treated with 64% of courses delivered in community practice and 36% in academic locations. Academic practices were more likely than community practices to treat with 1–5 fractions (63% vs. 23%; p < 0.0001). The number of delivered fractions decreased gradually from 2003 to 2010 for both academic and community practices (p < 0.0001); however, greater numbers of fractions were selected more often in community practices (p < 0.0001). Using multivariate logistic regression, we found that a significantly greater selection of 1–5 fractions developed after implementation online pathway monitoring (2009) with an odds ratio of 1.2 (confidence interval, 1.1–1.4) for community and 1.3 (confidence interval, 1.1–1.6) for academic practices. The mean number of fractions also decreased after online peer review from 6.3 to 6.0 for academic (p = 0.07) and 9.4 to 9.0 for community practices (p < 0.0001). Conclusion: This is one of the first studies to examine the efficacy of a clinical pathway for radiation oncology in an integrated cancer network. Clinical pathway implementation appears to be effective in changing patterns of care, particularly with

  7. Novel metabolic pathways in Archaea.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sato, Takaaki; Atomi, Haruyuki

    2011-06-01

    The Archaea harbor many metabolic pathways that differ to previously recognized classical pathways. Glycolysis is carried out by modified versions of the Embden-Meyerhof and Entner-Doudoroff pathways. Thermophilic archaea have recently been found to harbor a bi-functional fructose-1,6-bisphosphate aldolase/phosphatase for gluconeogenesis. A number of novel pentose-degrading pathways have also been recently identified. In terms of anabolic metabolism, a pathway for acetate assimilation, the methylaspartate cycle, and two CO2-fixing pathways, the 3-hydroxypropionate/4-hydroxybutyrate cycle and the dicarboxylate/4-hydroxybutyrate cycle, have been elucidated. As for biosynthetic pathways, recent studies have clarified the enzymes responsible for several steps involved in the biosynthesis of inositol phospholipids, polyamine, coenzyme A, flavin adeninedinucleotide and heme. By examining the presence/absence of homologs of these enzymes on genome sequences, we have found that the majority of these enzymes and pathways are specific to the Archaea. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  8. Degradation of clofibric acid in UV/chlorine disinfection process: kinetics, reactive species contribution and pathways.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tang, Yuqing; Shi, Xueting; Liu, Yongze; Feng, Li; Zhang, Liqiu

    2018-02-01

    As a potential endocrine disruptor, clofibric acid (CA) was investigated in this study for its degradation kinetics and pathways in UV/chlorine process. The results showed that CA in both UV photolysis and UV/chlorine processes could be degraded via pseudo-first-order kinetics, while it almost could not be degraded in the dark chlorination process. The observed rate constant ( k obs ) in UV photolysis was 0.0078 min -1, and increased to 0.0107 min -1 combining with 0.1 mM chlorine. The k obs increased to 0.0447 min -1 with further increasing the chlorine dosage from 0.1 to 1.0 mM, and reached a plateau at higher dosage (greater than 1.0 mM). The higher k obs was obtained at acid solution rather than basic solution. Moreover, the calculated contributions of radical species to k obs indicated that the HO• contributed significantly to CA degradation in acidic conditions, while the reactive chlorine species and UV direct photolysis dominated in neutral and basic solution. The degradation of CA was slightly inhibited in the presence of [Formula: see text] (1 ∼ 50 mM), barely affected by the presence of Cl - (1 ∼ 200 mM) and greatly suppressed by humic acid (0 ∼ 5 mg l -1 ). Thirteen main degradation intermediates and three degradation pathways of CA were identified during UV/chlorine process.

  9. An empirical test of pseudo random number generators by means of an exponential decaying process

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Coronel B, H.F.; Hernandez M, A.R.; Jimenez M, M.A.; Mora F, L.E.

    2007-01-01

    Empirical tests for pseudo random number generators based on the use of processes or physical models have been successfully used and are considered as complementary to theoretical tests of randomness. In this work a statistical methodology for evaluating the quality of pseudo random number generators is presented. The method is illustrated in the context of the so-called exponential decay process, using some pseudo random number generators commonly used in physics. (Author)

  10. The Fractions SNARC Revisited: Processing Fractions on a Consistent Mental Number Line.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Toomarian, Elizabeth Y; Hubbard, Edward M

    2017-07-12

    The ability to understand fractions is key to establishing a solid foundation in mathematics, yet children and adults struggle to comprehend them. Previous studies have suggested that these struggles emerge because people fail to process fraction magnitude holistically on the mental number line (MNL), focusing instead on fraction components (Bonato et al. 2007). Subsequent studies have produced evidence for default holistic processing (Meert et al., 2009; 2010), but examined only magnitude processing, not spatial representations. We explored the spatial representations of fractions on the MNL in a series of three experiments: Experiment 1 replicated Bonato et al. (2007); 30 naïve undergraduates compared unit fractions (1/1-1/9) to 1/5, resulting in a reverse SNARC effect. Experiment 2 countered potential strategic biases induced by the limited set of fractions used by Bonato et al. by expanding the stimulus set to include all irreducible, single-digit proper fractions, and asked participants to compare them against 1/2. We observed a classic SNARC effect, completely reversing the pattern from Experiment 1. Together, Experiments 1 and 2 demonstrate that stimulus properties dramatically impact spatial representations of fractions. In Experiment 3, we demonstrated within-subjects reliability of the SNARC effect across both a fractions and whole number comparison task. Our results suggest that adults can indeed process fraction magnitudes holistically, and that their spatial representations occur on a consistent MNL for both whole numbers and fractions.

  11. Is place-value processing in four-digit numbers fully automatic? Yes, but not always.

    Science.gov (United States)

    García-Orza, Javier; Estudillo, Alejandro J; Calleja, Marina; Rodríguez, José Miguel

    2017-12-01

    Knowing the place-value of digits in multi-digit numbers allows us to identify, understand and distinguish between numbers with the same digits (e.g., 1492 vs. 1942). Research using the size congruency task has shown that the place-value in a string of three zeros and a non-zero digit (e.g., 0090) is processed automatically. In the present study, we explored whether place-value is also automatically activated when more complex numbers (e.g., 2795) are presented. Twenty-five participants were exposed to pairs of four-digit numbers that differed regarding the position of some digits and their physical size. Participants had to decide which of the two numbers was presented in a larger font size. In the congruent condition, the number shown in a bigger font size was numerically larger. In the incongruent condition, the number shown in a smaller font size was numerically larger. Two types of numbers were employed: numbers composed of three zeros and one non-zero digit (e.g., 0040-0400) and numbers composed of four non-zero digits (e.g., 2795-2759). Results showed larger congruency effects in more distant pairs in both type of numbers. Interestingly, this effect was considerably stronger in the strings composed of zeros. These results indicate that place-value coding is partially automatic, as it depends on the perceptual and numerical properties of the numbers to be processed.

  12. Processing Biological Gender and Number Information during Chinese Pronoun Resolution: ERP Evidence for Functional Differentiation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xu, Xiaodong; Jiang, Xiaoming; Zhou, Xiaolin

    2013-01-01

    There have been a number of behavioral and neural studies on the processing of syntactic gender and number agreement information, marked by different morpho-syntactic features during sentence comprehension. By using the event-related potential (ERP) technique, the present study investigated whether the processing of semantic gender information and…

  13. Tension-induced vesicle fusion: pathways and pore dynamics

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Shillcock, Julian C.

    2008-01-01

    and eventually opens a pore to complete the fusion process. In pathway II, at higher tension, a stalk is formed during the fusion process that is then transformed by transmembrane pore formation into a fusion pore. Whereas the latter pathway II resembles stalk pathways as observed in other simulation studies......, fusion pathway I, which does not involve any stalk formation, has not been described previously to the best of our knowledge. A statistical analysis of the various processes shows that fusion is the dominant pathway for releasing the tension of the vesicles. The functional dependence of the observed...

  14. Generic Schemes for Single-Molecule Kinetics. 3: Self-Consistent Pathway Solutions for Nonrenewal Processes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Piephoff, D Evan; Cao, Jianshu

    2018-04-23

    We recently developed a pathway analysis framework (paper 1) for describing single-molecule kinetics for renewal (i.e., memoryless) processes based on the decomposition of a kinetic scheme into generic structures. In our approach, waiting time distribution functions corresponding to such structures are expressed in terms of self-consistent pathway solutions and concatenated to form measurable probability distribution functions (PDFs), affording a simple way to decompose and recombine a network. Here, we extend this framework to nonrenewal processes, which involve correlations between events, and employ it to formulate waiting time PDFs, including the first-passage time PDF, for a general kinetic network model. Our technique does not require the assumption of Poissonian kinetics, permitting a more general kinetic description than the usual rate approach, with minimal topological restrictiveness. To demonstrate the usefulness of this technique, we provide explicit calculations for our general model, which we adapt to two generic schemes for single-enzyme turnover with conformational interconversion. For each generic scheme, wherein the intermediate state(s) need not undergo Poissonian decay, the functional dependence of the mean first-passage time on the concentration of an external substrate is analyzed. When conformational detailed balance is satisfied, the enzyme turnover rate (related to the mean first-passage time) reduces to the celebrated Michaelis-Menten functional form, consistent with our previous work involving a similar scheme with all rate processes, thereby establishing further generality to this intriguing result. Our framework affords a general and intuitive approach for evaluating measurable waiting time PDFs and their moments, making it a potentially useful kinetic tool for a wide variety of single-molecule processes.

  15. Development of Tool Representations in the Dorsal and Ventral Visual Object Processing Pathways

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kersey, Alyssa J.; Clark, Tyia S.; Lussier, Courtney A.; Mahon, Bradford Z.; Cantlon, Jessica F.

    2016-01-01

    Tools represent a special class of objects, because they are processed across both the dorsal and ventral visual object processing pathways. Three core regions are known to be involved in tool processing: the left posterior middle temporal gyrus, the medial fusiform gyrus (bilaterally), and the left inferior parietal lobule. A critical and relatively unexplored issue concerns whether, in development, tool preferences emerge at the same time and to a similar degree across all regions of the tool-processing network. To test this issue, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to measure the neural amplitude, peak location, and the dispersion of tool-related neural responses in the youngest sample of children tested to date in this domain (ages 4–8 years). We show that children recruit overlapping regions of the adult tool-processing network and also exhibit similar patterns of co-activation across the network to adults. The amplitude and co-activation data show that the core components of the tool-processing network are established by age 4. Our findings on the distributions of peak location and dispersion of activation indicate that the tool network undergoes refinement between ages 4 and 8 years. PMID:26108614

  16. Selective interference of grasp and space representations with number magnitude and serial order processing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    van Dijck, Jean-Philippe; Fias, Wim; Andres, Michael

    2015-10-01

    It has been proposed that the metrics of space, time and other magnitudes relevant for action are coupled through a generalized magnitude system that also contribute to number representation. Several studies capitalized on stimulus-response compatibility effects to show that numbers map onto left-right representations and grasp representations as a function of their magnitude. However, the tasks typically used do not allow disentangling magnitude from serial order processing. Here, we devised a working memory (WM) task where participants had to remember random sequences of numbers and perform a precision/whole-hand grip (Experiment 1) or a uni-manual left/right button press (Experiment 2) in response to numbers presented during the retention interval. This task does allow differentiating the interference of number magnitude and serial order with each set of responses. Experiment 1 showed that precision grips were initiated faster than whole-hand grips in response to small numbers, irrespective of their serial position in WM. In contrast, Experiment 2 revealed an advantage of right over left button presses as serial position increased, without any influence of number magnitude. These findings demonstrate that grasping and left-right movements overlap with distinct dimensions of number processing. These findings are discussed in the light of different theories explaining the interactions between numbers, space and action.

  17. Analysis of Protein Localization and Secretory Pathway Function Using the Yeast "Saccharomyces Cerevisiae"

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vallen, Elizabeth

    2002-01-01

    The isolation and characterization of mutants has been crucial in understanding a number of processes in the field of cell biology. In this exercise, students examine the effects of mutations in the secretory pathway on protein localization. Yeast strains deficient for synthesis of histidinol dehydrogenase are transformed with a plasmid encoding a…

  18. [Results following the implementation of a clinical pathway in the process of care to elderly patients with osteoporotic hip fracture in a second level hospital].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sánchez-Hernández, N; Sáez-López, P; Paniagua-Tejo, S; Valverde-García, J A

    2016-01-01

    To evaluate the efficiency of a clinical pathway in the management of elderly patients with fragility hip fracture in a second level hospital in terms of length of stay time to surgery, morbidity, hospital mortality, and improved functional outcome. A comparative and prospective study was carried out between two groups of patients with hip fracture aged 75 and older prior to 2010 (n=216), and after a quality improvement intervention in 2013 (n=196). A clinical pathway based on recent scientific evidence was implemented. The degree of compliance with the implemented measures was quantified. The characteristics of the patients in both groups were similar in age, gender, functional status (Barthel Index) and comorbidity (Charlson Index). Median length of stay was reduced by more than 45% in 2013 (16.61 vs. 9.08 days, p=.000). Also, time to surgery decreased 29.4% in the multidisciplinary intervention group (6.23 vs. 4.4 days, p=.000). Patients assigned to the clinical pathway group showed higher medical complications rate (delirium, malnutrition, anaemia and electrolyte disorders), but a lower hospital mortality (5.10 vs. 2.87%, p>.005). The incidence of surgical wound infection (p=.031) and functional efficiency (p=.001) also improved in 2013. An increased number of patients started treatment for osteoporosis (14.80 vs. 76.09%, p=.001) after implementing the clinical pathway. The implementation of a clinical pathway in the care process of elderly patients with hip fracture reduced length of stay and time to surgery, without a negative impact on associated clinical and functional outcomes. Copyright © 2015 SECOT. Published by Elsevier Espana. All rights reserved.

  19. Search for lepton number violating charged current processes with neutrino beams

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kanemura, Shinya; Kuno, Yoshitaka; Ota, Toshihiko

    2013-01-01

    We propose a novel idea on measurements to understand which physics mechanism is responsible for the origin of a small neutrino mass, by searching for the processes of lepton number violating charged current interaction with incident of a neutrino beam. It turns out that only the proposed measurements could provide a potential to discriminate the mechanisms, in particular the ones called loop-induced mechanisms of neutrino mass generation, from the others. The expected rates of these processes based on some theoretical assumptions are estimated. They are found to be sizable so that detection of such processes could be achievable at near detectors in future highly intense neutrino-beam facilities

  20. Basic Number Processing Deficits in ADHD: A Broad Examination of Elementary and Complex Number Processing Skills in 9- to 12-Year-Old Children with ADHD-C

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kaufmann, Liane; Nuerk, Hans-Christoph

    2008-01-01

    ADHD (attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder) and academic difficulties are frequently associated, but to date this link is poorly understood. In order to explore which components of number processing and calculation skills may be disturbed in children with ADHD we presented a series of respective tasks to 9- to 12-year-old children with…

  1. Interleukins and their signaling pathways in the Reactome biological pathway database.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jupe, Steve; Ray, Keith; Roca, Corina Duenas; Varusai, Thawfeek; Shamovsky, Veronica; Stein, Lincoln; D'Eustachio, Peter; Hermjakob, Henning

    2018-04-01

    There is a wealth of biological pathway information available in the scientific literature, but it is spread across many thousands of publications. Alongside publications that contain definitive experimental discoveries are many others that have been dismissed as spurious, found to be irreproducible, or are contradicted by later results and consequently now considered controversial. Many descriptions and images of pathways are incomplete stylized representations that assume the reader is an expert and familiar with the established details of the process, which are consequently not fully explained. Pathway representations in publications frequently do not represent a complete, detailed, and unambiguous description of the molecules involved; their precise posttranslational state; or a full account of the molecular events they undergo while participating in a process. Although this might be sufficient to be interpreted by an expert reader, the lack of detail makes such pathways less useful and difficult to understand for anyone unfamiliar with the area and of limited use as the basis for computational models. Reactome was established as a freely accessible knowledge base of human biological pathways. It is manually populated with interconnected molecular events that fully detail the molecular participants linked to published experimental data and background material by using a formal and open data structure that facilitates computational reuse. These data are accessible on a Web site in the form of pathway diagrams that have descriptive summaries and annotations and as downloadable data sets in several formats that can be reused with other computational tools. The entire database and all supporting software can be downloaded and reused under a Creative Commons license. Pathways are authored by expert biologists who work with Reactome curators and editorial staff to represent the consensus in the field. Pathways are represented as interactive diagrams that include as

  2. Wound care clinical pathway: a conceptual model.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barr, J E; Cuzzell, J

    1996-08-01

    A clinical pathway is a written sequence of clinical processes or events that guides a patient with a defined problem toward an expected outcome. Clinical pathways are tools to assist with the cost-effective management of clinical outcomes related to specific problems or disease processes. The primary obstacles to developing clinical pathways for wound care are the chronic natures of some wounds and the many variables that can delay healing. The pathway introduced in this article was modeled upon the three phases of tissue repair: inflammatory, proliferative, and maturation. This physiology-based model allows clinicians to identify and monitor outcomes based on observable and measurable clinical parameters. The pathway design, which also includes educational and behavioral outcomes, allows the clinician to individualize the expected timeframe for outcome achievement based on individual patient criteria and expert judgement. Integral to the pathway are the "4P's" which help standardize the clinical processes by wound type: Protocols, Policies, Procedures, and Patient education tools. Four categories into which variances are categorized based on the cause of the deviation from the norm are patient, process/system, practitioner, and planning/discharge. Additional research is warranted to support the value of this clinical pathway in the clinical arena.

  3. Implementing Guided Pathways: Tips and Tools

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bailey, Thomas; Jaggars, Shanna Smith; Jenkins, Davis

    2015-01-01

    A growing number of community colleges and four-year universities are seeking to improve student outcomes by redesigning academic programs and student support services following the guided pathways approach. These institutions are mapping out highly structured, educationally coherent program pathways for students to follow by starting with the end…

  4. The NEDD8 modification pathway in plants

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Claus eSchwechheimer

    2014-03-01

    Full Text Available NEDD8, in plants and yeasts also known as RELATED TO UBIQUITIN (RUB, is an evolutionarily conserved 76 amino acid protein highly related to ubiquitin. Like ubiquitin, NEDD8 can be conjugated to and deconjugated from target proteins, but unlike ubiquitin, NEDD8 has not been reported to form chains similar to the different polymeric ubiquitin chains that have a role in a diverse set of cellular processes. NEDD8-modification is best known as a posttranslational modification of the cullin subunits of cullin-RING E3 ubiquitin ligases. In this context, structural analyses have revealed that neddylation induces a conformation change of the cullin that brings the ubiquitylation substrates into proximity of the interacting E2 conjugating enzyme. In turn, NEDD8 deconjugation destabilizes the cullin RING ligase complex allowing for the exchange of substrate recognition subunits via the exchange factor CAND1. In plants, components of the neddylation and deneddylation pathway were identified based on mutants with defects in auxin and light responses and the characterization of these mutants has been instrumental for the elucidation of the neddylation pathway. More recently, there has been evidence from animal and plant systems that NEDD8 conjugation may also regulate the behavior or fate of non-cullin substrates in a number of ways. Here, the current knowledge on NEDD8 processing, conjugation and deconjugation is presented, where applicable, in the context of specific signaling pathways from plants.

  5. The functional anatomy of speech perception: Dorsal and ventral processing pathways

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hickok, Gregory

    2003-04-01

    Drawing on recent developments in the cortical organization of vision, and on data from a variety of sources, Hickok and Poeppel (2000) have proposed a new model of the functional anatomy of speech perception. The model posits that early cortical stages of speech perception involve auditory fields in the superior temporal gyrus bilaterally (although asymmetrically). This cortical processing system then diverges into two broad processing streams, a ventral stream, involved in mapping sound onto meaning, and a dorsal stream, involved in mapping sound onto articulatory-based representations. The ventral stream projects ventrolaterally toward inferior posterior temporal cortex which serves as an interface between sound and meaning. The dorsal stream projects dorsoposteriorly toward the parietal lobe and ultimately to frontal regions. This network provides a mechanism for the development and maintenance of ``parity'' between auditory and motor representations of speech. Although the dorsal stream represents a tight connection between speech perception and speech production, it is not a critical component of the speech perception process under ecologically natural listening conditions. Some degree of bi-directionality in both the dorsal and ventral pathways is also proposed. A variety of recent empirical tests of this model have provided further support for the proposal.

  6. Curation and Computational Design of Bioenergy-Related Metabolic Pathways

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Karp, Peter D. [SRI International, Menlo Park, CA (United States)

    2014-09-12

    Pathway Tools is a systems-biology software package written by SRI International (SRI) that produces Pathway/Genome Databases (PGDBs) for organisms with a sequenced genome. Pathway Tools also provides a wide range of capabilities for analyzing predicted metabolic networks and user-generated omics data. More than 5,000 academic, industrial, and government groups have licensed Pathway Tools. This user community includes researchers at all three DOE bioenergy centers, as well as academic and industrial metabolic engineering (ME) groups. An integral part of the Pathway Tools software is MetaCyc, a large, multiorganism database of metabolic pathways and enzymes that SRI and its academic collaborators manually curate. This project included two main goals: I. Enhance the MetaCyc content of bioenergy-related enzymes and pathways. II. Develop computational tools for engineering metabolic pathways that satisfy specified design goals, in particular for bioenergy-related pathways. In part I, SRI proposed to significantly expand the coverage of bioenergy-related metabolic information in MetaCyc, followed by the generation of organism-specific PGDBs for all energy-relevant organisms sequenced at the DOE Joint Genome Institute (JGI). Part I objectives included: 1: Expand the content of MetaCyc to include bioenergy-related enzymes and pathways. 2: Enhance the Pathway Tools software to enable display of complex polymer degradation processes. 3: Create new PGDBs for the energy-related organisms sequenced by JGI, update existing PGDBs with new MetaCyc content, and make these data available to JBEI via the BioCyc website. In part II, SRI proposed to develop an efficient computational tool for the engineering of metabolic pathways. Part II objectives included: 4: Develop computational tools for generating metabolic pathways that satisfy specified design goals, enabling users to specify parameters such as starting and ending compounds, and preferred or disallowed intermediate compounds

  7. Conflict resolution in two-digit number processing: evidence of an inhibitory mechanism.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Macizo, Pedro

    2017-01-01

    We investigated the mechanism involved in conflict resolution when individuals processed two-digit numbers. Participants performed a comparison task in blocks of two trials. In the first trial, between-decade two-digit numbers were used in a compatible condition where the decade and the unit of one number were larger than those of the other number (i.e., 21-73) and an incompatible condition where the decade of one number was larger but the unit was smaller than those of the other number (i.e., 61-53). In the second trial, within-decade two-digit numbers were presented in a related condition where the numbers contained the units presented previously (i.e., 41-43) and an unrelated condition with units that did not appear before (i.e., 48-49). In the first trial, participants responded more slowly in incompatible trials relative to compatible trials. In the second trial, participants were slower in the related condition relative to unrelated trials only after incompatible trials. These results suggest that participants experienced conflict in the incompatible condition of first trial and that they inhibited irrelevant units to resolve conflict.

  8. Neurophysiology and itch pathways.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Schmelz, Martin

    2015-01-01

    As we all can easily differentiate the sensations of itch and pain, the most straightforward neurophysiologic concept would consist of two specific pathways that independently encode itch and pain. Indeed, a neuronal pathway for histamine-induced itch in the peripheral and central nervous system has been described in animals and humans, and recently several non-histaminergic pathways for itch have been discovered in rodents that support a dichotomous concept differentiated into a pain and an itch pathway, with both pathways being composed of different "flavors." Numerous markers and mediators have been found that are linked to itch processing pathways. Thus, the delineation of neuronal pathways for itch from pain pathways seemingly proves that all sensory aspects of itch are based on an itch-specific neuronal pathway. However, such a concept is incomplete as itch can also be induced by the activation of the pain pathway in particular when the stimulus is applied in a highly localized spatial pattern. These opposite views reflect the old dispute between specificity and pattern theories of itch. Rather than only being of theoretic interest, this conceptual problem has key implication for the strategy to treat chronic itch as key therapeutic targets would be either itch-specific pathways or unspecific nociceptive pathways.

  9. The creative pathways of everyday life

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Tanggaard, Lene

    2015-01-01

    interested in the simultaneous development of persons and social practices. Pathways are created in ordinary life; their formation may involve creativity and the improvisational co-creation of opportunities for action. Studying pathways may therefore direct creativity researchers toward the potentials...... in the mundane processes of everyday life is, however, seldom highlighted by researchers working explicitly on creativity. The premise of the present paper is that a focus on everyday life can help us understand creative processes in broader terms. I “creative pathways” may serve as a useful term for researchers...... of creativity in daily life and shed light of the processes of creativity. Creative pathways are present in existing ways of moving and doing things; they are also created in the here-and-now by persons acting in correspondence with the affordances in social practices. A focus on creative pathways is consistent...

  10. XEDAR activates the non-canonical NF-κB pathway

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Verhelst, Kelly; Gardam, Sandra; Borghi, Alice; Kreike, Marja; Carpentier, Isabelle; Beyaert, Rudi

    2015-01-01

    Members of the tumor necrosis factor receptor (TNFR) superfamily are involved in a number of physiological and pathological responses by activating a wide variety of intracellular signaling pathways. The X-linked ectodermal dysplasia receptor (XEDAR; also known as EDA2R or TNFRSF27) is a member of the TNFR superfamily that is highly expressed in ectodermal derivatives during embryonic development and binds to ectodysplasin-A2 (EDA-A2), a member of the TNF family that is encoded by the anhidrotic ectodermal dysplasia (EDA) gene. Although XEDAR was first described in the year 2000, its function and molecular mechanism of action is still largely unclear. XEDAR has been reported to activate canonical nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) signaling and mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinases. Here we report that XEDAR is also able to trigger the non-canonical NF-κB pathway, characterized by the processing of p100 (NF-κB2) into p52, followed by nuclear translocation of p52 and RelB. We provide evidence that XEDAR-induced p100 processing relies on the binding of XEDAR to TRAF3 and TRAF6, and requires the kinase activity of NIK and IKKα. We also show that XEDAR stimulation results in NIK accumulation and that p100 processing is negatively regulated by TRAF3, cIAP1 and A20. - Highlights: • XEDAR activates the non-canonical NF-κB pathway. • XEDAR-induced processing of p100 depends on XEDAR interaction with TRAF3 and TRAF6. • XEDAR-induced processing of p100 depends on NIK and IKKα activity. • Overexpression of XEDAR leads to NIK accumulation. • XEDAR-induced processing of p100 is negatively regulated by TRAF3 cIAP1 and A20

  11. XEDAR activates the non-canonical NF-κB pathway

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Verhelst, Kelly, E-mail: Kelly.Verhelst@irc.VIB-UGent.be [Inflammation Research Center, Unit of Molecular Signal Transduction in Inflammation, VIB, Ghent (Belgium); Department of Biomedical Molecular Biology, Ghent University, Ghent (Belgium); Gardam, Sandra, E-mail: s.gardam@garvan.org.au [Inflammation Research Center, Unit of Molecular Signal Transduction in Inflammation, VIB, Ghent (Belgium); Department of Biomedical Molecular Biology, Ghent University, Ghent (Belgium); Borghi, Alice, E-mail: Alice.Borghi@irc.VIB-UGent.be [Inflammation Research Center, Unit of Molecular Signal Transduction in Inflammation, VIB, Ghent (Belgium); Department of Biomedical Molecular Biology, Ghent University, Ghent (Belgium); Kreike, Marja, E-mail: Marja.Kreike@irc.VIB-UGent.be [Inflammation Research Center, Unit of Molecular Signal Transduction in Inflammation, VIB, Ghent (Belgium); Department of Biomedical Molecular Biology, Ghent University, Ghent (Belgium); Carpentier, Isabelle, E-mail: Isabelle.Carpentier@irc.VIB-UGent.be [Inflammation Research Center, Unit of Molecular Signal Transduction in Inflammation, VIB, Ghent (Belgium); Department of Biomedical Molecular Biology, Ghent University, Ghent (Belgium); Beyaert, Rudi, E-mail: Rudi.Beyaert@irc.VIB-UGent.be [Inflammation Research Center, Unit of Molecular Signal Transduction in Inflammation, VIB, Ghent (Belgium); Department of Biomedical Molecular Biology, Ghent University, Ghent (Belgium)

    2015-09-18

    Members of the tumor necrosis factor receptor (TNFR) superfamily are involved in a number of physiological and pathological responses by activating a wide variety of intracellular signaling pathways. The X-linked ectodermal dysplasia receptor (XEDAR; also known as EDA2R or TNFRSF27) is a member of the TNFR superfamily that is highly expressed in ectodermal derivatives during embryonic development and binds to ectodysplasin-A2 (EDA-A2), a member of the TNF family that is encoded by the anhidrotic ectodermal dysplasia (EDA) gene. Although XEDAR was first described in the year 2000, its function and molecular mechanism of action is still largely unclear. XEDAR has been reported to activate canonical nuclear factor κB (NF-κB) signaling and mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinases. Here we report that XEDAR is also able to trigger the non-canonical NF-κB pathway, characterized by the processing of p100 (NF-κB2) into p52, followed by nuclear translocation of p52 and RelB. We provide evidence that XEDAR-induced p100 processing relies on the binding of XEDAR to TRAF3 and TRAF6, and requires the kinase activity of NIK and IKKα. We also show that XEDAR stimulation results in NIK accumulation and that p100 processing is negatively regulated by TRAF3, cIAP1 and A20. - Highlights: • XEDAR activates the non-canonical NF-κB pathway. • XEDAR-induced processing of p100 depends on XEDAR interaction with TRAF3 and TRAF6. • XEDAR-induced processing of p100 depends on NIK and IKKα activity. • Overexpression of XEDAR leads to NIK accumulation. • XEDAR-induced processing of p100 is negatively regulated by TRAF3 cIAP1 and A20.

  12. Repression of germline RNAi pathways in somatic cells by retinoblastoma pathway chromatin complexes.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Xiaoyun Wu

    Full Text Available The retinoblastoma (Rb tumor suppressor acts with a number of chromatin cofactors in a wide range of species to suppress cell proliferation. The Caenorhabditis elegans retinoblastoma gene and many of these cofactors, called synMuv B genes, were identified in genetic screens for cell lineage defects caused by growth factor misexpression. Mutations in many synMuv B genes, including lin-35/Rb, also cause somatic misexpression of the germline RNA processing P granules and enhanced RNAi. We show here that multiple small RNA components, including a set of germline-specific Argonaute genes, are misexpressed in the soma of many synMuv B mutant animals, revealing one node for enhanced RNAi. Distinct classes of synMuv B mutants differ in the subcellular architecture of their misexpressed P granules, their profile of misexpressed small RNA and P granule genes, as well as their enhancement of RNAi and the related silencing of transgenes. These differences define three classes of synMuv B genes, representing three chromatin complexes: a LIN-35/Rb-containing DRM core complex, a SUMO-recruited Mec complex, and a synMuv B heterochromatin complex, suggesting that intersecting chromatin pathways regulate the repression of small RNA and P granule genes in the soma and the potency of RNAi. Consistent with this, the DRM complex and the synMuv B heterochromatin complex were genetically additive and displayed distinct antagonistic interactions with the MES-4 histone methyltransferase and the MRG-1 chromodomain protein, two germline chromatin regulators required for the synMuv phenotype and the somatic misexpression of P granule components. Thus intersecting synMuv B chromatin pathways conspire with synMuv B suppressor chromatin factors to regulate the expression of small RNA pathway genes, which enables heightened RNAi response. Regulation of small RNA pathway genes by human retinoblastoma may also underlie its role as a tumor suppressor gene.

  13. Dual pathways for the intracellular processing of insulin. Relationship between retroendocytosis of intact hormone and the recycling of insulin receptors

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Marshall, S.

    1985-01-01

    Adipocytes process insulin through either of two pathways: a retroendocytotic pathway that culminates in the release of intact insulin, and a degradative pathway that terminates in the intracellular catabolism and release of degraded ligand. Mechanistically, these pathways were found to differ in several ways. First, temporal differences were found in the rate at which intact and degraded products were extruded. After 125 I-insulin was preloaded into the cell interior, intact ligand was completely released during the first 10 min (t 1/2 = 2 min), whereas degraded insulin was released at a much slower rate over 1 h (t 1/2 greater than 8 min). Secondly, it was found that chloroquine profoundly inhibited the insulin degradative pathway, resulting in the intracellular accumulation of intact ligand and a reduction in the release of degraded products. In contrast, however, chloroquine was without effect on the retroendocytotic processing of insulin. Based on the known actions of chloroquine, it appears that retroendocytosis of insulin does not involve vesicular acidification or dissociation of the insulin-receptor complex and that insulin is most likely carried to the cell exterior in the same vesicles (either receptor-bound or free) as those mediating recycling receptors. Interestingly, accumulation of undergraded insulin within chloroquine-treated cells did not result in the release of additional intact ligand, suggesting that once insulin enters the degradative compartment it is committed to catabolism and cannot exit the cell through the retroendocytotic pathway. A third difference was revealed by the finding that extracellular unlabeled insulin (100 ng/ml) markedly accelerated the rate at which preloaded 125 I-insulin was released from adipocytes (t 1/2 of 3 min versus 7 min in controls cells)

  14. Basic number processing in children with specific learning disorders: Comorbidity of reading and mathematics disorders.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Moll, Kristina; Göbel, Silke M; Snowling, Margaret J

    2015-01-01

    As well as being the hallmark of mathematics disorders, deficits in number processing have also been reported for individuals with reading disorders. The aim of the present study was to investigate separately the components of numerical processing affected in reading and mathematical disorders within the framework of the Triple Code Model. Children with reading disorders (RD), mathematics disorders (MD), comorbid deficits (RD + MD), and typically developing children (TD) were tested on verbal, visual-verbal, and nonverbal number tasks. As expected, children with MD were impaired across a broad range of numerical tasks. In contrast, children with RD were impaired in (visual-)verbal number tasks but showed age-appropriate performance in nonverbal number skills, suggesting their impairments were domain specific and related to their reading difficulties. The comorbid group showed an additive profile of the impairments of the two single-deficit groups. Performance in speeded verbal number tasks was related to rapid automatized naming, a measure of visual-verbal access in the RD but not in the MD group. The results indicate that deficits in number skills are due to different underlying cognitive deficits in children with RD compared to children with MD: a phonological deficit in RD and a deficit in processing numerosities in MD.

  15. Depletion of key protein components of the RISC pathway impairs pre-ribosomal RNA processing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liang, Xue-Hai; Crooke, Stanley T

    2011-06-01

    Little is known about whether components of the RNA-induced silencing complex (RISC) mediate the biogenesis of RNAs other than miRNA. Here, we show that depletion of key proteins of the RISC pathway by antisense oligonucleotides significantly impairs pre-rRNA processing in human cells. In cells depleted of Drosha or Dicer, different precursors to 5.8S rRNA strongly accumulated, without affecting normal endonucleolytic cleavages. Moderate yet distinct processing defects were also observed in Ago2-depleted cells. Physical links between pre-rRNA and these proteins were identified by co-immunoprecipitation analyses. Interestingly, simultaneous depletion of Dicer and Drosha led to a different processing defect, causing slower production of 28S rRNA and its precursor. Both Dicer and Ago2 were detected in the nuclear fraction, and reduction of Dicer altered the structure of the nucleolus, where pre-rRNA processing occurs. Together, these results suggest that Drosha and Dicer are implicated in rRNA biogenesis.

  16. Relationships between number and space processing in adults with and without dyscalculia.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mussolin, Christophe; Martin, Romain; Schiltz, Christine

    2011-09-01

    A large body of evidence indicates clear relationships between number and space processing in healthy and brain-damaged adults, as well as in children. The present paper addressed this issue regarding atypical math development. Adults with a diagnosis of dyscalculia (DYS) during childhood were compared to adults with average or high abilities in mathematics across two bisection tasks. Participants were presented with Arabic number triplets and had to judge either the number magnitude or the spatial location of the middle number relative to the two outer numbers. For the numerical judgment, adults with DYS were slower than both groups of control peers. They were also more strongly affected by the factors related to number magnitude such as the range of the triplets or the distance between the middle number and the real arithmetical mean. By contrast, adults with DYS were as accurate and fast as adults who never experienced math disability when they had to make a spatial judgment. Moreover, number-space congruency affected performance similarly in the three experimental groups. These findings support the hypothesis of a deficit of number magnitude representation in DYS with a relative preservation of some spatial mechanisms in DYS. Results are discussed in terms of direct and indirect number-space interactions. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  17. Cluster growing process and a sequence of magic numbers

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Solov'yov, Ilia; Solov'yov, Andrey V.; Greiner, Walter

    2003-01-01

    demonstrate that in this way all known global minimum structures of the Lennard-Jones (LJ) clusters can be found. Our method provides an efficient tool for the calculation and analysis of atomic cluster structure. With its use we justify the magic number sequence for the clusters of noble gas atoms......We present a new theoretical framework for modeling the cluster growing process. Starting from the initial tetrahedral cluster configuration, adding new atoms to the system, and absorbing its energy at each step, we find cluster growing paths up to the cluster sizes of more than 100 atoms. We...

  18. TRWG developmental pathway for biospecimen-based assessment modalities

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Translational Research Working Group; Srivastava, Sudhir; Gray, Joe W.; Reid, Brian J.; Grad, Oren; Greenwood, Addison; Hawk, Ernest T.

    2008-09-03

    The Translational Research Working Group (TRWG) was created as a national initiative to evaluate the current status of NCI's investment in translational research and envision its future. The TRWG conceptualized translational research as a set of six developmental processes or pathways focused on various clinical goals. One of those pathways describes the development of biospecimen-based assays that utilize biomarkers for the detection, diagnosis, prognosis, and assessment of response to cancer treatment. The biospecimen-based assessment modality (BM) pathway was conceived not as comprehensive description of the corresponding real-world processes, but rather as a tool designed to facilitate movement of a candidate assay through the translational process to the point where it can be handed off for definitive clinical testing. This paper introduces the pathway in the context of prior work and discusses key challenges associated with the biomarker development process in light of the pathway.

  19. The radiation-induced fibroatrophic process: therapeutic perspective via the antioxidant pathway.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Delanian, Sylvie; Lefaix, Jean-Louis

    2004-11-01

    The radiation-induced fibroatrophic process (RIF) constitutes a late, local and unavoidable sequela to high-dose radiotherapy, traditionally considered irreversible. Today, this process is partly reversible, thanks to recent progress in understanding the physiopathology of the lesions it causes and the results of recent clinical trials using antioxidant therapy. This review includes a synthetic description of the static and dynamic features of the RIF process, as reflected by its clinical, instrumental and histopathological characteristics, and by its cellular and molecular regulation. Schematically, three successive clinical and histopathological phases can be distinguished: a pre-fibrotic aspecific inflammatory phase, a constitutive fibrotic cellular phase, and a matrix densification and remodelling phase, possibly ending in terminal tissular necrosis. The respective roles of the chief actors in the RIF process are defined, as well as their development with time. A fibroblastic stromal hypothesis is suggested revolving around a 'gravitational effect' exerted by the couple ROS (reactive oxygen species)--fibroblasts, and partly mediated by TGF-beta1. A variety of strategies have been tested for the management of RIF. In the light of the mechanisms described, a curative procedure has been proposed via the antioxidant pathway. In particular, it was showed that superoxide dismutase and combined pentoxifylline-tocopherol treatment enables the process of established radiation-induced fibroatrophy to be greatly reduced or even reversed, both in clinical practice and animal experiments. The efficacy of combined pentoxifylline-tocopherol treatment in superficial RIF was confirmed in a randomised clinical trial, and then in successful phase II trials especially in uterine fibroatrophy and osteoradionecrosis. It is of critical importance to evaluate these new management approaches in larger clinical trials and to improve the recording of results for better outcome analysis

  20. The radiation-induced fibroatrophic process: therapeutic perspective via the antioxidant pathway

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Delanian, Sylvie; Lefaix, Jean-Louis

    2004-01-01

    The radiation-induced fibroatrophic process (RIF) constitutes a late, local and unavoidable sequela to high-dose radiotherapy, traditionally considered irreversible. Today, this process is partly reversible, thanks to recent progress in understanding the physiopathology of the lesions it causes and the results of recent clinical trials using antioxidant therapy. This review includes a synthetic description of the static and dynamic features of the RIF process, as reflected by its clinical, instrumental and histopathological characteristics, and by its cellular and molecular regulation. Schematically, three successive clinical and histopathological phases can be distinguished: a pre-fibrotic aspecific inflammatory phase, a constitutive fibrotic cellular phase, and a matrix densification and remodelling phase, possibly ending in terminal tissular necrosis. The respective roles of the chief actors in the RIF process are defined, as well as their development with time. A fibroblastic stromal hypothesis is suggested revolving around a 'gravitational effect' exerted by the couple ROS (reactive oxygen species)--fibroblasts, and partly mediated by TGF-β1. A variety of strategies have been tested for the management of RIF. In the light of the mechanisms described, a curative procedure has been proposed via the antioxidant pathway. In particular, it was showed that superoxide dismutase and combined pentoxifylline-tocopherol treatment enables the process of established radiation-induced fibroatrophy to be greatly reduced or even reversed, both in clinical practice and animal experiments. The efficacy of combined pentoxifylline-tocopherol treatment in superficial RIF was confirmed in a randomised clinical trial, and then in successful phase II trials especially in uterine fibroatrophy and osteoradionecrosis. It is of critical importance to evaluate these new management approaches in larger clinical trials and to improve the recording of results for better outcome analysis

  1. Grammatical number processing and anticipatory eye movements are not tightly coordinated in English spoken language comprehension

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Brian eRiordan

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available Recent studies of eye movements in world-situated language comprehension have demonstrated that rapid processing of morphosyntactic information – e.g., grammatical gender and number marking – can produce anticipatory eye movements to referents in the visual scene. We investigated how type of morphosyntactic information and the goals of language users in comprehension affected eye movements, focusing on the processing of grammatical number morphology in English-speaking adults. Participants’ eye movements were recorded as they listened to simple English declarative (There are the lions. and interrogative (Where are the lions? sentences. In Experiment 1, no differences were observed in speed to fixate target referents when grammatical number information was informative relative to when it was not. The same result was obtained in a speeded task (Experiment 2 and in a task using mixed sentence types (Experiment 3. We conclude that grammatical number processing in English and eye movements to potential referents are not tightly coordinated. These results suggest limits on the role of predictive eye movements in concurrent linguistic and scene processing. We discuss how these results can inform and constrain predictive approaches to language processing.

  2. Diverse Regulators of Human Ribosome Biogenesis Discovered by Changes in Nucleolar Number

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Katherine I. Farley-Barnes

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available Ribosome biogenesis is a highly regulated, essential cellular process. Although studies in yeast have established some of the biological principles of ribosome biogenesis, many of the intricacies of its regulation in higher eukaryotes remain unknown. To understand how ribosome biogenesis is globally integrated in human cells, we conducted a genome-wide siRNA screen for regulators of nucleolar number. We found 139 proteins whose depletion changed the number of nucleoli per nucleus from 2–3 to only 1 in human MCF10A cells. Follow-up analyses on 20 hits found many (90% to be essential for the nucleolar functions of rDNA transcription (7, pre-ribosomal RNA (pre-rRNA processing (16, and/or global protein synthesis (14. This genome-wide analysis exploits the relationship between nucleolar number and function to discover diverse cellular pathways that regulate the making of ribosomes and paves the way for further exploration of the links between ribosome biogenesis and human disease.

  3. Cellular and Molecular Pathways Leading to External Root Resorption

    Science.gov (United States)

    Iglesias-Linares, A.; Hartsfield, J.K.

    2016-01-01

    External apical root resorption during orthodontic treatment implicates specific molecular pathways that orchestrate nonphysiologic cellular activation. To date, a substantial number of in vitro and in vivo molecular, genomic, and proteomic studies have supplied data that provide new insights into root resorption. Recent mechanisms and developments reviewed here include the role of the cellular component—specifically, the balance of CD68+, iNOS+ M1- and CD68+, CD163+ M2-like macrophages associated with root resorption and root surface repair processes linked to the expression of the M1-associated proinflammatory cytokine tumor necrosis factor, inducible nitric oxide synthase, the M1 activator interferon γ, the M2 activator interleukin 4, and M2-associated anti-inflammatory interleukin 10 and arginase I. Insights into the role of mesenchymal dental pulp cells in attenuating dentin resorption in homeostasis are also reviewed. Data on recently deciphered molecular pathways are reviewed at the level of (1) clastic cell adhesion in the external apical root resorption process and the specific role of α/β integrins, osteopontin, and related extracellular matrix proteins; (2) clastic cell fusion and activation by the RANKL/RANK/OPG and ATP-P2RX7-IL1 pathways; and (3) regulatory mechanisms of root resorption repair by cementum at the proteomic and transcriptomic levels. PMID:27811065

  4. Transfer of radionuclides to man through environmental pathways

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Mitchell, N.T.

    1974-01-01

    The most widely accepted method in current use for the evaluation of environmental impact from releases of radioactivity that may cause human radiation exposure used an environmental pathway model. The more important aspects of the model involve the use of critical pathway techniques to set controls on the releases of radioactive material to the environment and to assess the human radiation exposure arising as a consequence. The basic concepts of the environmental pathway model and its application are discussed. The model depends on achieving an understanding of radionuclide behavior in the environment, from the moment of release up to the time when contamination results in radiation exposure to the public. Exposure may be as a result of contaminated material entering the body-as air, water or a foodstuff; alternatively, it may be due to radiation whose source is external to the body. For each of these types of exposure pathway the sequence of events can be divided up into a number of compartments, between which transfer takes place. Transfer along the pathway is a dynamic process and can be described mathematically in terms of transfer functions between interacting compartments. Alternatively, for the situation of a regular discharge resulting in a steady-state condition the relationship between compartments can be expressed as a 'concentration factor'. The derivation of both of these terms is described and some aspects of their use are discussed. The paper then goes on to discuss the types of environmental pathway that are encountered as a result of release of radionuclides to the atmospheric and aquatic environments. Disposal to the ground is regarded as a special case of release to the aquatic environment. Some ot the literature on the subject is reviewed in discussingthe better known pathways showing what, to date, have been the most important mechanisms of transfer of radionuclides to man. (author)

  5. Coarsely resolved topography along protein folding pathways

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fernández, Ariel; Kostov, Konstantin S.; Berry, R. Stephen

    2000-03-01

    The kinetic data from the coarse representation of polypeptide torsional dynamics described in the preceding paper [Fernandez and Berry, J. Chem. Phys. 112, 5212 (2000), preceding paper] is inverted by using detailed balance to obtain a topographic description of the potential-energy surface (PES) along the dominant folding pathway of the bovine pancreatic trypsin inhibitor (BPTI). The topography is represented as a sequence of minima and effective saddle points. The dominant folding pathway displays an overall monotonic decrease in energy with a large number of staircaselike steps, a clear signature of a good structure-seeker. The diversity and availability of alternative folding pathways is analyzed in terms of the Shannon entropy σ(t) associated with the time-dependent probability distribution over the kinetic ensemble of contact patterns. Several stages in the folding process are evident. Initially misfolded states form and dismantle revealing no definite pattern in the topography and exhibiting high Shannon entropy. Passage down a sequence of staircase steps then leads to the formation of a nativelike intermediate, for which σ(t) is much lower and fairly constant. Finally, the structure of the intermediate is refined to produce the native state of BPTI. We also examine how different levels of tolerance to mismatches of side chain contacts influence the folding kinetics, the topography of the dominant folding pathway, and the Shannon entropy. This analysis yields upper and lower bounds of the frustration tolerance required for the expeditious and robust folding of BPTI.

  6. Predicting pathway cross-talks in ankylosing spondylitis through investigating the interactions among pathways.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gu, Xiang; Liu, Cong-Jian; Wei, Jian-Jie

    2017-11-13

    Given that the pathogenesis of ankylosing spondylitis (AS) remains unclear, the aim of this study was to detect the potentially functional pathway cross-talk in AS to further reveal the pathogenesis of this disease. Using microarray profile of AS and biological pathways as study objects, Monte Carlo cross-validation method was used to identify the significant pathway cross-talks. In the process of Monte Carlo cross-validation, all steps were iterated 50 times. For each run, detection of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) between two groups was conducted. The extraction of the potential disrupted pathways enriched by DEGs was then implemented. Subsequently, we established a discriminating score (DS) for each pathway pair according to the distribution of gene expression levels. After that, we utilized random forest (RF) classification model to screen out the top 10 paired pathways with the highest area under the curve (AUCs), which was computed using 10-fold cross-validation approach. After 50 bootstrap, the best pairs of pathways were identified. According to their AUC values, the pair of pathways, antigen presentation pathway and fMLP signaling in neutrophils, achieved the best AUC value of 1.000, which indicated that this pathway cross-talk could distinguish AS patients from normal subjects. Moreover, the paired pathways of SAPK/JNK signaling and mitochondrial dysfunction were involved in 5 bootstraps. Two paired pathways (antigen presentation pathway and fMLP signaling in neutrophil, as well as SAPK/JNK signaling and mitochondrial dysfunction) can accurately distinguish AS and control samples. These paired pathways may be helpful to identify patients with AS for early intervention.

  7. Calcium influx pathways in rat pancreatic ducts

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Hug, M J; Pahl, C; Novak, I

    1996-01-01

    A number of agonists increase intracellular Ca2+ activity, [Ca2+]i, in pancreatic ducts, but the influx/efflux pathways and intracellular Ca2+ stores in this epithelium are unknown. The aim of the present study was to characterise the Ca2+ influx pathways, especially their pH sensitivity, in nati...

  8. Aligning Metabolic Pathways Exploiting Binary Relation of Reactions.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yiran Huang

    Full Text Available Metabolic pathway alignment has been widely used to find one-to-one and/or one-to-many reaction mappings to identify the alternative pathways that have similar functions through different sets of reactions, which has important applications in reconstructing phylogeny and understanding metabolic functions. The existing alignment methods exhaustively search reaction sets, which may become infeasible for large pathways. To address this problem, we present an effective alignment method for accurately extracting reaction mappings between two metabolic pathways. We show that connected relation between reactions can be formalized as binary relation of reactions in metabolic pathways, and the multiplications of zero-one matrices for binary relations of reactions can be accomplished in finite steps. By utilizing the multiplications of zero-one matrices for binary relation of reactions, we efficiently obtain reaction sets in a small number of steps without exhaustive search, and accurately uncover biologically relevant reaction mappings. Furthermore, we introduce a measure of topological similarity of nodes (reactions by comparing the structural similarity of the k-neighborhood subgraphs of the nodes in aligning metabolic pathways. We employ this similarity metric to improve the accuracy of the alignments. The experimental results on the KEGG database show that when compared with other state-of-the-art methods, in most cases, our method obtains better performance in the node correctness and edge correctness, and the number of the edges of the largest common connected subgraph for one-to-one reaction mappings, and the number of correct one-to-many reaction mappings. Our method is scalable in finding more reaction mappings with better biological relevance in large metabolic pathways.

  9. The sequence of cortical activity inferred by response latency variability in the human ventral pathway of face processing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lin, Jo-Fu Lotus; Silva-Pereyra, Juan; Chou, Chih-Che; Lin, Fa-Hsuan

    2018-04-11

    Variability in neuronal response latency has been typically considered caused by random noise. Previous studies of single cells and large neuronal populations have shown that the temporal variability tends to increase along the visual pathway. Inspired by these previous studies, we hypothesized that functional areas at later stages in the visual pathway of face processing would have larger variability in the response latency. To test this hypothesis, we used magnetoencephalographic data collected when subjects were presented with images of human faces. Faces are known to elicit a sequence of activity from the primary visual cortex to the fusiform gyrus. Our results revealed that the fusiform gyrus showed larger variability in the response latency compared to the calcarine fissure. Dynamic and spectral analyses of the latency variability indicated that the response latency in the fusiform gyrus was more variable than in the calcarine fissure between 70 ms and 200 ms after the stimulus onset and between 4 Hz and 40 Hz, respectively. The sequential processing of face information from the calcarine sulcus to the fusiform sulcus was more reliably detected based on sizes of the response variability than instants of the maximal response peaks. With two areas in the ventral visual pathway, we show that the variability in response latency across brain areas can be used to infer the sequence of cortical activity.

  10. Post-processing Free Quantum Random Number Generator Based on Avalanche Photodiode Array

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Li Yang; Liao Sheng-Kai; Liang Fu-Tian; Shen Qi; Liang Hao; Peng Cheng-Zhi

    2016-01-01

    Quantum random number generators adopting single photon detection have been restricted due to the non-negligible dead time of avalanche photodiodes (APDs). We propose a new approach based on an APD array to improve the generation rate of random numbers significantly. This method compares the detectors' responses to consecutive optical pulses and generates the random sequence. We implement a demonstration experiment to show its simplicity, compactness and scalability. The generated numbers are proved to be unbiased, post-processing free, ready to use, and their randomness is verified by using the national institute of standard technology statistical test suite. The random bit generation efficiency is as high as 32.8% and the potential generation rate adopting the 32 × 32 APD array is up to tens of Gbits/s. (paper)

  11. Magnocellular pathway for rotation invariant Neocognitron.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ting, C H

    1993-03-01

    In the mammalian visual system, magnocellular pathway and parvocellular pathway cooperatively process visual information in parallel. The magnocellular pathway is more global and less particular about the details while the parvocellular pathway recognizes objects based on the local features. In many aspects, Neocognitron may be regarded as the artificial analogue of the parvocellular pathway. It is interesting then to model the magnocellular pathway. In order to achieve "rotation invariance" for Neocognitron, we propose a neural network model after the magnocellular pathway and expand its roles to include surmising the orientation of the input pattern prior to recognition. With the incorporation of the magnocellular pathway, a basic shift in the original paradigm has taken place. A pattern is now said to be recognized when and only when one of the winners of the magnocellular pathway is validified by the parvocellular pathway. We have implemented the magnocellular pathway coupled with Neocognitron parallel on transputers; our simulation programme is now able to recognize numerals in arbitrary orientation.

  12. Oncogenic Signaling Pathways in The Cancer Genome Atlas

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Sanchez-Vega, Francisco; Mina, Marco; Armenia, Joshua; Chatila, Walid K.; Luna, Augustin; La, Konnor C.; Dimitriadoy, Sofia; Liu, David L.; Kantheti, Havish S.; Saghafinia, Sadegh; Chakravarty, Debyani; Daian, Foysal; Gao, Qingsong; Bailey, Matthew H.; Liang, Wen Wei; Foltz, Steven M.; Shmulevich, Ilya; Ding, Li; Heins, Zachary J.; Ochoa, Angelica; Gross, Benjamin E.; Gao, Jianjiong; Zhang, Hongxin; Kundra, Ritika; Kandoth, Cyriac; Bahceci, Istemi; Dervishi, Leonard; Dogrusoz, Ugur; Zhou, Wanding; Shen, Hui; Laird, Peter W.; Way, Gregory P.; Greene, Casey S.; Liang, Han; Xiao, Yonghong; Wang, Chen; Iavarone, Antonio; Berger, Alice H.; Bivona, Trever G.; Lazar, Alexander J.; Hammer, Gary D.; Giordano, Thomas; Kwong, Lawrence N.; McArthur, Grant; Huang, Chenfei; Tward, Aaron D.; Frederick, Mitchell J.; McCormick, Frank; Meyerson, Matthew; Caesar-Johnson, Samantha J.; Demchok, John A.; Felau, Ina; Kasapi, Melpomeni; Ferguson, Martin L.; Hutter, Carolyn M.; Sofia, Heidi J.; Tarnuzzer, Roy; Wang, Zhining; Yang, Liming; Zenklusen, Jean C.; Zhang, Jiashan (Julia); Chudamani, Sudha; Liu, Jia; Lolla, Laxmi; Naresh, Rashi; Pihl, Todd; Sun, Qiang; Wan, Yunhu; Wu, Ye; Cho, Juok; DeFreitas, Timothy; Frazer, Scott; Gehlenborg, Nils; Getz, Gad; Heiman, David I.; Kim, Jaegil; Lawrence, Michael S.; Lin, Pei; Meier, Sam; Noble, Michael S.; Saksena, Gordon; Voet, Doug; Zhang, Hailei; Bernard, Brady; Chambwe, Nyasha; Dhankani, Varsha; Knijnenburg, Theo; Kramer, Roger; Leinonen, Kalle; Liu, Yuexin; Miller, Michael; Reynolds, Sheila; Shmulevich, Ilya; Thorsson, Vesteinn; Zhang, Wei; Akbani, Rehan; Broom, Bradley M.; Hegde, Apurva M.; Ju, Zhenlin; Kanchi, Rupa S.; Korkut, Anil; Li, Jun; Liang, Han; Ling, Shiyun; Liu, Wenbin; Lu, Yiling; Mills, Gordon B.; Ng, Kwok Shing; Rao, Arvind; Ryan, Michael; Wang, Jing; Weinstein, John N.; Zhang, Jiexin; Abeshouse, Adam; Armenia, Joshua; Chakravarty, Debyani; Chatila, Walid K.; de Bruijn, Ino; Gao, Jianjiong; Gross, Benjamin E.; Heins, Zachary J.; Kundra, Ritika; La, Konnor; Ladanyi, Marc; Luna, Augustin; Nissan, Moriah G.; Ochoa, Angelica; Phillips, Sarah M.; Reznik, Ed; Sanchez-Vega, Francisco; Sander, Chris; Schultz, Nikolaus; Sheridan, Robert; Sumer, S. Onur; Sun, Yichao; Taylor, Barry S.; Wang, Jioajiao; Zhang, Hongxin; Anur, Pavana; Peto, Myron; Spellman, Paul; Benz, Christopher; Stuart, Joshua M.; Wong, Christopher K.; Yau, Christina; Hayes, D. Neil; Parker, Joel S.; Wilkerson, Matthew D.; Ally, Adrian; Balasundaram, Miruna; Bowlby, Reanne; Brooks, Denise; Carlsen, Rebecca; Chuah, Eric; Dhalla, Noreen; Holt, Robert; Jones, Steven J.M.; Kasaian, Katayoon; Lee, Darlene; Ma, Yussanne; Marra, Marco A.; Mayo, Michael; Moore, Richard A.; Mungall, Andrew J.; Mungall, Karen; Robertson, A. Gordon; Sadeghi, Sara; Schein, Jacqueline E.; Sipahimalani, Payal; Tam, Angela; Thiessen, Nina; Tse, Kane; Wong, Tina; Berger, Ashton C.; Beroukhim, Rameen; Cherniack, Andrew D.; Cibulskis, Carrie; Gabriel, Stacey B.; Gao, Galen F.; Ha, Gavin; Meyerson, Matthew; Schumacher, Steven E.; Shih, Juliann; Kucherlapati, Melanie H.; Kucherlapati, Raju S.; Baylin, Stephen; Cope, Leslie; Danilova, Ludmila; Bootwalla, Moiz S.; Lai, Phillip H.; Maglinte, Dennis T.; Van Den Berg, David J.; Weisenberger, Daniel J.; Auman, J. Todd; Balu, Saianand; Bodenheimer, Tom; Fan, Cheng; Hoadley, Katherine A.; Hoyle, Alan P.; Jefferys, Stuart R.; Jones, Corbin D.; Meng, Shaowu; Mieczkowski, Piotr A.; Mose, Lisle E.; Perou, Amy H.; Perou, Charles M.; Roach, Jeffrey; Shi, Yan; Simons, Janae V.; Skelly, Tara; Soloway, Matthew G.; Tan, Donghui; Veluvolu, Umadevi; Fan, Huihui; Hinoue, Toshinori; Laird, Peter W.; Shen, Hui; Zhou, Wanding; Bellair, Michelle; Chang, Kyle; Covington, Kyle; Creighton, Chad J.; Dinh, Huyen; Doddapaneni, Harsha Vardhan; Donehower, Lawrence A.; Drummond, Jennifer; Gibbs, Richard A.; Glenn, Robert; Hale, Walker; Han, Yi; Hu, Jianhong; Korchina, Viktoriya; Lee, Sandra; Lewis, Lora; Li, Wei; Liu, Xiuping; Morgan, Margaret; Morton, Donna; Muzny, Donna; Santibanez, Jireh; Sheth, Margi; Shinbrot, Eve; Wang, Linghua; Wang, Min; Wheeler, David A.; Xi, Liu; Zhao, Fengmei; Hess, Julian; Appelbaum, Elizabeth L.; Bailey, Matthew; Cordes, Matthew G.; Ding, Li; Fronick, Catrina C.; Fulton, Lucinda A.; Fulton, Robert S.; Kandoth, Cyriac; Mardis, Elaine R.; McLellan, Michael D.; Miller, Christopher A.; Schmidt, Heather K.; Wilson, Richard K.; Crain, Daniel; Curley, Erin; Gardner, Johanna; Lau, Kevin; Mallery, David; Morris, Scott; Paulauskis, Joseph; Penny, Robert; Shelton, Candace; Shelton, Troy; Sherman, Mark; Thompson, Eric; Yena, Peggy; Bowen, Jay; Gastier-Foster, Julie M.; Gerken, Mark; Leraas, Kristen M.; Lichtenberg, Tara M.; Ramirez, Nilsa C.; Wise, Lisa; Zmuda, Erik; Corcoran, Niall; Costello, Tony; Hovens, Christopher; Carvalho, Andre L.; de Carvalho, Ana C.; Fregnani, José H.; Longatto-Filho, Adhemar; Reis, Rui M.; Scapulatempo-Neto, Cristovam; Silveira, Henrique C.S.; Vidal, Daniel O.; Burnette, Andrew; Eschbacher, Jennifer; Hermes, Beth; Noss, Ardene; Singh, Rosy; Anderson, Matthew L.; Castro, Patricia D.; Ittmann, Michael; Huntsman, David; Kohl, Bernard; Le, Xuan; Thorp, Richard; Andry, Chris; Duffy, Elizabeth R.; Lyadov, Vladimir; Paklina, Oxana; Setdikova, Galiya; Shabunin, Alexey; Tavobilov, Mikhail; McPherson, Christopher; Warnick, Ronald; Berkowitz, Ross; Cramer, Daniel; Feltmate, Colleen; Horowitz, Neil; Kibel, Adam; Muto, Michael; Raut, Chandrajit P.; Malykh, Andrei; Barnholtz-Sloan, Jill S.; Barrett, Wendi; Devine, Karen; Fulop, Jordonna; Ostrom, Quinn T.; Shimmel, Kristen; Wolinsky, Yingli; Sloan, Andrew E.; De Rose, Agostino; Giuliante, Felice; Goodman, Marc; Karlan, Beth Y.; Hagedorn, Curt H.; Eckman, John; Harr, Jodi; Myers, Jerome; Tucker, Kelinda; Zach, Leigh Anne; Deyarmin, Brenda; Hu, Hai; Kvecher, Leonid; Larson, Caroline; Mural, Richard J.; Somiari, Stella; Vicha, Ales; Zelinka, Tomas; Bennett, Joseph; Iacocca, Mary; Rabeno, Brenda; Swanson, Patricia; Latour, Mathieu; Lacombe, Louis; Têtu, Bernard; Bergeron, Alain; McGraw, Mary; Staugaitis, Susan M.; Chabot, John; Hibshoosh, Hanina; Sepulveda, Antonia; Su, Tao; Wang, Timothy; Potapova, Olga; Voronina, Olga; Desjardins, Laurence; Mariani, Odette; Roman-Roman, Sergio; Sastre, Xavier; Stern, Marc Henri; Cheng, Feixiong; Signoretti, Sabina; Berchuck, Andrew; Bigner, Darell; Lipp, Eric; Marks, Jeffrey; McCall, Shannon; McLendon, Roger; Secord, Angeles; Sharp, Alexis; Behera, Madhusmita; Brat, Daniel J.; Chen, Amy; Delman, Keith; Force, Seth; Khuri, Fadlo; Magliocca, Kelly; Maithel, Shishir; Olson, Jeffrey J.; Owonikoko, Taofeek; Pickens, Alan; Ramalingam, Suresh; Shin, Dong M.; Sica, Gabriel; Van Meir, Erwin G.; Zhang, Hongzheng; Eijckenboom, Wil; Gillis, Ad; Korpershoek, Esther; Looijenga, Leendert; Oosterhuis, Wolter; Stoop, Hans; van Kessel, Kim E.; Zwarthoff, Ellen C.; Calatozzolo, Chiara; Cuppini, Lucia; Cuzzubbo, Stefania; DiMeco, Francesco; Finocchiaro, Gaetano; Mattei, Luca; Perin, Alessandro; Pollo, Bianca; Chen, Chu; Houck, John; Lohavanichbutr, Pawadee; Hartmann, Arndt; Stoehr, Christine; Stoehr, Robert; Taubert, Helge; Wach, Sven; Wullich, Bernd; Kycler, Witold; Murawa, Dawid; Wiznerowicz, Maciej; Chung, Ki; Edenfield, W. Jeffrey; Martin, Julie; Baudin, Eric; Bubley, Glenn; Bueno, Raphael; De Rienzo, Assunta; Richards, William G.; Kalkanis, Steven; Mikkelsen, Tom; Noushmehr, Houtan; Scarpace, Lisa; Girard, Nicolas; Aymerich, Marta; Campo, Elias; Giné, Eva; Guillermo, Armando López; Van Bang, Nguyen; Hanh, Phan Thi; Phu, Bui Duc; Tang, Yufang; Colman, Howard; Evason, Kimberley; Dottino, Peter R.; Martignetti, John A.; Gabra, Hani; Juhl, Hartmut; Akeredolu, Teniola; Stepa, Serghei; Hoon, Dave; Ahn, Keunsoo; Kang, Koo Jeong; Beuschlein, Felix; Breggia, Anne; Birrer, Michael; Bell, Debra; Borad, Mitesh; Bryce, Alan H.; Castle, Erik; Chandan, Vishal; Cheville, John; Copland, John A.; Farnell, Michael; Flotte, Thomas; Giama, Nasra; Ho, Thai; Kendrick, Michael; Kocher, Jean Pierre; Kopp, Karla; Moser, Catherine; Nagorney, David; O'Brien, Daniel; O'Neill, Brian Patrick; Patel, Tushar; Petersen, Gloria; Que, Florencia; Rivera, Michael; Roberts, Lewis; Smallridge, Robert; Smyrk, Thomas; Stanton, Melissa; Thompson, R. Houston; Torbenson, Michael; Yang, Ju Dong; Zhang, Lizhi; Brimo, Fadi; Ajani, Jaffer A.; Gonzalez, Ana Maria Angulo; Behrens, Carmen; Bondaruk, Jolanta; Broaddus, Russell; Czerniak, Bogdan; Esmaeli, Bita; Fujimoto, Junya; Gershenwald, Jeffrey; Guo, Charles; Lazar, Alexander J.; Logothetis, Christopher; Meric-Bernstam, Funda; Moran, Cesar; Ramondetta, Lois; Rice, David; Sood, Anil; Tamboli, Pheroze; Thompson, Timothy; Troncoso, Patricia; Tsao, Anne; Wistuba, Ignacio; Carter, Candace; Haydu, Lauren; Hersey, Peter; Jakrot, Valerie; Kakavand, Hojabr; Kefford, Richard; Lee, Kenneth; Long, Georgina; Mann, Graham; Quinn, Michael; Saw, Robyn; Scolyer, Richard; Shannon, Kerwin; Spillane, Andrew; Stretch, Jonathan; Synott, Maria; Thompson, John; Wilmott, James; Al-Ahmadie, Hikmat; Chan, Timothy A.; Ghossein, Ronald; Gopalan, Anuradha; Levine, Douglas A.; Reuter, Victor; Singer, Samuel; Singh, Bhuvanesh; Tien, Nguyen Viet; Broudy, Thomas; Mirsaidi, Cyrus; Nair, Praveen; Drwiega, Paul; Miller, Judy; Smith, Jennifer; Zaren, Howard; Park, Joong Won; Hung, Nguyen Phi; Kebebew, Electron; Linehan, W. Marston; Metwalli, Adam R.; Pacak, Karel; Pinto, Peter A.; Schiffman, Mark; Schmidt, Laura S.; Vocke, Cathy D.; Wentzensen, Nicolas; Worrell, Robert; Yang, Hannah; Moncrieff, Marc; Goparaju, Chandra; Melamed, Jonathan; Pass, Harvey; Botnariuc, Natalia; Caraman, Irina; Cernat, Mircea; Chemencedji, Inga; Clipca, Adrian; Doruc, Serghei; Gorincioi, Ghenadie; Mura, Sergiu; Pirtac, Maria; Stancul, Irina; Tcaciuc, Diana; Albert, Monique; Alexopoulou, Iakovina; Arnaout, Angel; Bartlett, John; Engel, Jay; Gilbert, Sebastien; Parfitt, Jeremy; Sekhon, Harman; Thomas, George; Rassl, Doris M.; Rintoul, Robert C.; Bifulco, Carlo; Tamakawa, Raina; Urba, Walter; Hayward, Nicholas; Timmers, Henri; Antenucci, Anna; Facciolo, Francesco; Grazi, Gianluca; Marino, Mirella; Merola, Roberta; de Krijger, Ronald; Gimenez-Roqueplo, Anne Paule; Piché, Alain; Chevalier, Simone; McKercher, Ginette; Birsoy, Kivanc; Barnett, Gene; Brewer, Cathy; Farver, Carol; Naska, Theresa; Pennell, Nathan A.; Raymond, Daniel; Schilero, Cathy; Smolenski, Kathy; Williams, Felicia; Morrison, Carl; Borgia, Jeffrey A.; Liptay, Michael J.; Pool, Mark; Seder, Christopher W.; Junker, Kerstin; Omberg, Larsson; Dinkin, Mikhail; Manikhas, George; Alvaro, Domenico; Bragazzi, Maria Consiglia; Cardinale, Vincenzo; Carpino, Guido; Gaudio, Eugenio; Chesla, David; Cottingham, Sandra; Dubina, Michael; Moiseenko, Fedor; Dhanasekaran, Renumathy; Becker, Karl Friedrich; Janssen, Klaus Peter; Slotta-Huspenina, Julia; Abdel-Rahman, Mohamed H.; Aziz, Dina; Bell, Sue; Cebulla, Colleen M.; Davis, Amy; Duell, Rebecca; Elder, J. Bradley; Hilty, Joe; Kumar, Bahavna; Lang, James; Lehman, Norman L.; Mandt, Randy; Nguyen, Phuong; Pilarski, Robert; Rai, Karan; Schoenfield, Lynn; Senecal, Kelly; Wakely, Paul; Hansen, Paul; Lechan, Ronald; Powers, James; Tischler, Arthur; Grizzle, William E.; Sexton, Katherine C.; Kastl, Alison; Henderson, Joel; Porten, Sima; Waldmann, Jens; Fassnacht, Martin; Asa, Sylvia L.; Schadendorf, Dirk; Couce, Marta; Graefen, Markus; Huland, Hartwig; Sauter, Guido; Schlomm, Thorsten; Simon, Ronald; Tennstedt, Pierre; Olabode, Oluwole; Nelson, Mark; Bathe, Oliver; Carroll, Peter R.; Chan, June M.; Disaia, Philip; Glenn, Pat; Kelley, Robin K.; Landen, Charles N.; Phillips, Joanna; Prados, Michael; Simko, Jeffry; Smith-McCune, Karen; VandenBerg, Scott; Roggin, Kevin; Fehrenbach, Ashley; Kendler, Ady; Sifri, Suzanne; Steele, Ruth; Jimeno, Antonio; Carey, Francis; Forgie, Ian; Mannelli, Massimo; Carney, Michael; Hernandez, Brenda; Campos, Benito; Herold-Mende, Christel; Jungk, Christin; Unterberg, Andreas; von Deimling, Andreas; Bossler, Aaron; Galbraith, Joseph; Jacobus, Laura; Knudson, Michael; Knutson, Tina; Ma, Deqin; Milhem, Mohammed; Sigmund, Rita; Godwin, Andrew K.; Madan, Rashna; Rosenthal, Howard G.; Adebamowo, Clement; Adebamowo, Sally N.; Boussioutas, Alex; Beer, David; Giordano, Thomas; Mes-Masson, Anne Marie; Saad, Fred; Bocklage, Therese; Landrum, Lisa; Mannel, Robert; Moore, Kathleen; Moxley, Katherine; Postier, Russel; Walker, Joan; Zuna, Rosemary; Feldman, Michael; Valdivieso, Federico; Dhir, Rajiv; Luketich, James; Pinero, Edna M.Mora; Quintero-Aguilo, Mario; Carlotti, Carlos Gilberto; Dos Santos, Jose Sebastião; Kemp, Rafael; Sankarankuty, Ajith; Tirapelli, Daniela; Catto, James; Agnew, Kathy; Swisher, Elizabeth; Creaney, Jenette; Robinson, Bruce; Shelley, Carl Simon; Godwin, Eryn M.; Kendall, Sara; Shipman, Cassaundra; Bradford, Carol; Carey, Thomas; Haddad, Andrea; Moyer, Jeffey; Peterson, Lisa; Prince, Mark; Rozek, Laura; Wolf, Gregory; Bowman, Rayleen; Fong, Kwun M.; Yang, Ian; Korst, Robert; Rathmell, W. Kimryn; Fantacone-Campbell, J. Leigh; Hooke, Jeffrey A.; Kovatich, Albert J.; Shriver, Craig D.; DiPersio, John; Drake, Bettina; Govindan, Ramaswamy; Heath, Sharon; Ley, Timothy; Van Tine, Brian; Westervelt, Peter; Rubin, Mark A.; Lee, Jung Il; Aredes, Natália D.; Mariamidze, Armaz; Van Allen, Eliezer M.; Cherniack, Andrew D.; Ciriello, Giovanni; Sander, Chris; Schultz, Nikolaus

    2018-01-01

    Genetic alterations in signaling pathways that control cell-cycle progression, apoptosis, and cell growth are common hallmarks of cancer, but the extent, mechanisms, and co-occurrence of alterations in these pathways differ between individual tumors and tumor types. Using mutations, copy-number

  13. Two-Electron Transfer Pathways.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lin, Jiaxing; Balamurugan, D; Zhang, Peng; Skourtis, Spiros S; Beratan, David N

    2015-06-18

    The frontiers of electron-transfer chemistry demand that we develop theoretical frameworks to describe the delivery of multiple electrons, atoms, and ions in molecular systems. When electrons move over long distances through high barriers, where the probability for thermal population of oxidized or reduced bridge-localized states is very small, the electrons will tunnel from the donor (D) to acceptor (A), facilitated by bridge-mediated superexchange interactions. If the stable donor and acceptor redox states on D and A differ by two electrons, it is possible that the electrons will propagate coherently from D to A. While structure-function relations for single-electron superexchange in molecules are well established, strategies to manipulate the coherent flow of multiple electrons are largely unknown. In contrast to one-electron superexchange, two-electron superexchange involves both one- and two-electron virtual intermediate states, the number of virtual intermediates increases very rapidly with system size, and multiple classes of pathways interfere with one another. In the study described here, we developed simple superexchange models for two-electron transfer. We explored how the bridge structure and energetics influence multielectron superexchange, and we compared two-electron superexchange interactions to single-electron superexchange. Multielectron superexchange introduces interference between singly and doubly oxidized (or reduced) bridge virtual states, so that even simple linear donor-bridge-acceptor systems have pathway topologies that resemble those seen for one-electron superexchange through bridges with multiple parallel pathways. The simple model systems studied here exhibit a richness that is amenable to experimental exploration by manipulating the multiple pathways, pathway crosstalk, and changes in the number of donor and acceptor species. The features that emerge from these studies may assist in developing new strategies to deliver multiple

  14. Variations on standard broiler processing in an effort to reduce Campylobacter numbers on postpick carcasses

    Science.gov (United States)

    Campylobacter numbers increase on broiler carcasses during defeathering due to leakage of gut contents through the vent. We tested several processing modifications designed to interfere with the transfer of Campylobacter from gut contents to carcass surface. Numbers of Campylobacter detected on br...

  15. An Epidemiological Study of Number Processing and Mental Calculation in Greek Schoolchildren

    Science.gov (United States)

    Koumoula, Anastasia; Tsironi, Vanda; Stamouli, Victoria; Bardani, Irini; Stavroula, Siapati; Graham, Annik; Kafantaris, Ignatios; Charalambidou, Irini; Dellatolas, Georges; von Aster, Michael

    2004-01-01

    The aim of this study was to validate and standardize an instrument for the diagnosis of developmental dyscalculia (mathematics disorder) in a Greek population and to obtain relevant epidemiological data. We used the "Neuropsychological Test Battery for Number Processing and Calculation in Children" (NUCALC) in a community sample of 240 students…

  16. Antigen processing and remodeling of the endosomal pathway: requirements for antigen cross-presentation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Compeer, Ewoud Bernardus; Flinsenberg, Thijs Willem Hendrik; van der Grein, Susanna Geertje; Boes, Marianne

    2012-01-01

    Cross-presentation of endocytosed antigen as peptide/class I major histocompatibility complex complexes plays a central role in the elicitation of CD8(+) T cell clones that mediate anti-viral and anti-tumor immune responses. While it has been clear that there are specific subsets of professional antigen presenting cells capable of antigen cross-presentation, identification of mechanisms involved is still ongoing. Especially amongst dendritic cells (DC), there are specialized subsets that are highly proficient at antigen cross-presentation. We here present a focused survey on the cell biological processes in the endosomal pathway that support antigen cross-presentation. This review highlights DC-intrinsic mechanisms that facilitate the cross-presentation of endocytosed antigen, including receptor-mediated uptake, maturation-induced endosomal sorting of membrane proteins, dynamic remodeling of endosomal structures and cell surface-directed endosomal trafficking. We will conclude with the description of pathogen-induced deviation of endosomal processing, and discuss how immune evasion strategies pertaining endosomal trafficking may preclude antigen cross-presentation.

  17. Antigen processing and remodeling of the endosomal pathway: requirements for antigen cross-presentation.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ewoud Bernardus Compeer

    2012-03-01

    Full Text Available The cross-presentation of endocytosed antigen as peptide/class I MHC complexes plays a central role in the elicitation of CD8+ T cell clones that mediate anti-viral and anti-tumor immune responses. While it has been clear that there are specific subsets of professional antigen presenting cells (APC capable of antigen cross-presentation, description of mechanisms involved is still ongoing. Especially amongst dendritic cells (DC, there are specialized subsets that are highly proficient at antigen cross-presentation. We here present a focused survey on the cell biological processes in the endosomal pathway that support antigen cross-presentation. This review highlight DC-intrinsic mechanisms that facilitate the cross-presentation of endocytosed antigen, including receptor-mediated uptake, recycling and maturation including the sorting of membrane proteins, dynamic remodeling of endosomal structures and cell-surface directed endosomal trafficking. We will conclude with description of pathogen-induced deviation of endosomal processing, and discuss how immune evasion strategies pertaining endosomal trafficking may preclude antigen cross-presentation.

  18. Neural pathways for visual speech perception

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lynne E Bernstein

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available This paper examines the questions, what levels of speech can be perceived visually, and how is visual speech represented by the brain? Review of the literature leads to the conclusions that every level of psycholinguistic speech structure (i.e., phonetic features, phonemes, syllables, words, and prosody can be perceived visually, although individuals differ in their abilities to do so; and that there are visual modality-specific representations of speech qua speech in higher-level vision brain areas. That is, the visual system represents the modal patterns of visual speech. The suggestion that the auditory speech pathway receives and represents visual speech is examined in light of neuroimaging evidence on the auditory speech pathways. We outline the generally agreed-upon organization of the visual ventral and dorsal pathways and examine several types of visual processing that might be related to speech through those pathways, specifically, face and body, orthography, and sign language processing. In this context, we examine the visual speech processing literature, which reveals widespread diverse patterns activity in posterior temporal cortices in response to visual speech stimuli. We outline a model of the visual and auditory speech pathways and make several suggestions: (1 The visual perception of speech relies on visual pathway representations of speech qua speech. (2 A proposed site of these representations, the temporal visual speech area (TVSA has been demonstrated in posterior temporal cortex, ventral and posterior to multisensory posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS. (3 Given that visual speech has dynamic and configural features, its representations in feedforward visual pathways are expected to integrate these features, possibly in TVSA.

  19. Optimization and planning of operating theatre activities: an original definition of pathways and process modeling.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Barbagallo, Simone; Corradi, Luca; de Ville de Goyet, Jean; Iannucci, Marina; Porro, Ivan; Rosso, Nicola; Tanfani, Elena; Testi, Angela

    2015-05-17

    The Operating Room (OR) is a key resource of all major hospitals, but it also accounts for up 40% of resource costs. Improving cost effectiveness, while maintaining a quality of care, is a universal objective. These goals imply an optimization of planning and a scheduling of the activities involved. This is highly challenging due to the inherent variable and unpredictable nature of surgery. A Business Process Modeling Notation (BPMN 2.0) was used for the representation of the "OR Process" (being defined as the sequence of all of the elementary steps between "patient ready for surgery" to "patient operated upon") as a general pathway ("path"). The path was then both further standardized as much as possible and, at the same time, keeping all of the key-elements that would allow one to address or define the other steps of planning, and the inherent and wide variability in terms of patient specificity. The path was used to schedule OR activity, room-by-room, and day-by-day, feeding the process from a "waiting list database" and using a mathematical optimization model with the objective of ending up in an optimized planning. The OR process was defined with special attention paid to flows, timing and resource involvement. Standardization involved a dynamics operation and defined an expected operating time for each operation. The optimization model has been implemented and tested on real clinical data. The comparison of the results reported with the real data, shows that by using the optimization model, allows for the scheduling of about 30% more patients than in actual practice, as well as to better exploit the OR efficiency, increasing the average operating room utilization rate up to 20%. The optimization of OR activity planning is essential in order to manage the hospital's waiting list. Optimal planning is facilitated by defining the operation as a standard pathway where all variables are taken into account. By allowing a precise scheduling, it feeds the process of

  20. Genomic instability and radiation risk in molecular pathways to colon cancer.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jan Christian Kaiser

    Full Text Available Colon cancer is caused by multiple genomic alterations which lead to genomic instability (GI. GI appears in molecular pathways of microsatellite instability (MSI and chromosomal instability (CIN with clinically observed case shares of about 15-20% and 80-85%. Radiation enhances the colon cancer risk by inducing GI, but little is known about different outcomes for MSI and CIN. Computer-based modelling can facilitate the understanding of the phenomena named above. Comprehensive biological models, which combine the two main molecular pathways to colon cancer, are fitted to incidence data of Japanese a-bomb survivors. The preferred model is selected according to statistical criteria and biological plausibility. Imprints of cell-based processes in the succession from adenoma to carcinoma are identified by the model from age dependences and secular trends of the incidence data. Model parameters show remarkable compliance with mutation rates and growth rates for adenoma, which has been reported over the last fifteen years. Model results suggest that CIN begins during fission of intestinal crypts. Chromosomal aberrations are generated at a markedly elevated rate which favors the accelerated growth of premalignant adenoma. Possibly driven by a trend of Westernization in the Japanese diet, incidence rates for the CIN pathway increased notably in subsequent birth cohorts, whereas rates pertaining to MSI remained constant. An imbalance between number of CIN and MSI cases began to emerge in the 1980s, whereas in previous decades the number of cases was almost equal. The CIN pathway exhibits a strong radio-sensitivity, probably more intensive in men. Among young birth cohorts of both sexes the excess absolute radiation risk related to CIN is larger by an order of magnitude compared to the MSI-related risk. Observance of pathway-specific risks improves the determination of the probability of causation for radiation-induced colon cancer in individual patients

  1. Aging: Molecular Pathways and Implications on the Cardiovascular System

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Arthur José Pontes Oliveira de Almeida

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available The world’s population over 60 years is growing rapidly, reaching 22% of the global population in the next decades. Despite the increase in global longevity, individual healthspan needs to follow this growth. Several diseases have their prevalence increased by age, such as cardiovascular diseases, the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Understanding the aging biology mechanisms is fundamental to the pursuit of cardiovascular health. In this way, aging is characterized by a gradual decline in physiological functions, involving the increased number in senescent cells into the body. Several pathways lead to senescence, including oxidative stress and persistent inflammation, as well as energy failure such as mitochondrial dysfunction and deregulated autophagy, being ROS, AMPK, SIRTs, mTOR, IGF-1, and p53 key regulators of the metabolic control, connecting aging to the pathways which drive towards diseases. In addition, senescence can be induced by cellular replication, which resulted from telomere shortening. Taken together, it is possible to draw a common pathway unifying aging to cardiovascular diseases, and the central point of this process, senescence, can be the target for new therapies, which may result in the healthspan matching the lifespan.

  2. Random number generation as an index of controlled processing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jahanshahi, Marjan; Saleem, T; Ho, Aileen K; Dirnberger, Georg; Fuller, R

    2006-07-01

    Random number generation (RNG) is a functionally complex process that is highly controlled and therefore dependent on Baddeley's central executive. This study addresses this issue by investigating whether key predictions from this framework are compatible with empirical data. In Experiment 1, the effect of increasing task demands by increasing the rate of the paced generation was comprehensively examined. As expected, faster rates affected performance negatively because central resources were increasingly depleted. Next, the effects of participants' exposure were manipulated in Experiment 2 by providing increasing amounts of practice on the task. There was no improvement over 10 practice trials, suggesting that the high level of strategic control required by the task was constant and not amenable to any automatization gain with repeated exposure. Together, the results demonstrate that RNG performance is a highly controlled and demanding process sensitive to additional demands on central resources (Experiment 1) and is unaffected by repeated performance or practice (Experiment 2). These features render the easily administered RNG task an ideal and robust index of executive function that is highly suitable for repeated clinical use. ((c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved).

  3. Dual pathways to prospective remembering

    Science.gov (United States)

    McDaniel, Mark A.; Umanath, Sharda; Einstein, Gilles O.; Waldum, Emily R.

    2015-01-01

    According to the multiprocess framework (McDaniel and Einstein, 2000), the cognitive system can support prospective memory (PM) retrieval through two general pathways. One pathway depends on top–down attentional control processes that maintain activation of the intention and/or monitor the environment for the triggering or target cues that indicate that the intention should be executed. A second pathway depends on (bottom–up) spontaneous retrieval processes, processes that are often triggered by a PM target cue; critically, spontaneous retrieval is assumed not to require monitoring or active maintenance of the intention. Given demand characteristics associated with experimental settings, however, participants are often inclined to monitor, thereby potentially masking discovery of bottom–up spontaneous retrieval processes. In this article, we discuss parameters of laboratory PM paradigms to discourage monitoring and review recent behavioral evidence from such paradigms that implicate spontaneous retrieval in PM. We then re-examine the neuro-imaging evidence from the lens of the multiprocess framework and suggest some critical modifications to existing neuro-cognitive interpretations of the neuro-imaging results. These modifications illuminate possible directions and refinements for further neuro-imaging investigations of PM. PMID:26236213

  4. Dual Pathways to Prospective Remembering

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mark A Mcdaniel

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available According to the multiprocess framework (McDaniel & Einstein, 2000, the cognitive system can support prospective memory (PM retrieval through two general pathways. One pathway depends on top-down attentional control processes that maintain activation of the intention and/or monitor the environment for the triggering or target cues that indicate that the intention should be executed. A second pathway depends on (bottom-up spontaneous retrieval processes, processes that are often triggered by a PM target cue; critically spontaneous retrieval is assumed to not require monitoring or active maintenance of the intention. Given demand characteristics associated with experimental settings, however, participants are often inclined to monitor, thereby potentially masking discovery of bottom-up spontaneous retrieval processes. In this article, we discuss parameters of laboratory PM paradigms to discourage monitoring and review recent behavioral evidence from such paradigms that implicate spontaneous retrieval in PM. We then re-examine the neuro-imaging evidence from the lens of the multiprocess framework and suggest some critical modifications to existing neuro-cognitive interpretations of the neuro-imaging results. These modifications illuminate possible directions and refinements for further neuro-imaging investigations of PM.

  5. Mining pathway associations for disease-related pathway activity analysis based on gene expression and methylation data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Hyeonjeong; Shin, Miyoung

    2017-01-01

    The problem of discovering genetic markers as disease signatures is of great significance for the successful diagnosis, treatment, and prognosis of complex diseases. Even if many earlier studies worked on identifying disease markers from a variety of biological resources, they mostly focused on the markers of genes or gene-sets (i.e., pathways). However, these markers may not be enough to explain biological interactions between genetic variables that are related to diseases. Thus, in this study, our aim is to investigate distinctive associations among active pathways (i.e., pathway-sets) shown each in case and control samples which can be observed from gene expression and/or methylation data. The pathway-sets are obtained by identifying a set of associated pathways that are often active together over a significant number of class samples. For this purpose, gene expression or methylation profiles are first analyzed to identify significant (active) pathways via gene-set enrichment analysis. Then, regarding these active pathways, an association rule mining approach is applied to examine interesting pathway-sets in each class of samples (case or control). By doing so, the sets of associated pathways often working together in activity profiles are finally chosen as our distinctive signature of each class. The identified pathway-sets are aggregated into a pathway activity network (PAN), which facilitates the visualization of differential pathway associations between case and control samples. From our experiments with two publicly available datasets, we could find interesting PAN structures as the distinctive signatures of breast cancer and uterine leiomyoma cancer, respectively. Our pathway-set markers were shown to be superior or very comparable to other genetic markers (such as genes or gene-sets) in disease classification. Furthermore, the PAN structure, which can be constructed from the identified markers of pathway-sets, could provide deeper insights into

  6. Aging and the number sense: preserved basic non-symbolic numerical processing and enhanced basic symbolic processing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jade Eloise eNorris

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available Aging often leads to general cognitive decline in domains such as memory and attention. The effect of aging on numerical cognition, particularly on foundational numerical skills known as the Number Sense, is not well known. Early research focused on the effect of aging on arithmetic. Recent studies have begun to investigate the impact of healthy aging on basic numerical skills, but focused on non-symbolic quantity discrimination alone. Moreover, contradictory findings have emerged. The current study aimed to further investigate the impact of aging on basic non-symbolic and symbolic numerical skills. A group of 25 younger (18-25 and 25 older adults (60-77 participated in non-symbolic and symbolic numerical comparison tasks. Mathematical and spelling abilities were also measured. Results showed that aging had no effect on foundational non-symbolic numerical skills, as both groups performed similarly (RTs, accuracy and Weber fractions (w. All participants showed decreased non-symbolic acuity (accuracy and w in trials requiring inhibition. However, aging appears to be associated with a greater decline in discrimination speed in such trials. Furthermore, aging seems to have a positive impact on mathematical ability and basic symbolic numerical processing, as older participants attained significantly higher mathematical achievement scores, and performed significantly better on the symbolic comparison task than younger participants. The findings suggest that aging and its lifetime exposure to numbers may lead to better mathematical achievement and stronger basic symbolic numerical skills. Our results further support the observation that basic non-symbolic numerical skills are resilient to aging, but that aging may exacerbate poorer performance on trials requiring inhibitory processes. These findings lend further support to the notion that preserved basic numerical skills in aging may reflect the preservation of an innate, primitive and embedded Number

  7. Generalized hardware post-processing technique for chaos-based pseudorandom number generators

    KAUST Repository

    Barakat, Mohamed L.

    2013-06-01

    This paper presents a generalized post-processing technique for enhancing the pseudorandomness of digital chaotic oscillators through a nonlinear XOR-based operation with rotation and feedback. The technique allows full utilization of the chaotic output as pseudorandom number generators and improves throughput without a significant area penalty. Digital design of a third-order chaotic system with maximum function nonlinearity is presented with verified chaotic dynamics. The proposed post-processing technique eliminates statistical degradation in all output bits, thus maximizing throughput compared to other processing techniques. Furthermore, the technique is applied to several fully digital chaotic oscillators with performance surpassing previously reported systems in the literature. The enhancement in the randomness is further examined in a simple image encryption application resulting in a better security performance. The system is verified through experiment on a Xilinx Virtex 4 FPGA with throughput up to 15.44 Gbit/s and logic utilization less than 0.84% for 32-bit implementations. © 2013 ETRI.

  8. Dysregulated Pathway Identification of Alzheimer's Disease Based on Internal Correlation Analysis of Genes and Pathways.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kong, Wei; Mou, Xiaoyang; Di, Benteng; Deng, Jin; Zhong, Ruxing; Wang, Shuaiqun

    2017-11-20

    Dysregulated pathway identification is an important task which can gain insight into the underlying biological processes of disease. Current pathway-identification methods focus on a set of co-expression genes and single pathways and ignore the correlation between genes and pathways. The method proposed in this study, takes into account the internal correlations not only between genes but also pathways to identifying dysregulated pathways related to Alzheimer's disease (AD), the most common form of dementia. In order to find the significantly differential genes for AD, mutual information (MI) is used to measure interdependencies between genes other than expression valves. Then, by integrating the topology information from KEGG, the significant pathways involved in the feature genes are identified. Next, the distance correlation (DC) is applied to measure the pairwise pathway crosstalks since DC has the advantage of detecting nonlinear correlations when compared to Pearson correlation. Finally, the pathway pairs with significantly different correlations between normal and AD samples are known as dysregulated pathways. The molecular biology analysis demonstrated that many dysregulated pathways related to AD pathogenesis have been discovered successfully by the internal correlation detection. Furthermore, the insights of the dysregulated pathways in the development and deterioration of AD will help to find new effective target genes and provide important theoretical guidance for drug design. Copyright© Bentham Science Publishers; For any queries, please email at epub@benthamscience.org.

  9. Comparison of pathways associated with hepatitis B- and C-infected hepatocellular carcinoma using pathway-based class discrimination method.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lee, Sun Young; Song, Kwang Hoon; Koo, Imhoi; Lee, Kee-Ho; Suh, Kyung-Suk; Kim, Bu-Yeo

    2012-06-01

    Molecular signatures causing hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) from chronic infection of hepatitis B virus (HBV) or hepatitis C virus (HCV) are not clearly known. Using microarray datasets composed of HCV-positive HCC or HBV-positive HCC, pathways that could discriminate tumor tissue from adjacent non-tumor liver tissue were selected by implementing nearest shrunken centroid algorithm. Cancer-related signaling pathways and lipid metabolism-related pathways were predominantly enriched in HCV-positive HCC, whereas functionally diverse pathways including immune-related pathways, cell cycle pathways, and RNA metabolism pathways were mainly enriched in HBV-positive HCC. In addition to differentially involved pathways, signaling pathways such as TGF-β, MAPK, and p53 pathways were commonly significant in both HCCs, suggesting the presence of common hepatocarcinogenesis process. The pathway clustering also verified segregation of pathways into the functional subgroups in both HCCs. This study indicates the functional distinction and similarity on the pathways implicated in the development of HCV- and/or HBV-positive HCC. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  10. Decision process in MCDM with large number of criteria and heterogeneous risk preferences

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jian Liu

    Full Text Available A new decision process is proposed to address the challenge that a large number criteria in the multi-criteria decision making (MCDM problem and the decision makers with heterogeneous risk preferences. First, from the perspective of objective data, the effective criteria are extracted based on the similarity relations between criterion values and the criteria are weighted, respectively. Second, the corresponding types of theoretic model of risk preferences expectations will be built, based on the possibility and similarity between criterion values to solve the problem for different interval numbers with the same expectation. Then, the risk preferences (Risk-seeking, risk-neutral and risk-aversion will be embedded in the decision process. Later, the optimal decision object is selected according to the risk preferences of decision makers based on the corresponding theoretic model. Finally, a new algorithm of information aggregation model is proposed based on fairness maximization of decision results for the group decision, considering the coexistence of decision makers with heterogeneous risk preferences. The scientific rationality verification of this new method is given through the analysis of real case. Keywords: Heterogeneous, Risk preferences, Fairness, Decision process, Group decision

  11. Mitochondrial pathways governing stress resistance, life, and death in the fungal aging model Podospora anserina.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Osiewacz, Heinz D; Brust, Diana; Hamann, Andrea; Kunstmann, Birgit; Luce, Karin; Müller-Ohldach, Mathis; Scheckhuber, Christian Q; Servos, Jörg; Strobel, Ingmar

    2010-06-01

    Work from more than 50 years of research has unraveled a number of molecular pathways that are involved in controlling aging of the fungal model system Podospora anserina. Early research revealed that wild-type strain aging is linked to gross reorganization of the mitochondrial DNA. Later it was shown that aging of P. anserina does also take place, although at a slower pace, when the wild-type specific mitochondrial DNA rearrangements do not occur. Now it is clear that a network of different pathways is involved in the control of aging. Branches of these pathways appear to be connected and constitute a hierarchical system of responses. Although cross talk between the individual pathways seems to be fundamental in the coordination of the overall system, the precise underlying interactions remain to be unraveled. Such a systematic approach aims at a holistic understanding of the process of biological aging, the ultimate goal of modern systems biology.

  12. Cellular Energy Pathways as Novel Targets for the Therapy of Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease

    Science.gov (United States)

    2017-09-01

    AWARD NUMBER: W81XWH-15-1-0419 TITLE: Cellular Energy Pathways as Novel Targets for the Therapy of Autosomal Dominant Polycystic Kidney Disease...COVERED 1 Sep 2016 - 31 Aug 2017 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE 5a. CONTRACT NUMBER Cellular Energy Pathways as Novel Targets for the Therapy of Autosomal...inappropriate cell growth, fluid secretion, and dysregulation of cellular energy metabolism. The enzyme AMPK regulates a number of cellular pathways, including

  13. Applying meta-pathway analyses through metagenomics to identify the functional properties of the major bacterial communities of a single spontaneous cocoa bean fermentation process sample.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Illeghems, Koen; Weckx, Stefan; De Vuyst, Luc

    2015-09-01

    A high-resolution functional metagenomic analysis of a representative single sample of a Brazilian spontaneous cocoa bean fermentation process was carried out to gain insight into its bacterial community functioning. By reconstruction of microbial meta-pathways based on metagenomic data, the current knowledge about the metabolic capabilities of bacterial members involved in the cocoa bean fermentation ecosystem was extended. Functional meta-pathway analysis revealed the distribution of the metabolic pathways between the bacterial members involved. The metabolic capabilities of the lactic acid bacteria present were most associated with the heterolactic fermentation and citrate assimilation pathways. The role of Enterobacteriaceae in the conversion of substrates was shown through the use of the mixed-acid fermentation and methylglyoxal detoxification pathways. Furthermore, several other potential functional roles for Enterobacteriaceae were indicated, such as pectinolysis and citrate assimilation. Concerning acetic acid bacteria, metabolic pathways were partially reconstructed, in particular those related to responses toward stress, explaining their metabolic activities during cocoa bean fermentation processes. Further, the in-depth metagenomic analysis unveiled functionalities involved in bacterial competitiveness, such as the occurrence of CRISPRs and potential bacteriocin production. Finally, comparative analysis of the metagenomic data with bacterial genomes of cocoa bean fermentation isolates revealed the applicability of the selected strains as functional starter cultures. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  14. Pathway Distiller - multisource biological pathway consolidation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Doderer, Mark S; Anguiano, Zachry; Suresh, Uthra; Dashnamoorthy, Ravi; Bishop, Alexander J R; Chen, Yidong

    2012-01-01

    One method to understand and evaluate an experiment that produces a large set of genes, such as a gene expression microarray analysis, is to identify overrepresentation or enrichment for biological pathways. Because pathways are able to functionally describe the set of genes, much effort has been made to collect curated biological pathways into publicly accessible databases. When combining disparate databases, highly related or redundant pathways exist, making their consolidation into pathway concepts essential. This will facilitate unbiased, comprehensive yet streamlined analysis of experiments that result in large gene sets. After gene set enrichment finds representative pathways for large gene sets, pathways are consolidated into representative pathway concepts. Three complementary, but different methods of pathway consolidation are explored. Enrichment Consolidation combines the set of the pathways enriched for the signature gene list through iterative combining of enriched pathways with other pathways with similar signature gene sets; Weighted Consolidation utilizes a Protein-Protein Interaction network based gene-weighting approach that finds clusters of both enriched and non-enriched pathways limited to the experiments' resultant gene list; and finally the de novo Consolidation method uses several measurements of pathway similarity, that finds static pathway clusters independent of any given experiment. We demonstrate that the three consolidation methods provide unified yet different functional insights of a resultant gene set derived from a genome-wide profiling experiment. Results from the methods are presented, demonstrating their applications in biological studies and comparing with a pathway web-based framework that also combines several pathway databases. Additionally a web-based consolidation framework that encompasses all three methods discussed in this paper, Pathway Distiller (http://cbbiweb.uthscsa.edu/PathwayDistiller), is established to allow

  15. Junction detection and pathway selection

    Science.gov (United States)

    Peck, Alex N.; Lim, Willie Y.; Breul, Harry T.

    1992-02-01

    The ability to detect junctions and make choices among the possible pathways is important for autonomous navigation. In our script-based navigation approach where a journey is specified as a script of high-level instructions, actions are frequently referenced to junctions, e.g., `turn left at the intersection.' In order for the robot to carry out these kind of instructions, it must be able (1) to detect an intersection (i.e., an intersection of pathways), (2) know that there are several possible pathways it can take, and (3) pick the pathway consistent with the high level instruction. In this paper we describe our implementation of the ability to detect junctions in an indoor environment, such as corners, T-junctions and intersections, using sonar. Our approach uses a combination of partial scan of the local environment and recognition of sonar signatures of certain features of the junctions. In the case where the environment is known, we use additional sensor information (such as compass bearings) to help recognize the specific junction. In general, once a junction is detected and its type known, the number of possible pathways can be deduced and the correct pathway selected. Then the appropriate behavior for negotiating the junction is activated.

  16. Aquatic pathway 2

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    1977-01-01

    This third part of the investigation discusses the preliminary results of sub-investigations concerning problems of the release of radioactive substances into the environment via the water pathway. On the basis of papers on the emission into the draining ditch and the exchange processes there, investigations of a possible incorporation via different exposure pathways are reported. Special regard is paid to drinking water supply aquatic foodstuffs, the river sediment, the utilisation of the agricultural surfaces and the draining ditch including its pre-pollution. The dynamics of contamination processes is reported on with regard to the problem of accidents. The colloquium will give an outline of the progress made so far and admit participants' suggestions for further work on the sub-investigations. The following colloquia will report further findings, in particular effects on aquatic ecosystems. (orig.) [de

  17. Materials processing strategies for colloidal quantum dot solar cells: advances, present-day limitations, and pathways to improvement

    KAUST Repository

    Carey, Graham H.; Chou, Kang Wei; Yan, Buyi; Kirmani, Ahmad R.; Amassian, Aram; Sargent, Edward H.

    2013-01-01

    Colloidal quantum dot photovoltaic devices have improved from initial, sub-1% solar power conversion efficiency to current record performance of over 7%. Rapid advances in materials processing and device physics have driven this impressive performance progress. The highest-efficiency approaches rely on a fabrication process that starts with nanocrystals in solution, initially capped with long organic molecules. This solution is deposited and the resultant film is treated using a solution containing a second, shorter capping ligand, leading to a cross-linked, non-redispersible, and dense layer. This procedure is repeated, leading to the widely employed layer-by-layer solid-state ligand exchange. We will review the properties and features of this process, and will also discuss innovative pathways to creating even higher-performing films and photovoltaic devices.

  18. Materials processing strategies for colloidal quantum dot solar cells: advances, present-day limitations, and pathways to improvement

    KAUST Repository

    Carey, Graham H.

    2013-05-13

    Colloidal quantum dot photovoltaic devices have improved from initial, sub-1% solar power conversion efficiency to current record performance of over 7%. Rapid advances in materials processing and device physics have driven this impressive performance progress. The highest-efficiency approaches rely on a fabrication process that starts with nanocrystals in solution, initially capped with long organic molecules. This solution is deposited and the resultant film is treated using a solution containing a second, shorter capping ligand, leading to a cross-linked, non-redispersible, and dense layer. This procedure is repeated, leading to the widely employed layer-by-layer solid-state ligand exchange. We will review the properties and features of this process, and will also discuss innovative pathways to creating even higher-performing films and photovoltaic devices.

  19. A free radical-generating system regulates AβPP metabolism/processing: involvement of the ubiquitin/proteasome and autophagy/lysosome pathways.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Recuero, María; Munive, Victor A; Sastre, Isabel; Aldudo, Jesús; Valdivieso, Fernando; Bullido, María J

    2013-01-01

    Oxidative stress is an early event in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease (AD). We previously reported that, in SK-N-MC cells, the xanthine/xanthine oxidase (X-XOD) free radical generating system regulates the metabolism/processing of the amyloid-β protein precursor (AβPP). Oxidative stress alters the two main cellular proteolytic machineries, the ubiquitin/proteasome (UPS) and the autophagy/lysosome systems, and recent studies have established connections between the malfunctioning of these and the pathogenesis of AD. The aim of the present work was to examine the involvement of these proteolytic systems in the regulation of AβPP metabolism by X-XOD. The proteasome inhibitor MG132 was found to accelerate the metabolism/processing of AβPP promoted by X-XOD because it significantly enhances the secretion of α-secretase-cleaved soluble AβPP and also the levels of both carboxy-terminal fragments (CTFs) produced by α- and β-secretase. Further, MG132 modulated the intracellular accumulation of holo-AβPP and/or AβPP CTFs. This indicates that the X-XOD modulation of AβPP metabolism/processing involves the UPS pathway. With respect to the autophagy/lysosome pathway, the AβPP processing and intracellular location patterns induced by X-XOD treatment closely resembled those produced by the lysosome inhibitor ammonium chloride. The present results suggest that the regulation of AβPP metabolism/processing by mild oxidative stress requires UPS activity with a simultaneous reduction in that of the autophagy/lysosome system.

  20. Variations on standard broiler processing in an effort to lessen Campylobacter numbers on post-pick carcasses

    Science.gov (United States)

    Campylobacter numbers increase on broiler carcasses during defeathering due to leakage of gut contents through the vent. We tested several processing modifications designed to interfere with the transfer of Campylobacter from gut contents to carcass surface. Numbers of Campylobacter detected on brea...

  1. Design of distributed systems of hydrolithospere processes management. Selection of optimal number of extracting wells

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pershin, I. M.; Pervukhin, D. A.; Ilyushin, Y. V.; Afanaseva, O. V.

    2017-10-01

    The article considers the important issue of designing the distributed systems of hydrolithospere processes management. Control effects on the hydrolithospere processes are implemented by a set of extractive wells. The article shows how to determine the optimal number of extractive wells that provide a distributed control impact on the management object.

  2. p-Nitrophenol degradation by electro-Fenton process: Pathway, kinetic model and optimization using central composite design.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Meijide, J; Rosales, E; Pazos, M; Sanromán, M A

    2017-10-01

    The chemical process scale-up, from lab studies to industrial production, is challenging and requires deep knowledge of the kinetic model and the reactions that take place in the system. This knowledge is also useful in order to be employed for the reactor design and the determination of the optimal operational conditions. In this study, a model substituted phenol such as p-nitrophenol was degraded by electro-Fenton process and the reaction products yielded along the treatment were recorded. The kinetic model was developed using Matlab software and was based on main reactions that occurred until total mineralization which allowed predicting the degradation pathway under this advanced oxidation process. The predicted concentration profiles of p-nitrophenol, their intermediates and by-products in electro-Fenton process were validated with experimental assays and the results were consistent. Finally, based on the developed kinetic model the degradation process was optimized using central composite design taking as key parameters the ferrous ion concentration and current density. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  3. Pseudo-random number generators for Monte Carlo simulations on ATI Graphics Processing Units

    Science.gov (United States)

    Demchik, Vadim

    2011-03-01

    Basic uniform pseudo-random number generators are implemented on ATI Graphics Processing Units (GPU). The performance results of the realized generators (multiplicative linear congruential (GGL), XOR-shift (XOR128), RANECU, RANMAR, RANLUX and Mersenne Twister (MT19937)) on CPU and GPU are discussed. The obtained speed up factor is hundreds of times in comparison with CPU. RANLUX generator is found to be the most appropriate for using on GPU in Monte Carlo simulations. The brief review of the pseudo-random number generators used in modern software packages for Monte Carlo simulations in high-energy physics is presented.

  4. Counting on the mental number line to make a move: Sensorimotor ('pen') control and numerical processing

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Sheridan, R.; Rooijen, M. van; Giles, O.; Mushtaq, F.; Steenbergen, B.; Mon-Williams, M.; Waterman, A.H.

    2017-01-01

    Mathematics is often conducted with a writing implement. But is there a relationship between numerical processing and sensorimotor 'pen' control? We asked participants to move a stylus so it crossed an unmarked line at a location specified by a symbolic number (1-9), where number colour indicated

  5. Adverse Outcome Pathway Network Analyses: Techniques and benchmarking the AOPwiki

    Science.gov (United States)

    Abstract: As the community of toxicological researchers, risk assessors, and risk managers adopt the adverse outcome pathway (AOP) paradigm for organizing toxicological knowledge, the number and diversity of adverse outcome pathways and AOP networks are continuing to grow. This ...

  6. Alternative end-joining pathway(s): bricolage at DNA breaks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Frit, Philippe; Barboule, Nadia; Yuan, Ying; Gomez, Dennis; Calsou, Patrick

    2014-05-01

    To cope with DNA double strand break (DSB) genotoxicity, cells have evolved two main repair pathways: homologous recombination which uses homologous DNA sequences as repair templates, and non-homologous Ku-dependent end-joining involving direct sealing of DSB ends by DNA ligase IV (Lig4). During the last two decades a third player most commonly named alternative end-joining (A-EJ) has emerged, which is defined as any Ku- or Lig4-independent end-joining process. A-EJ increasingly appears as a highly error-prone bricolage on DSBs and despite expanding exploration, it still escapes full characterization. In the present review, we discuss the mechanism and regulation of A-EJ as well as its biological relevance under physiological and pathological situations, with a particular emphasis on chromosomal instability and cancer. Whether or not it is a genuine DSB repair pathway, A-EJ is emerging as an important cellular process and understanding A-EJ will certainly be a major challenge for the coming years. Copyright © 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  7. A Traveller Information System: Minimisation of the Number of Graphs’ Nodes Involved When Processing Route Requests

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Bendaoud Zakaria

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available The number of people using public transport is continuously increasing. Transport companies want to fulfil travellers’ expectations wherever possible. However, the great number of public transport companies operating in the same area can sometimes confuse travellers as to which route they should take and how to obtain the information relative to their journey. In this paper we suggest integrating several traveller information systems from different companies into the same multimodal information system, offering companies the choice not to share their data. This encourages them to join the system. Additionally, we have minimised the number of nodes involved when processing travellers’ requests in order to simplify the calculation process. To put our plan into action, we have opted for a multi-agent system coupled with the Voronoi decomposition for managing the network.

  8. The ventral visual pathway: an expanded neural framework for the processing of object quality.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kravitz, Dwight J; Saleem, Kadharbatcha S; Baker, Chris I; Ungerleider, Leslie G; Mishkin, Mortimer

    2013-01-01

    Since the original characterization of the ventral visual pathway, our knowledge of its neuroanatomy, functional properties, and extrinsic targets has grown considerably. Here we synthesize this recent evidence and propose that the ventral pathway is best understood as a recurrent occipitotemporal network containing neural representations of object quality both utilized and constrained by at least six distinct cortical and subcortical systems. Each system serves its own specialized behavioral, cognitive, or affective function, collectively providing the raison d'être for the ventral visual pathway. This expanded framework contrasts with the depiction of the ventral visual pathway as a largely serial staged hierarchy culminating in singular object representations and more parsimoniously incorporates attentional, contextual, and feedback effects. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

  9. Modularized TGFbeta-Smad Signaling Pathway

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Yongfeng; Wang, M.; Carra, C.; Cucinotta, F. A.

    2011-01-01

    The Transforming Growth Factor beta (TGFbeta) signaling pathway is a prominent regulatory signaling pathway controlling various important cellular processes. It can be induced by several factors, including ionizing radiation. It is regulated by Smads in a negative feedback loop through promoting increases in the regulatory Smads in the cell nucleus, and subsequent expression of inhibitory Smad, Smad7 to form a ubiquitin ligase with Smurf targeting active TGF receptors for degradation. In this work, we proposed a mathematical model to study the radiation-induced Smad-regulated TGF signaling pathway. By modularization, we are able to analyze each module (subsystem) and recover the nonlinear dynamics of the entire network system. Meanwhile the excitability, a common feature observed in the biological systems, along the TGF signaling pathway is discussed by mathematical analysis and numerical simulation.

  10. Pathway analysis for alternate low-level waste disposal methods

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Rao, R.R.; Kozak, M.W.; McCord, J.T.; Olague, N.E.

    1992-01-01

    The purpose of this paper is to evaluate a complete set of environmental pathways for disposal options and conditions that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) may analyze for a low-level radioactive waste (LLW) license application. The regulations pertaining In the past, shallow-land burial has been used for the disposal of low-level radioactive waste. However, with the advent of the State Compact system of LLW disposal, many alternative technologies may be used. The alternative LLW disposal facilities include below- ground vault, tumulus, above-ground vault, shaft, and mine disposal This paper will form the foundation of an update of the previously developed Sandia National Laboratories (SNL)/NRC LLW performance assessment methodology. Based on the pathway assessment for alternative disposal methods, a determination will be made about whether the current methodology can satisfactorily analyze the pathways and phenomena likely to be important for the full range of potential disposal options. We have attempted to be conservative in keeping pathways in the lists that may usually be of marginal importance. In this way we can build confidence that we have spanned the range of cases likely to be encountered at a real site. Results of the pathway assessment indicate that disposal methods can be categorized in groupings based on their depth of disposal. For the deep disposal options of shaft and mine disposal, the key pathways are identical. The shallow disposal options, such as tumulus, shallow-land, and below-ground vault disposal also may be grouped together from a pathway analysis perspective. Above-ground vault disposal cannot be grouped with any of the other disposal options. The pathway analysis shows a definite trend concerning depth of disposal. The above-ground option has the largest number of significant pathways. As the waste becomes more isolated, the number of significant pathways is reduced. Similar to shallow-land burial, it was found that for all

  11. Penalized differential pathway analysis of integrative oncogenomics studies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    van Wieringen, Wessel N; van de Wiel, Mark A

    2014-04-01

    Through integration of genomic data from multiple sources, we may obtain a more accurate and complete picture of the molecular mechanisms underlying tumorigenesis. We discuss the integration of DNA copy number and mRNA gene expression data from an observational integrative genomics study involving cancer patients. The two molecular levels involved are linked through the central dogma of molecular biology. DNA copy number aberrations abound in the cancer cell. Here we investigate how these aberrations affect gene expression levels within a pathway using observational integrative genomics data of cancer patients. In particular, we aim to identify differential edges between regulatory networks of two groups involving these molecular levels. Motivated by the rate equations, the regulatory mechanism between DNA copy number aberrations and gene expression levels within a pathway is modeled by a simultaneous-equations model, for the one- and two-group case. The latter facilitates the identification of differential interactions between the two groups. Model parameters are estimated by penalized least squares using the lasso (L1) penalty to obtain a sparse pathway topology. Simulations show that the inclusion of DNA copy number data benefits the discovery of gene-gene interactions. In addition, the simulations reveal that cis-effects tend to be over-estimated in a univariate (single gene) analysis. In the application to real data from integrative oncogenomic studies we show that inclusion of prior information on the regulatory network architecture benefits the reproducibility of all edges. Furthermore, analyses of the TP53 and TGFb signaling pathways between ER+ and ER- samples from an integrative genomics breast cancer study identify reproducible differential regulatory patterns that corroborate with existing literature.

  12. Minimally Processed Functional Foods: Technological and Operational Pathways.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rodgers, Svetlana

    2016-10-01

    This paper offers a concise review of technical and operational concepts underpinning commercialization of minimally processed functional foods (FFs), foods with fresh-like qualities commanding premium prices. The growing number of permitted nutritional content/health claims, many of which relate to well-being, coupled with emerging extraction and food processing technologies offers new exciting opportunities for small and medium size enterprises (SMEs) specializing in fresh produce to play an active role in the health market. Supporting SMEs, governments could benefit from savings in healthcare costs and value creation in the economy. Consumers could benefit from novel FF formats such as refrigerated RTE (ready-to-eat) meals, a variety of fresh-like meat-, fish-, and egg-based products, fresh-cut fruits and vegetables, cereal-based fermented foods and beverages. To preserve these valuable commodities, mild biological (enzymatic treatment, fermentation and, bio-preservation) and engineering solutions are needed. The latter include nonthermal techniques such as high-pressure treatment, cook-chill, sous-vide, mirco-encapsulation, vacuum impregnation and others. "De-constructive" culinary techniques such as 3D food printing and molecular gastronomy as well as developments in nutrigenomics and digital technologies facilitate novel product formats, personalization and access to niche markets. In the operational sense, moving from nourishment to health improvement demands a shift from defensive market-oriented to offensive market-developing strategies including collaborative networks with research organizations. © 2016 Institute of Food Technologists®.

  13. Pathways-driven sparse regression identifies pathways and genes associated with high-density lipoprotein cholesterol in two Asian cohorts.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Matt Silver

    2013-11-01

    Full Text Available Standard approaches to data analysis in genome-wide association studies (GWAS ignore any potential functional relationships between gene variants. In contrast gene pathways analysis uses prior information on functional structure within the genome to identify pathways associated with a trait of interest. In a second step, important single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs or genes may be identified within associated pathways. The pathways approach is motivated by the fact that genes do not act alone, but instead have effects that are likely to be mediated through their interaction in gene pathways. Where this is the case, pathways approaches may reveal aspects of a trait's genetic architecture that would otherwise be missed when considering SNPs in isolation. Most pathways methods begin by testing SNPs one at a time, and so fail to capitalise on the potential advantages inherent in a multi-SNP, joint modelling approach. Here, we describe a dual-level, sparse regression model for the simultaneous identification of pathways and genes associated with a quantitative trait. Our method takes account of various factors specific to the joint modelling of pathways with genome-wide data, including widespread correlation between genetic predictors, and the fact that variants may overlap multiple pathways. We use a resampling strategy that exploits finite sample variability to provide robust rankings for pathways and genes. We test our method through simulation, and use it to perform pathways-driven gene selection in a search for pathways and genes associated with variation in serum high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels in two separate GWAS cohorts of Asian adults. By comparing results from both cohorts we identify a number of candidate pathways including those associated with cardiomyopathy, and T cell receptor and PPAR signalling. Highlighted genes include those associated with the L-type calcium channel, adenylate cyclase, integrin, laminin, MAPK

  14. Pathways-Driven Sparse Regression Identifies Pathways and Genes Associated with High-Density Lipoprotein Cholesterol in Two Asian Cohorts

    Science.gov (United States)

    Silver, Matt; Chen, Peng; Li, Ruoying; Cheng, Ching-Yu; Wong, Tien-Yin; Tai, E-Shyong; Teo, Yik-Ying; Montana, Giovanni

    2013-01-01

    Standard approaches to data analysis in genome-wide association studies (GWAS) ignore any potential functional relationships between gene variants. In contrast gene pathways analysis uses prior information on functional structure within the genome to identify pathways associated with a trait of interest. In a second step, important single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) or genes may be identified within associated pathways. The pathways approach is motivated by the fact that genes do not act alone, but instead have effects that are likely to be mediated through their interaction in gene pathways. Where this is the case, pathways approaches may reveal aspects of a trait's genetic architecture that would otherwise be missed when considering SNPs in isolation. Most pathways methods begin by testing SNPs one at a time, and so fail to capitalise on the potential advantages inherent in a multi-SNP, joint modelling approach. Here, we describe a dual-level, sparse regression model for the simultaneous identification of pathways and genes associated with a quantitative trait. Our method takes account of various factors specific to the joint modelling of pathways with genome-wide data, including widespread correlation between genetic predictors, and the fact that variants may overlap multiple pathways. We use a resampling strategy that exploits finite sample variability to provide robust rankings for pathways and genes. We test our method through simulation, and use it to perform pathways-driven gene selection in a search for pathways and genes associated with variation in serum high-density lipoprotein cholesterol levels in two separate GWAS cohorts of Asian adults. By comparing results from both cohorts we identify a number of candidate pathways including those associated with cardiomyopathy, and T cell receptor and PPAR signalling. Highlighted genes include those associated with the L-type calcium channel, adenylate cyclase, integrin, laminin, MAPK signalling and immune

  15. Importance of Mediator complex in the regulation and integration of diverse signaling pathways in plants

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Subhasis eSamanta

    2015-09-01

    Full Text Available Basic transcriptional machinery in eukaryotes is assisted by a number of cofactors, which either increase or decrease the rate of transcription. Mediator complex is one such cofactor, and recently has drawn a lot of interest because of its integrative power to converge different signaling pathways before channelling the transcription instructions to the RNA polymerase II machinery. Like yeast and metazoans, plants do possess the Mediator complex across the kingdom, and its isolation and subunit analyses have been reported from the model plant, Arabidopsis. Genetic and molecular analyses have unravelled important regulatory roles of Mediator subunits at every stage of plant life cycle starting from flowering to embryo and organ development, to even size determination. It also contributes immensely to the survival of plants against different environmental vagaries by the timely activation of its resistance mechanisms. Here, we have provided an overview of plant Mediator complex starting from its discovery to regulation of stoichiometry of its subunits. We have also reviewed involvement of different Mediator subunits in different processes and pathways including defense response pathways evoked by diverse biotic cues. Wherever possible, attempts have been made to provide mechanistic insight of Mediator’s involvement in these processes.

  16. Importance of Mediator complex in the regulation and integration of diverse signaling pathways in plants.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Samanta, Subhasis; Thakur, Jitendra K

    2015-01-01

    Basic transcriptional machinery in eukaryotes is assisted by a number of cofactors, which either increase or decrease the rate of transcription. Mediator complex is one such cofactor, and recently has drawn a lot of interest because of its integrative power to converge different signaling pathways before channeling the transcription instructions to the RNA polymerase II machinery. Like yeast and metazoans, plants do possess the Mediator complex across the kingdom, and its isolation and subunit analyses have been reported from the model plant, Arabidopsis. Genetic, and molecular analyses have unraveled important regulatory roles of Mediator subunits at every stage of plant life cycle starting from flowering to embryo and organ development, to even size determination. It also contributes immensely to the survival of plants against different environmental vagaries by the timely activation of its resistance mechanisms. Here, we have provided an overview of plant Mediator complex starting from its discovery to regulation of stoichiometry of its subunits. We have also reviewed involvement of different Mediator subunits in different processes and pathways including defense response pathways evoked by diverse biotic cues. Wherever possible, attempts have been made to provide mechanistic insight of Mediator's involvement in these processes.

  17. H2S and polysulfide metabolism: Conventional and unconventional pathways.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Olson, Kenneth R

    2018-03-01

    It is now well established that hydrogen sulfide (H 2 S) is an effector of a wide variety of physiological processes. It is also clear that many of the effects of H 2 S are mediated through reactions with cysteine sulfur on regulatory proteins and most of these are not mediated directly by H 2 S but require prior oxidation of H 2 S and the formation of per- and polysulfides (H 2 S n , n = 2-8). Attendant with understanding the regulatory functions of H 2 S and H 2 S n is an appreciation of the mechanisms that control, i.e., both increase and decrease, their production and catabolism. Although a number of standard "conventional" pathways have been described and well characterized, novel "unconventional" pathways are continuously being identified. This review summarizes our current knowledge of both the conventional and unconventional. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  18. Wall Turbulence with Designer Properties: Identification, Characterization and Manipulation of Energy Pathways

    Science.gov (United States)

    2016-02-26

    AFRL-AFOSR-VA-TR-2016-0108 Wall turbulence with designer properties Beverley Mckeon CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY Final Report 02/26/2016... Wall turbulence with designer properties: Identification, characterization & manipulation of energy pathways 5a. CONTRACT NUMBER 5b. GRANT NUMBER...identification, characterization and manipulation of energy pathways in wall turbulence . The objectives were pursued separately and collaboratively by the

  19. Number processing and arithmetic skills in children with cochlear implants

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Silvia ePixner

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available Though previous findings report that hearing impaired children exhibit impaired language and arithmetic skills, our current understanding of how hearing and the associated language impairments may influence the development of arithmetic skills is still limited. In the current study numerical/arithmetic performance of 45 children with a cochlea implant were compared to that of controls matched for hearing age, intelligence and sex. Our main results were twofold disclosing that children with CI show general as well as specific numerical/arithmetic impairments. On the one hand, we found an increased percentage of children with CI with an indication of dyscalculia symptoms, a general slowing in multiplication and subtraction as well as less accurate number line estimations. On the other hand, however, children with CI exhibited very circumscribed difficulties associated with place-value processing. Performance declined specifically when subtraction required a borrow procedure and number line estimation required the integration of units, tens, and hundreds instead of only units and tens. Thus, it seems that despite initially atypical language development, children with CI are able to acquire arithmetic skills in a qualitatively similar fashion as their normal hearing peers. Nonetheless, when demands on place-value understanding, which has only recently been proposed to be language mediated, hearing impaired children experience specific difficulties.

  20. Individual differences influence two-digit number processing, but not their analog magnitude processing: a large-scale online study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huber, Stefan; Nuerk, Hans-Christoph; Reips, Ulf-Dietrich; Soltanlou, Mojtaba

    2017-12-23

    Symbolic magnitude comparison is one of the most well-studied cognitive processes in research on numerical cognition. However, while the cognitive mechanisms of symbolic magnitude processing have been intensively studied, previous studies have paid less attention to individual differences influencing symbolic magnitude comparison. Employing a two-digit number comparison task in an online setting, we replicated previous effects, including the distance effect, the unit-decade compatibility effect, and the effect of cognitive control on the adaptation to filler items, in a large-scale study in 452 adults. Additionally, we observed that the most influential individual differences were participants' first language, time spent playing computer games and gender, followed by reported alcohol consumption, age and mathematical ability. Participants who used a first language with a left-to-right reading/writing direction were faster than those who read and wrote in the right-to-left direction. Reported playing time for computer games was correlated with faster reaction times. Female participants showed slower reaction times and a larger unit-decade compatibility effect than male participants. Participants who reported never consuming alcohol showed overall slower response times than others. Older participants were slower, but more accurate. Finally, higher grades in mathematics were associated with faster reaction times. We conclude that typical experiments on numerical cognition that employ a keyboard as an input device can also be run in an online setting. Moreover, while individual differences have no influence on domain-specific magnitude processing-apart from age, which increases the decade distance effect-they generally influence performance on a two-digit number comparison task.

  1. Pathways to Healing: Person-centered Responses to Complementary Services

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bertrand, Sharon W.; Fermon, Barbara; Coleman, Julie Foley

    2014-01-01

    Objectives: This research study assessed perceived changes in quality-of-life measures related to participation in complementary services consisting of a variety of nontraditional therapies and/or programs at Pathways: A Health Crisis Resource Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Design: Survey data were used to assess perceived changes participants ascribed to their experience with complementary services at Pathways. Quantitative data analysis was conducted using participant demographics together with participant ratings of items from the “Self-Assessment of Change” (SAC) measure developed at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Qualitative data analysis was conducted on written responses to an additional survey question: “To what extent has your participation at Pathways influenced your healing process?” Setting/Location: Pathways offers a variety of services, including one-to-one sessions using nontraditional healing therapies, support groups, educational classes, and practice groups such as yoga and meditation for those facing serious health challenges. These services are offered free of charge through community financial support using volunteer practitioners. Participants: People (126) diagnosed with serious health challenges who used Pathways services from 2007 through 2009. Interventions: Participation in self-selected Pathways services. Measures: Responses to items on the SAC measure plus written responses to the question, “To what extent has your participation at Pathways influenced your healing process?” Results: Quantitative findings: Participants reported experiencing significant changes across all components of the SAC measure. Qualitative findings: Responses to the open-ended survey question identified perspectives on the culture of Pathways and a shift in participants' perceptions of well-being based on their experience of Pathways services. Conclusions: Participation in services provided by the Pathways organization improved perceptions of

  2. Correlation of Metabolic Variables with the Number of ORFs in Human Pathogenic and Phylogenetically Related Non- or Less-Pathogenic Bacteria.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brambila-Tapia, Aniel Jessica Leticia; Poot-Hernández, Augusto Cesar; Garcia-Guevara, Jose Fernando; Rodríguez-Vázquez, Katya

    2016-06-01

    To date, a few works have performed a correlation of metabolic variables in bacteria; however specific correlations with these variables have not been reported. In this work, we included 36 human pathogenic bacteria and 18 non- or less-pathogenic-related bacteria and obtained all metabolic variables, including enzymes, metabolic pathways, enzymatic steps and specific metabolic pathways, and enzymatic steps of particular metabolic processes, from a reliable metabolic database (KEGG). Then, we correlated the number of the open reading frames (ORF) with these variables and with the proportions of these variables, and we observed a negative correlation with the proportion of enzymes (r = -0.506, p < 0.0001), metabolic pathways (r = -0.871, p < 00.0001), enzymatic reactions (r = -0.749, p < 00.0001), and with the proportions of central metabolism variables as well as a positive correlation with the proportions of multistep reactions (r = 0.650, p < 00.0001) and secondary metabolism variables. The proportion of multifunctional reactions (r: -0.114, p = 0.41) and the proportion of enzymatic steps (r: -0.205, p = 0.14) did not present a significant correlation. These correlations indicate that as the size of a genome (measured in the number of ORFs) increases, the proportion of genes that encode enzymes significantly diminishes (especially those related to central metabolism), suggesting that when essential metabolic pathways are complete, an increase in the number of ORFs does not require a similar increase in the metabolic pathways and enzymes, but only a slight increase is sufficient to cope with a large genome.

  3. Modularized Smad-regulated TGFβ signaling pathway.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Yongfeng; Wang, Minli; Carra, Claudio; Cucinotta, Francis A

    2012-12-01

    The transforming Growth Factor β (TGFβ) signaling pathway is a prominent regulatory signaling pathway controlling various important cellular processes. TGFβ signaling can be induced by several factors including ionizing radiation. The pathway is regulated in a negative feedback loop through promoting the nuclear import of the regulatory Smads and a subsequent expression of inhibitory Smad7, that forms ubiquitin ligase with Smurf2, targeting active TGFβ receptors for degradation. In this work, we proposed a mathematical model to study the Smad-regulated TGFβ signaling pathway. By modularization, we are able to analyze mathematically each component subsystem and recover the nonlinear dynamics of the entire network system. Meanwhile the excitability, a common feature observed in the biological systems, in the TGFβ signaling pathway is discussed and supported as well by numerical simulation, indicating the robustness of the model. Published by Elsevier Inc.

  4. Modelling and Decision Support of Clinical Pathways

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gabriel, Roland; Lux, Thomas

    The German health care market is under a rapid rate of change, forcing especially hospitals to provide high-quality services at low costs. Appropriate measures for more effective and efficient service provision are process orientation and decision support by information technology of clinical pathway of a patient. The essential requirements are adequate modelling of clinical pathways as well as usage of adequate systems, which are capable of assisting the complete path of a patient within a hospital, and preferably also outside of it, in a digital way. To fulfil these specifications the authors present a suitable concept, which meets the challenges of well-structured clinical pathways as well as rather poorly structured diagnostic and therapeutic decisions, by interplay of process-oriented and knowledge-based hospital information systems.

  5. Computational study on a puzzle in the biosynthetic pathway of anthocyanin: Why is an enzymatic oxidation/ reduction process required for a simple tautomerization?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sato, Hajime; Wang, Chao; Yamazaki, Mami; Saito, Kazuki; Uchiyama, Masanobu

    2018-01-01

    In the late stage of anthocyanin biosynthesis, dihydroflavonol reductase (DFR) and anthocyanidin synthase (ANS) mediate a formal tautomerization. However, such oxidation/reduction process requires high energy and appears to be unnecessary, as the oxidation state does not change during the transformation. Thus, a non-enzymatic pathway of tautomerization has also been proposed. To resolve the long-standing issue of whether this non-enzymatic pathway is the main contributor for the biosynthesis, we carried out density functional theory (DFT) calculations to examine this non-enzymatic pathway from dihydroflavonol to anthocyanidin. We show here that the activation barriers for the proposed non-enzymatic tautomerization are too high to enable the reaction to proceed under normal aqueous conditions in plants. The calculations also explain the experimentally observed requirement for acidic conditions during the final step of conversion of 2-flaven-3,4-diol to anthocyanidin; a thermodynamically and kinetically favorable concerted pathway can operate under these conditions.

  6. Frequency of Home Numeracy Activities Is Differentially Related to Basic Number Processing and Calculation Skills in Kindergartners

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mutaf Yıldız, Belde; Sasanguie, Delphine; De Smedt, Bert; Reynvoet, Bert

    2018-01-01

    Home numeracy has been shown to play an important role in children’s mathematical performance. However, findings are inconsistent as to which home numeracy activities are related to which mathematical skills. The present study disentangled between various mathematical abilities that were previously masked by the use of composite scores of mathematical achievement. Our aim was to shed light on the specific associations between home numeracy and various mathematical abilities. The relationships between kindergartners’ home numeracy activities, their basic number processing and calculation skills were investigated. Participants were 128 kindergartners (Mage = 5.43 years, SD = 0.29, range: 4.88–6.02 years) and their parents. The children completed non-symbolic and symbolic comparison tasks, non-symbolic and symbolic number line estimation tasks, mapping tasks (enumeration and connecting), and two calculation tasks. Their parents completed a home numeracy questionnaire. Results indicated small but significant associations between formal home numeracy activities that involved more explicit teaching efforts (i.e., identifying numerals, counting) and children’s enumeration skills. There was no correlation between formal home numeracy activities and non-symbolic number processing. Informal home numeracy activities that involved more implicit teaching attempts, such as “playing games” and “using numbers in daily life,” were (weakly) correlated with calculation and symbolic number line estimation, respectively. The present findings suggest that disentangling between various basic number processing and calculation skills in children might unravel specific relations with both formal and informal home numeracy activities. This might explain earlier reported contradictory findings on the association between home numeracy and mathematical abilities. PMID:29623055

  7. Frequency of Home Numeracy Activities Is Differentially Related to Basic Number Processing and Calculation Skills in Kindergartners.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mutaf Yıldız, Belde; Sasanguie, Delphine; De Smedt, Bert; Reynvoet, Bert

    2018-01-01

    Home numeracy has been shown to play an important role in children's mathematical performance. However, findings are inconsistent as to which home numeracy activities are related to which mathematical skills. The present study disentangled between various mathematical abilities that were previously masked by the use of composite scores of mathematical achievement. Our aim was to shed light on the specific associations between home numeracy and various mathematical abilities. The relationships between kindergartners' home numeracy activities, their basic number processing and calculation skills were investigated. Participants were 128 kindergartners ( M age = 5.43 years, SD = 0.29, range: 4.88-6.02 years) and their parents. The children completed non-symbolic and symbolic comparison tasks, non-symbolic and symbolic number line estimation tasks, mapping tasks (enumeration and connecting), and two calculation tasks. Their parents completed a home numeracy questionnaire. Results indicated small but significant associations between formal home numeracy activities that involved more explicit teaching efforts (i.e., identifying numerals, counting) and children's enumeration skills. There was no correlation between formal home numeracy activities and non-symbolic number processing. Informal home numeracy activities that involved more implicit teaching attempts , such as "playing games" and "using numbers in daily life," were (weakly) correlated with calculation and symbolic number line estimation, respectively. The present findings suggest that disentangling between various basic number processing and calculation skills in children might unravel specific relations with both formal and informal home numeracy activities. This might explain earlier reported contradictory findings on the association between home numeracy and mathematical abilities.

  8. Counting on the mental number line to make a move: sensorimotor ('pen') control and numerical processing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sheridan, Rebecca; van Rooijen, Maaike; Giles, Oscar; Mushtaq, Faisal; Steenbergen, Bert; Mon-Williams, Mark; Waterman, Amanda

    2017-10-01

    Mathematics is often conducted with a writing implement. But is there a relationship between numerical processing and sensorimotor 'pen' control? We asked participants to move a stylus so it crossed an unmarked line at a location specified by a symbolic number (1-9), where number colour indicated whether the line ran left-right ('normal') or vice versa ('reversed'). The task could be simplified through the use of a 'mental number line' (MNL). Many modern societies use number lines in mathematical education and the brain's representation of number appears to follow a culturally determined spatial organisation (so better task performance is associated with this culturally normal orientation-the MNL effect). Participants (counter-balanced) completed two consistent blocks of trials, 'normal' and 'reversed', followed by a mixed block where line direction varied randomly. Experiment 1 established that the MNL effect was robust, and showed that the cognitive load associated with reversing the MNL not only affected response selection but also the actual movement execution (indexed by duration) within the mixed trials. Experiment 2 showed that an individual's motor abilities predicted performance in the difficult (mixed) condition but not the easier blocks. These results suggest that numerical processing is not isolated from motor capabilities-a finding with applied consequences.

  9. Using a multi-method, user centred, prospective hazard analysis to assess care quality and patient safety in a care pathway

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Escoto Kamisha

    2007-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Care pathways can be complex, often involving multiple care providers and as such are recognised as containing multiple opportunities for error. Prospective hazard analysis methods may be useful for evaluating care provided across primary and secondary care pathway boundaries. These methods take into account the views of users (staff and patients when determining where potential hazards may lie. The aim of this study is to evaluate the feasibility of prospective hazard analysis methods when assessing quality and safety in care pathways that lie across primary and secondary care boundaries. Methods Development of a process map of the care pathway for patients entering into a Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD supported discharge programme. Triangulation of information from: care process mapping, semi-structured interviews with COPD patients, semi-structured interviews with COPD staff, two round modified Delphi study and review of prioritised quality and safety challenges by health care staff. Results Interview themes emerged under the headings of quality of care and patient safety. Quality and safety concerns were mostly raised in relation to communication, for example, communication with other hospital teams. The three highest ranked safety concerns from the modified Delphi review were: difficulties in accessing hospital records, information transfer to primary care and failure to communicate medication changes to primary care. Conclusion This study has demonstrated the feasibility of using mixed methods to review the quality and safety of care in a care pathway. By using multiple research methods it was possible to get a clear picture of service quality variations and also to demonstrate which points in the care pathway had real potential for patient safety incidents or system failures to occur. By using these methods to analyse one condition specific care pathway it was possible to uncover a number of hospital

  10. Oxygen entry through multiple pathways in T-state human hemoglobin.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Takayanagi, Masayoshi; Kurisaki, Ikuo; Nagaoka, Masataka

    2013-05-23

    The heme oxygen (O2) binding site of human hemoglobin (HbA) is buried in the interior of the protein, and there is a debate over the O2 entry pathways from solvent to the binding site. As a first step to understand HbA O2 binding process at the atomic level, we detected all significant multiple O2 entry pathways from solvent to the binding site in the α and β subunits of the T-state tetramer HbA by utilizing ensemble molecular dynamics (MD) simulation. By executing 128 independent 8 ns MD trajectories in O2-rich aqueous solvent, we simulated the O2 entry processes and obtained 141 and 425 O2 entry events in the α and β subunits of HbA, respectively. We developed the intrinsic pathway identification by clustering method to achieve a persuasive visualization of the multiple entry pathways including both the shapes and relative importance of each pathway. The rate constants of O2 entry estimated from the MD simulations correspond to the experimentally observed values, suggesting that O2 ligands enter the binding site through multiple pathways. The obtained multiple pathway map can be utilized for future detailed analysis of HbA O2 binding process.

  11. IntPath--an integrated pathway gene relationship database for model organisms and important pathogens.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhou, Hufeng; Jin, Jingjing; Zhang, Haojun; Yi, Bo; Wozniak, Michal; Wong, Limsoon

    2012-01-01

    Pathway data are important for understanding the relationship between genes, proteins and many other molecules in living organisms. Pathway gene relationships are crucial information for guidance, prediction, reference and assessment in biochemistry, computational biology, and medicine. Many well-established databases--e.g., KEGG, WikiPathways, and BioCyc--are dedicated to collecting pathway data for public access. However, the effectiveness of these databases is hindered by issues such as incompatible data formats, inconsistent molecular representations, inconsistent molecular relationship representations, inconsistent referrals to pathway names, and incomprehensive data from different databases. In this paper, we overcome these issues through extraction, normalization and integration of pathway data from several major public databases (KEGG, WikiPathways, BioCyc, etc). We build a database that not only hosts our integrated pathway gene relationship data for public access but also maintains the necessary updates in the long run. This public repository is named IntPath (Integrated Pathway gene relationship database for model organisms and important pathogens). Four organisms--S. cerevisiae, M. tuberculosis H37Rv, H. Sapiens and M. musculus--are included in this version (V2.0) of IntPath. IntPath uses the "full unification" approach to ensure no deletion and no introduced noise in this process. Therefore, IntPath contains much richer pathway-gene and pathway-gene pair relationships and much larger number of non-redundant genes and gene pairs than any of the single-source databases. The gene relationships of each gene (measured by average node degree) per pathway are significantly richer. The gene relationships in each pathway (measured by average number of gene pairs per pathway) are also considerably richer in the integrated pathways. Moderate manual curation are involved to get rid of errors and noises from source data (e.g., the gene ID errors in WikiPathways and

  12. Wnt and the Wnt signaling pathway in bone development and disease

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Yiping; Li, Yi-Ping; Paulson, Christie; Shao, Jian-Zhong; Zhang, Xiaoling; Wu, Mengrui; Chen, Wei

    2014-01-01

    Wnt signaling affects both bone modeling, which occurs during development, and bone remodeling, which is a lifelong process involving tissue renewal. Wnt signals are especially known to affect the differentiation of osteoblasts. In this review, we summarize recent advances in understanding the mechanisms of Wnt signaling, which is divided into two major branches: the canonical pathway and the noncanonical pathway. The canonical pathway is also called the Wnt/β-catenin pathway. There are two major noncanonical pathways: the Wnt-planar cell polarity pathway (Wnt-PCP pathway) and the Wnt-calcium pathway (Wnt-Ca2+ pathway). This review also discusses how Wnt ligands, receptors, intracellular effectors, transcription factors, and antagonists affect both the bone modeling and bone remodeling processes. We also review the role of Wnt ligands, receptors, intracellular effectors, transcription factors, and antagonists in bone as demonstrated in mouse models. Disrupted Wnt signaling is linked to several bone diseases, including osteoporosis, van Buchem disease, and sclerosteosis. Studying the mechanism of Wnt signaling and its interactions with other signaling pathways in bone will provide potential therapeutic targets to treat these bone diseases. PMID:24389191

  13. An application of stereoscopy and image processing in forensics: recovering obliterated firearms serial number

    Science.gov (United States)

    da Silva Nunes, L. C.; dos Santos, Paulo Acioly M.

    2004-10-01

    We present an application of the use of stereoscope to recovering obliterated firearms serial number. We investigate a promising new combined cheap method using both non-destructive and destructive techniques. With the use of a stereomicroscope coupled with a digital camera and a flexible cold light source, we can capture the image of the damaged area, and with continuous polishing and sometimes with the help of image processing techniques we could enhance the observed images and they can also be recorded as evidence. This method has already proven to be useful, in certain cases, in aluminum dotted pistol frames, whose serial number is printed with a laser, when etching techniques are not successful. We can also observe acid treated steel surfaces and enhance the images of recovered serial numbers, which sometimes lack of definition.

  14. Dexter energy transfer pathways.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Skourtis, Spiros S; Liu, Chaoren; Antoniou, Panayiotis; Virshup, Aaron M; Beratan, David N

    2016-07-19

    Energy transfer with an associated spin change of the donor and acceptor, Dexter energy transfer, is critically important in solar energy harvesting assemblies, damage protection schemes of photobiology, and organometallic opto-electronic materials. Dexter transfer between chemically linked donors and acceptors is bridge mediated, presenting an enticing analogy with bridge-mediated electron and hole transfer. However, Dexter coupling pathways must convey both an electron and a hole from donor to acceptor, and this adds considerable richness to the mediation process. We dissect the bridge-mediated Dexter coupling mechanisms and formulate a theory for triplet energy transfer coupling pathways. Virtual donor-acceptor charge-transfer exciton intermediates dominate at shorter distances or higher tunneling energy gaps, whereas virtual intermediates with an electron and a hole both on the bridge (virtual bridge excitons) dominate for longer distances or lower energy gaps. The effects of virtual bridge excitons were neglected in earlier treatments. The two-particle pathway framework developed here shows how Dexter energy-transfer rates depend on donor, bridge, and acceptor energetics, as well as on orbital symmetry and quantum interference among pathways.

  15. Targeting Wnt Pathways in Disease

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zimmerman, Zachary F.; Moon, Randall T.

    2012-01-01

    Wnt-mediated signal transduction pathways have long been recognized for their roles in regulating embryonic development, and have more recently been linked to cancer, neurologic diseases, inflammatory diseases, and disorders of endocrine function and bone metabolism in adults. Although therapies targeting Wnt signaling are attractive in theory, in practice it has been difficult to obtain specific therapeutics because many components of Wnt signaling pathways are also involved in other cellular processes, thereby reducing the specificity of candidate therapeutics. New technologies, and advances in understanding the mechanisms of Wnt signaling, have improved our understanding of the nuances of Wnt signaling and are leading to promising new strategies to target Wnt signaling pathways. PMID:23001988

  16. Care pathways for organ donation after brain death: guidance from available literature?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hoste, Pieter; Vanhaecht, Kris; Ferdinande, Patrick; Rogiers, Xavier; Eeckloo, Kristof; Blot, Stijn; Hoste, Eric; Vogelaers, Dirk; Vandewoude, Koenraad

    2016-10-01

    A discussion of the literature concerning the impact of care pathways in the complex and by definition multidisciplinary process of organ donation following brain death. Enhancing the quality and safety of organs for transplantation has become a central concern for governmental and professional organizations. At the local hospital level, a donor coordinator can use a range of interventions to improve the donation and procurement process. Care pathways have been proven to represent an effective intervention in several settings for optimizing processes and outcomes. A discussion paper. A systematic review of the Medline, CINAHL, EMBASE and The Cochrane Library databases was conducted for articles published until June 2015, using the keywords donation after brain death and care pathways. Each paper was reviewed to investigate the effects of existing care pathways for donation after brain death. An additional search for unpublished information was conducted. Although literature supports care pathways as an effective intervention in several settings, few studies have explored its use and effectiveness for complex care processes such as donation after brain death. Nurses should be aware of their role in the donation process. Care pathways have the potential to support them, but their effectiveness has been insufficiently explored. Further research should focus on the development and standardization of the clinical content of a care pathway for donation after brain death and the identification of quality indicators. These should be used in a prospective effectiveness assessment of the proposed pathway. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  17. p38 MAPK pathway is essential for self-renewal of mouse male germline stem cells (mGSCs).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Niu, Zhiwei; Mu, Hailong; Zhu, Haijing; Wu, Jiang; Hua, Jinlian

    2017-02-01

    Male germline stem cells (mGSCs), also called spermatogonial stem cells (SSCs), constantly generate spermatozoa in male animals. A number of preliminary studies on mechanisms of mGSC self-renewal have previously been conducted, revealing that several factors are involved in this regulated process. The p38 MAPK pathway is widely conserved in multiple cell types in vivo, and plays an important role in cell proliferation, differentiation, inflammation and apoptosis. However, its role in self-renewal of mGSCs has not hitherto been determined. Here, the mouse mGSCs were cultured and their identity was verified by semi-RT-PCR, alkaline phosphatase (AP) staining and immunofluorescence staining. Then, the p38 MAPK pathway was blocked by p38 MAPK-specific inhibitor SB202190. mGSC self-renewal ability was then analysed by observation of morphology, cell number, cell growth analysis, TUNEL incorporation assay and cell cycle analysis. Results showed that mouse mGSC self-renewal ability was significantly inhibited by SB202190. This study showed for the first time that the p38 MAPK pathway plays a key role in maintaining self-renewal capacity of mouse mGSCs, which offers a new self-renewal pathway for these cells and contributes to overall knowledge of the mechanisms of mGSC self-renewal. © 2016 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

  18. Overlapping riboflavin supply pathways in bacteria.

    Science.gov (United States)

    García-Angulo, Víctor Antonio

    2017-03-01

    Riboflavin derivatives are essential cofactors for a myriad of flavoproteins. In bacteria, flavins importance extends beyond their role as intracellular protein cofactors, as secreted flavins are a key metabolite in a variety of physiological processes. Bacteria obtain riboflavin through the endogenous riboflavin biosynthetic pathway (RBP) or by the use of importer proteins. Bacteria frequently encode multiple paralogs of the RBP enzymes and as for other micronutrient supply pathways, biosynthesis and uptake functions largely coexist. It is proposed that bacteria shut down biosynthesis and would rather uptake riboflavin when the vitamin is environmentally available. Recently, the overlap of riboflavin provisioning elements has gained attention and the functions of duplicated paralogs of RBP enzymes started to be addressed. Results point towards the existence of a modular structure in the bacterial riboflavin supply pathways. Such structure uses subsets of RBP genes to supply riboflavin for specific functions. Given the importance of riboflavin in intra and extracellular bacterial physiology, this complex array of riboflavin provision pathways may have developed to contend with the various riboflavin requirements. In riboflavin-prototrophic bacteria, riboflavin transporters could represent a module for riboflavin provision for particular, yet unidentified processes, rather than substituting for the RBP as usually assumed.

  19. Autism-specific copy number variants further implicate the phosphatidylinositol signaling pathway and the glutamatergic synapse in the etiology of the disorder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cuscó, Ivon; Medrano, Andrés; Gener, Blanca; Vilardell, Mireia; Gallastegui, Fátima; Villa, Olaya; González, Eva; Rodríguez-Santiago, Benjamín; Vilella, Elisabet; Del Campo, Miguel; Pérez-Jurado, Luis A

    2009-05-15

    Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) constitute a group of severe neurodevelopmental conditions with complex multifactorial etiology. In order to explore the hypothesis that submicroscopic genomic rearrangements underlie some ASD cases, we have analyzed 96 Spanish patients with idiopathic ASD after extensive clinical and laboratory screening, by array comparative genomic hybridization (aCGH) using a homemade bacterial artificial chromosome (BAC) array. Only 13 of the 238 detected copy number alterations, ranging in size from 89 kb to 2.4 Mb, were present specifically in the autistic population (12 out of 96 individuals, 12.5%). Following validation by additional molecular techniques, we have characterized these novel candidate regions containing 24 different genes including alterations in two previously reported regions of chromosome 7 associated with the ASD phenotype. Some of the genes located in ASD-specific copy number variants act in common pathways, most notably the phosphatidylinositol signaling and the glutamatergic synapse, both known to be affected in several genetic syndromes related with autism and previously associated with ASD. Our work supports the idea that the functional alteration of genes in related neuronal networks is involved in the etiology of the ASD phenotype and confirms a significant diagnostic yield for aCGH, which should probably be included in the diagnostic workup of idiopathic ASD.

  20. From quantity to number : Studies on magnitude processing

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Gebuis, T.|info:eu-repo/dai/nl/304836362

    2009-01-01

    The ability to work with the symbolic number system, the Arabic numbers, enables humans to perform more complex and accurate calculations than the non-symbolic numerosity system (e.g. arrays of dots). The application of this symbolic system has turned out to be so useful that we have a hard time

  1. Working Memory Strategies during Rational Number Magnitude Processing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hurst, Michelle; Cordes, Sara

    2017-01-01

    Rational number understanding is a critical building block for success in more advanced mathematics; however, how rational number magnitudes are conceptualized is not fully understood. In the current study, we used a dual-task working memory (WM) interference paradigm to investigate the dominant type of strategy (i.e., requiring verbal WM…

  2. Pathways to youth homelessness.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Martijn, Claudine; Sharpe, Louise

    2006-01-01

    Research documents high levels of psychopathology among homeless youth. Most research, however, has not distinguished between disorders that are present prior to homelessness and those that develop following homelessness. Hence whether psychological disorders are the cause or consequence of homelessness has not been established. The aim of this study is to investigate causal pathways to homelessness amongst currently homeless youth in Australia. The study uses a quasi-qualitative methodology to generate hypotheses for larger-scale research. High rates of psychological disorders were confirmed in the sample 35 homeless youth aged 14-25. The rates of psychological disorders at the point of homelessness were greater than in normative samples, but the rates of clinical disorder increased further once homeless. Further in-depth analyses were conducted to identify the temporal sequence for each individual with a view to establishing a set of causal pathways to homelessness and trajectories following homelessness that characterised the people in the sample. Five pathways to homelessness and five trajectories following homelessness were identified that accounted for the entire sample. Each pathway constituted a series of interactions between different factors similar to that described by Craig and Hodson (1998. Psychological Medicine, 28, 1379-1388) as "complex subsidiary pathways". The major findings were that (1) trauma is a common experience amongst homeless youth prior to homelessness and figured in the causal pathways to homelessness for over half of the sample; (2) once homeless, for the majority of youth there is an increase in the number of psychological diagnoses including drug and alcohol diagnoses; and (3) crime did not precede homelessness for all but one youth; however, following homelessness, involvement in criminal activity was common and became a distinguishing factor amongst youth. The implications of these findings for future research and service

  3. Cartography of Pathway Signal Perturbations Identifies Distinct Molecular Pathomechanisms in Malignant and Chronic Lung Diseases

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arakelyan, Arsen; Nersisyan, Lilit; Petrek, Martin; Löffler-Wirth, Henry; Binder, Hans

    2016-01-01

    Lung diseases are described by a wide variety of developmental mechanisms and clinical manifestations. Accurate classification and diagnosis of lung diseases are the bases for development of effective treatments. While extensive studies are conducted toward characterization of various lung diseases at molecular level, no systematic approach has been developed so far. Here we have applied a methodology for pathway-centered mining of high throughput gene expression data to describe a wide range of lung diseases in the light of shared and specific pathway activity profiles. We have applied an algorithm combining a Pathway Signal Flow (PSF) algorithm for estimation of pathway activity deregulation states in lung diseases and malignancies, and a Self Organizing Maps algorithm for classification and clustering of the pathway activity profiles. The analysis results allowed clearly distinguish between cancer and non-cancer lung diseases. Lung cancers were characterized by pathways implicated in cell proliferation, metabolism, while non-malignant lung diseases were characterized by deregulations in pathways involved in immune/inflammatory response and fibrotic tissue remodeling. In contrast to lung malignancies, chronic lung diseases had relatively heterogeneous pathway deregulation profiles. We identified three groups of interstitial lung diseases and showed that the development of characteristic pathological processes, such as fibrosis, can be initiated by deregulations in different signaling pathways. In conclusion, this paper describes the pathobiology of lung diseases from systems viewpoint using pathway centered high-dimensional data mining approach. Our results contribute largely to current understanding of pathological events in lung cancers and non-malignant lung diseases. Moreover, this paper provides new insight into molecular mechanisms of a number of interstitial lung diseases that have been studied to a lesser extent. PMID:27200087

  4. SNP-based pathway enrichment analysis for genome-wide association studies

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Potkin Steven G

    2011-04-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Recently we have witnessed a surge of interest in using genome-wide association studies (GWAS to discover the genetic basis of complex diseases. Many genetic variations, mostly in the form of single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs, have been identified in a wide spectrum of diseases, including diabetes, cancer, and psychiatric diseases. A common theme arising from these studies is that the genetic variations discovered by GWAS can only explain a small fraction of the genetic risks associated with the complex diseases. New strategies and statistical approaches are needed to address this lack of explanation. One such approach is the pathway analysis, which considers the genetic variations underlying a biological pathway, rather than separately as in the traditional GWAS studies. A critical challenge in the pathway analysis is how to combine evidences of association over multiple SNPs within a gene and multiple genes within a pathway. Most current methods choose the most significant SNP from each gene as a representative, ignoring the joint action of multiple SNPs within a gene. This approach leads to preferential identification of genes with a greater number of SNPs. Results We describe a SNP-based pathway enrichment method for GWAS studies. The method consists of the following two main steps: 1 for a given pathway, using an adaptive truncated product statistic to identify all representative (potentially more than one SNPs of each gene, calculating the average number of representative SNPs for the genes, then re-selecting the representative SNPs of genes in the pathway based on this number; and 2 ranking all selected SNPs by the significance of their statistical association with a trait of interest, and testing if the set of SNPs from a particular pathway is significantly enriched with high ranks using a weighted Kolmogorov-Smirnov test. We applied our method to two large genetically distinct GWAS data sets of schizophrenia, one

  5. ComPath: comparative enzyme analysis and annotation in pathway/subsystem contexts

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kim Sun

    2008-03-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Once a new genome is sequenced, one of the important questions is to determine the presence and absence of biological pathways. Analysis of biological pathways in a genome is a complicated task since a number of biological entities are involved in pathways and biological pathways in different organisms are not identical. Computational pathway identification and analysis thus involves a number of computational tools and databases and typically done in comparison with pathways in other organisms. This computational requirement is much beyond the capability of biologists, so information systems for reconstructing, annotating, and analyzing biological pathways are much needed. We introduce a new comparative pathway analysis workbench, ComPath, which integrates various resources and computational tools using an interactive spreadsheet-style web interface for reliable pathway analyses. Results ComPath allows users to compare biological pathways in multiple genomes using a spreadsheet style web interface where various sequence-based analysis can be performed either to compare enzymes (e.g. sequence clustering and pathways (e.g. pathway hole identification, to search a genome for de novo prediction of enzymes, or to annotate a genome in comparison with reference genomes of choice. To fill in pathway holes or make de novo enzyme predictions, multiple computational methods such as FASTA, Whole-HMM, CSR-HMM (a method of our own introduced in this paper, and PDB-domain search are integrated in ComPath. Our experiments show that FASTA and CSR-HMM search methods generally outperform Whole-HMM and PDB-domain search methods in terms of sensitivity, but FASTA search performs poorly in terms of specificity, detecting more false positive as E-value cutoff increases. Overall, CSR-HMM search method performs best in terms of both sensitivity and specificity. Gene neighborhood and pathway neighborhood (global network visualization tools can be used

  6. Microphysical Parameterizations for NWP: It's All About the Sizes and Production Pathways of Hydrometeors

    Science.gov (United States)

    Michelson, Sara A.; Bao, Jian-Wen; Grell, Evelyn D.

    2017-04-01

    Bulk microphysical parameterization schemes are popularly used in numerical weather prediction (NWP) models to simulate clouds and precpitation. These schemes are based on assumed number distribution functions for individual hydrometeor species, which are integratable over size distributions of diameters from zero to infinity. Typically, hydrometeor mass and number mixing ratios are predicted in these schemes. Some schemes also predict a third parameter of hydrometeor distribution characteristics. In this study, four commonly-used microphysics schemes of various complexity that are available in the Weather Research and Forecasting Model (WRF) are investigated and compared using numerical model simulations of an idealized 2-D squall line and microphysics budget analysis. Diagnoses of the parameterized pathways for hydrometeor production reveal that the differences related to the assumptions of hydrometeor size distributions between the schemes lead to the differences in the simulations due to the net effect of various microphysical processes on the interaction between latent heating/evaporative cooling and flow dynamics as the squall line develops. Results from this study also highlight the possibility that the advantage of double-moment formulations can be overshadowed by the uncertainties in the spectral definition of individual hydrometeor categories and spectrum-dependent microphysical processes. It is concluded that the major differences between the schemes investigated here are in the assumed hydrometeor size distributions and pathways for their production.

  7. Kynurenine pathway metabolites and enzymes involved in redox reactions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    González Esquivel, D; Ramírez-Ortega, D; Pineda, B; Castro, N; Ríos, C; Pérez de la Cruz, V

    2017-01-01

    Oxido-reduction reactions are a fundamental part of the life due to support many vital biological processes as cellular respiration and glucose oxidation. In the redox reactions, one substance transfers one or more electrons to another substance. An important electron carrier is the coenzyme NAD + , which is involved in many metabolic pathways. De novo biosynthesis of NAD + is through the kynurenine pathway, the major route of tryptophan catabolism, which is sensitive to redox environment and produces metabolites with redox capacity, able to alter biological functions that are controlled by redox-responsive signaling pathways. Kynurenine pathway metabolites have been implicated in the physiology process and in the physiopathology of many diseases; processes that also share others factors as dysregulation of calcium homeostasis, mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress, inflammation and cell death, which impact the redox environment. This review examines in detail the available evidence in which kynurenine pathway metabolites participate in redox reactions and their effect on cellular redox homeostasis, since the knowledge of the main factors and mechanisms that lead to cell death in many neurodegenative disorders and other pathologies, such as mitochondrial dysfunction, oxidative stress and kynurenines imbalance, will allow to develop therapies using them as targets. This article is part of the Special Issue entitled 'The Kynurenine Pathway in Health and Disease'. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  8. Comparative TEA for Indirect Liquefaction Pathways to Distillate-Range Fuels via Oxygenated Intermediates

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Tan, Eric; Snowden-Swan, Lesley J.; Talmadge, Michael; Dutta, Abhijit; Jones, Susanne; Ramasamy, Karthikeyan; Gray, Michael; Dagle, Robert; Padmaperuma, Asanga; Gerber, Mark; Sahir, Asad; Tao, Ling; Zhang, Yanan

    2017-03-03

    This paper presents a comparative techno-economic analysis of five conversion pathways from biomass to gasoline-, jet-, and diesel-range hydrocarbons via indirect liquefaction with specific focus on pathways utilizing oxygenated intermediates (derived either via thermochemical or biochemical conversion steps). The four emerging pathways of interest are compared with one conventional pathway (Fischer-Tropsch) for the production of the hydrocarbon blendstocks. The processing steps of the four emerging pathways include: biomass-to-syngas via indirect gasification, gas cleanup, conversion of syngas to alcohols/oxygenates, followed by conversion of alcohols/oxygenates to hydrocarbon blendstocks via dehydration, oligomerization, and hydrogenation. We show that the emerging pathways via oxygenated intermediates have the potential to be cost competitive with the conventional Fischer-Tropsch process. The evaluated pathways and the benchmark process generally exhibit similar fuel yields and carbon conversion efficiencies. The resulting minimum fuel selling prices are comparable to the benchmark at approximately $3.60 per gallon-gasoline equivalent, with potential for two new pathways to be more economically competitive. Additionally, the coproduct values can play an important role in the economics of the processes with oxygenated intermediates derived via syngas fermentation. Major cost drivers for the integrated processes are tied to achievable fuel yields and conversion efficiency of the intermediate steps, i.e., the production of oxygenates/alcohols from syngas and the conversion of oxygenates/alcohols to hydrocarbon fuels.

  9. Chemical Transformation Motifs --- Modelling Pathways as Integer Hyperflows

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Andersen, Jakob L.; Flamm, Christoph; Merkle, Daniel

    2018-01-01

    analysis are discussed in detail. To demonstrate the applicability of the mathematical framework to real-life problems we first explore the design space of possible non-oxidative glycolysis pathways and show that recent manually designed pathways can be further optimised. We then use a model of sugar...... chemistry to investigate pathways in the autocatalytic formose process. A graph transformation-based approach is used to automatically generate the reaction networks of interest....

  10. Age-related effect of cell death on fiber morphology and number in tongue muscle.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kletzien, Heidi; Hare, Allison J; Leverson, Glen; Connor, Nadine P

    2018-01-01

    Multiple pathways may exist for age-related tongue muscle degeneration. Cell death is one mechanism contributing to muscle atrophy and decreased function. We hypothesized with aging, apoptosis, and apoptotic regulators would be increased, and muscle fiber size and number would be reduced in extrinsic tongue muscles. Cell death indices, expression of caspase-3 and Bcl-2, and measures of muscle morphology and number were determined in extrinsic tongue muscles of young and old rats. Significant increases in cell death, caspase-3, and Bcl-2 were observed in all extrinsic tongue muscles along with reductions in muscle fiber number in old rats. We demonstrated that apoptosis indices increase with age in lingual muscles and that alterations in apoptotic regulators may be associated with age-related degeneration in muscle fiber size and number. These observed apoptotic processes may be detrimental to muscle function, and may contribute to degradation of cranial functions with age. Muscle Nerve 57: E29-E37, 2018. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  11. VISIBIOweb: visualization and layout services for BioPAX pathway models

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dilek, Alptug; Belviranli, Mehmet E.; Dogrusoz, Ugur

    2010-01-01

    With recent advancements in techniques for cellular data acquisition, information on cellular processes has been increasing at a dramatic rate. Visualization is critical to analyzing and interpreting complex information; representing cellular processes or pathways is no exception. VISIBIOweb is a free, open-source, web-based pathway visualization and layout service for pathway models in BioPAX format. With VISIBIOweb, one can obtain well-laid-out views of pathway models using the standard notation of the Systems Biology Graphical Notation (SBGN), and can embed such views within one's web pages as desired. Pathway views may be navigated using zoom and scroll tools; pathway object properties, including any external database references available in the data, may be inspected interactively. The automatic layout component of VISIBIOweb may also be accessed programmatically from other tools using Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The web site is free and open to all users and there is no login requirement. It is available at: http://visibioweb.patika.org. PMID:20460470

  12. In silico analysis of phytohormone metabolism and communication pathways in citrus transcriptome

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vera Quecini

    2007-01-01

    Full Text Available Plant hormones play a crucial role in integrating endogenous and exogenous signals and in determining developmental responses to form the plant body throughout its life cycle. In citrus species, several economically important processes are controlled by phytohormones, including seed germination, secondary growth, fruit abscission and ripening. Integrative genomics is a powerful tool for linking newly researched organisms, such as tropical woody species, to functional studies already carried out on established model organisms. Based on gene orthology analyses and expression patterns, we searched the Citrus Genome Sequencing Consortium (CitEST database for Expressed Sequence Tags (EST consensus sequences sharing similarity to known components of hormone metabolism and signaling pathways in model species. More than 600 homologs of functionally characterized hormone metabolism and signal transduction members from model species were identified in citrus, allowing us to propose a framework for phytohormone signaling mechanisms in citrus. A number of components from hormone-related metabolic pathways were absent in citrus, suggesting the presence of distinct metabolic pathways. Our results demonstrated the power of comparative genomics between model systems and economically important crop species to elucidate several aspects of plant physiology and metabolism.

  13. Reducing the number of obstetrical beds by challenging traditions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Salvig, Camilla Dalby; Storkholm, Marie Højriis; Salvig, Jannie Dalby; Uldbjerg, Niels

    2018-05-19

    The aim of this commentary is to describe changes in women care at an obstetric department that made it possible to reduce the number of beds from 40 to 29. Patient pathways were reviewed and revised using lean methodology. The mean length of stay was reduced from 70 to 59 hours and the mean numbers of hospitalizations per woman from 1.26 to 1.20. At the organizational level, we introduced a Family Department, home management of newborns, home monitoring of the women with cardiotocography and blood samples, and intrapartum Group B Streptococcus-PCR. Additionally, an After Birth Clinic and network meetings for vulnerable women were established. In patient pathway, we reduced the hospitalization indicated by preterm premature rupture of membranes, preeclampsia and observation after birth laceration. According to National Patient Satisfaction surveys, there was no decrease in women's satisfaction after reducing the number of beds. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.

  14. Problems of the processing of nuclear magnetic logging signals (identification of fluid-containing strata from a number of measurements)

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Aliev, T.M.; Orlov, G.L.; Lof, V.M.; Mityushin, E.M.; Ragimova, E.K.

    1978-01-01

    Problems of the processing of nuclear magnetic logging signals to identification of fluid-containing strata from a number of measurements. Problems of application statistical decision theory to discovery of fluid-containing beds from a number of measurements are considered. Using the technique possibilities of nuclear magnetic logging method the necessary volume of samples is motivated, the rational algorithm for processing of sequential measurements is obtained

  15. Pathway Relevance Ranking for Tumor Samples through Network-Based Data Integration.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lieven P C Verbeke

    Full Text Available The study of cancer, a highly heterogeneous disease with different causes and clinical outcomes, requires a multi-angle approach and the collection of large multi-omics datasets that, ideally, should be analyzed simultaneously. We present a new pathway relevance ranking method that is able to prioritize pathways according to the information contained in any combination of tumor related omics datasets. Key to the method is the conversion of all available data into a single comprehensive network representation containing not only genes but also individual patient samples. Additionally, all data are linked through a network of previously identified molecular interactions. We demonstrate the performance of the new method by applying it to breast and ovarian cancer datasets from The Cancer Genome Atlas. By integrating gene expression, copy number, mutation and methylation data, the method's potential to identify key pathways involved in breast cancer development shared by different molecular subtypes is illustrated. Interestingly, certain pathways were ranked equally important for different subtypes, even when the underlying (epi-genetic disturbances were diverse. Next to prioritizing universally high-scoring pathways, the pathway ranking method was able to identify subtype-specific pathways. Often the score of a pathway could not be motivated by a single mutation, copy number or methylation alteration, but rather by a combination of genetic and epi-genetic disturbances, stressing the need for a network-based data integration approach. The analysis of ovarian tumors, as a function of survival-based subtypes, demonstrated the method's ability to correctly identify key pathways, irrespective of tumor subtype. A differential analysis of survival-based subtypes revealed several pathways with higher importance for the bad-outcome patient group than for the good-outcome patient group. Many of the pathways exhibiting higher importance for the bad

  16. [Various pathways leading to the progression of chronic liver diseases].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Egresi, Anna; Lengyel, Gabriella; Somogyi, Anikó; Blázovics, Anna; Hagymási, Krisztina

    2016-02-21

    As the result of various effects (viruses, metabolic diseases, nutritional factors, toxic agents, autoimmune processes) abnormal liver function, liver steatosis and connective tissue remodeling may develop. Progression of this process is complex including various pathways and a number of factors. The authors summarize the factors involved in the progression of chronic liver disease. They describe the role of cells and the produced inflammatory mediators and cytokines, as well as the relationship between the disease and the intestinal flora. They emphasize the role of oxidative stress, mitochondrial dysfunction and cell death in disease progression. Insulin resistance and micro-elements (iron, copper) in relation to liver damage are also discussed, and genetic and epigenetic aspects underlying disease progression are summarized. Discovery of novel treatment options, assessment of the effectiveness of treatment, as well as the success and proper timing of liver transplantation may depend on a better understanding of the process of disease progression.

  17. NMR studies of stock process water and reaction pathways in hydrothermal carbonization of furfural residue

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fen Yue

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available Hydrothermal carbonization (HTC is a valuable approach to convert furfural residue (FR into carbon material. The prepared biochars are usually characterized comprehensively, while the stock process water still remains to be studied in detail. Herein, a NMR study of the main components in stock process water generated at different HTC reaction conditions was reported. Various qualitative and quantitative NMR techniques (1H and 13C NMR, 1H–1H COSY and 1H13C HSQC etc. especially 1D selective gradient total correlation spectroscopy (TOCSY NMR were strategically applied in the analysis of HTC stock process water. Without separation and purification, it was demonstrated that the main detectable compounds are 5-hydroxymethylfurfural, formic acid, methanol, acetic acid, levulinic acid, glycerol, hydroxyacetone and acetaldehyde in this complicate mixture. Furthermore, the relationship between the concentration of major products and the reaction conditions (180–240 °C at 8 h, and 1–24 h at 240 °C was established. Finally, reasonable reaction pathways for hydrothermal conversion of FR were proposed based on this result and our previously obtained characteristics of biochars. The routine and challenging NMR methods utilized here would be an alternative other than HPLC or GC for biomass conversion research and can be extended to more studies. Keywords: NMR, Hydrothermal carbonization, Furfural residue, Stock process water

  18. Modelling and Analysis of Biochemical Signalling Pathway Cross-talk

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Robin Donaldson

    2010-02-01

    Full Text Available Signalling pathways are abstractions that help life scientists structure the coordination of cellular activity. Cross-talk between pathways accounts for many of the complex behaviours exhibited by signalling pathways and is often critical in producing the correct signal-response relationship. Formal models of signalling pathways and cross-talk in particular can aid understanding and drive experimentation. We define an approach to modelling based on the concept that a pathway is the (synchronising parallel composition of instances of generic modules (with internal and external labels. Pathways are then composed by (synchronising parallel composition and renaming; different types of cross-talk result from different combinations of synchronisation and renaming. We define a number of generic modules in PRISM and five types of cross-talk: signal flow, substrate availability, receptor function, gene expression and intracellular communication. We show that Continuous Stochastic Logic properties can both detect and distinguish the types of cross-talk. The approach is illustrated with small examples and an analysis of the cross-talk between the TGF-b/BMP, WNT and MAPK pathways.

  19. KEGGParser: parsing and editing KEGG pathway maps in Matlab.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arakelyan, Arsen; Nersisyan, Lilit

    2013-02-15

    KEGG pathway database is a collection of manually drawn pathway maps accompanied with KGML format files intended for use in automatic analysis. KGML files, however, do not contain the required information for complete reproduction of all the events indicated in the static image of a pathway map. Several parsers and editors of KEGG pathways exist for processing KGML files. We introduce KEGGParser-a MATLAB based tool for KEGG pathway parsing, semiautomatic fixing, editing, visualization and analysis in MATLAB environment. It also works with Scilab. The source code is available at http://www.mathworks.com/matlabcentral/fileexchange/37561.

  20. Number line estimation and complex mental calculation: Is there a shared cognitive process driving the two tasks?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Montefinese, Maria; Semenza, Carlo

    2018-05-17

    It is widely accepted that different number-related tasks, including solving simple addition and subtraction, may induce attentional shifts on the so-called mental number line, which represents larger numbers on the right and smaller numbers on the left. Recently, it has been shown that different number-related tasks also employ spatial attention shifts along with general cognitive processes. Here we investigated for the first time whether number line estimation and complex mental arithmetic recruit a common mechanism in healthy adults. Participants' performance in two-digit mental additions and subtractions using visual stimuli was compared with their performance in a mental bisection task using auditory numerical intervals. Results showed significant correlations between participants' performance in number line bisection and that in two-digit mental arithmetic operations, especially in additions, providing a first proof of a shared cognitive mechanism (or multiple shared cognitive mechanisms) between auditory number bisection and complex mental calculation.

  1. Understanding trade pathways to target biosecurity surveillance

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Manuel Colunga-Garcia

    2013-09-01

    Full Text Available Increasing trends in global trade make it extremely difficult to prevent the entry of all potential invasive species (IS. Establishing early detection strategies thus becomes an important part of the continuum used to reduce the introduction of invasive species. One part necessary to ensure the success of these strategies is the determination of priority survey areas based on invasion pressure. We used a pathway-centred conceptual model of pest invasion to address these questions: what role does global trade play in invasion pressure of plant ecosystems and how could an understanding of this role be used to enhance early detection strategies? We concluded that the relative level of invasion pressure for destination ecosystems can be influenced by the intensity of pathway usage (import volume and frequency, the number and type of pathways with a similar destination, and the number of different ecological regions that serve as the source for imports to the same destination. As these factors increase, pressure typically intensifies because of increasing a propagule pressure, b likelihood of transporting pests with higher intrinsic invasion potential, and c likelihood of transporting pests into ecosystems with higher invasibility. We used maritime containerized imports of live plants into the contiguous U.S. as a case study to illustrate the practical implications of the model to determine hotspot areas of relative invasion pressure for agricultural and forest ecosystems (two ecosystems with high potential invasibility. Our results illustrated the importance of how a pathway-centred model could be used to highlight potential target areas for early detection strategies for IS. Many of the hotspots in agricultural and forest ecosystems were within major U.S. metropolitan areas. Invasion ecologists can utilize pathway-centred conceptual models to a better understand the role of human-mediated pathways in pest establishment, b enhance current

  2. Designing monitoring arrangements for collaborative learning about adaptation pathways

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Hermans, L.M.; Haasnoot, M.; ter Maat, Judith; Kwakkel, J.H.

    2017-01-01

    Adaptation pathways approaches support long-term planning under uncertainty. The use of adaptation pathways implies a systematic monitoring effort to inform future adaptation decisions. Such monitoring should feed into a long-term collaborative learning process between multiple actors at various

  3. Unexpected Reaction Pathway for butyrylcholinesterase-catalyzed inactivation of “hunger hormone” ghrelin

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yao, Jianzhuang; Yuan, Yaxia; Zheng, Fang; Zhan, Chang-Guo

    2016-02-01

    Extensive computational modeling and simulations have been carried out, in the present study, to uncover the fundamental reaction pathway for butyrylcholinesterase (BChE)-catalyzed hydrolysis of ghrelin, demonstrating that the acylation process of BChE-catalyzed hydrolysis of ghrelin follows an unprecedented single-step reaction pathway and the single-step acylation process is rate-determining. The free energy barrier (18.8 kcal/mol) calculated for the rate-determining step is reasonably close to the experimentally-derived free energy barrier (~19.4 kcal/mol), suggesting that the obtained mechanistic insights are reasonable. The single-step reaction pathway for the acylation is remarkably different from the well-known two-step acylation reaction pathway for numerous ester hydrolysis reactions catalyzed by a serine esterase. This is the first time demonstrating that a single-step reaction pathway is possible for an ester hydrolysis reaction catalyzed by a serine esterase and, therefore, one no longer can simply assume that the acylation process must follow the well-known two-step reaction pathway.

  4. Minimal metabolic pathway structure is consistent with associated biomolecular interactions

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bordbar, Aarash; Nagarajan, Harish; Lewis, Nathan E.

    2014-01-01

    Pathways are a universal paradigm for functionally describing cellular processes. Even though advances in high-throughput data generation have transformed biology, the core of our biological understanding, and hence data interpretation, is still predicated on human-defined pathways. Here, we......, effectively doubling the known regulatory roles for Nac and MntR. This study suggests an underlying and fundamental principle in the evolutionary selection of pathway structures; namely, that pathways may be minimal, independent, and segregated....

  5. Photon number projection using non-number-resolving detectors

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Rohde, Peter P; Webb, James G; Huntington, Elanor H; Ralph, Timothy C

    2007-01-01

    Number-resolving photo-detection is necessary for many quantum optics experiments, especially in the application of entangled state preparation. Several schemes have been proposed for approximating number-resolving photo-detection using non-number-resolving detectors. Such techniques include multi-port detection and time-division multiplexing. We provide a detailed analysis and comparison of different number-resolving detection schemes, with a view to creating a useful reference for experimentalists. We show that the ideal architecture for projective measurements is a function of the detector's dark count and efficiency parameters. We also describe a process for selecting an appropriate topology given actual experimental component parameters

  6. Radioresistance-related signaling pathways in nasopharyngeal carcinoma cells

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Guo Ya; Zhu Xiaodong; Qu Song; Su Fang; Wang Qi; Zhang Wei

    2011-01-01

    Objective: To study the difference of gene expression profile between the radioresistant human nasopharyngeal carcinoma cell line CNE-2R and CNE-2, and to screen the signaling pathway associated with radioresistance of nasopharyngeal carcinoma. Methods: The radioresistant nasopharyngeal carcinoma cell line CNE-2R was constructed from the original cell line CNE-2. CNE-2R and CNE-2 cells were cultured and administered with 60 Co γ-ray irradiation at the dose of 400 cGy for 15 times. Human-6v 3.0 whole genome expression profile was used to screen the differentially expressed genes. Bioinformatic analysis was used to identify the pathways related to radioresistance. Results: The number of the differentially expressed genes that were found in these 2 experiments was 374. The Kegg pathway and Biocarta pathway analysis of the differentially expressed genes showed the biological importance of Toll-like receptor signaling pathway and IL-1 R-mediated signal transduction pathway to the radioresistance of the CNE-2R cells and the significant differences of 13 genes in these 2 pathways,including JUN, MYD88, CCL5, CXCL10, STAT1, LY96, FOS, CCL3, IL-6, IL-8, IL-1α, IL-1β, and IRAK2 (t=13.47-66.57, P<0.05). Conclusions: Toll-like receptor signaling pathway and IL-1R-mediated signal transduction pathway might be related to the occurrence of radioresistance. (authors)

  7. TO BE OR NOT TO BE: AN INFORMATIVE NON-SYMBOLIC NUMERICAL MAGNITUDE PROCESSING STUDY ABOUT SMALL VERSUS LARGE NUMBERS IN INFANTS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Annelies CEULEMANS

    2014-03-01

    Full Text Available Many studies tested the association between numerical magnitude processing and mathematical achievement with conflicting findings reported for individuals with mathematical learning disorders. Some of the inconsistencies might be explained by the number of non-symbolic stimuli or dot collections used in studies. It has been hypothesized that there is an object-file system for ‘small’ and an analogue magnitude system for ‘large’ numbers. This two-system account has been supported by the set size limit of the object-file system (three items. A boundary was defined, accordingly, categorizing numbers below four as ‘small’ and from four and above as ‘large’. However, data on ‘small’ number processing and on the ‘boundary’ between small and large numbers are missing. In this contribution we provide data from infants discriminating between the number sets 4 vs. 8 and 1 vs. 4, both containing the number four combined with a small and a large number respectively. Participants were 25 and 26 full term 9-month-olds for 4 vs. 8 and 1 vs. 4 respectively. The stimuli (dots were controlled for continuous variables. Eye-tracking was combined with the habituation paradigm. The results showed that the infants were successful in discriminating 1 from 4, but failed to discriminate 4 from 8 dots. This finding supports the assumption of the number four as a ‘small’ number and enlarges the object-file system’s limit. This study might help to explain inconsistencies in studies. Moreover, the information may be useful in answering parent’s questions about challenges that vulnerable children with number processing problems, such as children with mathematical learning disorders, might encounter. In addition, the study might give some information on the stimuli that can be used to effectively foster children’s magnitude processing skills.

  8. Angiogenesis-Related Pathways in the Pathogenesis of Ovarian Cancer

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Aristotle Bamias

    2013-07-01

    Full Text Available Ovarian Cancer represents the most fatal type of gynecological malignancies. A number of processes are involved in the pathogenesis of ovarian cancer, especially within the tumor microenvironment. Angiogenesis represents a hallmark phenomenon in cancer, and it is responsible for tumor spread and metastasis in ovarian cancer, among other tumor types, as it leads to new blood vessel formation. In recent years angiogenesis has been given considerable attention in order to identify targets for developing effective anti-tumor therapies. Growth factors have been identified to play key roles in driving angiogenesis and, thus, the formation of new blood vessels that assist in “feeding” cancer. Such molecules include the vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF, the platelet derived growth factor (PDGF, the fibroblast growth factor (FGF, and the angiopoietin/Tie2 receptor complex. These proteins are key players in complex molecular pathways within the tumor cell and they have been in the spotlight of the development of anti-angiogenic molecules that may act as stand-alone therapeutics, or in concert with standard treatment regimes such as chemotherapy. The pathways involved in angiogenesis and molecules that have been developed in order to combat angiogenesis are described in this paper.

  9. A More Flexible Lipoprotein Sorting Pathway

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chahales, Peter

    2015-01-01

    Lipoprotein biogenesis in Gram-negative bacteria occurs by a conserved pathway, each step of which is considered essential. In contrast to this model, LoVullo and colleagues demonstrate that the N-acyl transferase Lnt is not required in Francisella tularensis or Neisseria gonorrhoeae. This suggests the existence of a more flexible lipoprotein pathway, likely due to a modified Lol transporter complex, and raises the possibility that pathogens may regulate lipoprotein processing to modulate interactions with the host. PMID:25755190

  10. Minimum Energy Pathways for Chemical Reactions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Walch, S. P.; Langhoff, S. R. (Technical Monitor)

    1995-01-01

    Computed potential energy surfaces are often required for computation of such parameters as rate constants as a function of temperature, product branching ratios, and other detailed properties. We have found that computation of the stationary points/reaction pathways using CASSCF/derivative methods, followed by use of the internally contracted CI method to obtain accurate energetics, gives useful results for a number of chemically important systems. The talk will focus on a number of applications to reactions leading to NOx and soot formation in hydrocarbon combustion.

  11. Identification of Biodegradation Pathways in a Multi-Process Phytoremediation System (MPPS) Using Natural Abundance 14C Analysis of PLFA

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cowie, B. R.; Greenberg, B. M.; Slater, G. F.

    2008-12-01

    Optimizing remediation of petroleum-contaminated soils requires thorough understanding of the mechanisms and pathways involved in a proposed remediation system. In many engineered and natural attenuation systems, multiple degradation pathways may contribute to observed contaminant mass losses. In this study, biodegradation in the soil microbial community was identified as a major pathway for petroleum hydrocarbon removal in a Multi-Process Phytoremediation System (MPPS) using natural abundance 14C analysis of Phospholipid Fatty Acids (PLFA). In contaminated soils, PLFA were depleted in Δ14C to less than -800‰, directly demonstrating microbial uptake and utilization of petroleum derived carbon (Δ14C = -992‰) during bioremediation. Mass balance indicated that more than 80% of microbial carbon was derived from petroleum hydrocarbons and a maximum of 20% was produced from metabolism of modern carbon sources. In contrast, in a nearby uncontaminated control soil, the microbial community maintained a nearly modern 14C signature, suggesting preferential degradation of more labile, recent carbon. Mass balance using δ13C and Δ14C of soil CO2 demonstrated that mineralization of petroleum carbon contributed 60-65% of soil CO2 at the contaminated site. The remainder was derived from atmospheric (27-30%) and decomposition of non- petroleum natural organic carbon (5-10%). The clean control exhibited substantially lower CO2 concentrations that were derived from atmospheric (55%) and natural organic carbon (45%) sources. This study highlights the value of using multiple carbon isotopes to identify degradation pathways in petroleum- contaminated soils undergoing phytoremediation and the power of natural abundance 14C to detect petroleum metabolism in natural microbial communities.

  12. Environmental and energy system analysis of bio-methane production pathways : A comparison between feedstocks and process optimizations

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Pierie, F.; van Someren, C. E. J.; Benders, R. M. J.; Bekkering, J.; van Gemert, W. J. Th; Moll, H. C.

    2015-01-01

    The energy efficiency and sustainability of an anaerobic green gas production pathway was evaluated, taking into account five biomass feedstocks, optimization of the green gas production pathway, replacement of current waste management pathways by mitigation, and transport of the feedstocks.

  13. Environmental and energy system analysis of bio-methane production pathways : a comparison between feedstocks and process optimizations

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Pierie, Frank; van Someren, Christian; Benders, René M.J.; Bekkering, Jan; van Gemert, Wim; Moll, Henri C.

    2015-01-01

    The energy efficiency and sustainability of an anaerobic green gas production pathway was evaluated, taking into account five biomass feedstocks, optimization of the green gas production pathway, replacement of current waste management pathways by mitigation, and transport of the feedstocks.

  14. Pathway Analysis in Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder: An Ensemble Approach

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mooney, Michael A.; McWeeney, Shannon K.; Faraone, Stephen V.; Hinney, Anke; Hebebrand, Johannes; Nigg, Joel T.; Wilmot, Beth

    2016-01-01

    Despite a wealth of evidence for the role of genetics in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), specific and definitive genetic mechanisms have not been identified. Pathway analyses, a subset of gene-set analyses, extend the knowledge gained from genome-wide association studies (GWAS) by providing functional context for genetic associations. However, there are numerous methods for association testing of gene sets and no real consensus regarding the best approach. The present study applied six pathway analysis methods to identify pathways associated with ADHD in two GWAS datasets from the Psychiatric Genomics Consortium. Methods that utilize genotypes to model pathway-level effects identified more replicable pathway associations than methods using summary statistics. In addition, pathways implicated by more than one method were significantly more likely to replicate. A number of brain-relevant pathways, such as RhoA signaling, glycosaminoglycan biosynthesis, fibroblast growth factor receptor activity, and pathways containing potassium channel genes, were nominally significant by multiple methods in both datasets. These results support previous hypotheses about the role of regulation of neurotransmitter release, neurite outgrowth and axon guidance in contributing to the ADHD phenotype and suggest the value of cross-method convergence in evaluating pathway analysis results. PMID:27004716

  15. miR2Pathway: A Novel Analytical Method to Discover MicroRNA-mediated Dysregulated Pathways Involved in Hepatocellular Carcinoma.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Chaoxing; Dinu, Valentin

    2018-03-22

    MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small, non-coding RNAs involved in the regulation of gene expression at a post-transcriptional level. Recent studies have shown miRNAs as key regulators of a variety of biological processes, such as proliferation, differentiation, apoptosis, metabolism, etc. Aberrantly expressed miRNAs influence individual gene expression level, but rewired miRNA-mRNA connections can influence the activity of biological pathways. Here, we define rewired miRNA-mRNA connections as the differential (rewiring) effects on the activity of biological pathways between hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and normal phenotypes. Our work presented here uses a PageRank-based approach to measure the degree of miRNA-mediated dysregulation of biological pathways between HCC and normal samples based on rewired miRNA-mRNA connections. In our study, we regard the degree of miRNA-mediated dysregulation of biological pathways as disease risk of biological pathways. Therefore, we propose a new method, miR2Pathway, to measure and rank the degree of miRNA-mediated dysregulation of biological pathways by measuring the total differential influence of miRNAs on the activity of pathways between HCC and normal states. miR2Pathway proposed here systematically shows the first evidence for a mechanism of biological pathways being dysregulated by rewired miRNA-mRNA connections, and provides new insight into exploring mechanisms behind HCC. Thus, miR2Pathway is a novel method to identify and rank miRNA-dysregulated pathways in HCC. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier Inc.

  16. Nursing Informatics Certification Worldwide: History, Pathway, Roles, and Motivation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cummins, M. R.; Gundlapalli, A. V.; Murray, P.; Park, H.-A.; Lehmann, C. U.

    2016-01-01

    Summary Introduction Official recognition and certification for informatics professionals are essential aspects of workforce development. Objective: To describe the history, pathways, and nuances of certification in nursing informatics across the globe; compare and contrast those with board certification in clinical informatics for physicians. Methods (1) A review of the representative literature on informatics certification and related competencies for nurses and physicians, and relevant websites for nursing informatics associations and societies worldwide; (2) similarities and differences between certification processes for nurses and physicians, and (3) perspectives on roles for nursing informatics professionals in healthcare Results The literature search for ‘nursing informatics certification’ yielded few results in PubMed; Google Scholar yielded a large number of citations that extended to magazines and other non-peer reviewed sources. Worldwide, there are several nursing informatics associations, societies, and workgroups dedicated to nursing informatics associated with medical/health informatics societies. A formal certification program for nursing informatics appears to be available only in the United States. This certification was established in 1992, in concert with the formation and definition of nursing informatics as a specialty practice of nursing by the American Nurses Association. Although informatics is inherently interprofessional, certification pathways for nurses and physicians have developed separately, following long-standing professional structures, training, and pathways aligned with clinical licensure and direct patient care. There is substantial similarity with regard to the skills and competencies required for nurses and physicians to obtain informatics certification in their respective fields. Nurses may apply for and complete a certification examination if they have experience in the field, regardless of formal training. Increasing

  17. MDRC Research on Career Pathways. Issue Brief

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kazis, Richard

    2016-01-01

    As postsecondary credentials have become increasingly important to accessing higher-quality employment, a growing number of education and workforce programs are implementing "career pathways" approaches to help both youth and adults prepare for further education and better jobs. In recent years, the Manpower Demonstration Research…

  18. Intuitive numbers guide decisions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ellen Peters

    2008-12-01

    Full Text Available Measuring reaction times to number comparisons is thought to reveal a processing stage in elementary numerical cognition linked to internal, imprecise representations of number magnitudes. These intuitive representations of the mental number line have been demonstrated across species and human development but have been little explored in decision making. This paper develops and tests hypotheses about the influence of such evolutionarily ancient, intuitive numbers on human decisions. We demonstrate that individuals with more precise mental-number-line representations are higher in numeracy (number skills consistent with previous research with children. Individuals with more precise representations (compared to those with less precise representations also were more likely to choose larger, later amounts over smaller, immediate amounts, particularly with a larger proportional difference between the two monetary outcomes. In addition, they were more likely to choose an option with a larger proportional but smaller absolute difference compared to those with less precise representations. These results are consistent with intuitive number representations underlying: a perceived differences between numbers, b the extent to which proportional differences are weighed in decisions, and, ultimately, c the valuation of decision options. Human decision processes involving numbers important to health and financial matters may be rooted in elementary, biological processes shared with other species.

  19. The evolution of the pathway and its role in improving patient care.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mould, G; Bowers, J; Ghattas, M

    2010-10-01

    Redesign in healthcare has increased the focus on the needs of the patient. The redesign process typically involves a review of current practice using the patient pathway before considering possible improvements. The patient pathway can serve various roles, and it may be mapped in different ways using a variety of media. This paper reviews the evolution of the patient pathway comparing the merits of different media. Simple approaches to mapping pathways can be most useful. However, experience in the redesign of Unscheduled Care in NHS Fife suggests that computer-based, hierarchical pathway models using stylised icons offer many advantages. Such approaches can increase the effectiveness of pathways in the redesign process, providing both the detail and the system view in an accessible graphical form. This enhanced capability helps staff analyse current practice and visualise and assess redesign options. In addition, the pathway can fulfil new roles as a training tool and an effective basis for organising knowledge about patient care.

  20. FPPS mediates TGF-β1-induced non-small cell lung cancer cell invasion and the EMT process via the RhoA/Rock1 pathway.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lin, Lin; Li, Ming; Lin, Lei; Xu, Xiaolin; Jiang, Gening; Wu, Liang

    2018-02-05

    Farnesyl pyrophosphate synthase (FPPS), a key enzyme in the mevalonate pathway, was recently shown to play a role in cancer progression. However, its role in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) metastasis and the underlying mechanism remain unclear. In this study, FPPS expression was significantly correlated with TNM stage, and metastasis. Inhibition or knockdown of FPPS blocked TGF-β1-induced cell invasion and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT) process. FPPS expression of FPPS was induced by TGF-β1 and FPPS promoted cell invasion and EMT via the RhoA/Rock1 pathway. In conclusion, FPPS mediates TGF-β1-induced lung cancer cell invasion and EMT via the RhoA/Rock1 pathway. These findings suggest new treatment strategies to reduce mortality associated with metastasis in patients with NSCLC. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  1. Cotton transformation via pollen tube pathway.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Min; Zhang, Baohong; Wang, Qinglian

    2013-01-01

    Although many gene transfer methods have been employed for successfully obtaining transgenic cotton, the major constraint in cotton improvement is the limitation of genotype because the majority of transgenic methods require plant regeneration from a single transformed cell which is limited by cotton tissue culture. Comparing with other plant species, it is difficult to induce plant regeneration from cotton; currently, only a limited number of cotton cultivars can be cultured for obtaining regenerated plants. Thus, development of a simple and genotype-independent genetic transformation method is particularly important for cotton community. In this chapter, we present a simple, cost-efficient, and genotype-independent cotton transformation method-pollen tube pathway-mediated transformation. This method uses pollen tube pathway to deliver transgene into cotton embryo sacs and then insert foreign genes into cotton genome. There are three major steps for pollen tube pathway-mediated genetic transformation, which include injection of -foreign genes into pollen tube, integration of foreign genes into plant genome, and selection of transgenic plants.

  2. Sources and pathways of selected organochlorine pesticides to the Arctic and the effect of pathway divergence on HCH trends in biota: a review

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Li, Y.F.; Macdonald, R.W.

    2005-01-01

    Historical global usage and emissions for organochlorine pesticides (OCPs), including hexachlorocyclohexanes (HCHs), dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane (DDT), toxaphene and endosulfan, are presented. Relationships between the air concentrations of these OCPs and their global emissions are also discussed. Differences between the pathways of α- and β-HCH to the Arctic Ocean are described in the context of environmental concentrating and diluting processes. These concentrating and diluting processes are shown to control the temporal and spatial loading of northern oceans and that the HCH burdens in marine biota from these oceans respond accordingly. The HCHs provide an elegant example of how hemispheric-scale solvent switching processes can alter the ocean into which an HCH congener partitions, how air-water partitioning controls the pathway for HCHs entering the Arctic, and how the various pathways impact spatial and temporal trends of HCH residues in arctic animals feeding out of marine and terrestrial foodwebs

  3. Data mining and pathway analysis of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase with natural language processing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Long; Zhang, Chunhua; Wang, Yanling; Li, Yuqian; Han, Qiaoqiao; Yang, Huixin; Zhu, Yuechun

    2017-01-01

    Human glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (G6PD) is a crucial enzyme in the pentose phosphate pathway, and serves an important role in biosynthesis and the redox balance. G6PD deficiency is a major cause of neonatal jaundice and acute hemolyticanemia, and recently, G6PD has been associated with diseases including inflammation and cancer. The aim of the present study was to conduct a search of the National Center for Biotechnology Information PubMed library for articles discussing G6PD. Genes that were identified to be associated with G6PD were recorded, and the frequency at which each gene appeared was calculated. Gene ontology (GO), pathway and network analyses were then performed. A total of 98 G6PD-associated genes and 33 microRNAs (miRNAs) that potentially regulate G6PD were identified. The 98 G6PD-associated genes were then sub-classified into three functional groups by GO analysis, followed by analysis of function, pathway, network, and disease association. Out of the 47 signaling pathways identified, seven were significantly correlated with G6PD-associated genes. At least two out of four independent programs identified the 33 miRNAs that were predicted to target G6PD. miR-1207-5P, miR-1 and miR-125a-5p were predicted by all four software programs to target G6PD. The results of the present study revealed that dysregulation of G6PD was associated with cancer, autoimmune diseases, and oxidative stress-induced disorders. These results revealed the potential roles of G6PD-regulated signaling and metabolic pathways in the etiology of these diseases. PMID:28627690

  4. Cost unit accounting based on a clinical pathway: a practical tool for DRG implementation.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Feyrer, R; Rösch, J; Weyand, M; Kunzmann, U

    2005-10-01

    Setting up a reliable cost unit accounting system in a hospital is a fundamental necessity for economic survival, given the current general conditions in the healthcare system. Definition of a suitable cost unit is a crucial factor for success. We present here the development and use of a clinical pathway as a cost unit as an alternative to the DRG. Elective coronary artery bypass grafting was selected as an example. Development of the clinical pathway was conducted according to a modular concept that mirrored all the treatment processes across various levels and modules. Using service records and analyses the process algorithms of the clinical pathway were developed and visualized with CorelTM iGrafix Process 2003. A detailed process cost record constituted the basis of the pathway costing, in which financial evaluation of the treatment processes was performed. The result of this study was a structured clinical pathway for coronary artery bypass grafting together with a cost calculation in the form of cost unit accounting. The use of a clinical pathway as a cost unit offers considerable advantages compared to the DRG or clinical case. The variance in the diagnoses and procedures within a pathway is minimal, so the consumption of resources is homogeneous. This leads to a considerable improvement in the value of cost unit accounting as a strategic control instrument in hospitals.

  5. Selective mutism: a consensus based care pathway of good practice.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Keen, D V; Fonseca, S; Wintgens, A

    2008-10-01

    Selective mutism (SM) now acknowledged as an anxiety condition, tends to be a poorly understood, highly complex and vastly under-recognised clinical entity. Children with SM are a vulnerable group as the condition is not the remit of any one professional group. This inevitably leads to delay in formal diagnosis and management. There is a lack of systematic research on which to base guidelines for management. To develop, agree and validate key principles underlying the management of SM through a consensus process involving international experts, in order to create a local care pathway. A local multi-agency consultation process developed 11 statements, which were felt to be the key principles underpinning a potential care pathway for managing SM. Thirteen recognised experts from North America, Europe and Australia participated in a modified Delphi process involving two rounds using a Likert-scale and free commentary. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses were used in the validation or revision of the statements at each stage. Response rates were 100% for Round 1 and 84.6% for Round 2. Despite the differing professional backgrounds and service contexts, by successive revision and/or revalidation of statements, it was possible to arrive at a consensus about key principles relating to early recognition, assessment and intervention. The agreed key principles are presented together with the resulting local care pathway. Through a Delphi process, agreement was reached by a multidisciplinary group of professionals, on key principles that underpin the timely identification, assessment and management of children with SM. These include the potential for staff in school/preschool settings to identify SM and that intervention programmes should generally be based in these settings. Children with SM should receive assessment for possible coexisting disorders, whether developmental, emotional or behavioural and additional specific intervention given for these. Agreement was

  6. Standardising school nursing practice: developing and implementing a care pathways package.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Turney, Nicy; Clarke, Maggie; Stevenson, Emily

    2012-11-01

    The NHS has a longstanding relationship with care pathways for managing clinical processes and patient outcomes. Care pathways are an effective mechanism to improve the delivery of services in managing children's health. However, few individual NHS trusts have successfully developed and implemented local pathways. This paper describes the development and implementation of a comprehensive care pathways package for school nursing in a community health services trust in the East Midlands.

  7. Verification of Stochastic Process Calculi

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Skrypnyuk, Nataliya

    algorithms for constructing bisimulation relations, computing (overapproximations of) sets of reachable states and computing the expected time reachability, the last for a linear fragment of IMC. In all the cases we have the complexities of algorithms which are low polynomial in the size of the syntactic....... In support of this claim we have developed analysis methods that belong to a particular type of Static Analysis { Data Flow / Pathway Analysis. These methods have previously been applied to a number of non-stochastic process calculi. In this thesis we are lifting them to the stochastic calculus...... of Interactive Markov Chains (IMC). We have devised the Pathway Analysis of IMC that is not only correct in the sense of overapproximating all possible behaviour scenarios, as is usual for Static Analysis methods, but is also precise. This gives us the possibility to explicitly decide on the trade-o between...

  8. Role of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway in gastric cancer: An in-depth literature review

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chiurillo, Miguel Angel

    2015-01-01

    Gastric cancer remains one of the most common cancers worldwide and one of the leading cause for cancer-related deaths. Gastric adenocarcinoma is a multifactorial disease that is genetically, cytologically and architecturally more heterogeneous than other gastrointestinal carcinomas. The aberrant activation of the Wnt/β-catenin signaling pathway is involved in the development and progression of a significant proportion of gastric cancer cases. This review focuses on the participation of the Wnt/β-catenin pathway in gastric cancer by offering an analysis of the relevant literature published in this field. Indeed, it is discussed the role of key factors in Wnt/β-catenin signaling and their downstream effectors regulating processes involved in tumor initiation, tumor growth, metastasis and resistance to therapy. Available data indicate that constitutive Wnt signalling resulting from Helicobacter pylori infection and inactivation of Wnt inhibitors (mainly by inactivating mutations and promoter hypermethylation) play an important role in gastric cancer. Moreover, a number of recent studies confirmed CTNNB1 and APC as driver genes in gastric cancer. The identification of specific membrane, intracellular, and extracellular components of the Wnt pathway has revealed potential targets for gastric cancer therapy. High-throughput “omics” approaches will help in the search for Wnt pathway antagonist in the near future. PMID:25992323

  9. Dissection of the insulin signaling pathway via quantitative phosphoproteomics

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Krüger, Marcus; Kratchmarova, Irina; Blagoev, Blagoy

    2008-01-01

    spectrum of the tyrosine phosphorylation cascade, we have defined the tyrosine-phosphoproteome of the insulin signaling pathway, using high resolution mass spectrometry in combination with phosphotyrosine immunoprecipitation and stable isotope labeling by amino acids in cell culture (SILAC......The insulin signaling pathway is of pivotal importance in metabolic diseases, such as diabetes, and in cellular processes, such as aging. Insulin activates a tyrosine phosphorylation cascade that branches to create a complex network affecting multiple biological processes. To understand the full...

  10. Evolutionary pets: offspring numbers reveal speciation process in domesticated chickens.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Inga Tiemann

    Full Text Available Since Darwin, the nature of the relationship between evolution and domestication has been debated. Evolution offers different mechanisms of selection that lead to adaptation and may end in the origin of new species as defined by the biological species concept. Domestication has given rise to numerous breeds in almost every domesticated species, including chickens. At the same time, so-called artificial selection seems to exclude mechanisms of sexual selection by the animals themselves. We want to forward the question to the animal itself: With whom do you reproduce successfully? This study focused on the sexual behavior of the domestic chicken Gallus gallus f.dom., particularly the White Crested Polish breed. Experiments on mate choice and the observation of fertilization and hatching rates of mixed-breeding groups revealed breed-specific preferences. In breeding groups containing White Crested Polish and a comparative breed, more purebred chicks hatched than hybrids (number of eggs collected: 1059. Mating was possible in equal shares, but in relation to the number of eggs collected, purebred offspring (62.75% ± 7.10%, M ± SE hatched to a greater extend compared to hybrid offspring (28.75% ± 15.32%, M ± SE. These data demonstrate that the mechanism of sexual selection is still present in domestic chicken breeds, which includes the alteration of gene frequencies typical for domestication and evolutionary speciation. Due to selection and mate choice we state that breeding in principle can generate new species. Therefore, we see domestication as an evolutionary process that integrates human interests of animal breeding with innate mate choice by the animal.

  11. Valsartan ameliorates podocyte loss in diabetic mice through the Notch pathway.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gao, Feng; Yao, Min; Cao, Yanping; Liu, Shuxia; Liu, Qingjuan; Duan, Huijun

    2016-05-01

    The Notch pathway is known to be linked to diabetic nephropathy (DN); however, its underlying mechanism was poorly understood. In the present study, we examined the effect of Valsartan, an angiotensin II type 1 receptor antagonist, on the Notch pathway and podocyte loss in DN. Diabetes was induced in mice by an intraperitoneal injection of streptozotocin and and this was followed by treatment with Valsartan. Levels of blood glucose, kidney weight and body weight, as well as proteinuria were measured. Samples of the kidneys were also histologically examined. The relative levels of Jagged1, Notch1, Notch intracellular domain 1 (NICD1), Hes family BHLH transcription factor 1 (Hes1) and Hes-related family BHLH transcription factor with YRPW motif 1 expression (Hey1) in the glomeruli were determined by immunohistochemical analysis, western blot analysis and RT-qPCR. The B-Cell CLL/Lymphoma 2 (Bcl-2) and p53 pathways were examined by western blot analysis. Apoptosis and detachment of podocytes from the glomerular basement membrane were examined using a TUNEL assay, flow cytometric analysis and ELISA. The number of podocytes was quantified by measuring Wilms tumor-1 (WT-1) staining. We noted that the expression of Jagged1, Notch1, NICD1, Hes1 and Hey1 was increased in a time-dependent manner in the glomeruli of mice with streptozotocin (STZ)-induced diabetes. Moreover, in diabetic mice, Valsartan significantly reduced kidney weight and proteinuria, and mitigated the pathogenic processes in the kidneys. Valsartan also inhibited the activation of Notch, Bcl-2 and p53 pathways and ameliorated podocyte loss in the glomeruli of mice with STZ-induced diabetes. Taken together, these findings indicated that Valsartan exerted a beneficial effect on reducing podocyte loss, which is associated with inhibition of Notch pathway activation in the glomeruli of diabetic mice.

  12. A more flexible lipoprotein sorting pathway.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chahales, Peter; Thanassi, David G

    2015-05-01

    Lipoprotein biogenesis in Gram-negative bacteria occurs by a conserved pathway, each step of which is considered essential. In contrast to this model, LoVullo and colleagues demonstrate that the N-acyl transferase Lnt is not required in Francisella tularensis or Neisseria gonorrhoeae. This suggests the existence of a more flexible lipoprotein pathway, likely due to a modified Lol transporter complex, and raises the possibility that pathogens may regulate lipoprotein processing to modulate interactions with the host. Copyright © 2015, American Society for Microbiology. All Rights Reserved.

  13. Bio-inspired approach to multistage image processing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Timchenko, Leonid I.; Pavlov, Sergii V.; Kokryatskaya, Natalia I.; Poplavska, Anna A.; Kobylyanska, Iryna M.; Burdenyuk, Iryna I.; Wójcik, Waldemar; Uvaysova, Svetlana; Orazbekov, Zhassulan; Kashaganova, Gulzhan

    2017-08-01

    Multistage integration of visual information in the brain allows people to respond quickly to most significant stimuli while preserving the ability to recognize small details in the image. Implementation of this principle in technical systems can lead to more efficient processing procedures. The multistage approach to image processing, described in this paper, comprises main types of cortical multistage convergence. One of these types occurs within each visual pathway and the other between the pathways. This approach maps input images into a flexible hierarchy which reflects the complexity of the image data. The procedures of temporal image decomposition and hierarchy formation are described in mathematical terms. The multistage system highlights spatial regularities, which are passed through a number of transformational levels to generate a coded representation of the image which encapsulates, in a computer manner, structure on different hierarchical levels in the image. At each processing stage a single output result is computed to allow a very quick response from the system. The result is represented as an activity pattern, which can be compared with previously computed patterns on the basis of the closest match.

  14. Influence of the fast-processing technique on the number of the occlusal contacts and occlusal vertical dimension of complete dentures.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Atashrazm, Parsa; Alavijeh, Leila Zamani; Afshar, Maryam Sadat Sadrzadeh

    2011-03-01

    Occlusal errors during acryl processing affect the retention and stability of complete dentures. The aim of the present study was to assess the influence of a short curing technique on the number of occlusal contacts and the occlusal vertical dimension (OVD) of complete dentures. Complete dentures were prepared. The number of occlusal contacts was recorded in centric relation (CR) using 60 µ articulation paper. The OVD was recorded with the waxed trial denture in place. Dentures were then invested and processed with compression molding and short cure water bath technique. The number of occlusal contacts was recorded again. The amount of pin opening was measured for all of the complete dentures on the articulator. Data were analyzed with paired t-test to determine the alterations. The mean number of occlusal contacts before and after processing was 10.9 ± 2.4 and 6.3 ± 3.1 respectively (4.7 ± 1.9 decrease; p negative effect on the morphologic pattern of artificial teeth of complete dentures and thus should be used carefully.

  15. Pathway modeling of microarray data: A case study of pathway activity changes in the testis following in utero exposure to dibutyl phthalate (DBP)

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ovacik, Meric A.; Sen, Banalata; Euling, Susan Y.; Gaido, Kevin W.; Ierapetritou, Marianthi G.; Androulakis, Ioannis P.

    2013-01-01

    Pathway activity level analysis, the approach pursued in this study, focuses on all genes that are known to be members of metabolic and signaling pathways as defined by the KEGG database. The pathway activity level analysis entails singular value decomposition (SVD) of the expression data of the genes constituting a given pathway. We explore an extension of the pathway activity methodology for application to time-course microarray data. We show that pathway analysis enhances our ability to detect biologically relevant changes in pathway activity using synthetic data. As a case study, we apply the pathway activity level formulation coupled with significance analysis to microarray data from two different rat testes exposed in utero to Dibutyl Phthalate (DBP). In utero DBP exposure in the rat results in developmental toxicity of a number of male reproductive organs, including the testes. One well-characterized mode of action for DBP and the male reproductive developmental effects is the repression of expression of genes involved in cholesterol transport, steroid biosynthesis and testosterone synthesis that lead to a decreased fetal testicular testosterone. Previous analyses of DBP testes microarray data focused on either individual gene expression changes or changes in the expression of specific genes that are hypothesized, or known, to be important in testicular development and testosterone synthesis. However, a pathway analysis may inform whether there are additional affected pathways that could inform additional modes of action linked to DBP developmental toxicity. We show that Pathway activity analysis may be considered for a more comprehensive analysis of microarray data

  16. Pathway modeling of microarray data: A case study of pathway activity changes in the testis following in utero exposure to dibutyl phthalate (DBP)

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Ovacik, Meric A. [Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Department, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854 (United States); Sen, Banalata [National Center for Environmental Assessment, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Research Triangle Park, NC 27709 (United States); Euling, Susan Y. [National Center for Environmental Assessment, Office of Research and Development, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Washington, DC 20460 (United States); Gaido, Kevin W. [U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Center for Veterinary Medicine, Office of New Animal Drug Evaluation, Division of Human Food Safety, Rockville, MD 20855 (United States); Ierapetritou, Marianthi G. [Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Department, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854 (United States); Androulakis, Ioannis P., E-mail: yannis@rci.rutgers.edu [Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Department, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854 (United States); Biomedical Engineering Department, Rutgers University, NJ 08854 (United States)

    2013-09-15

    Pathway activity level analysis, the approach pursued in this study, focuses on all genes that are known to be members of metabolic and signaling pathways as defined by the KEGG database. The pathway activity level analysis entails singular value decomposition (SVD) of the expression data of the genes constituting a given pathway. We explore an extension of the pathway activity methodology for application to time-course microarray data. We show that pathway analysis enhances our ability to detect biologically relevant changes in pathway activity using synthetic data. As a case study, we apply the pathway activity level formulation coupled with significance analysis to microarray data from two different rat testes exposed in utero to Dibutyl Phthalate (DBP). In utero DBP exposure in the rat results in developmental toxicity of a number of male reproductive organs, including the testes. One well-characterized mode of action for DBP and the male reproductive developmental effects is the repression of expression of genes involved in cholesterol transport, steroid biosynthesis and testosterone synthesis that lead to a decreased fetal testicular testosterone. Previous analyses of DBP testes microarray data focused on either individual gene expression changes or changes in the expression of specific genes that are hypothesized, or known, to be important in testicular development and testosterone synthesis. However, a pathway analysis may inform whether there are additional affected pathways that could inform additional modes of action linked to DBP developmental toxicity. We show that Pathway activity analysis may be considered for a more comprehensive analysis of microarray data.

  17. Large-scale transcriptome analysis reveals arabidopsis metabolic pathways are frequently influenced by different pathogens.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jiang, Zhenhong; He, Fei; Zhang, Ziding

    2017-07-01

    Through large-scale transcriptional data analyses, we highlighted the importance of plant metabolism in plant immunity and identified 26 metabolic pathways that were frequently influenced by the infection of 14 different pathogens. Reprogramming of plant metabolism is a common phenomenon in plant defense responses. Currently, a large number of transcriptional profiles of infected tissues in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana) have been deposited in public databases, which provides a great opportunity to understand the expression patterns of metabolic pathways during plant defense responses at the systems level. Here, we performed a large-scale transcriptome analysis based on 135 previously published expression samples, including 14 different pathogens, to explore the expression pattern of Arabidopsis metabolic pathways. Overall, metabolic genes are significantly changed in expression during plant defense responses. Upregulated metabolic genes are enriched on defense responses, and downregulated genes are enriched on photosynthesis, fatty acid and lipid metabolic processes. Gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA) identifies 26 frequently differentially expressed metabolic pathways (FreDE_Paths) that are differentially expressed in more than 60% of infected samples. These pathways are involved in the generation of energy, fatty acid and lipid metabolism as well as secondary metabolite biosynthesis. Clustering analysis based on the expression levels of these 26 metabolic pathways clearly distinguishes infected and control samples, further suggesting the importance of these metabolic pathways in plant defense responses. By comparing with FreDE_Paths from abiotic stresses, we find that the expression patterns of 26 FreDE_Paths from biotic stresses are more consistent across different infected samples. By investigating the expression correlation between transcriptional factors (TFs) and FreDE_Paths, we identify several notable relationships. Collectively, the current study

  18. Small numbers are sensed directly, high numbers constructed from size and density.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zimmermann, Eckart

    2018-04-01

    Two theories compete to explain how we estimate the numerosity of visual object sets. The first suggests that the apparent numerosity is derived from an analysis of more low-level features like size and density of the set. The second theory suggests that numbers are sensed directly. Consistent with the latter claim is the existence of neurons in parietal cortex which are specialized for processing the numerosity of elements in the visual scene. However, recent evidence suggests that only low numbers can be sensed directly whereas the perception of high numbers is supported by the analysis of low-level features. Processing of low and high numbers, being located at different levels of the neural hierarchy should involve different receptive field sizes. Here, I tested this idea with visual adaptation. I measured the spatial spread of number adaptation for low and high numerosities. A focused adaptation spread of high numerosities suggested the involvement of early neural levels where receptive fields are comparably small and the broad spread for low numerosities was consistent with processing of number neurons which have larger receptive fields. These results provide evidence for the claim that different mechanism exist generating the perception of visual numerosity. Whereas low numbers are sensed directly as a primary visual attribute, the estimation of high numbers however likely depends on the area size over which the objects are spread. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  19. Psychological Perspectives on Pathways Linking Socioeconomic Status and Physical Health

    Science.gov (United States)

    Matthews, Karen A.; Gallo, Linda C.

    2011-01-01

    Low socioeconomic status (SES) is a reliable correlate of poor physical health. Rather than treat SES as a covariate, health psychology has increasingly focused on the psychobiological pathways that inform understanding why SES is related to physical health. This review assesses the status of research that has examined stress and its associated distress, and social and personal resources as pathways. It highlights work on biomarkers and biological pathways related to SES that can serve as intermediate outcomes in future studies. Recent emphasis on the accumulation of psychobiological risks across the life course is summarized and represents an important direction for future research. Studies that test pathways from SES to candidate psychosocial pathways to health outcomes are few in number but promising. Future research should test integrated models rather than taking piecemeal approaches to evidence. Much work remains to be done, but the questions are of great health significance. PMID:20636127

  20. Cost comparison of orthopaedic fracture pathways using discrete event simulation in a Glasgow hospital

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jenkins, Paul J; McDonald, David A; Van Der Meer, Robert; Morton, Alec; Nugent, Margaret; Rymaszewski, Lech A

    2017-01-01

    Objective Healthcare faces the continual challenge of improving outcome while aiming to reduce cost. The aim of this study was to determine the micro cost differences of the Glasgow non-operative trauma virtual pathway in comparison to a traditional pathway. Design Discrete event simulation was used to model and analyse cost and resource utilisation with an activity-based costing approach. Data for a full comparison before the process change was unavailable so we used a modelling approach, comparing a virtual fracture clinic (VFC) with a simulated traditional fracture clinic (TFC). Setting The orthopaedic unit VFC pathway pioneered at Glasgow Royal Infirmary has attracted significant attention and interest and is the focus of this cost study. Outcome measures Our study focused exclusively on patients with non-operative trauma attending emergency department or the minor injuries unit and the subsequent step in the patient pathway. Retrospective studies of patient outcomes as a result of the protocol introductions for specific injuries are presented in association with activity costs from the models. Results Patients are satisfied with the new pathway, the information provided and the outcome of their injuries (Evidence Level IV). There was a 65% reduction in the number of first outpatient face-to-face (f2f) attendances in orthopaedics. In the VFC pathway, the resources required per day were significantly lower for all staff groups (p≤0.001). The overall cost per patient of the VFC pathway was £22.84 (95% CI 21.74 to 23.92) per patient compared with £36.81 (95% CI 35.65 to 37.97) for the TFC pathway. Conclusions Our results give a clearer picture of the cost comparison of the virtual pathway over a wholly traditional f2f clinic system. The use of simulation-based stochastic costings in healthcare economic analysis has been limited to date, but this study provides evidence for adoption of this method as a basis for its application in other healthcare settings

  1. Predicting metabolic pathways by sub-network extraction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Faust, Karoline; van Helden, Jacques

    2012-01-01

    Various methods result in groups of functionally related genes obtained from genomes (operons, regulons, syntheny groups, and phylogenetic profiles), transcriptomes (co-expression groups) and proteomes (modules of interacting proteins). When such groups contain two or more enzyme-coding genes, graph analysis methods can be applied to extract a metabolic pathway that interconnects them. We describe here the way to use the Pathway extraction tool available on the NeAT Web server ( http://rsat.ulb.ac.be/neat/ ) to piece together the metabolic pathway from a group of associated, enzyme-coding genes. The tool identifies the reactions that can be catalyzed by the products of the query genes (seed reactions), and applies sub-graph extraction algorithms to extract from a metabolic network a sub-network that connects the seed reactions. This sub-network represents the predicted metabolic pathway. We describe here the pathway prediction process in a step-by-step way, give hints about the main parametric choices, and illustrate how this tool can be used to extract metabolic pathways from bacterial genomes, on the basis of two study cases: the isoleucine-valine operon in Escherichia coli and a predicted operon in Cupriavidus (Ralstonia) metallidurans.

  2. Pathway cross-talk network analysis identifies critical pathways in neonatal sepsis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Meng, Yu-Xiu; Liu, Quan-Hong; Chen, Deng-Hong; Meng, Ying

    2017-06-01

    Despite advances in neonatal care, sepsis remains a major cause of morbidity and mortality in neonates worldwide. Pathway cross-talk analysis might contribute to the inference of the driving forces in bacterial sepsis and facilitate a better understanding of underlying pathogenesis of neonatal sepsis. This study aimed to explore the critical pathways associated with the progression of neonatal sepsis by the pathway cross-talk analysis. By integrating neonatal transcriptome data with known pathway data and protein-protein interaction data, we systematically uncovered the disease pathway cross-talks and constructed a disease pathway cross-talk network for neonatal sepsis. Then, attract method was employed to explore the dysregulated pathways associated with neonatal sepsis. To determine the critical pathways in neonatal sepsis, rank product (RP) algorithm, centrality analysis and impact factor (IF) were introduced sequentially, which synthetically considered the differential expression of genes and pathways, pathways cross-talks and pathway parameters in the network. The dysregulated pathways with the highest IF values as well as RPpathways in neonatal sepsis. By integrating three kinds of data, only 6919 common genes were included to perform the pathway cross-talk analysis. By statistic analysis, a total of 1249 significant pathway cross-talks were selected to construct the pathway cross-talk network. Moreover, 47 dys-regulated pathways were identified via attract method, 20 pathways were identified under RPpathways with the highest IF were also screened from the pathway cross-talk network. Among them, we selected 8 common pathways, i.e. critical pathways. In this study, we systematically tracked 8 critical pathways involved in neonatal sepsis by integrating attract method and pathway cross-talk network. These pathways might be responsible for the host response in infection, and of great value for advancing diagnosis and therapy of neonatal sepsis. Copyright © 2017

  3. Enrofloxacin Permeation Pathways across the Porin OmpC.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Prajapati, Jigneshkumar Dahyabhai; Solano, Carlos José Fernández; Winterhalter, Mathias; Kleinekathöfer, Ulrich

    2018-02-01

    In Gram-negative bacteria, the lack or quenching of antibiotic translocation across the outer membrane is one of the main factors for acquiring antibiotic resistance. An atomic-level comprehension of the key features governing the transport of drugs by outer-membrane protein channels would be very helpful in developing the next generation of antibiotics. In a previous study [ J. D. Prajapati et al. J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2017 , 13 , 4553 ], we characterized the diffusion pathway of a ciprofloxacin molecule through the outer membrane porin OmpC of Escherichia coli by combining metadynamics and a zero-temperature string method. Here, we evaluate the diffusion route through the OmpC porin for a similar fluoroquinolone, that is, the enrofloxacin molecule, using the previously developed protocol. As a result, it was found that the lowest-energy pathway was similar to that for ciprofloxacin; namely, a reorientation was required on the extracellular side with the carboxyl group ahead before enrofloxacin reached the constriction region. In turn, the free-energy basins for both antibiotics are located at similar positions in the space defined by selected reaction coordinates, and their affinity sites share a wide number of porin residues. However, there are some important deviations due to the chemical differences of these two drugs. On the one hand, a slower diffusion process is expected for enrofloxacin, as the permeation pathway exhibits higher overall energy barriers, mainly in the constriction region. On the other hand, enrofloxacin needs to replace some polar interactions in its affinity sites with nonpolar ones. This study demonstrates how minor chemical modifications can qualitatively affect the translocation mechanism of an antibiotic molecule.

  4. PathJam: a new service for integrating biological pathway information

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Glez-Peña Daniel

    2010-03-01

    Full Text Available Biological pathways are crucial to much of the scientific research today including the study of specific biological processes related with human diseases. PathJam is a new comprehensive and freely accessible web-server application integrating scattered human pathway annotation from several public sources. The tool has been designed for both (i being intuitive for wet-lab users providing statistical enrichment analysis of pathway annotations and (ii giving support to the development of new integrative pathway applications. PathJam’s unique features and advantages include interactive graphs linking pathways and genes of interest, downloadable results in fully compatible formats, GSEA compatible output files and a standardized RESTful API.

  5. Spectral evidence for multi-pathway contribution to the upconversion pathway in NaYF4:Yb3+,Er3+ phosphors.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cho, Youngho; Song, Si Won; Lim, Soo Yeong; Kim, Jae Hun; Park, Chan Ryang; Kim, Hyung Min

    2017-03-08

    Although upconversion phosphors have been widely used in nanomedicine, laser engineering, bioimaging, and solar cell technology, the upconversion luminescence mechanism of the phosphors has been fiercely debated. A comprehensive understanding of upconversion photophysics has been significantly impeded because the number of photons incorporated in the process in different competitive pathways could not be resolved. Few convincing results to estimate the contribution of each of the two-, three-, and four-photon channels of near-infrared (NIR) energy have been reported in yielding upconverted visible luminescence. In this study, we present the energy upconversion process occurring in NaYF 4 :Yb 3+ ,Er 3+ phosphors as a function of excitation frequency and power density. We investigated the upconversion mechanism of lanthanide phosphors by comparing UV/VIS one-photon excitation spectra and NIR multi-photon spectra. A detailed analysis of minor transitions in one-photon spectra and luminescence decay enables us to assign electronic origins of individual bands in multi-photon upconversion luminescence and provides characteristic transitions representing the corresponding upconversion channel. Furthermore, we estimated the quantitative contribution of multiple channels with respect to irradiation power and excitation energy.

  6. Plasma metabolomics reveal the correlation of metabolic pathways and Prakritis of humans

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Amey Shirolkar

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available Background: Ayurveda, an ancient Indian medicinal system, has categorized human body constitutions in three broad constitutional types (prakritis i.e. Vata, Pitta and Kapha. Objectives: Analysis of plasma metabolites and related pathways to classify Prakriti specific dominant marker metabolites and metabolic pathways. Materials and methods: 38 healthy male individuals were assessed for dominant Prakritis and their fasting blood samples were collected. The processed plasma samples were subjected to rapid resolution liquid chromatography–electrospray ionization–quadrupole time of flight mass spectrometry (RRLC–ESI–QTOFMS. Mass profiles were aligned and subjected to multivariate analysis. Results: Partial least square discriminant analysis (PLS-DA model showed 97.87% recognition capability. List of PLS-DA metabolites was subjected to permutative Benjamini–Hochberg false discovery rate (FDR correction and final list of 76 metabolites with p  2.0 was identified. Pathway analysis using metascape and JEPETTO plugins in Cytoscape revealed that steroidal hormone biosynthesis, amino acid, and arachidonic acid metabolism are major pathways varying with different constitution. Biological Go processes analysis showed that aromatic amino acids, sphingolipids, and pyrimidine nucleotides metabolic processes were dominant in kapha type of body constitution. Fat soluble vitamins, cellular amino acid, and androgen biosynthesis process along with branched chain amino acid and glycerolipid catabolic processes were dominant in pitta type individuals. Vata Prakriti was found to have dominant catecholamine, arachidonic acid and hydrogen peroxide metabolomics processes. Conclusion: The neurotransmission and oxidative stress in vata, BCAA catabolic, androgen, xenobiotics metabolic processes in pitta, and aromatic amino acids, sphingolipid, and pyrimidine metabolic process in kapha Prakriti were the dominant marker pathways. Keywords: Ayurveda, Prakriti, Human

  7. Version control of pathway models using XML patches.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Saffrey, Peter; Orton, Richard

    2009-03-17

    Computational modelling has become an important tool in understanding biological systems such as signalling pathways. With an increase in size complexity of models comes a need for techniques to manage model versions and their relationship to one another. Model version control for pathway models shares some of the features of software version control but has a number of differences that warrant a specific solution. We present a model version control method, along with a prototype implementation, based on XML patches. We show its application to the EGF/RAS/RAF pathway. Our method allows quick and convenient storage of a wide range of model variations and enables a thorough explanation of these variations. Trying to produce these results without such methods results in slow and cumbersome development that is prone to frustration and human error.

  8. SKPDB: a structural database of shikimate pathway enzymes

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    de Azevedo Walter F

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The functional and structural characterisation of enzymes that belong to microbial metabolic pathways is very important for structure-based drug design. The main interest in studying shikimate pathway enzymes involves the fact that they are essential for bacteria but do not occur in humans, making them selective targets for design of drugs that do not directly impact humans. Description The ShiKimate Pathway DataBase (SKPDB is a relational database applied to the study of shikimate pathway enzymes in microorganisms and plants. The current database is updated regularly with the addition of new data; there are currently 8902 enzymes of the shikimate pathway from different sources. The database contains extensive information on each enzyme, including detailed descriptions about sequence, references, and structural and functional studies. All files (primary sequence, atomic coordinates and quality scores are available for downloading. The modeled structures can be viewed using the Jmol program. Conclusions The SKPDB provides a large number of structural models to be used in docking simulations, virtual screening initiatives and drug design. It is freely accessible at http://lsbzix.rc.unesp.br/skpdb/.

  9. Comparative techno-economic analysis and process design for indirect liquefaction pathways to distillate-range fuels via biomass-derived oxygenated intermediates upgrading: Liquid Transportation Fuel Production via Biomass-derived Oxygenated Intermediates Upgrading

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Tan, Eric C. D. [National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden CO USA; Snowden-Swan, Lesley J. [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland WA USA; Talmadge, Michael [National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden CO USA; Dutta, Abhijit [National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden CO USA; Jones, Susanne [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland WA USA; Ramasamy, Karthikeyan K. [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland WA USA; Gray, Michel [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland WA USA; Dagle, Robert [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland WA USA; Padmaperuma, Asanga [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland WA USA; Gerber, Mark [Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, Richland WA USA; Sahir, Asad H. [National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden CO USA; Tao, Ling [National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden CO USA; Zhang, Yanan [National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Golden CO USA

    2016-09-27

    This paper presents a comparative techno-economic analysis (TEA) of five conversion pathways from biomass to gasoline-, jet-, and diesel-range hydrocarbons via indirect liquefaction with specific focus on pathways utilizing oxygenated intermediates. The four emerging pathways of interest are compared with one conventional pathway (Fischer-Tropsch) for the production of the hydrocarbon blendstocks. The processing steps of the four emerging pathways include: biomass to syngas via indirect gasification, gas cleanup, conversion of syngas to alcohols/oxygenates followed by conversion of alcohols/oxygenates to hydrocarbon blendstocks via dehydration, oligomerization, and hydrogenation. Conversion of biomass-derived syngas to oxygenated intermediates occurs via three different pathways, producing: 1) mixed alcohols over a MoS2 catalyst, 2) mixed oxygenates (a mixture of C2+ oxygenated compounds, predominantly ethanol, acetic acid, acetaldehyde, ethyl acetate) using an Rh-based catalyst, and 3) ethanol from syngas fermentation. This is followed by the conversion of oxygenates/alcohols to fuel-range olefins in two approaches: 1) mixed alcohols/ethanol to 1-butanol rich mixture via Guerbet reaction, followed by alcohol dehydration, oligomerization, and hydrogenation, and 2) mixed oxygenates/ethanol to isobutene rich mixture and followed by oligomerization and hydrogenation. The design features a processing capacity of 2,000 tonnes/day (2,205 short tons) of dry biomass. The minimum fuel selling prices (MFSPs) for the four developing pathways range from $3.40 to $5.04 per gasoline-gallon equivalent (GGE), in 2011 US dollars. Sensitivity studies show that MFSPs can be improved with co-product credits and are comparable to the commercial Fischer-Tropsch benchmark ($3.58/GGE). Overall, this comparative TEA study documents potential economics for the developmental biofuel pathways via mixed oxygenates.

  10. Harnessing natural diversity to probe metabolic pathways.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Oliver R Homann

    2005-12-01

    Full Text Available Analyses of cellular processes in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae rely primarily upon a small number of highly domesticated laboratory strains, leaving the extensive natural genetic diversity of the model organism largely unexplored and unexploited. We asked if this diversity could be used to enrich our understanding of basic biological processes. As a test case, we examined a simple trait: the utilization of di/tripeptides as nitrogen sources. The capacity to import small peptides is likely to be under opposing selective pressures (nutrient utilization versus toxin vulnerability and may therefore be sculpted by diverse pathways and strategies. Hitherto, dipeptide utilization in S. cerevisiae was solely ascribed to the activity of a single protein, the Ptr2p transporter. Using high-throughput phenotyping and several genetically diverse strains, we identified previously unknown cellular activities that contribute to this trait. We find that the Dal5p allantoate/ureidosuccinate permease is also capable of facilitating di/tripeptide transport. Moreover, even in the absence of Dal5p and Ptr2p, an additional activity--almost certainly the periplasmic asparaginase II Asp3p--facilitates the utilization of dipeptides with C-terminal asparagine residues by a different strategy. Another, as-yet-unidentified activity enables the utilization of dipeptides with C-terminal arginine residues. The relative contributions of these activities to the utilization of di/tripeptides vary among the strains analyzed, as does the vulnerability of these strains to a toxic dipeptide. Only by sampling the genetic diversity of multiple strains were we able to uncover several previously unrecognized layers of complexity in this metabolic pathway. High-throughput phenotyping facilitates the rapid exploration of the molecular basis of biological complexity, allowing for future detailed investigation of the selective pressures that drive microbial evolution.

  11. Computational identification of signalling pathways in Plasmodium falciparum.

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    Oyelade, Jelili; Ewejobi, Itunu; Brors, Benedikt; Eils, Roland; Adebiyi, Ezekiel

    2011-06-01

    Malaria is one of the world's most common and serious diseases causing death of about 3 million people each year. Its most severe occurrence is caused by the protozoan Plasmodium falciparum. Reports have shown that the resistance of the parasite to existing drugs is increasing. Therefore, there is a huge and urgent need to discover and validate new drug or vaccine targets to enable the development of new treatments for malaria. The ability to discover these drug or vaccine targets can only be enhanced from our deep understanding of the detailed biology of the parasite, for example how cells function and how proteins organize into modules such as metabolic, regulatory and signal transduction pathways. It has been noted that the knowledge of signalling transduction pathways in Plasmodium is fundamental to aid the design of new strategies against malaria. This work uses a linear-time algorithm for finding paths in a network under modified biologically motivated constraints. We predicted several important signalling transduction pathways in Plasmodium falciparum. We have predicted a viable signalling pathway characterized in terms of the genes responsible that may be the PfPKB pathway recently elucidated in Plasmodium falciparum. We obtained from the FIKK family, a signal transduction pathway that ends up on a chloroquine resistance marker protein, which indicates that interference with FIKK proteins might reverse Plasmodium falciparum from resistant to sensitive phenotype. We also proposed a hypothesis that showed the FIKK proteins in this pathway as enabling the resistance parasite to have a mechanism for releasing chloroquine (via an efflux process). Furthermore, we also predicted a signalling pathway that may have been responsible for signalling the start of the invasion process of Red Blood Cell (RBC) by the merozoites. It has been noted that the understanding of this pathway will give insight into the parasite virulence and will facilitate rational vaccine design

  12. A review of the evidence for the canonical Wnt pathway in autism spectrum disorders

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    Kalkman Hans

    2012-10-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Microdeletion and microduplication copy number variations are found in patients with autism spectrum disorder and in a number of cases they include genes that are involved in the canonical Wnt signaling pathway (for example, FZD9, BCL9 or CDH8. Association studies investigating WNT2, DISC1, MET, DOCK4 or AHI1 also provide evidence that the canonical Wnt pathway might be affected in autism. Prenatal medication with sodium-valproate or antidepressant drugs increases autism risk. In animal studies, it has been found that these medications promote Wnt signaling, including among others an increase in Wnt2 gene expression. Notably, the available genetic information indicates that not only canonical Wnt pathway activation, but also inhibition seems to increase autism risk. The canonical Wnt pathway plays a role in dendrite growth and suboptimal activity negatively affects the dendritic arbor. In principle, this provides a logical explanation as to why both hypo- and hyperactivity may generate a similar set of behavioral and cognitive symptoms. However, without a validated biomarker to stratify for deviant canonical Wnt pathway activity, it is probably too dangerous to treat patients with compounds that modify pathway activity.

  13. Normal mode-guided transition pathway generation in proteins.

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    Byung Ho Lee

    Full Text Available The biological function of proteins is closely related to its structural motion. For instance, structurally misfolded proteins do not function properly. Although we are able to experimentally obtain structural information on proteins, it is still challenging to capture their dynamics, such as transition processes. Therefore, we need a simulation method to predict the transition pathways of a protein in order to understand and study large functional deformations. Here, we present a new simulation method called normal mode-guided elastic network interpolation (NGENI that performs normal modes analysis iteratively to predict transition pathways of proteins. To be more specific, NGENI obtains displacement vectors that determine intermediate structures by interpolating the distance between two end-point conformations, similar to a morphing method called elastic network interpolation. However, the displacement vector is regarded as a linear combination of the normal mode vectors of each intermediate structure, in order to enhance the physical sense of the proposed pathways. As a result, we can generate more reasonable transition pathways geometrically and thermodynamically. By using not only all normal modes, but also in part using only the lowest normal modes, NGENI can still generate reasonable pathways for large deformations in proteins. This study shows that global protein transitions are dominated by collective motion, which means that a few lowest normal modes play an important role in this process. NGENI has considerable merit in terms of computational cost because it is possible to generate transition pathways by partial degrees of freedom, while conventional methods are not capable of this.

  14. Synthetic metabolic engineering-a novel, simple technology for designing a chimeric metabolic pathway

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    Ye Xiaoting

    2012-09-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background The integration of biotechnology into chemical manufacturing has been recognized as a key technology to build a sustainable society. However, the practical applications of biocatalytic chemical conversions are often restricted due to their complexities involving the unpredictability of product yield and the troublesome controls in fermentation processes. One of the possible strategies to overcome these limitations is to eliminate the use of living microorganisms and to use only enzymes involved in the metabolic pathway. Use of recombinant mesophiles producing thermophilic enzymes at high temperature results in denaturation of indigenous proteins and elimination of undesired side reactions; consequently, highly selective and stable biocatalytic modules can be readily prepared. By rationally combining those modules together, artificial synthetic pathways specialized for chemical manufacturing could be designed and constructed. Results A chimeric Embden-Meyerhof (EM pathway with balanced consumption and regeneration of ATP and ADP was constructed by using nine recombinant E. coli strains overproducing either one of the seven glycolytic enzymes of Thermus thermophilus, the cofactor-independent phosphoglycerate mutase of Pyrococcus horikoshii, or the non-phosphorylating glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase of Thermococcus kodakarensis. By coupling this pathway with the Thermus malate/lactate dehydrogenase, a stoichiometric amount of lactate was produced from glucose with an overall ATP turnover number of 31. Conclusions In this study, a novel and simple technology for flexible design of a bespoke metabolic pathway was developed. The concept has been testified via a non-ATP-forming chimeric EM pathway. We designated this technology as “synthetic metabolic engineering”. Our technology is, in principle, applicable to all thermophilic enzymes as long as they can be functionally expressed in the host, and thus would be

  15. Isotopic evidence for nitrous oxide production pathways in a partial nitritation-anammox reactor.

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    Harris, Eliza; Joss, Adriano; Emmenegger, Lukas; Kipf, Marco; Wolf, Benjamin; Mohn, Joachim; Wunderlin, Pascal

    2015-10-15

    Nitrous oxide (N2O) production pathways in a single stage, continuously fed partial nitritation-anammox reactor were investigated using online isotopic analysis of offgas N2O with quantum cascade laser absorption spectroscopy (QCLAS). N2O emissions increased when reactor operating conditions were not optimal, for example, high dissolved oxygen concentration. SP measurements indicated that the increase in N2O was due to enhanced nitrifier denitrification, generally related to nitrite build-up in the reactor. The results of this study confirm that process control via online N2O monitoring is an ideal method to detect imbalances in reactor operation and regulate aeration, to ensure optimal reactor conditions and minimise N2O emissions. Under normal operating conditions, the N2O isotopic site preference (SP) was much higher than expected - up to 40‰ - which could not be explained within the current understanding of N2O production pathways. Various targeted experiments were conducted to investigate the characteristics of N2O formation in the reactor. The high SP measurements during both normal operating and experimental conditions could potentially be explained by a number of hypotheses: i) unexpectedly strong heterotrophic N2O reduction, ii) unknown inorganic or anammox-associated N2O production pathway, iii) previous underestimation of SP fractionation during N2O production from NH2OH, or strong variations in SP from this pathway depending on reactor conditions. The second hypothesis - an unknown or incompletely characterised production pathway - was most consistent with results, however the other possibilities cannot be discounted. Further experiments are needed to distinguish between these hypotheses and fully resolve N2O production pathways in PN-anammox systems. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  16. Designing a Care Pathway Model - A Case Study of the Outpatient Total Hip Arthroplasty Care Pathway.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Oosterholt, Robin I; Simonse, Lianne Wl; Boess, Stella U; Vehmeijer, Stephan Bw

    2017-03-09

    Although the clinical attributes of total hip arthroplasty (THA) care pathways have been thoroughly researched, a detailed understanding of the equally important organisational attributes is still lacking. The aim of this article is to contribute with a model of the outpatient THA care pathway that depicts how the care team should be organised to enable patient discharge on the day of surgery. The outpatient THA care pathway enables patients to be discharged on the day of surgery, shortening the length of stay and intensifying the provision and organisation of care. We utilise visual care modelling to construct a visual design of the organisation of the care pathway. An embedded case study was conducted of the outpatient THA care pathway at a teaching hospital in the Netherlands. The data were collected using a visual care modelling toolkit in 16 semi-structured interviews. Problems and inefficiencies in the care pathway were identified and addressed in the iterative design process. The results are two visual models of the most critical phases of the outpatient THA care pathway: diagnosis & preparation (1) and mobilisation & discharge (4). The results show the care team composition, critical value exchanges, and sequence that enable patient discharge on the day of surgery. The design addressed existing problems and is an optimisation of the case hospital's pathway. The network of actors consists of the patient (1), radiologist (1), anaesthetist (1), nurse specialist (1), pharmacist (1), orthopaedic surgeon (1,4), physiotherapist (1,4), nurse (4), doctor (4) and patient application (1,4). The critical value exchanges include patient preparation (mental and practical), patient education, aligned care team, efficient sequence of value exchanges, early patient mobilisation, flexible availability of the physiotherapist, functional discharge criteria, joint decision making and availability of the care team.

  17. Iodinated contrast media electro-degradation: process performance and degradation pathways.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Del Moro, Guido; Pastore, Carlo; Di Iaconi, Claudio; Mascolo, Giuseppe

    2015-02-15

    The electrochemical degradation of six of the most widely used iodinated contrast media was investigated. Batch experiments were performed under constant current conditions using two DSA® electrodes (titanium coated with a proprietary and patented mixed metal oxide solution of precious metals such as iridium, ruthenium, platinum, rhodium and tantalum). The degradation removal never fell below 85% (at a current density of 64 mA/cm(2) with a reaction time of 150 min) when perchlorate was used as the supporting electrolyte; however, when sulphate was used, the degradation performance was above 80% (at a current density of 64 mA/cm(2) with a reaction time of 150 min) for all of the compounds studied. Three main degradation pathways were identified, namely, the reductive de-iodination of the aromatic ring, the reduction of alkyl aromatic amides to simple amides and the de-acylation of N-aromatic amides to produce aromatic amines. However, as amidotrizoate is an aromatic carboxylate, this is added via the decarboxylation reaction. The investigation did not reveal toxicity except for the lower current density used, which has shown a modest toxicity, most likely for some reaction intermediates that are not further degraded. In order to obtain total removal of the contrast media, it was necessary to employ a current intensity between 118 and 182 mA/cm(2) with energy consumption higher than 370 kWh/m(3). Overall, the electrochemical degradation was revealed to be a reliable process for the treatment of iodinated contrast media that can be found in contaminated waters such as hospital wastewater or pharmaceutical waste-contaminated streams. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  18. Validation of RetroPath, a computer-aided design tool for metabolic pathway engineering.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fehér, Tamás; Planson, Anne-Gaëlle; Carbonell, Pablo; Fernández-Castané, Alfred; Grigoras, Ioana; Dariy, Ekaterina; Perret, Alain; Faulon, Jean-Loup

    2014-11-01

    Metabolic engineering has succeeded in biosynthesis of numerous commodity or high value compounds. However, the choice of pathways and enzymes used for production was many times made ad hoc, or required expert knowledge of the specific biochemical reactions. In order to rationalize the process of engineering producer strains, we developed the computer-aided design (CAD) tool RetroPath that explores and enumerates metabolic pathways connecting the endogenous metabolites of a chassis cell to the target compound. To experimentally validate our tool, we constructed 12 top-ranked enzyme combinations producing the flavonoid pinocembrin, four of which displayed significant yields. Namely, our tool queried the enzymes found in metabolic databases based on their annotated and predicted activities. Next, it ranked pathways based on the predicted efficiency of the available enzymes, the toxicity of the intermediate metabolites and the calculated maximum product flux. To implement the top-ranking pathway, our procedure narrowed down a list of nine million possible enzyme combinations to 12, a number easily assembled and tested. One round of metabolic network optimization based on RetroPath output further increased pinocembrin titers 17-fold. In total, 12 out of the 13 enzymes tested in this work displayed a relative performance that was in accordance with its predicted score. These results validate the ranking function of our CAD tool, and open the way to its utilization in the biosynthesis of novel compounds. Copyright © 2014 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

  19. DISC1 pathway in brain development: exploring therapeutic targets for major psychiatric disorders

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    Atsushi eKamiya

    2012-03-01

    Full Text Available Genetic risk factors for major psychiatric disorders play key roles in neurodevelopment. Thus, exploring the molecular pathways of risk genes is important not only for understanding the molecular mechanisms underlying brain development, but also to decipher how genetic disturbances affect brain maturation and functioning relevant to major mental illnesses. During the last decade, there has been significant progress in determining the mechanisms whereby risk genes impact brain development. Nonetheless, given that the majority of psychiatric disorders have etiological complexities encompassing multiple risk genes and environmental factors, the biological mechanisms of these diseases remain poorly understood. How can we move forward in our research for discovery of the biological markers and novel therapeutic targets for major mental disorders? Here we review recent progress in the neurobiology of Disrupted in schizophrenia 1 (DISC1, a major risk gene for major mental disorders, with a particular focus on its roles in cerebral cortex development. Convergent findings implicate DISC1 as part of a large, multi-step pathway implicated in various cellular processes and signal transduction. We discuss links between the DISC1 pathway and environmental factors, such as immune/inflammatory responses, which may suggest novel therapeutic targets. Existing treatments for major mental disorders are hampered by a limited number of pharmacological targets. Consequently, elucidation of the DISC1 pathway, and its association with neuropsychiatric disorders, may offer hope for novel treatment interventions.

  20. Making Sense of the Yeast Sphingolipid Pathway.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Megyeri, Márton; Riezman, Howard; Schuldiner, Maya; Futerman, Anthony H

    2016-12-04

    Sphingolipids (SL) and their metabolites play key roles both as structural components of membranes and as signaling molecules. Many of the key enzymes and regulators of SL metabolism were discovered using the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and based on the high degree of conservation, a number of mammalian homologs were identified. Although yeast continues to be an important tool for SL research, the complexity of SL structure and nomenclature often hampers the ability of new researchers to grasp the subtleties of yeast SL biology and discover new modulators of this intricate pathway. Moreover, the emergence of lipidomics by mass spectrometry has enabled the rapid identification of SL species in yeast and rendered the analysis of SL composition under various physiological and pathophysiological conditions readily amenable. However, the complex nomenclature of the identified species renders much of the data inaccessible to non-specialists. In this review, we focus on parsing both the classical SL nomenclature and the nomenclature normally used during mass spectrometry analysis, which should facilitate the understanding of yeast SL data and might shed light on biological processes in which SLs are involved. Finally, we discuss a number of putative roles of various yeast SL species. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  1. A critical assessment of theoretical methods for finding reaction pathways and transition states of surface processes

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Klimes, JirI; Michaelides, Angelos; Bowler, David R

    2010-01-01

    The performance of a variety of techniques for locating transition states on potential energy surfaces is evaluated within the density functional theory framework. Diffusion of a water molecule across NaCl(001) and HCl bond breaking on the same surface are treated as general test cases; the former is an example of a low barrier diffusion process and the latter an example of a relatively high barrier covalent bond rupture event. The methods considered include the nudged elastic band (NEB), Dewar, Healy and Stewart (DHS), dimer, constrained optimization (CO), activation-relaxation technique (ART) and one-side growing string (OGS) as well as novel combinations of the DHS with growing string (DHS + GS) and DHS plus climbing image (CI-DHS). A key conclusion to come from this study is that the NEB method is relatively fast, especially when just a single (climbing) image is used. Indeed, using more images represents an unnecessary computational burden for our set of processes. The dimer method exhibits variable performance; being poor for the water diffusion processes, which have small activation energies, but much more efficient for the HCl bond breaking process which has a higher barrier. When only a poor initial guess of the transition state geometry is available, the CI-DHS scheme is one of the most efficient techniques considered. And as a means to quickly establish an approximate minimum energy pathway the DHS + GS scheme offers some potential.

  2. Data mining of the transcriptome of Plasmodium falciparum: the pentose phosphate pathway and ancillary processes

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    Ginsburg Hagai

    2005-03-01

    Full Text Available Abstract The general paradigm that emerges from the analysis of the transcriptome of the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum is that the expression clusters of genes that code for enzymes engaged in the same cellular function is coordinated. Here the consistency of this perception is examined by analysing specific pathways that metabolically-linked. The pentose phosphate pathway (PPP is a fundamental element of cell biochemistry since it is the major pathway for the recycling of NADP+ to NADPH and for the production of ribose-5-phosphate that is needed for the synthesis of nucleotides. The function of PPP depends on the synthesis of NADP+ and thiamine pyrophosphate, a co-enzyme of the PPP enzyme transketolase. In this essay, the transcription of gene coding for enzymes involved in the PPP, thiamine and NAD(P+ syntheses are analysed. The genes coding for two essential enzymes in these pathways, transaldolase and NAD+ kinase could not be found in the genome of P. falciparum. It is found that the transcription of the genes of each pathway is not always coordinated and there is usually a gene whose transcription sets the latest time for the full deployment of the pathway's activity. The activity of PPP seems to involve only the oxidative arm of PPP that is geared for maximal NADP+ reduction and ribose-5-phosphate production during the early stages of parasite development. The synthesis of thiamine diphosphate is predicted to occur much later than the expression of transketolase. Later in the parasite cycle, the non-oxidative arm of PPP that can use fructose-6-phosphate and glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate supplied by glycolysis, becomes fully deployed allowing to maximize the production of ribose-5-phosphate. These discrepancies require direct biochemical investigations to test the activities of the various enzymes in the developing parasite. Notably, several transcripts of PPP enzyme-coding genes display biphasic pattern of transcription unlike most

  3. Protective effect of resveratrol against nigrostriatal pathway injury in striatum via JNK pathway.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Dan; Liu, Nan; Zhao, Liang; Tong, Lei; Kawano, Hitoshi; Yan, Hong-Jing; Li, Hong-Peng

    2017-01-01

    Nigrostriatal pathway injury is one of the traumatic brain injury models that usually lead to neurological dysfunction or neuron necrosis. Resveratrol-induced benefits have recently been demonstrated in several models of neuronal degeneration diseases. However, the protective properties of resveratrol against neurodegeneration have not been explored definitely. Thus, we employ the nigrostriatal pathway injury model to mimic the insults on the brain. Resveratrol decreased the p-ERK expression and increased the p-JNK expression compared to the DMSO group, but not alter the p38 MAPK proteins around the lesion site by Western blot. Prior to the injury, mice were infused with resveratrol intracerebroventricularly with or without JNK-IN-8, a specific c-JNK pathway inhibitor for JNK1, JNK2 and JNK4. The study assessed modified improved neurological function score (mNSS) and beam/walking test, the level of inflammatory cytokines IL-1β, IL-6 and TNF-α, and striatal expression of Bax and Bcl-2 proteins associated with neuronal apoptosis. The results revealed that resveratrol exerted a neuroprotective effect as shown by the improved mNSS and beam latency, anti-inflammatory effects as indicated by the decreased level of IL-1β, TNF-α and IL-6. Furthermore, resveratrol up-regulated the protein expression of p-JNK and Bcl-2, down-regulated the expression of Bax and the number of Fluoro-Jade C (FJC) positive neurons. However, these advantages of resveratrol were abolished by JNK-IN-8 treatment. Overall, we demonstrated that resveratrol treatment attenuates the nigrostriatal pathway injury-induced neuronal apoptosis and inflammation via activation of c-JNK signaling. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  4. Infectious Entry Pathway of Enterovirus B Species

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    Varpu Marjomäki

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available Enterovirus B species (EV-B are responsible for a vast number of mild and serious acute infections. They are also suspected of remaining in the body, where they cause persistent infections contributing to chronic diseases such as type I diabetes. Recent studies of the infectious entry pathway of these viruses revealed remarkable similarities, including non-clathrin entry of large endosomes originating from the plasma membrane invaginations. Many cellular factors regulating the efficient entry have recently been associated with macropinocytic uptake, such as Rac1, serine/threonine p21-activated kinase (Pak1, actin, Na/H exchanger, phospholipace C (PLC and protein kinase Cα (PKCα. Another characteristic feature is the entry of these viruses to neutral endosomes, independence of endosomal acidification and low association with acidic lysosomes. The biogenesis of neutral multivesicular bodies is crucial for their infection, at least for echovirus 1 (E1 and coxsackievirus A9 (CVA9. These pathways are triggered by the virus binding to their receptors on the plasma membrane, and they are not efficiently recycled like other cellular pathways used by circulating receptors. Therefore, the best “markers” of these pathways may be the viruses and often their receptors. A deeper understanding of this pathway and associated endosomes is crucial in elucidating the mechanisms of enterovirus uncoating and genome release from the endosomes to start efficient replication.

  5. The glycolytic pathway of Trimastix pyriformis is an evolutionary mosaic

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    Silberman Jeffrey D

    2006-11-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Glycolysis and subsequent fermentation is the main energy source for many anaerobic organisms. The glycolytic pathway consists of ten enzymatic steps which appear to be universal amongst eukaryotes. However, it has been shown that the origins of these enzymes in specific eukaryote lineages can differ, and sometimes involve lateral gene transfer events. We have conducted an expressed sequence tag (EST survey of the anaerobic flagellate Trimastix pyriformis to investigate the nature of the evolutionary origins of the glycolytic enzymes in this relatively unstudied organism. Results We have found genes in the Trimastix EST data that encode enzymes potentially catalyzing nine of the ten steps of the glycolytic conversion of glucose to pyruvate. Furthermore, we have found two different enzymes that in principle could catalyze the conversion of phosphoenol pyruvate (PEP to pyruvate (or the reverse reaction as part of the last step in glycolysis. Our phylogenetic analyses of all of these enzymes revealed at least four cases where the relationship of the Trimastix genes to homologs from other species is at odds with accepted organismal relationships. Although lateral gene transfer events likely account for these anomalies, with the data at hand we were not able to establish with confidence the bacterial donor lineage that gave rise to the respective Trimastix enzymes. Conclusion A number of the glycolytic enzymes of Trimastix have been transferred laterally from bacteria instead of being inherited from the last common eukaryotic ancestor. Thus, despite widespread conservation of the glycolytic biochemical pathway across eukaryote diversity, in a number of protist lineages the enzymatic components of the pathway have been replaced by lateral gene transfer from disparate evolutionary sources. It remains unclear if these replacements result from selectively advantageous properties of the introduced enzymes or if they are neutral

  6. Investigating multiple dysregulated pathways in rheumatoid arthritis based on pathway interaction network.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Song, Xian-Dong; Song, Xian-Xu; Liu, Gui-Bo; Ren, Chun-Hui; Sun, Yuan-Bo; Liu, Ke-Xin; Liu, Bo; Liang, Shuang; Zhu, Zhu

    2018-03-01

    The traditional methods of identifying biomarkers in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) have focussed on the differentially expressed pathways or individual pathways, which however, neglect the interactions between pathways. To better understand the pathogenesis of RA, we aimed to identify dysregulated pathway sets using a pathway interaction network (PIN), which considered interactions among pathways. Firstly, RA-related gene expression profile data, protein-protein interactions (PPI) data and pathway data were taken up from the corresponding databases. Secondly, principal component analysis method was used to calculate the pathway activity of each of the pathway, and then a seed pathway was identified using data gleaned from the pathway activity. A PIN was then constructed based on the gene expression profile, pathway data, and PPI information. Finally, the dysregulated pathways were extracted from the PIN based on the seed pathway using the method of support vector machines and an area under the curve (AUC) index. The PIN comprised of a total of 854 pathways and 1064 pathway interactions. The greatest change in the activity score between RA and control samples was observed in the pathway of epigenetic regulation of gene expression, which was extracted and regarded as the seed pathway. Starting with this seed pathway, one maximum pathway set containing 10 dysregulated pathways was extracted from the PIN, having an AUC of 0.8249, and the result indicated that this pathway set could distinguish RA from the controls. These 10 dysregulated pathways might be potential biomarkers for RA diagnosis and treatment in the future.

  7. The role of clinical pathway on the outcomes of ischemic stroke patients at Bethesda Hospital Yogyakarta

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    Francisca Diana Alexandra, Iwan Dwiprahasto, Rizaldy Pinzon

    2014-04-01

    Full Text Available Stroke becomes world health problem all over the world because it is the causal factor of high mortality and disability. Good and well-organized process of healthcare service will improve the outcome of the patients with stroke. Clinical pathway may be used as clear standard to help reduce unnecessary variations of medical treatment and measure. The study aimed at finding out the correlation between the use of clinical pathway and the outcome of the patients with ischemic stroke in Bethesda Hospital Yogyakarta. It was an observational and analytic study with cohort restorative study design. The author compared the outcomes of acute ischemic stroke between the group with clinical pathway and the group without the clinical pathway. Data was collected using consecutive sampling from the electronic registry and medical record data of the patients from January 1st, 2011 to December 31st, 2011. It was conducted to 124 patients with ischemic stroke assigned to two groups (the first groups of 62 patients with clinical pathway and the second groups of 62 patients without clinical pathway. The basic characteristics of the two groups were the same. The results of the analysis showed that there was a significant decrease in the incidence of complication and a significant increase in the use of antiplatelete drugs, antidiabetic drugs and statin as secondary preventive measure of the recurrent stroke. There was not any significant difference in the duration of the hospitalized healthcare, the financing and the mortality between the two observation groups. The study indicated that the use of the clinical pathway in the stroke treatment improved the outcome of the patients with stroke. It was necessary to conduct further study to evaluate the effectiveness of the clinical pathway in improving the outcome of the patients with bigger number of the subjects and the longer period of time.

  8. In vivo imaging of Hedgehog pathway activation with a nuclear fluorescent reporter.

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    John K Mich

    Full Text Available The Hedgehog (Hh pathway is essential for embryonic development and tissue regeneration, and its dysregulation can lead to birth defects and tumorigenesis. Understanding how this signaling mechanism contributes to these processes would benefit from an ability to visualize Hedgehog pathway activity in live organisms, in real time, and with single-cell resolution. We report here the generation of transgenic zebrafish lines that express nuclear-localized mCherry fluorescent protein in a Gli transcription factor-dependent manner. As demonstrated by chemical and genetic perturbations, these lines faithfully report Hedgehog pathway state in individual cells and with high detection sensitivity. They will be valuable tools for studying dynamic Gli-dependent processes in vertebrates and for identifying new chemical and genetic regulators of the Hh pathway.

  9. Electrokinetic demonstration at Sandia National Laboratories: Use of transference numbers for site characterization and process evaluation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Lindgren, E.R.; Mattson, E.D.

    1997-01-01

    Electrokinetic remediation is generally an in situ method using direct current electric potentials to move ionic contaminants and/or water to collection electrodes. The method has been extensively studied for application in saturated clayey soils. Over the past few years, an electrokinetic extraction method specific for sandy, unsaturated soils has been developed and patented by Sandia National Laboratories. A RCRA RD ampersand D permitted demonstration of this technology for the in situ removal of chromate contamination from unsaturated soils in a former chromic acid disposal pit was operated during the summer and fall of 1996. This large scale field test represents the first use of electrokinetics for the removal of heavy metal contamination from unsaturated soils in the United States and is part of the US EPA Superfund Innovative Technology Evaluation (SITE) Program. Guidelines for characterizing a site for electrokinetic remediation are lacking, especially for applications in unsaturated soil. The transference number of an ion is the fraction of the current carried by that ion in an electric field and represents the best measure of contaminant removal efficiency in most electrokinetic remediation processes. In this paper we compare the transference number of chromate initially present in the contaminated unsaturated soil, with the transference number in the electrokinetic process effluent to demonstrate the utility of evaluating this parameter

  10. Clinical pathways for inborn errors of metabolism: warranted and feasible

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    Demirdas Serwet

    2013-02-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Inborn errors of metabolism (IEMs are known for their low prevalence and multidisciplinary care mostly founded on expert opinion. Clinical pathways are multidisciplinary tools to organise care which provide a clear route to the best care and improve communication. In 2010 the Dutch Society for Children and Adults with an Inborn Error of Metabolism (VKS initiated development of clinical pathways for inborn errors of metabolism. In this letter to the editor we describe why it is warranted to develop clinical pathways for IEMs and shortly discuss the process of development for these pathways in the Netherlands.

  11. Pathways of number line development in childeren: Predictors and risk for adverse mathematical outcome

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Friso-van den Bos, I.; van Luit, J.E.H.; Kroesbergen, E.H.; Xenidou-Dervou, I.; van der Schoot, M.; van Lieshout, E.C.D.M.; Jonkman, L.M.

    2015-01-01

    Dyscalculia, or mathematics learning disability, has received growing attention in recent years. Working memory and number sense are hypothesized to form important determinants of dyscalculia, but longitudinal assessments of number sense in children with or at-risk for dyscalculia are scarce. The

  12. Distribution of δ-aminolevulinic acid biosynthetic pathways among phototrophic and related bacteria

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Avissar, Y.J.; Beale, S.I.; Ormerod, J.G.

    1989-01-01

    Two biosynthetic pathways are known for the universal tetrapyrrole precursor, δ-aminolevulinic acid (ALA): condensation of glycine and succinyl-CoA to form ALA with the loss of C-1 of glycine as CO 2 , and conversion of the intact carbon skeleton of glutamate to ALA in a process requiring tRNA Glu , ATP, Mg 2+ , NADPH, and pyridoxal phosphate. The distribution of the two ALA biosynthetic pathways among various bacterial genera was determined, using cell-free extracts obtained from representative organisms. Evidence for the operation of the glutamate pathway was obtained by the measurement of RNase-sensitive label incorporation from glutamate into ALA using 3,4-[ 3 H]glutamate and 1-[ 14 C]glutamate as substrate. The glycine pathway was indicated by RNase-insensitive incorporation of level from 2-[ 14 C]glycine into ALA. The distribution of the two pathways among the bacteria tested was in general agreement with their previously phylogenetic relationships and clearly indicates that the glutamate pathway is the more ancient process, whereas the glycine pathway probably evolved much later. The glutamate pathway is the more widely utilized one among bacteria, while the glycine pathway is apparently limited to the α subgroup of purple bacteria (including Rhodobacter, Rhodospirillum, and Rhizobium). E. coli was found ALA via the glutamate pathway. The ALA-requiring hemA mutant of E. coli was determined to lack the dehydrogenase activity that utilizes glutamyl-tRNA as a substrate

  13. Antagonism between Hedgehog and Wnt signaling pathways regulates tumorigenicity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ding, Mei; Wang, Xin

    2017-12-01

    The crosstalk of multiple cellular signaling pathways is crucial in animal development and tissue homeostasis, and its dysregulation may result in tumor formation and metastasis. The Hedgehog (Hh) and Wnt signaling pathways are both considered to be essential regulators of cell proliferation, differentiation and oncogenesis. Recent studies have indicated that the Hh and Wnt signaling pathways are closely associated and involved in regulating embryogenesis and cellular differentiation. Hh signaling acts upstream of the Wnt signaling pathway, and negative regulates Wnt activity via secreted frizzled-related protein 1 (SFRP1), and the Wnt/β-catenin pathway downregulates Hh activity through glioma-associated oncogene homolog 3 transcriptional regulation. This evidence suggests that the imbalance of Hh and Wnt regulation serves a crucial role in cancer-associated processes. The activation of SFRP1, which inhibits Wnt, has been demonstrated to be an important cross-point between the two signaling pathways. The present study reviews the complex interaction between the Hh and Wnt signaling pathways in embryogenesis and tumorigenicity, and the role of SFRP1 as an important mediator associated with the dysregulation of the Hh and Wnt signaling pathways.

  14. Avian metapneumovirus subgroup C induces autophagy through the ATF6 UPR pathway.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hou, Lei; Wei, Li; Zhu, Shanshan; Wang, Jing; Quan, Rong; Li, Zixuan; Liu, Jue

    2017-10-03

    An increasing number of studies have demonstrated that macroautophagy/autophagy plays an important role in the infectious processes of diverse pathogens. However, it remains unknown whether autophagy is induced in avian metapneumovirus (aMPV)-infected host cells, and, if so, how this occurs. Here, we report that aMPV subgroup C (aMPV/C) induces autophagy in cultured cells. We demonstrated this relationship by detecting classical autophagic features, including the formation of autophagsomes, the presence of GFP-LC3 puncta and the conversation of LC3-I into LC3-II. Also, we used pharmacological regulators and siRNAs targeting ATG7 or LC3 to examine the role of autophagy in aMPV/C replication. The results showed that autophagy is required for efficient replication of aMPV/C. Moreover, infection with aMPV/C promotes autophagosome maturation and induces a complete autophagic process. Finally, the ATF6 pathway, of which one component is the unfolded protein response (UPR), becomes activated in aMPV/C-infected cells. Knockdown of ATF6 inhibited aMPV/C-induced autophagy and viral replication. Collectively, these results not only show that autophagy promotes aMPV/C replication in the cultured cells, but also reveal that the molecular mechanisms underlying aMPV/C-induced autophagy depends on regulation of the ER stress-related UPR pathway.

  15. Optokinetic stimulation modulates neglect for the number space: Evidence from mental number interval bisection

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Konstantinos ePriftis

    2012-02-01

    Full Text Available Behavioral, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging data support the idea that numbers are represented along a mental number line (MNL, an analogical, visuo-spatial representation of number magnitude. The MNL is left-to-right oriented, with small numbers on the left and larger numbers on the right. Left neglect patients are impaired in processing the left side of the MNL and show a rightward deviation in the mental bisection of numerical intervals. In the present study we investigated the effects of optokinetic stimulation (OKS -a technique inducing spatial attention shifts by means of activation of the optokinetic nystagmus- on mental number interval bisection. One patient with left neglect following right hemisphere stroke (BG and four control patients with right hemisphere damage, but without neglect, performed the mental number interval bisection task in three experimental conditions of OKS: static, leftward, and rightward. In the static condition, BG misbisected to the right of the true midpoint. BG misbisected to the left following leftward OKS, but again to the right of the midpoint following rightward OKS. In contrast, the performance of controls was not significantly affected by the direction of OKS. We argue that shifts of visuospatial attention, induced by OKS, may affect the mental number interval bisection, suggesting the presence of an interaction between the processing of number magnitude and the processing of the perceptual space, in patients with neglect for the mental number space.

  16. Structured syncope care pathways based on lean six sigma methodology optimises resource use with shorter time to diagnosis and increased diagnostic yield.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Martens, Leon; Goode, Grahame; Wold, Johan F H; Beck, Lionel; Martin, Georgina; Perings, Christian; Stolt, Pelle; Baggerman, Lucas

    2014-01-01

    To conduct a pilot study on the potential to optimise care pathways in syncope/Transient Loss of Consciousness management by using Lean Six Sigma methodology while maintaining compliance with ESC and/or NICE guidelines. Five hospitals in four European countries took part. The Lean Six Sigma methodology consisted of 3 phases: 1) Assessment phase, in which baseline performance was mapped in each centre, processes were evaluated and a new operational model was developed with an improvement plan that included best practices and change management; 2) Improvement phase, in which optimisation pathways and standardised best practice tools and forms were developed and implemented. Staff were trained on new processes and change-management support provided; 3) Sustaining phase, which included support, refinement of tools and metrics. The impact of the implementation of new pathways was evaluated on number of tests performed, diagnostic yield, time to diagnosis and compliance with guidelines. One hospital with focus on geriatric populations was analysed separately from the other four. With the new pathways, there was a 59% reduction in the average time to diagnosis (p = 0.048) and a 75% increase in diagnostic yield (p = 0.007). There was a marked reduction in repetitions of diagnostic tests and improved prioritisation of indicated tests. Applying a structured Lean Six Sigma based methodology to pathways for syncope management has the potential to improve time to diagnosis and diagnostic yield.

  17. Structured syncope care pathways based on lean six sigma methodology optimises resource use with shorter time to diagnosis and increased diagnostic yield.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Leon Martens

    Full Text Available To conduct a pilot study on the potential to optimise care pathways in syncope/Transient Loss of Consciousness management by using Lean Six Sigma methodology while maintaining compliance with ESC and/or NICE guidelines.Five hospitals in four European countries took part. The Lean Six Sigma methodology consisted of 3 phases: 1 Assessment phase, in which baseline performance was mapped in each centre, processes were evaluated and a new operational model was developed with an improvement plan that included best practices and change management; 2 Improvement phase, in which optimisation pathways and standardised best practice tools and forms were developed and implemented. Staff were trained on new processes and change-management support provided; 3 Sustaining phase, which included support, refinement of tools and metrics. The impact of the implementation of new pathways was evaluated on number of tests performed, diagnostic yield, time to diagnosis and compliance with guidelines. One hospital with focus on geriatric populations was analysed separately from the other four.With the new pathways, there was a 59% reduction in the average time to diagnosis (p = 0.048 and a 75% increase in diagnostic yield (p = 0.007. There was a marked reduction in repetitions of diagnostic tests and improved prioritisation of indicated tests.Applying a structured Lean Six Sigma based methodology to pathways for syncope management has the potential to improve time to diagnosis and diagnostic yield.

  18. Designing a Care Pathway Model – A Case Study of the Outpatient Total Hip Arthroplasty Care Pathway

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Robin I. Oosterholt

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available Introduction: Although the clinical attributes of total hip arthroplasty (THA care pathways have been thoroughly researched, a detailed understanding of the equally important organisational attributes is still lacking. The aim of this article is to contribute with a model of the outpatient THA care pathway that depicts how the care team should be organised to enable patient discharge on the day of surgery. Theory: The outpatient THA care pathway enables patients to be discharged on the day of surgery, short- ening the length of stay and intensifying the provision and organisation of care. We utilise visual care modelling to construct a visual design of the organisation of the care pathway. Methods: An embedded case study was conducted of the outpatient THA care pathway at a teaching hospital in the Netherlands. The data were collected using a visual care modelling toolkit in 16 semi- structured interviews. Problems and inefficiencies in the care pathway were identified and addressed in the iterative design process. Results: The results are two visual models of the most critical phases of the outpatient THA care pathway: diagnosis & preparation (1 and mobilisation & discharge (4. The results show the care team composition, critical value exchanges, and sequence that enable patient discharge on the day of surgery. Conclusion: The design addressed existing problems and is an optimisation of the case hospital’s pathway. The network of actors consists of the patient (1, radiologist (1, anaesthetist (1, nurse specialist (1, pharmacist (1, orthopaedic surgeon (1,4, physiotherapist (1,4, nurse (4, doctor (4 and patient applica- tion (1,4. The critical value exchanges include patient preparation (mental and practical, patient education, aligned care team, efficient sequence of value exchanges, early patient mobilisation, flexible availability of the physiotherapist, functional discharge criteria, joint decision making and availability of the care team.

  19. Impact of care pathways for in-hospital management of COPD exacerbation: a systematic review.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lodewijckx, C; Sermeus, W; Panella, M; Deneckere, S; Leigheb, F; Decramer, M; Vanhaecht, K

    2011-11-01

    In-hospital management of COPD exacerbation is suboptimal, and outcomes are poor. Care pathways are a possible strategy for optimizing care processes and outcomes. The aim of the literature review was to explore characteristics of existing care pathways for in-hospital management of COPD exacerbations and to address their impact on performance of care processes, clinical outcomes, and team functioning. A literature search was conducted for articles published between 1990 and 2010 in the electronic databases of Medline, CINAHL, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library. Main inclusion criteria were (I) patients hospitalized for a COPD exacerbation; (II) implementation and evaluation of a care pathway; (III) report of original research, including experimental and quasi experimental designs, variance analysis, and interviews of professionals and patients about their perception on pathway effectiveness. Four studies with a quasi experimental design were included. Three studies used a pre-post test design; the fourth study was a non randomized controlled trial comparing an experimental group where patients were treated according to a care pathway with a control group where usual care was provided. The four studied care pathways were multidisciplinary structured care plans, outlining time-specific clinical interventions and responsibilities by discipline. Statistic analyses were rarely performed, and the trials used very divergent indicators to evaluate the impact of the care pathways. The studies described positive effects on blood sampling, daily weight measurement, arterial blood gas measurement, referral to rehabilitation, feelings of anxiety, length of stay, readmission, and in-hospital mortality. Research on COPD care pathways is very limited. The studies described few positive effects of the care pathways on diagnostic processes and on clinical outcomes. Though due to limited statistical analysis and weak design of the studies, the internal validity of results is limited

  20. Unbiased plasma metabolomics reveal the correlation of metabolic pathways and Prakritis of humans.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shirolkar, Amey; Chakraborty, Sutapa; Mandal, Tusharkanti; Dabur, Rajesh

    2017-11-25

    Ayurveda, an ancient Indian medicinal system, has categorized human body constitutions in three broad constitutional types (prakritis) i.e. Vata, Pitta and Kapha. Analysis of plasma metabolites and related pathways to classify Prakriti specific dominant marker metabolites and metabolic pathways. 38 healthy male individuals were assessed for dominant Prakritis and their fasting blood samples were collected. The processed plasma samples were subjected to rapid resolution liquid chromatography-electrospray ionization-quadrupole time of flight mass spectrometry (RRLC-ESI-QTOFMS). Mass profiles were aligned and subjected to multivariate analysis. Partial least square discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) model showed 97.87% recognition capability. List of PLS-DA metabolites was subjected to permutative Benjamini-Hochberg false discovery rate (FDR) correction and final list of 76 metabolites with p  2.0 was identified. Pathway analysis using metascape and JEPETTO plugins in Cytoscape revealed that steroidal hormone biosynthesis, amino acid, and arachidonic acid metabolism are major pathways varying with different constitution. Biological Go processes analysis showed that aromatic amino acids, sphingolipids, and pyrimidine nucleotides metabolic processes were dominant in kapha type of body constitution. Fat soluble vitamins, cellular amino acid, and androgen biosynthesis process along with branched chain amino acid and glycerolipid catabolic processes were dominant in pitta type individuals. Vata Prakriti was found to have dominant catecholamine, arachidonic acid and hydrogen peroxide metabolomics processes. The neurotransmission and oxidative stress in vata, BCAA catabolic, androgen, xenobiotics metabolic processes in pitta, and aromatic amino acids, sphingolipid, and pyrimidine metabolic process in kaphaPrakriti were the dominant marker pathways. Copyright © 2017 Transdisciplinary University, Bangalore and World Ayurveda Foundation. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights

  1. Understanding pathways of exposure using site-specific habits surveys, particularly new pathways and methodologies

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Grzechnik, M.; McTaggart, K.; Clyne, F.

    2006-01-01

    Full text of publication follows: UK policy on the control of radiation exposure via routine discharges from nuclear licensed sites has long been based on ICRP recommendations that embody the principles of justification of practices, optimisation of protection, and dose limitation. Radiological protection of the public is based on the concept of a critical group of individuals. This group is defined as those people who, as a result of the area they reside and their habits, receive the highest radiation dose due to the operations of a site. Therefore, if the dose to this critical group is acceptable in relation to relevant dose limits and constraints, then other members of the public will receive lower doses. Thus, the principle of critical groups provides overall protection for the public. Surveys to determine local habits involve an integrated methodology, whereby the potential radioactive exposure pathways from liquid and gaseous discharges and direct radiation from the site are investigated. Surveys to identify these habits must be undertaken rigorously for consistency, and have been known to reveal unexpected pathways of radiation exposure. Pathways typically include consumption of local foodstuffs and external exposure. Furthermore, a number of critical groups ma y be identified within a single survey area if the habits of one group do not adequately describe those of the other inhabitants of the area. Survey preparation involves the initial identification of high producers and consumers of local foods in a geographically defined area surrounding the nuclear facility. Pathways can be broken down into three general groups, which include exposure arising from; 1) Terrestrial (gaseous) discharges surveyed within 5 km of the site 2) Direct radiation surveyed within 1 km of the site 3) Aquatic (liquid) discharges surveyed within local areas affected by the discharges, including seas, rivers and sewage works. The survey fieldwork involves interviewing members of the

  2. DCEO Biotechnology: Tools To Design, Construct, Evaluate, and Optimize the Metabolic Pathway for Biosynthesis of Chemicals

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Chen, Xiulai; Gao, Cong; Guo, Liang

    2018-01-01

    , and pathway optimization at the systems level, offers a conceptual and technological framework to exploit potential pathways, modify existing pathways and create new pathways for the optimal production of desired chemicals. Here, we summarize recent progress of DCEO biotechnology and examples of its......Chemical synthesis is a well established route for producing many chemicals on a large scale, but some drawbacks still exist in this process, such as unstable intermediates, multistep reactions, complex process control, etc. Biobased production provides an attractive alternative to these challenges......, but how to make cells into efficient factories is challenging. As a key enabling technology to develop efficient cell factories, design-construction-evaluation-optimization (DCEO) biotechnology, which incorporates the concepts and techniques of pathway design, pathway construction, pathway evaluation...

  3. Developing a pathway for high-value, patient-centered total joint arthroplasty.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Van Citters, Aricca D; Fahlman, Cheryl; Goldmann, Donald A; Lieberman, Jay R; Koenig, Karl M; DiGioia, Anthony M; O'Donnell, Beth; Martin, John; Federico, Frank A; Bankowitz, Richard A; Nelson, Eugene C; Bozic, Kevin J

    2014-05-01

    Total joint arthroplasty (TJA) is one of the most widely performed elective procedures; however, there are wide variations in cost and quality among facilities where the procedure is performed. The purposes of this study were to (1) develop a generalizable clinical care pathway for primary TJA using inputs from clinical, academic, and patient stakeholders; and (2) identify system- and patient-level processes to provide safe, effective, efficient, and patient-centered care for patients undergoing TJA. We used a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to design a care pathway that spans 14 months beginning with the presurgical office visit and concluding 12 months after discharge. We derived care suggestions from interviews with 16 hospitals selected based on readmission rates, cost, and quality (n = 10) and author opinion (n = 6). A 32-member multistakeholder panel refined the pathway during a 1-day workshop. Participants were selected based on leadership in orthopaedic (n = 4) and anesthesia (n = 1) specialty societies; involvement in organizations specializing in safety and high reliability care (n = 3), lean production/consumption of care (n = 3), and patient experience of care (n = 3); membership in an interdisciplinary care team of a hospital selected for interviewing (n = 8); recent receipt of a TJA (n = 1); and participation in the pathway development team (n = 9). The care pathway includes 40 suggested processes to improve care, 37 techniques to reduce waste, and 55 techniques to improve communication. Central themes include standardization and process improvement, interdisciplinary communication and collaboration, and patient/family engagement and education. Selected recommendations include standardizing care protocols and staff roles; aligning information flow with patient and process flow; identifying a role accountable for care delivery and communication; managing patient expectations; and stratifying patients into the most appropriate care

  4. A novel dysregulated pathway-identification analysis based on global influence of within-pathway effects and crosstalk between pathways

    Science.gov (United States)

    Han, Junwei; Li, Chunquan; Yang, Haixiu; Xu, Yanjun; Zhang, Chunlong; Ma, Jiquan; Shi, Xinrui; Liu, Wei; Shang, Desi; Yao, Qianlan; Zhang, Yunpeng; Su, Fei; Feng, Li; Li, Xia

    2015-01-01

    Identifying dysregulated pathways from high-throughput experimental data in order to infer underlying biological insights is an important task. Current pathway-identification methods focus on single pathways in isolation; however, consideration of crosstalk between pathways could improve our understanding of alterations in biological states. We propose a novel method of pathway analysis based on global influence (PAGI) to identify dysregulated pathways, by considering both within-pathway effects and crosstalk between pathways. We constructed a global gene–gene network based on the relationships among genes extracted from a pathway database. We then evaluated the extent of differential expression for each gene, and mapped them to the global network. The random walk with restart algorithm was used to calculate the extent of genes affected by global influence. Finally, we used cumulative distribution functions to determine the significance values of the dysregulated pathways. We applied the PAGI method to five cancer microarray datasets, and compared our results with gene set enrichment analysis and five other methods. Based on these analyses, we demonstrated that PAGI can effectively identify dysregulated pathways associated with cancer, with strong reproducibility and robustness. We implemented PAGI using the freely available R-based and Web-based tools (http://bioinfo.hrbmu.edu.cn/PAGI). PMID:25551156

  5. GenMAPP 2: new features and resources for pathway analysis

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dahlquist Kam D

    2007-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Microarray technologies have evolved rapidly, enabling biologists to quantify genome-wide levels of gene expression, alternative splicing, and sequence variations for a variety of species. Analyzing and displaying these data present a significant challenge. Pathway-based approaches for analyzing microarray data have proven useful for presenting data and for generating testable hypotheses. Results To address the growing needs of the microarray community we have released version 2 of Gene Map Annotator and Pathway Profiler (GenMAPP, a new GenMAPP database schema, and integrated resources for pathway analysis. We have redesigned the GenMAPP database to support multiple gene annotations and species as well as custom species database creation for a potentially unlimited number of species. We have expanded our pathway resources by utilizing homology information to translate pathway content between species and extending existing pathways with data derived from conserved protein interactions and coexpression. We have implemented a new mode of data visualization to support analysis of complex data, including time-course, single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP, and splicing. GenMAPP version 2 also offers innovative ways to display and share data by incorporating HTML export of analyses for entire sets of pathways as organized web pages. Conclusion GenMAPP version 2 provides a means to rapidly interrogate complex experimental data for pathway-level changes in a diverse range of organisms.

  6. What is a clinical pathway? Refinement of an operational definition to identify clinical pathway studies for a Cochrane systematic review

    OpenAIRE

    Lawal, Adegboyega K.; Rotter, Thomas; Kinsman, Leigh; Machotta, Andreas; Ronellenfitsch, Ulrich; Scott, Shannon D.; Goodridge, Donna; Plishka, Christopher; Groot, Gary

    2016-01-01

    textabstractClinical pathways (CPWs) are a common component in the quest to improve the quality of health. CPWs are used to reduce variation, improve quality of care, and maximize the outcomes for specific groups of patients. An ongoing challenge is the operationalization of a definition of CPW in healthcare. This may be attributable to both the differences in definition and a lack of conceptualization in the field of clinical pathways. This correspondence article describes a process of refin...

  7. Pten Regulates Retinal Amacrine Cell Number by Modulating Akt, Tgfβ, and Erk Signaling.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tachibana, Nobuhiko; Cantrup, Robert; Dixit, Rajiv; Touahri, Yacine; Kaushik, Gaurav; Zinyk, Dawn; Daftarian, Narsis; Biernaskie, Jeff; McFarlane, Sarah; Schuurmans, Carol

    2016-09-07

    All tissues are genetically programmed to acquire an optimal size that is defined by total cell number and individual cellular dimensions. The retina contains stereotyped proportions of one glial and six neuronal cell types that are generated in overlapping waves. How multipotent retinal progenitors know when to switch from making one cell type to the next so that appropriate numbers of each cell type are generated is poorly understood. Pten is a phosphatase that controls progenitor cell proliferation and differentiation in several lineages. Here, using a conditional loss-of-function strategy, we found that Pten regulates retinal cell division and is required to produce the full complement of rod photoreceptors and amacrine cells in mouse. We focused on amacrine cell number control, identifying three downstream Pten effector pathways. First, phosphoinositide 3-kinase/Akt signaling is hyperactivated in Pten conditional knock-out (cKO) retinas, and misexpression of constitutively active Akt (Akt-CA) in retinal explants phenocopies the reduction in amacrine cell production observed in Pten cKOs. Second, Akt-CA activates Tgfβ signaling in retinal explants, which is a negative feedback pathway for amacrine cell production. Accordingly, Tgfβ signaling is elevated in Pten cKO retinas, and epistatic analyses placed Pten downstream of TgfβRII in amacrine cell number control. Finally, Pten regulates Raf/Mek/Erk signaling levels to promote the differentiation of all amacrine cell subtypes, which are each reduced in number in Pten cKOs. Pten is thus a positive regulator of amacrine cell production, acting via multiple downstream pathways, highlighting its diverse actions as a mediator of cell number control. Despite the importance of size for optimal organ function, how individual cell types are generated in correct proportions is poorly understood. There are several ways to control cell number, including readouts of organ function (e.g., secreted hormones reach functional

  8. The role of the ubiquitination–proteasome pathway in breast cancer: Use of mouse models for analyzing ubiquitination processes

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Rossi, Sabrina; Loda, Massimo

    2003-01-01

    Turnover of several regulatory proteins results from targeted destruction via ubiquitination and subsequent degradation through the proteosome. The timely and irreversible degradation of critical regulators is essential for normal cellular function. The precise biochemical mechanisms that are involved in protein turnover by ubiquitin-mediated degradation have been elucidated using in vitro assays and cell culture systems. However, pathways that lead to ubiquitination of critical regulatory proteins in vivo are more complex, and have both temporal and tissue-specific differences. In vivo models will allow identification of substrates and enzymes of the ubiquitin–proteosome pathway that play important roles in selected tissues and diseases. In addition, assessment of the therapeutic efficacy of drugs designed to inhibit or enhance protein turnover by ubiquitination requires in vivo models. In the present review we describe selected examples of transgenic and knockout models of proteins that are known either to be regulated by ubiquitin-mediated degradation or to have a catalytic function in this process, and to play an important role in breast cancer. We outline the functions of these proteins in vivo and focus on knowledge gained in the comparison of in vivo behavior predicted from cell-free in vitro data or from experiments conducted in cell culture systems

  9. The Stokes number approach to support scale-up and technology transfer of a mixing process.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Willemsz, Tofan A; Hooijmaijers, Ricardo; Rubingh, Carina M; Frijlink, Henderik W; Vromans, Herman; van der Voort Maarschalk, Kees

    2012-09-01

    Transferring processes between different scales and types of mixers is a common operation in industry. Challenges within this operation include the existence of considerable differences in blending conditions between mixer scales and types. Obtaining the correct blending conditions is crucial for the ability to break up agglomerates in order to achieve the desired blend uniformity. Agglomerate break up is often an abrasion process. In this study, the abrasion rate potential of agglomerates is described by the Stokes abrasion (St(Abr)) number of the system. The St(Abr) number equals the ratio between the kinetic energy density of the moving powder bed and the work of fracture of the agglomerate. In this study, the St(Abr) approach demonstrates to be a useful tool to predict the abrasion of agglomerates during blending when technology is transferred between mixer scales/types. Applying the St(Abr) approach revealed a transition point between parameters that determined agglomerate abrasion. This study gave evidence that (1) below this transition point, agglomerate abrasion is determined by a combination of impeller effects and by the kinetic energy density of the powder blend, whereas (2) above this transition point, agglomerate abrasion is mainly determined by the kinetic energy density of the powder blend.

  10. Alien species pathways to the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    M Verónica Toral-Granda

    Full Text Available Alien species, one of the biggest threats to natural ecosystems worldwide, are of particular concern for oceanic archipelagos such as Galápagos. To enable more effective management of alien species, we reviewed, collated and analysed all available records of alien species for Galápagos. We also assembled a comprehensive dataset on pathways to and among the Galápagos Islands, including tourist and resident numbers, tourist vessels, their itineraries and visitation sites, aircraft capacity and occupancy, air and sea cargo and biosecurity interceptions. So far, 1,579 alien terrestrial and marine species have been introduced to Galápagos by humans. Of these, 1,476 have become established. Almost half of these were intentional introductions, mostly of plants. Most unintentional introductions arrived on plants and plant associated material, followed by transport vehicles, and commodities (in particular fruit and vegetables. The number, frequency and geographic origin of pathways for the arrival and dispersal of alien species to and within Galápagos have increased over time, tracking closely the increase in human population (residents and tourists on the islands. Intentional introductions of alien species should decline as biosecurity is strengthened but there is a danger that unintentional introductions will increase further as tourism on Galápagos expands. This unique world heritage site will only retain its biodiversity values if the pathways for invasion are managed effectively.

  11. Alien species pathways to the Galapagos Islands, Ecuador

    Science.gov (United States)

    Trueman, Mandy; Izurieta, Juan Carlos; Araujo, Eddy; Cruz, Marilyn; Zander, Kerstin K.; Izurieta, Arturo

    2017-01-01

    Alien species, one of the biggest threats to natural ecosystems worldwide, are of particular concern for oceanic archipelagos such as Galápagos. To enable more effective management of alien species, we reviewed, collated and analysed all available records of alien species for Galápagos. We also assembled a comprehensive dataset on pathways to and among the Galápagos Islands, including tourist and resident numbers, tourist vessels, their itineraries and visitation sites, aircraft capacity and occupancy, air and sea cargo and biosecurity interceptions. So far, 1,579 alien terrestrial and marine species have been introduced to Galápagos by humans. Of these, 1,476 have become established. Almost half of these were intentional introductions, mostly of plants. Most unintentional introductions arrived on plants and plant associated material, followed by transport vehicles, and commodities (in particular fruit and vegetables). The number, frequency and geographic origin of pathways for the arrival and dispersal of alien species to and within Galápagos have increased over time, tracking closely the increase in human population (residents and tourists) on the islands. Intentional introductions of alien species should decline as biosecurity is strengthened but there is a danger that unintentional introductions will increase further as tourism on Galápagos expands. This unique world heritage site will only retain its biodiversity values if the pathways for invasion are managed effectively. PMID:28902860

  12. Oscillatory Dynamics of the Extracellular Signal-regulated Kinase Pathway

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Shankaran, Harish; Wiley, H. S.

    2010-12-01

    The extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) pathway is a central signaling pathway in development and disease and is regulated by multiple negative and positive feedback loops. Recent studies have shown negative feedback from ERK to upstream regulators can give rise to biochemical oscillations with a periodicity of between 15-30 minutes. Feedback due to the stimulated transcription of negative regulators of the ERK pathway can also give rise to transcriptional oscillations with a periodicity of 1-2h. The biological significance of these oscillations is not clear, but recent evidence suggests that transcriptional oscillations participate in developmental processes, such as somite formation. Biochemical oscillations are more enigmatic, but could provide a mechanism for encoding different types of inputs into a common signaling pathway.

  13. A strategy for evaluating pathway analysis methods.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yu, Chenggang; Woo, Hyung Jun; Yu, Xueping; Oyama, Tatsuya; Wallqvist, Anders; Reifman, Jaques

    2017-10-13

    , either established or assumed, of the pathways perturbed by a specific clinical or experimental condition. As such, our strategy allows researchers to systematically and objectively evaluate pathway analysis methods by employing any number of datasets for a variety of conditions.

  14. Cost comparison of orthopaedic fracture pathways using discrete event simulation in a Glasgow hospital.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Anderson, Gillian H; Jenkins, Paul J; McDonald, David A; Van Der Meer, Robert; Morton, Alec; Nugent, Margaret; Rymaszewski, Lech A

    2017-09-07

    Healthcare faces the continual challenge of improving outcome while aiming to reduce cost. The aim of this study was to determine the micro cost differences of the Glasgow non-operative trauma virtual pathway in comparison to a traditional pathway. Discrete event simulation was used to model and analyse cost and resource utilisation with an activity-based costing approach. Data for a full comparison before the process change was unavailable so we used a modelling approach, comparing a virtual fracture clinic (VFC) with a simulated traditional fracture clinic (TFC). The orthopaedic unit VFC pathway pioneered at Glasgow Royal Infirmary has attracted significant attention and interest and is the focus of this cost study. Our study focused exclusively on patients with non-operative trauma attending emergency department or the minor injuries unit and the subsequent step in the patient pathway. Retrospective studies of patient outcomes as a result of the protocol introductions for specific injuries are presented in association with activity costs from the models. Patients are satisfied with the new pathway, the information provided and the outcome of their injuries (Evidence Level IV). There was a 65% reduction in the number of first outpatient face-to-face (f2f) attendances in orthopaedics. In the VFC pathway, the resources required per day were significantly lower for all staff groups (p≤0.001). The overall cost per patient of the VFC pathway was £22.84 (95% CI 21.74 to 23.92) per patient compared with £36.81 (95% CI 35.65 to 37.97) for the TFC pathway. Our results give a clearer picture of the cost comparison of the virtual pathway over a wholly traditional f2f clinic system. The use of simulation-based stochastic costings in healthcare economic analysis has been limited to date, but this study provides evidence for adoption of this method as a basis for its application in other healthcare settings. © Article author(s) (or their employer(s) unless otherwise

  15. Stress responses during ageing: molecular pathways regulating protein homeostasis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kyriakakis, Emmanouil; Princz, Andrea; Tavernarakis, Nektarios

    2015-01-01

    The ageing process is characterized by deterioration of physiological function accompanied by frailty and ageing-associated diseases. The most broadly and well-studied pathways influencing ageing are the insulin/insulin-like growth factor 1 signaling pathway and the dietary restriction pathway. Recent studies in diverse organisms have also delineated emerging pathways, which collectively or independently contribute to ageing. Among them the proteostatic-stress-response networks, inextricably affect normal ageing by maintaining or restoring protein homeostasis to preserve proper cellular and organismal function. In this chapter, we survey the involvement of heat stress and endoplasmic reticulum stress responses in the regulation of longevity, placing emphasis on the cross talk between different response mechanisms and their systemic effects. We further discuss novel insights relevant to the molecular pathways mediating these stress responses that may facilitate the development of innovative interventions targeting age-related pathologies such as diabetes, cancer, cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases.

  16. Multiple pathways of DNA double-strand break processing in a mutant Indian muntjac cell line

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Bouffler, S.D.; Jha, B.; Johnson, R.T.

    1990-01-01

    DNA break processing is compared in the Indian muntjac cell lines, SVM and DM. The initial frequencies and resealing of X-ray generated single- and double-strand breaks are similar in the two cell lines. Inhibiting the repair of UV damage leads to greater double-strand breakage in SVM than in DM, and some of these breaks are not repaired; however, repair-associated single-strand breakage and resealing are normal. Dimethylsulfate also induces excess double-strand breakage in SVM, and these breaks are irreparable. Restricted plasmids are reconstituted correctly in SVM at approximately 30% of the frequency observed in DM. Thus SVM has a reduced capacity to repair certain types of double-strand break. This defect is not due to a DNA ligase deficiency. We conclude that DNA double-strand breaks are repaired by a variety of pathways within mammalian cells and that the structure of the break or its mode of formation determines its subsequent fate

  17. Pathway analysis of kidney cancer using proteomics and metabolic profiling

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fiehn Oliver

    2006-11-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Renal cell carcinoma (RCC is the sixth leading cause of cancer death and is responsible for 11,000 deaths per year in the US. Approximately one-third of patients present with disease which is already metastatic and for which there is currently no adequate treatment, and no biofluid screening tests exist for RCC. In this study, we have undertaken a comprehensive proteomic analysis and subsequently a pathway and network approach to identify biological processes involved in clear cell RCC (ccRCC. We have used these data to investigate urinary markers of RCC which could be applied to high-risk patients, or to those being followed for recurrence, for early diagnosis and treatment, thereby substantially reducing mortality of this disease. Results Using 2-dimensional electrophoresis and mass spectrometric analysis, we identified 31 proteins which were differentially expressed with a high degree of significance in ccRCC as compared to adjacent non-malignant tissue, and we confirmed some of these by immunoblotting, immunohistochemistry, and comparison to published transcriptomic data. When evaluated by several pathway and biological process analysis programs, these proteins are demonstrated to be involved with a high degree of confidence (p values Conclusion Extensive pathway and network analysis allowed for the discovery of highly significant pathways from a set of clear cell RCC samples. Knowledge of activation of these processes will lead to novel assays identifying their proteomic and/or metabolomic signatures in biofluids of patient at high risk for this disease; we provide pilot data for such a urinary bioassay. Furthermore, we demonstrate how the knowledge of networks, processes, and pathways altered in kidney cancer may be used to influence the choice of optimal therapy.

  18. Cerebrospinal fluid Aβ42 levels and APP processing pathway genes in Parkinson's disease.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bekris, Lynn M; Tsuang, Debby W; Peskind, Elaine R; Yu, Chang E; Montine, Thomas J; Zhang, Jing; Zabetian, Cyrus P; Leverenz, James B

    2015-06-01

    Of recent interest is the finding that certain cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) biomarkers traditionally linked to Alzheimer's disease (AD), specifically amyloid beta protein (Aβ), are abnormal in PD CSF. The aim of this exploratory investigation was to determine whether genetic variation within the amyloid precursor protein (APP) processing pathway genes correlates with CSF Aβ42 levels in Parkinson's disease (PD). Parkinson's disease (n = 86) and control (n = 161) DNA were genotyped for 19 regulatory region tagging single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) within nine genes (APP, ADAM10, BACE1, BACE2, PSEN1, PSEN2, PEN2, NCSTN, and APH1B) involved in the cleavage of APP. The SNP genotypes were tested for their association with CSF biomarkers and PD risk while adjusting for age, sex, and APOE ɛ4 status. Significant correlation with CSF Aβ42 levels in PD was observed for two SNPs, (APP rs466448 and APH1B rs2068143). Conversely, significant correlation with CSF Aβ42 levels in controls was observed for three SNPs (APP rs214484, rs2040273, and PSEN1 rs362344). In addition, results of this exploratory investigation suggest that an APP SNP and an APH1B SNP are marginally associated with PD CSF Aβ42 levels in APOE ɛ4 noncarriers. Further hypotheses generated include that decreased CSF Aβ42 levels are in part driven by genetic variation in APP processing genes. Additional investigation into the relationship between these findings and clinical characteristics of PD, including cognitive impairment, compared with other neurodegenerative diseases, such as AD, are warranted. © 2015 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society. © 2015 International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society.

  19. Pivotal role of the muscle-contraction pathway in cryptorchidism and evidence for genomic connections with cardiomyopathy pathways in RASopathies

    KAUST Repository

    Cannistraci, Carlo

    2013-02-14

    Background: Cryptorchidism is the most frequent congenital disorder in male children; however the genetic causes of cryptorchidism remain poorly investigated. Comparative integratomics combined with systems biology approach was employed to elucidate genetic factors and molecular pathways underlying testis descent. Methods. Literature mining was performed to collect genomic loci associated with cryptorchidism in seven mammalian species. Information regarding the collected candidate genes was stored in MySQL relational database. Genomic view of the loci was presented using Flash GViewer web tool (http://gmod.org/wiki/Flashgviewer/). DAVID Bioinformatics Resources 6.7 was used for pathway enrichment analysis. Cytoscape plug-in PiNGO 1.11 was employed for protein-network-based prediction of novel candidate genes. Relevant protein-protein interactions were confirmed and visualized using the STRING database (version 9.0). Results. The developed cryptorchidism gene atlas includes 217 candidate loci (genes, regions involved in chromosomal mutations, and copy number variations) identified at the genomic, transcriptomic, and proteomic level. Human orthologs of the collected candidate loci were presented using a genomic map viewer. The cryptorchidism gene atlas is freely available online: http://www.integratomics-time.com/cryptorchidism/. Pathway analysis suggested the presence of twelve enriched pathways associated with the list of 179 literature-derived candidate genes. Additionally, a list of 43 network-predicted novel candidate genes was significantly associated with four enriched pathways. Joint pathway analysis of the collected and predicted candidate genes revealed the pivotal importance of the muscle-contraction pathway in cryptorchidism and evidence for genomic associations with cardiomyopathy pathways in RASopathies. Conclusions: The developed gene atlas represents an important resource for the scientific community researching genetics of cryptorchidism. The

  20. Computed Potential Energy Surfaces and Minimum Energy Pathways for Chemical Reactions

    Science.gov (United States)

    Walch, Stephen P.; Langhoff, S. R. (Technical Monitor)

    1994-01-01

    Computed potential energy surfaces are often required for computation of such parameters as rate constants as a function of temperature, product branching ratios, and other detailed properties. For some dynamics methods, global potential energy surfaces are required. In this case, it is necessary to obtain the energy at a complete sampling of all the possible arrangements of the nuclei, which are energetically accessible, and then a fitting function must be obtained to interpolate between the computed points. In other cases, characterization of the stationary points and the reaction pathway connecting them is sufficient. These properties may be readily obtained using analytical derivative methods. We have found that computation of the stationary points/reaction pathways using CASSCF/derivative methods, followed by use of the internally contracted CI method to obtain accurate energetics, gives usefull results for a number of chemically important systems. The talk will focus on a number of applications including global potential energy surfaces, H + O2, H + N2, O(3p) + H2, and reaction pathways for complex reactions, including reactions leading to NO and soot formation in hydrocarbon combustion.

  1. RNF4-mediated polyubiquitination regulates the Fanconi anemia/BRCA pathway

    OpenAIRE

    Xie, Jenny; Kim, Hyungjin; Moreau, Lisa A.; Puhalla, Shannon; Garber, Judy; Al Abo, Muthana; Takeda, Shunichi; D’Andrea, Alan D.

    2015-01-01

    The Fanconi anemia/BRCA (FA/BRCA) pathway is a DNA repair pathway that is required for excision of DNA interstrand cross-links. The 17 known FA proteins, along with several FA-associated proteins (FAAPs), cooperate in this pathway to detect, unhook, and excise DNA cross-links and to subsequently repair the double-strand breaks generated in the process. In the current study, we identified a patient with FA with a point mutation in FANCA, which encodes a mutant FANCA protein (FANCAI939S). FANCA...

  2. Pathway index models for construction of patient-specific risk profiles.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Eng, Kevin H; Wang, Sijian; Bradley, William H; Rader, Janet S; Kendziorski, Christina

    2013-04-30

    Statistical methods for variable selection, prediction, and classification have proven extremely useful in moving personalized genomics medicine forward, in particular, leading to a number of genomic-based assays now in clinical use for predicting cancer recurrence. Although invaluable in individual cases, the information provided by these assays is limited. Most often, a patient is classified into one of very few groups (e.g., recur or not), limiting the potential for truly personalized treatment. Furthermore, although these assays provide information on which individuals are at most risk (e.g., those for which recurrence is predicted), they provide no information on the aberrant biological pathways that give rise to the increased risk. We have developed an approach to address these limitations. The approach models a time-to-event outcome as a function of known biological pathways, identifies important genomic aberrations, and provides pathway-based patient-specific assessments of risk. As we demonstrate in a study of ovarian cancer from The Cancer Genome Atlas project, the patient-specific risk profiles are powerful and efficient characterizations useful in addressing a number of questions related to identifying informative patient subtypes and predicting survival. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  3. Modular optimization of heterologous pathways for de novo synthesis of (2S-naringenin in Escherichia coli.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Junjun Wu

    Full Text Available Due to increasing concerns about food safety and environmental issues, bio-based production of flavonoids from safe, inexpensive, and renewable substrates is increasingly attracting attention. Here, the complete biosynthetic pathway, consisting of 3-deoxy-D-arabinoheptulosonate 7-phosphate synthase (DAHPS, chorismate mutase/prephenate dehydrogenase (CM/PDH, tyrosine ammonia lyase (TAL, 4-coumarate:CoA ligase (4CL, chalcone synthase (CHS, chalcone isomerase (CHI, malonate synthetase, and malonate carrier protein, was constructed using pre-made modules to overproduce (2S-naringenin from D-glucose. Modular pathway engineering strategies were applied to the production of the flavonoid precursor (2S-naringenin from L-tyrosine to investigate the metabolic space for efficient conversion. Modular expression was combinatorially tuned by modifying plasmid gene copy numbers and promoter strengths to identify an optimally balanced pathway. Furthermore, a new modular pathway from D-glucose to L-tyrosine was assembled and re-optimized with the identified optimal modules to enable de novo synthesis of (2S-naringenin. Once this metabolic balance was achieved, the optimum strain was capable of producing 100.64 mg/L (2S-naringenin directly from D-glucose, which is the highest production titer from D-glucose in Escherichia coli. The fermentation system described here paves the way for the development of an economical process for microbial production of flavonoids.

  4. Pathway analysis of gene signatures predicting metastasis of node-negative primary breast cancer

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Yu, Jack X; Sieuwerts, Anieta M; Zhang, Yi; Martens, John WM; Smid, Marcel; Klijn, Jan GM; Wang, Yixin; Foekens, John A

    2007-01-01

    Published prognostic gene signatures in breast cancer have few genes in common. Here we provide a rationale for this observation by studying the prognostic power and the underlying biological pathways of different gene signatures. Gene signatures to predict the development of metastases in estrogen receptor-positive and estrogen receptor-negative tumors were identified using 500 re-sampled training sets and mapping to Gene Ontology Biological Process to identify over-represented pathways. The Global Test program confirmed that gene expression profilings in the common pathways were associated with the metastasis of the patients. The apoptotic pathway and cell division, or cell growth regulation and G-protein coupled receptor signal transduction, were most significantly associated with the metastatic capability of estrogen receptor-positive or estrogen-negative tumors, respectively. A gene signature derived of the common pathways predicted metastasis in an independent cohort. Mapping of the pathways represented by different published prognostic signatures showed that they share 53% of the identified pathways. We show that divergent gene sets classifying patients for the same clinical endpoint represent similar biological processes and that pathway-derived signatures can be used to predict prognosis. Furthermore, our study reveals that the underlying biology related to aggressiveness of estrogen receptor subgroups of breast cancer is quite different

  5. The genetic makeup of the Drosophila piRNA pathway.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Handler, Dominik; Meixner, Katharina; Pizka, Manfred; Lauss, Kathrin; Schmied, Christopher; Gruber, Franz Sebastian; Brennecke, Julius

    2013-06-06

    The piRNA (PIWI-interacting RNA) pathway is a small RNA silencing system that acts in animal gonads and protects the genome against the deleterious influence of transposons. A major bottleneck in the field is the lack of comprehensive knowledge of the factors and molecular processes that constitute this pathway. We conducted an RNAi screen in Drosophila and identified ~50 genes that strongly impact the ovarian somatic piRNA pathway. Many identified genes fall into functional categories that indicate essential roles for mitochondrial metabolism, RNA export, the nuclear pore, transcription elongation, and chromatin regulation in the pathway. Follow-up studies on two factors demonstrate that components acting at distinct hierarchical levels of the pathway were identified. Finally, we define CG2183/Gasz as an essential primary piRNA biogenesis factor in somatic and germline cells. Based on the similarities between insect and vertebrate piRNA pathways, our results have far-reaching implications for the understanding of this conserved genome defense system. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  6. Usher syndrome: molecular links of pathogenesis, proteins and pathways.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kremer, Hannie; van Wijk, Erwin; Märker, Tina; Wolfrum, Uwe; Roepman, Ronald

    2006-10-15

    Usher syndrome is the most common form of deaf-blindness. The syndrome is both clinically and genetically heterogeneous, and to date, eight causative genes have been identified. The proteins encoded by these genes are part of a dynamic protein complex that is present in hair cells of the inner ear and in photoreceptor cells of the retina. The localization of the Usher proteins and the phenotype in animal models indicate that the Usher protein complex is essential in the morphogenesis of the stereocilia bundle in hair cells and in the calycal processes of photoreceptor cells. In addition, the Usher proteins are important in the synaptic processes of both cell types. The association of other proteins with the complex indicates functional links to a number of basic cell-biological processes. Prominently present is the connection to the dynamics of the actin cytoskeleton, involved in cellular morphology, cell polarity and cell-cell interactions. The Usher protein complex can also be linked to the cadherins/catenins in the adherens junction-associated protein complexes, suggesting a role in cell polarity and tissue organization. A third link can be established to the integrin transmembrane signaling network. The Usher interactome, as outlined in this review, participates in pathways common in inner ear and retina that are disrupted in the Usher syndrome.

  7. DMPD: Regulatory pathways in inflammation. [Dynamic Macrophage Pathway CSML Database

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available 17967718 Regulatory pathways in inflammation. Mantovani A, Garlanda C, Locati M, Ro....html) (.csml) Show Regulatory pathways in inflammation. PubmedID 17967718 Title Regulatory pathways in infl

  8. Development, Implementation and Compliance of Treatment Pathways in Radiation Medicine

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Louis ePotters

    2013-05-01

    Full Text Available INTRODUCTION: While much emphasis on safety in the radiation oncology clinic is placed on process, there remains considerable opportunity to increase safety, enhance outcomes and avoid ad-hoc care by instituting detailed treatment pathways. The purpose of this study was to review the process of developing evidence and consensus-based, outcomes-oriented treatment pathways that standardize treatment and patient management in a large multicenter radiation oncology practice. Further, we reviewed our compliance in incorporating these directives into our day-to-day clinical practice. METHODS: Using the Institute of Medicine guideline for developing treatment pathways, 87 disease specific pathways were developed and incorporated into the electronic medical system in our multi-facility radiation oncology department. Compliance in incorporating treatment pathways was assessed by mining our EMR data from January 1, 2010 through February 2012 for patients with breast and prostate cancer. RESULTS: This retrospective analysis of data from electronic medical records found overall compliance to breast and prostate cancer treatment pathways to be 97% and 99%, respectively. The reason for non-compliance proved to be either a failure to complete the prescribed care based on grade II or III toxicity (n=1 breast, 3 prostate or patient elected discontinuance of care (n=1 prostate or the physician chose a higher dose for positive/close margins (n=3 breast. CONCLUSION: This study demonstrates that consensus and evidence-based treatment pathways can be developed and implemented in a multi-center department of radiation oncology. And that for prostate and breast cancer there was a high degree of compliance using these directives. The development and implementation of these pathways serve as a key component of our safety program, most notably in our effort to facilitate consistent decision-making and reducing variation between physicians.

  9. ErbB receptors and cell polarity: New pathways and paradigms for understanding cell migration and invasion

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Feigin, Michael E.; Muthuswamy, Senthil K.

    2009-01-01

    The ErbB family of receptor tyrosine kinases is involved in initiation and progression of a number of human cancers, and receptor activation or overexpression correlates with poor patient survival. Research over the past two decades has elucidated the molecular mechanisms underlying ErbB-induced tumorigenesis, which has resulted in the development of effective targeted therapies. ErbB-induced signal transduction cascades regulate a wide variety of cell processes, including cell proliferation, apoptosis, cell polarity, migration and invasion. Within tumors, disruption of these core processes, through cooperative oncogenic lesions, results in aggressive, metastatic disease. This review will focus on the ErbB signaling networks that regulate migration and invasion and identify a potential role for cell polarity pathways during cancer progression

  10. The role of fingers in number processing in young children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lafay, Anne; Thevenot, Catherine; Castel, Caroline; Fayol, Michel

    2013-01-01

    The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between finger counting and numerical processing in 4-7-year-old children. Children were assessed on a variety of numerical tasks and we examined the correlations between their rates of success and their frequency of finger use in a counting task. We showed that children's performance on finger pattern comparison and identification tasks did not correlate with the frequency of finger use. However, this last variable correlated with the percentages of correct responses in an enumeration task (i.e., Give-N task), even when the age of children was entered as a covariate in the analysis. Despite this correlation, we showed that some children who never used their fingers in the counting task were able to perform optimally in the enumeration task. Overall, our results support the conclusion that finger counting is useful but not necessary to develop accurate symbolic numerical skills. Moreover, our results suggest that the use of fingers in a counting task is related to the ability of children in a dynamic enumeration task but not to static tasks involving recognition or comparison of finger patterns. Therefore, it could be that the link between fingers and numbers remain circumscribed to counting tasks and do not extent to static finger montring situations.

  11. Evaluating the effect of clinical care pathways on quality of cancer care: analysis of breast, colon and rectal cancer pathways.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bao, Han; Yang, Fengjuan; Su, Shaofei; Wang, Xinyu; Zhang, Meiqi; Xiao, Yaming; Jiang, Hao; Wang, Jiaying; Liu, Meina

    2016-05-01

    Substantial gaps exist between clinical practice and evidence-based cancer care, potentially leading to adverse clinical outcomes and decreased quality of life for cancer patients. This study aimed to evaluate the usefulness of clinical pathways as a tool for improving quality of cancer care, using breast, colon, and rectal cancer pathways as demonstrations. Newly diagnosed patients with invasive breast, colon, and rectal cancer were enrolled as pre-pathway groups, while patients with the same diagnoses treated according to clinical pathways were recruited for post-pathway groups. Compliance with preoperative core biopsy or fine-needle aspiration, utilization of sentinel lymph node biopsy, and proportion of patients whose tumor hormone receptor status was stated in pathology report were significantly increased after implementation of clinical pathway for breast cancer. For colon cancer, compliance with two care processes was significantly improved: surgical resection with anastomosis and resection of at least 12 lymph nodes. Regarding rectal cancer, there was a significant increase in compliance with preoperative evaluation of depth of tumor invasion, total mesorectal excision treatment of middle- or low-position rectal cancer, and proportion of patients who had undergone rectal cancer surgery whose pathology report included margin status. Moreover, total length of hospital stay was decreased remarkably for all three cancer types, and postoperative complications remained unchanged following implementation of the clinical pathways. Clinical pathways can improve compliance with standard care by implementing evidence-based quality indicators in daily practice, which could serve as a useful tool for narrowing the gap between clinical practice and evidence-based care.

  12. Alterations in protein kinase C activity and processing during zinc-deficiency-induced cell death.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chou, Susan S; Clegg, Michael S; Momma, Tony Y; Niles, Brad J; Duffy, Jodie Y; Daston, George P; Keen, Carl L

    2004-10-01

    Protein kinases C (PKCs) are a family of serine/threonine kinases that are critical for signal transduction pathways involved in growth, differentiation and cell death. All PKC isoforms have four conserved domains, C1-C4. The C1 domain contains cysteine-rich finger-like motifs, which bind two zinc atoms. The zinc-finger motifs modulate diacylglycerol binding; thus, intracellular zinc concentrations could influence the activity and localization of PKC family members. 3T3 cells were cultured in zinc-deficient or zinc-supplemented medium for up to 32 h. Cells cultured in zinc-deficient medium had decreased zinc content, lowered cytosolic classical PKC activity, increased caspase-3 processing and activity, and reduced cell number. Zinc-deficient cytosols had decreased activity and expression levels of PKC-alpha, whereas PKC-alpha phosphorylation was not altered. Inhibition of PKC-alpha with Gö6976 had no effect on cell number in the zinc-deficient group. Proteolysis of the novel PKC family member, PKC-delta, to its 40-kDa catalytic fragment occurred in cells cultured in the zinc-deficient medium. Occurrence of the PKC-delta fragment in mitochondria was co-incident with caspase-3 activation. Addition of the PKC-delta inhibitor, rottlerin, or zinc to deficient medium reduced or eliminated proteolysis of PKC-delta, activated caspase-3 and restored cell number. Inhibition of caspase-3 processing by Z-DQMD-FMK (Z-Asp-Gln-Met-Asp-fluoromethylketone) did not restore cell number in the zinc-deficient group, but resulted in processing of full-length PKC-delta to a 56-kDa fragment. These results support the concept that intracellular zinc concentrations influence PKC activity and processing, and that zinc-deficiency-induced apoptosis occurs in part through PKC-dependent pathways.

  13. Developmental Pathways Are Blueprints for Designing Successful Crops

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ben Trevaskis

    2018-06-01

    Full Text Available Genes controlling plant development have been studied in multiple plant systems. This has provided deep insights into conserved genetic pathways controlling core developmental processes including meristem identity, phase transitions, determinacy, stem elongation, and branching. These pathways control plant growth patterns and are fundamentally important to crop biology and agriculture. This review describes the conserved pathways that control plant development, using Arabidopsis as a model. Historical examples of how plant development has been altered through selection to improve crop performance are then presented. These examples, drawn from diverse crops, show how the genetic pathways controlling development have been modified to increase yield or tailor growth patterns to suit local growing environments or specialized crop management practices. Strategies to apply current progress in genomics and developmental biology to future crop improvement are then discussed within the broader context of emerging trends in plant breeding. The ways that knowledge of developmental processes and understanding of gene function can contribute to crop improvement, beyond what can be achieved by selection alone, are emphasized. These include using genome re-sequencing, mutagenesis, and gene editing to identify or generate novel variation in developmental genes. The expanding scope for comparative genomics, the possibility to engineer new developmental traits and new approaches to resolve gene–gene or gene–environment interactions are also discussed. Finally, opportunities to integrate fundamental research and crop breeding are highlighted.

  14. Detecting number processing and mental calculation in patients with disorders of consciousness using a hybrid brain-computer interface system.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Yuanqing; Pan, Jiahui; He, Yanbin; Wang, Fei; Laureys, Steven; Xie, Qiuyou; Yu, Ronghao

    2015-12-15

    For patients with disorders of consciousness such as coma, a vegetative state or a minimally conscious state, one challenge is to detect and assess the residual cognitive functions in their brains. Number processing and mental calculation are important brain functions but are difficult to detect in patients with disorders of consciousness using motor response-based clinical assessment scales such as the Coma Recovery Scale-Revised due to the patients' motor impairments and inability to provide sufficient motor responses for number- and calculation-based communication. In this study, we presented a hybrid brain-computer interface that combines P300 and steady state visual evoked potentials to detect number processing and mental calculation in Han Chinese patients with disorders of consciousness. Eleven patients with disorders of consciousness who were in a vegetative state (n = 6) or in a minimally conscious state (n = 3) or who emerged from a minimally conscious state (n = 2) participated in the brain-computer interface-based experiment. During the experiment, the patients with disorders of consciousness were instructed to perform three tasks, i.e., number recognition, number comparison, and mental calculation, including addition and subtraction. In each experimental trial, an arithmetic problem was first presented. Next, two number buttons, only one of which was the correct answer to the problem, flickered at different frequencies to evoke steady state visual evoked potentials, while the frames of the two buttons flashed in a random order to evoke P300 potentials. The patients needed to focus on the target number button (the correct answer). Finally, the brain-computer interface system detected P300 and steady state visual evoked potentials to determine the button to which the patients attended, further presenting the results as feedback. Two of the six patients who were in a vegetative state, one of the three patients who were in a minimally conscious state, and

  15. Notch pathway signaling in the skin antagonizes Merkel cell development.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Logan, Gregory J; Wright, Margaret C; Kubicki, Adam C; Maricich, Stephen M

    2018-02-15

    Merkel cells are mechanosensitive skin cells derived from the epidermal lineage whose development requires expression of the basic helix-loop-helix transcription factor Atoh1. The genes and pathways involved in regulating Merkel cell development during embryogenesis are poorly understood. Notch pathway signaling antagonizes Atoh1 expression in many developing body regions, so we hypothesized that Notch signaling might inhibit Merkel cell development. We found that conditional, constitutive overexpression of the Notch intracellular domain (NICD) in mouse epidermis significantly decreased Merkel cell numbers in whisker follicles and touch domes of hairy skin. Conversely, conditional deletion of the obligate NICD binding partner RBPj in the epidermis significantly increased Merkel cell numbers in whisker follicles, led to the development of ectopic Merkel cells outside of touch domes in hairy skin epidermis, and altered the distribution of Merkel cells in touch domes. Deletion of the downstream Notch effector gene Hes1 also significantly increased Merkel cell numbers in whisker follicles. Together, these data demonstrate that Notch signaling regulates Merkel cell production and patterning. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  16. Abnormal global processing along the dorsal visual pathway in autism: a possible mechanism for weak visuospatial coherence?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pellicano, Elizabeth; Gibson, Lisa; Maybery, Murray; Durkin, Kevin; Badcock, David R

    2005-01-01

    Frith and Happe (Frith, U., & Happe, F. (1994). Autism: Beyond theory of mind. Cognition, 50, 115-132) argue that individuals with autism exhibit 'weak central coherence': an inability to integrate elements of information into coherent wholes. Some authors have speculated that a high-level impairment might be present in the dorsal visual pathway in autism, and furthermore, that this might account for weak central coherence, at least at the visuospatial level. We assessed the integrity of the dorsal visual pathway in children diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and in typically developing children, using two visual tasks, one examining functioning at higher levels of the dorsal cortical stream (Global Dot Motion (GDM)), and the other assessing lower-level dorsal stream functioning (Flicker Contrast Sensitivity (FCS)). Central coherence was tested using the Children's Embedded Figures Test (CEFT). Relative to the typically developing children, the children with ASD had shorter CEFT latencies and higher GDM thresholds but equivalent FCS thresholds. Additionally, CEFT latencies were inversely related to GDM thresholds in the ASD group. These outcomes indicate that the elevated global motion thresholds in autism are the result of high-level impairments in dorsal cortical regions. Weak visuospatial coherence in autism may be in the form of abnormal cooperative mechanisms in extra-striate cortical areas, which might contribute to differential performance when processing stimuli as Gestalts, including both dynamic (i.e., global motion perception) and static (i.e., disembedding performance) stimuli.

  17. Tuning crystallization pathways through sequence engineering of biomimetic polymers

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ma, Xiang; Zhang, Shuai; Jiao, Fang; Newcomb, Christina J.; Zhang, Yuliang; Prakash, Arushi; Liao, Zhihao; Baer, Marcel D.; Mundy, Christopher J.; Pfaendtner, James; Noy, Aleksandr; Chen, Chun-Long; de Yoreo, James J.

    2017-07-01

    Two-step nucleation pathways in which disordered, amorphous, or dense liquid states precede the appearance of crystalline phases have been reported for a wide range of materials, but the dynamics of such pathways are poorly understood. Moreover, whether these pathways are general features of crystallizing systems or a consequence of system-specific structural details that select for direct versus two-step processes is unknown. Using atomic force microscopy to directly observe crystallization of sequence-defined polymers, we show that crystallization pathways are indeed sequence dependent. When a short hydrophobic region is added to a sequence that directly forms crystalline particles, crystallization instead follows a two-step pathway that begins with the creation of disordered clusters of 10-20 molecules and is characterized by highly non-linear crystallization kinetics in which clusters transform into ordered structures that then enter the growth phase. The results shed new light on non-classical crystallization mechanisms and have implications for the design of self-assembling polymer systems.

  18. Tuning crystallization pathways through sequence engineering of biomimetic polymers

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Ma, Xiang; Zhang, Shuai; Jiao, Fang; Newcomb, Christina J.; Zhang, Yuliang; Prakash, Arushi; Liao, Zhihao; Baer, Marcel D.; Mundy, Christopher J.; Pfaendtner, James; Noy, Aleksandr; Chen, Chun-Long; De Yoreo, James J.

    2017-04-17

    Two-step nucleation pathways in which disordered, amorphous, or dense liquid states precede appearance of crystalline phases have been reported for a wide range of materials, but the dynamics of such pathways are poorly understood. Moreover, whether these pathways are general features of crystallizing systems or a consequence of system-specific structural details that select for direct vs two-step processes is unknown. Using atomic force microscopy to directly observe crystallization of sequence-defined polymers, we show that crystallization pathways are indeed sequence dependent. When a short hydrophobic region is added to a sequence that directly forms crystalline particles, crystallization instead follows a two-step pathway that begins with creation of disordered clusters of 10-20 molecules and is characterized by highly non-linear crystallization kinetics in which clusters transform into ordered structures that then enter the growth phase. The results shed new light on non-classical crystallization mechanisms and have implications for design of self-assembling polymer systems.

  19. Rational-number comparison across notation: Fractions, decimals, and whole numbers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hurst, Michelle; Cordes, Sara

    2016-02-01

    Although fractions, decimals, and whole numbers can be used to represent the same rational-number values, it is unclear whether adults conceive of these rational-number magnitudes as lying along the same ordered mental continuum. In the current study, we investigated whether adults' processing of rational-number magnitudes in fraction, decimal, and whole-number notation show systematic ratio-dependent responding characteristic of an integrated mental continuum. Both reaction time (RT) and eye-tracking data from a number-magnitude comparison task revealed ratio-dependent performance when adults compared the relative magnitudes of rational numbers, both within the same notation (e.g., fractions vs. fractions) and across different notations (e.g., fractions vs. decimals), pointing to an integrated mental continuum for rational numbers across notation types. In addition, eye-tracking analyses provided evidence of an implicit whole-number bias when we compared values in fraction notation, and individual differences in this whole-number bias were related to the individual's performance on a fraction arithmetic task. Implications of our results for both cognitive development research and math education are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

  20. Novel Evasion Mechanisms of the Classical Complement Pathway.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Garcia, Brandon L; Zwarthoff, Seline A; Rooijakkers, Suzan H M; Geisbrecht, Brian V

    2016-09-15

    Complement is a network of soluble and cell surface-associated proteins that gives rise to a self-amplifying, yet tightly regulated system with fundamental roles in immune surveillance and clearance. Complement becomes activated on the surface of nonself cells by one of three initiating mechanisms known as the classical, lectin, and alternative pathways. Evasion of complement function is a hallmark of invasive pathogens and hematophagous organisms. Although many complement-inhibition strategies hinge on hijacking activities of endogenous complement regulatory proteins, an increasing number of uniquely evolved evasion molecules have been discovered over the past decade. In this review, we focus on several recent investigations that revealed mechanistically distinct inhibitors of the classical pathway. Because the classical pathway is an important and specific mediator of various autoimmune and inflammatory disorders, in-depth knowledge of novel evasion mechanisms could direct future development of therapeutic anti-inflammatory molecules. Copyright © 2016 by The American Association of Immunologists, Inc.

  1. Individual Differences in Working Memory, Nonverbal IQ, and Mathematics Achievement and Brain Mechanisms Associated with Symbolic and Nonsymbolic Number Processing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gullick, Margaret M.; Sprute, Lisa A.; Temple, Elise

    2011-01-01

    Individual differences in mathematics performance may stem from domain-general factors like working memory and intelligence. Parietal and frontal brain areas have been implicated in number processing, but the influence of such cognitive factors on brain activity during mathematics processing is not known. The relationship between brain mechanisms…

  2. Pathway Aggregation in the Risk Assessment of Proliferation Resistance and Physical Protection (PR&PP) of Nuclear Energy Systems

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    2015-01-01

    The framework for Proliferation Resistance and Physical Protection (PR & PP) evaluation is to define a set of challenges, to obtain the system responses, and to assess the outcomes. The assessment of outcomes heavily relies on pathways, defined as sequences of events or actions that could potentially be followed by a State or a group of individuals in order to achieve a proliferation objective, with the defined threats as initiating events. There may be large number of segments connecting pathway stages (e.g. acquisition, processing, and fabrication for PR) which can lead to even larger number of pathways or scenarios through possible different combinations of segment connections, each with associated probabilities contributing to the overall risk. Clustering of these scenarios in specified stage attribute intervals is important for their tractable analysis and outcome assessment. A software tool for scenario generation and clustering (OSUPR) is developed that utilizes the PRCALC code developed at the Brookhaven National Laboratory for scenario generation and the K- means, mean shift and adaptive mean shift algorithms as possible clustering schemes. The results of the study using the Example Sodium Fast Breeder as an example system show that clustering facilitates the probabilistic or deterministic analysis of scenarios to identify system vulnerabilities and communication of the major risk contributors to stakeholders. The results of the study also show that the mean shift algorithm has the most potential for assisting the analysis of the scenarios generated by PRCALC.

  3. Pathway Aggregation in the Risk Assessment of Proliferation Resistance and Physical Protection (PR&PP) of Nuclear Energy Systems

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Aldemir, Tunc [Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH (United States); Denning, Richard [Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH (United States); Catalyurek, Umit [Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH (United States); Yilmaz, Alper [Ohio State Univ., Columbus, OH (United States); Yue, Meng [Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States); Cheng, Lap-Yan [Brookhaven National Lab. (BNL), Upton, NY (United States)

    2015-01-23

    The framework for Proliferation Resistance and Physical Protection (PR & PP) evaluation is to define a set of challenges, to obtain the system responses, and to assess the outcomes. The assessment of outcomes heavily relies on pathways, defined as sequences of events or actions that could potentially be followed by a State or a group of individuals in order to achieve a proliferation objective, with the defined threats as initiating events. There may be large number of segments connecting pathway stages (e.g. acquisition, processing, and fabrication for PR) which can lead to even larger number of pathways or scenarios through possible different combinations of segment connections, each with associated probabilities contributing to the overall risk. Clustering of these scenarios in specified stage attribute intervals is important for their tractable analysis and outcome assessment. A software tool for scenario generation and clustering (OSUPR) is developed that utilizes the PRCALC code developed at the Brookhaven National Laboratory for scenario generation and the K- means, mean shift and adaptive mean shift algorithms as possible clustering schemes. The results of the study using the Example Sodium Fast Breeder as an example system show that clustering facilitates the probabilistic or deterministic analysis of scenarios to identify system vulnerabilities and communication of the major risk contributors to stakeholders. The results of the study also show that the mean shift algorithm has the most potential for assisting the analysis of the scenarios generated by PRCALC.

  4. [Cell signaling pathways interaction in cellular proliferation: Potential target for therapeutic interventionism].

    Science.gov (United States)

    Valdespino-Gómez, Víctor Manuel; Valdespino-Castillo, Patricia Margarita; Valdespino-Castillo, Víctor Edmundo

    2015-01-01

    Nowadays, cellular physiology is best understood by analysing their interacting molecular components. Proteins are the major components of the cells. Different proteins are organised in the form of functional clusters, pathways or networks. These molecules are ordered in clusters of receptor molecules of extracellular signals, transducers, sensors and biological response effectors. The identification of these intracellular signaling pathways in different cellular types has required a long journey of experimental work. More than 300 intracellular signaling pathways have been identified in human cells. They participate in cell homeostasis processes for structural and functional maintenance. Some of them participate simultaneously or in a nearly-consecutive progression to generate a cellular phenotypic change. In this review, an analysis is performed on the main intracellular signaling pathways that take part in the cellular proliferation process, and the potential use of some components of these pathways as target for therapeutic interventionism are also underlined. Copyright © 2015 Academia Mexicana de Cirugía A.C. Published by Masson Doyma México S.A. All rights reserved.

  5. Social identities as pathways into and out of addiction

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Genevieve Anita Dingle

    2015-11-01

    Full Text Available There exists a predominant identity loss and redemption narrative in the addiction literature describing how individuals move from a substance user identity to a recovery identity. However, other identity related pathways influencing onset, treatment seeking and recovery may exist, and the process through which social identities unrelated to substance use change over time is not well understood. This study was designed to provide a richer understanding of such social identities processes. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 adults residing in a drug and alcohol therapeutic community (TC and thematic analysis revealed two distinct identity-related pathways leading into and out of addiction. Some individuals experienced a loss of valued identities during addiction onset that were later renewed during recovery (consistent with the existing redemption narrative. However, a distinct identity gain pathway emerged for socially isolated individuals, who described the onset of their addiction in terms of a new valued social identity. Almost all participants described their TC experience in terms of belonging to a recovery community. Participants on the identity loss pathway aimed to renew their pre-addiction identities after treatment while those on the identity gain pathway aimed to build aspirational new identities involving study, work, or family roles. These findings help to explain how social factors are implicated in the course of addiction, and may act as either motivations for or barriers to recovery. The qualitative analysis yielded a testable model for future research in other samples and settings.

  6. Social Identities as Pathways into and out of Addiction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dingle, Genevieve A.; Cruwys, Tegan; Frings, Daniel

    2015-01-01

    There exists a predominant identity loss and “redemption” narrative in the addiction literature describing how individuals move from a “substance user” identity to a “recovery” identity. However, other identity related pathways influencing onset, treatment seeking and recovery may exist, and the process through which social identities unrelated to substance use change over time is not well understood. This study was designed to provide a richer understanding of such social identities processes. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 adults residing in a drug and alcohol therapeutic community (TC) and thematic analysis revealed two distinct identity-related pathways leading into and out of addiction. Some individuals experienced a loss of valued identities during addiction onset that were later renewed during recovery (consistent with the existing redemption narrative). However, a distinct identity gain pathway emerged for socially isolated individuals, who described the onset of their addiction in terms of a new valued social identity. Almost all participants described their TC experience in terms of belonging to a recovery community. Participants on the identity loss pathway aimed to renew their pre-addiction identities after treatment while those on the identity gain pathway aimed to build aspirational new identities involving study, work, or family roles. These findings help to explain how social factors are implicated in the course of addiction, and may act as either motivations for or barriers to recovery. The qualitative analysis yielded a testable model for future research in other samples and settings. PMID:26648882

  7. Copy number variation analysis of matched ovarian primary tumors and peritoneal metastasis.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Joel A Malek

    Full Text Available Ovarian cancer is the most deadly gynecological cancer. The high rate of mortality is due to the large tumor burden with extensive metastatic lesion of the abdominal cavity. Despite initial chemosensitivity and improved surgical procedures, abdominal recurrence remains an issue and results in patients' poor prognosis. Transcriptomic and genetic studies have revealed significant genome pathologies in the primary tumors and yielded important information regarding carcinogenesis. There are, however, few studies on genetic alterations and their consequences in peritoneal metastatic tumors when compared to their matched ovarian primary tumors. We used high-density SNP arrays to investigate copy number variations in matched primary and metastatic ovarian cancer from 9 patients. Here we show that copy number variations acquired by ovarian tumors are significantly different between matched primary and metastatic tumors and these are likely due to different functional requirements. We show that these copy number variations clearly differentially affect specific pathways including the JAK/STAT and cytokine signaling pathways. While many have shown complex involvement of cytokines in the ovarian cancer environment we provide evidence that ovarian tumors have specific copy number variation differences in many of these genes.

  8. Functional analysis of the MAPK pathways in fungi.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Martínez-Soto, Domingo; Ruiz-Herrera, José

    The Mitogen-Activated Protein Kinase (MAPK) signaling pathways constitute one of the most important and evolutionarily conserved mechanisms for the perception of extracellular information in all the eukaryotic organisms. The MAPK pathways are involved in the transfer to the cell of the information perceived from extracellular stimuli, with the final outcome of activation of different transcription factors that regulate gene expression in response to them. In all species of fungi, the MAPK pathways have important roles in their physiology and development; e.g. cell cycle control, mating, morphogenesis, response to different stresses, resistance to UV radiation and to temperature changes, cell wall assembly and integrity, degradation of cellular organelles, virulence, cell-cell signaling, fungus-plant interaction, and response to damage-associated molecular patterns (DAMPs). Considering the importance of the phylogenetically conserved MAPK pathways in fungi, an updated review of the knowledge on them is discussed in this article. This information reveals their importance, their distribution in fungal species evolutionarily distant and with different lifestyles, their organization and function, and the interactions occurring between different MAPK pathways, and with other signaling pathways, for the regulation of the most complex cellular processes. Copyright © 2017 Asociación Española de Micología. Publicado por Elsevier España, S.L.U. All rights reserved.

  9. Dimensionless Numbers Expressed in Terms of Common CVD Process Parameters

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kuczmarski, Maria A.

    1999-01-01

    A variety of dimensionless numbers related to momentum and heat transfer are useful in Chemical Vapor Deposition (CVD) analysis. These numbers are not traditionally calculated by directly using reactor operating parameters, such as temperature and pressure. In this paper, these numbers have been expressed in a form that explicitly shows their dependence upon the carrier gas, reactor geometry, and reactor operation conditions. These expressions were derived for both monatomic and diatomic gases using estimation techniques for viscosity, thermal conductivity, and heat capacity. Values calculated from these expressions compared well to previously published values. These expressions provide a relatively quick method for predicting changes in the flow patterns resulting from changes in the reactor operating conditions.

  10. The Role of Cognitive Processes, Foundational Math Skill, and Calculation Accuracy and Fluency in Word-Problem Solving versus Pre-Algebraic Knowledge

    Science.gov (United States)

    Fuchs, Lynn S.; Gilbert, Jennifer K.; Powell, Sarah R.; Cirino, Paul T.; Fuchs, Douglas; Hamlett, Carol L.; Seethaler, Pamela M.; Tolar, Tammy D.

    2016-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to examine child-level pathways in development of pre-algebraic knowledge versus word-problem solving, while evaluating the contribution of calculation accuracy and fluency as mediators of foundational skills/processes. Children (n = 962; mean 7.60 years) were assessed on general cognitive processes and early calculation, word-problem, and number knowledge at start of grade 2; calculation accuracy and calculation fluency at end of grade 2; and pre-algebraic knowledge and word-problem solving at end of grade 4. Important similarities in pathways were identified, but path analysis also indicated that language comprehension is more critical for later word-problem solving than pre-algebraic knowledge. We conclude that pathways in development of these forms of 4th-grade mathematics performance are more alike than different, but demonstrate the need to fine-tune instruction for strands of the mathematics curriculum in ways that address individual students’ foundational mathematics skills or cognitive processes. PMID:27786534

  11. Transcriptomic analysis in a Drosophila model identifies previously implicated and novel pathways in the therapeutic mechanism in neuropsychiatric disorders

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Priyanka eSingh

    2011-03-01

    Full Text Available We have taken advantage of a newly described Drosophila model to gain insights into the potential mechanism of antiepileptic drugs (AEDs, a group of drugs that are widely used in the treatment of several neurological and psychiatric conditions besides epilepsy. In the recently described Drosophila model that is inspired by pentylenetetrazole (PTZ induced kindling epileptogenesis in rodents, chronic PTZ treatment for seven days causes a decreased climbing speed and an altered CNS transcriptome, with the latter mimicking gene expression alterations reported in epileptogenesis. In the model, an increased climbing speed is further observed seven days after withdrawal from chronic PTZ. We used this post-PTZ withdrawal regime to identify potential AED mechanism. In this regime, treatment with each of the five AEDs tested, namely, ethosuximide (ETH, gabapentin (GBP, vigabatrin (VGB, sodium valproate (NaVP and levetiracetam (LEV, resulted in rescuing of the altered climbing behavior. The AEDs also normalized PTZ withdrawal induced transcriptomic perturbation in fly heads; whereas AED untreated flies showed a large number of up- and down-regulated genes which were enriched in several processes including gene expression and cell communication, the AED treated flies showed differential expression of only a small number of genes that did not enrich gene expression and cell communication processes. Gene expression and cell communication related upregulated genes in AED untreated flies overrepresented several pathways - spliceosome, RNA degradation, and ribosome in the former category, and inositol phosphate metabolism, phosphatidylinositol signaling, endocytosis and hedgehog signaling in the latter. Transcriptome remodeling effect of AEDs was overall confirmed by microarray clustering that clearly separated the profiles of AED treated and untreated flies. Besides being consistent with previously implicated pathways, our results provide evidence for a role of

  12. Traumatogenic Processes and Pathways to Mental Health Outcomes for Sexual Minorities Exposed to Bias Crime Information.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lannert, Brittany K

    2015-07-01

    Vicarious traumatization of nonvictim members of communities targeted by bias crimes has been suggested by previous qualitative studies and often dominates public discussion following bias events, but proximal and distal responses of community members have yet to be comprehensively modeled, and quantitative research on vicarious responses is scarce. This comprehensive review integrates theoretical and empirical literatures in social, clinical, and physiological psychology in the development of a model of affective, cognitive, and physiological responses of lesbian, gay, and bisexual individuals upon exposure to information about bias crimes. Extant qualitative research in vicarious response to bias crimes is reviewed in light of theoretical implications and methodological limitations. Potential pathways to mental health outcomes are outlined, including accumulative effects of anticipatory defensive responding, multiplicative effects of minority stress, and putative traumatogenic physiological and cognitive processes of threat. Methodological considerations, future research directions, and clinical implications are also discussed. © The Author(s) 2014.

  13. Random walk of the baryon number

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kazaryan, A.M.; Khlebnikov, S.Y.; Shaposhnikov, M.E.

    1989-01-01

    A new approach is suggested for the anomalous nonconservation of baryon number in the electroweak theory at high temperatures. Arguments are presented in support of the idea that the baryon-number changing reactions may be viewed as random Markov processes. Making use of the general theory of Markov processes, the Fokker--Planck equation for the baryon-number distribution density is obtained and kinetic coefficients are calculated

  14. Prediction of novel synthetic pathways for the production of desired chemicals

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Park Jin

    2010-03-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background There have been several methods developed for the prediction of synthetic metabolic pathways leading to the production of desired chemicals. In these approaches, novel pathways were predicted based on chemical structure changes, enzymatic information, and/or reaction mechanisms, but the approaches generating a huge number of predicted results are difficult to be applied to real experiments. Also, some of these methods focus on specific pathways, and thus are limited to expansion to the whole metabolism. Results In the present study, we propose a system framework employing a retrosynthesis model with a prioritization scoring algorithm. This new strategy allows deducing the novel promising pathways for the synthesis of a desired chemical together with information on enzymes involved based on structural changes and reaction mechanisms present in the system database. The prioritization scoring algorithm employing Tanimoto coefficient and group contribution method allows examination of structurally qualified pathways to recognize which pathway is more appropriate. In addition, new concepts of binding site covalence, estimation of pathway distance and organism specificity were taken into account to identify the best synthetic pathway. Parameters of these factors can be evolutionarily optimized when a newly proven synthetic pathway is registered. As the proofs of concept, the novel synthetic pathways for the production of isobutanol, 3-hydroxypropionate, and butyryl-CoA were predicted. The prediction shows a high reliability, in which experimentally verified synthetic pathways were listed within the top 0.089% of the identified pathway candidates. Conclusions It is expected that the system framework developed in this study would be useful for the in silico design of novel metabolic pathways to be employed for the efficient production of chemicals, fuels and materials.

  15. Personalized identification of differentially expressed pathways in pediatric sepsis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, Binjie; Zeng, Qiyi

    2017-10-01

    Sepsis is a leading killer of children worldwide with numerous differentially expressed genes reported to be associated with sepsis. Identifying core pathways in an individual is important for understanding septic mechanisms and for the future application of custom therapeutic decisions. Samples used in the study were from a control group (n=18) and pediatric sepsis group (n=52). Based on Kauffman's attractor theory, differentially expressed pathways associated with pediatric sepsis were detected as attractors. When the distribution results of attractors are consistent with the distribution of total data assessed using support vector machine, the individualized pathway aberrance score (iPAS) was calculated to distinguish differences. Through attractor and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes functional analysis, 277 enriched pathways were identified as attractors. There were 81 pathways with Ppathways with Ppathway clusters and four sample clusters. Thus, in the majority pediatric sepsis samples, core pathways can be detected as different from accumulated normal samples. In conclusion, a novel procedure that identified the dysregulated attractors in individuals with pediatric sepsis was constructed. Attractors can be markers to identify pathways involved in pediatric sepsis. iPAS may provide a correlation score for each of the signaling pathways present in an individual patient. This process may improve the personalized interpretation of disease mechanisms and may be useful in the forthcoming era of personalized medicine.

  16. Kynurenine pathway in psychosis: evidence of increased tryptophan degradation.

    LENUS (Irish Health Repository)

    Barry, Sandra

    2009-05-01

    The kynurenine pathway of tryptophan degradation may serve to integrate disparate abnormalities heretofore identified in research aiming to elucidate the complex aetiopathogenesis of psychotic disorders. Post-mortem brain tissue studies have reported elevated kynurenine and kynurenic acid in the frontal cortex and upregulation of the first step of the pathway in the anterior cingulate cortex of individuals with schizophrenia. In this study, we examined kynurenine pathway activity by measuring tryptophan breakdown, a number of pathway metabolites and interferon gamma (IFN-gamma), which is the preferential activator of the first-step enzyme, indoleamine dioxygenase (IDO), in the plasma of patients with major psychotic disorder. Plasma tryptophan, kynurenine pathway metabolites were measured using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) in 34 patients with a diagnosis on the psychotic spectrum (schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder) and in 36 healthy control subjects. IFN-gamma was measured using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The mean tryptophan breakdown index (kynurenine\\/tryptophan) was significantly higher in the patient group compared with controls (P < 0.05). IFN-gamma measures did not differ between groups (P = 0.23). No relationship was found between measures of psychopathology, symptom severity and activity in the first step in the pathway. A modest correlation was established between the tryptophan breakdown index and illness duration. These results provide evidence for kynurenine pathway upregulation, specifically involving the first enzymatic step, in patients with major psychotic disorder. Increased tryptophan degradation in psychoses may have potential consequences for the treatment of these disorders by informing the development of novel therapeutic compounds.

  17. Protein degradation pathways in Parkinson's disease: curse or blessing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ebrahimi-Fakhari, Darius; Wahlster, Lara; McLean, Pamela J

    2012-08-01

    Protein misfolding, aggregation and deposition are common disease mechanisms in many neurodegenerative diseases including Parkinson's disease (PD). Accumulation of damaged or abnormally modified proteins may lead to perturbed cellular function and eventually to cell death. Thus, neurons rely on elaborated pathways of protein quality control and removal to maintain intracellular protein homeostasis. Molecular chaperones, the ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS) and the autophagy-lysosomal pathway (ALP) are critical pathways that mediate the refolding or removal of abnormal proteins. The successive failure of these protein degradation pathways, as a cause or consequence of early pathological alterations in vulnerable neurons at risk, may present a key step in the pathological cascade that leads to spreading neurodegeneration. A growing number of studies in disease models and patients have implicated dysfunction of the UPS and ALP in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease and related disorders. Deciphering the exact mechanism by which the different proteolytic systems contribute to the elimination of pathogenic proteins, like α-synuclein, is therefore of paramount importance. We herein review the role of protein degradation pathways in Parkinson's disease and elaborate on the different contributions of the UPS and the ALP to the clearance of altered proteins. We examine the interplay between different degradation pathways and provide a model for the role of the UPS and ALP in the evolution and progression of α-synuclein pathology. With regards to exciting recent studies we also discuss the putative potential of using protein degradation pathways as novel therapeutic targets in Parkinson's disease.

  18. An overview of bioinformatics methods for modeling biological pathways in yeast.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hou, Jie; Acharya, Lipi; Zhu, Dongxiao; Cheng, Jianlin

    2016-03-01

    The advent of high-throughput genomics techniques, along with the completion of genome sequencing projects, identification of protein-protein interactions and reconstruction of genome-scale pathways, has accelerated the development of systems biology research in the yeast organism Saccharomyces cerevisiae In particular, discovery of biological pathways in yeast has become an important forefront in systems biology, which aims to understand the interactions among molecules within a cell leading to certain cellular processes in response to a specific environment. While the existing theoretical and experimental approaches enable the investigation of well-known pathways involved in metabolism, gene regulation and signal transduction, bioinformatics methods offer new insights into computational modeling of biological pathways. A wide range of computational approaches has been proposed in the past for reconstructing biological pathways from high-throughput datasets. Here we review selected bioinformatics approaches for modeling biological pathways inS. cerevisiae, including metabolic pathways, gene-regulatory pathways and signaling pathways. We start with reviewing the research on biological pathways followed by discussing key biological databases. In addition, several representative computational approaches for modeling biological pathways in yeast are discussed. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  19. Oxygen and the evolution of metabolic pathways

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jahnke, L. L.

    1986-01-01

    While a considerable amount of evidence has been accumulated about the history of oxygen on this planet, little is known about the relative amounts to which primitive cells might have been exposed. One clue may be found in the metabolic pathways of extant microorganisms. While eucaryotes are principally aerobic organisms, a number are capable of anaerobic growth by fermentation. One such eucaryotic microorganism, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, will grow in the complete absence of oxygen when supplemented with unsaturated fatty acid and sterol. Oxygen-requiring enzymes are involved in the synthesis of both of these compounds. Studies have demonstrated that the oxidative desaturation of palmitic acid and the conversion of squalene to sterols occur in the range of 10-(3) to 10(-2) PAL. Thus, if the oxygen requirements of these enzymatic processes are an indication, eucaryotes might be more primitive than anticipated from the microfossil record. Results of studies on the oxygen requirements for sterol and unsaturated fatty acid synthesis in a more primitive procaryotic system are also discussed.

  20. Integrated GWAS and Pathway profiling for feed efficiency traits in pigs leads to novel genes and their molecular pathways

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Do, Duy Ngoc; Ostersen, Tage; Strathe, Anders Bjerring

    2013-01-01

    Genome wide association studies (GWAS) are being extensively used in revealing genetic architecture of complex traits. However, GWAS offer limited understanding of the biological role of significant single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) affecting complex traits. Pathway analysis using GWAS results...... is an important step where we firstly detect genes located near GWAS-detected SNPs and subsequently we detect enrichment of these genes in various biological processes and pathways. The objective of this study was to apply these steps to identify relevant pathways involved in residual feed intake (RFI) in pigs....... Residual feed intake is a feed efficiency measure and is highly economically important in animal production. In our study, a total of 596 Yorkshire boars had phenotypic and genotypic records. After quality control, 37,915 SNPs were available for GWAS which was implemented in the DMU software package...

  1. Intricacies of hedgehog signaling pathways: A perspective in tumorigenesis

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kar, Swayamsiddha; Deb, Moonmoon; Sengupta, Dipta; Shilpi, Arunima; Bhutia, Sujit Kumar; Patra, Samir Kumar

    2012-01-01

    The hedgehog (HH) signaling pathway is a crucial negotiator of developmental proceedings in the embryo governing a diverse array of processes including cell proliferation, differentiation, and tissue patterning. The overall activity of the pathway is significantly curtailed after embryogenesis as well as in adults, yet it retains many of its functional capacities. However, aberration in HH signaling mediates the initiation, proliferation and continued sustenance of malignancy in different tissues to varying degrees through different mechanisms. In this review, we provide an overview of the role of constitutively active aberrant HH signaling pathway in different types of human cancer and the underlying molecular and genetic mechanisms that drive tumorigenesis in that particular tissue. An insight into the various modes of anomalous HH signaling in different organs will provide a comprehensive knowledge of the pathway in these tissues and open a window for individually tailored, tissue-specific therapeutic interventions. The synergistic cross talking of HH pathway with many other regulatory molecules and developmentally inclined signaling pathways may offer many avenues for pharmacological advances. Understanding the molecular basis of abnormal HH signaling in cancer will provide an opportunity to inhibit the deregulated pathway in many aggressive and therapeutically challenging cancers where promising options are not available.

  2. Intricacies of hedgehog signaling pathways: A perspective in tumorigenesis

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Kar, Swayamsiddha; Deb, Moonmoon; Sengupta, Dipta; Shilpi, Arunima; Bhutia, Sujit Kumar [Epigenetics and Cancer Research Laboratory, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Group, Department of Life Science, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, Odisha 769008 (India); Patra, Samir Kumar, E-mail: samirp@nitrkl.ac.in [Epigenetics and Cancer Research Laboratory, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Group, Department of Life Science, National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, Odisha 769008 (India)

    2012-10-01

    The hedgehog (HH) signaling pathway is a crucial negotiator of developmental proceedings in the embryo governing a diverse array of processes including cell proliferation, differentiation, and tissue patterning. The overall activity of the pathway is significantly curtailed after embryogenesis as well as in adults, yet it retains many of its functional capacities. However, aberration in HH signaling mediates the initiation, proliferation and continued sustenance of malignancy in different tissues to varying degrees through different mechanisms. In this review, we provide an overview of the role of constitutively active aberrant HH signaling pathway in different types of human cancer and the underlying molecular and genetic mechanisms that drive tumorigenesis in that particular tissue. An insight into the various modes of anomalous HH signaling in different organs will provide a comprehensive knowledge of the pathway in these tissues and open a window for individually tailored, tissue-specific therapeutic interventions. The synergistic cross talking of HH pathway with many other regulatory molecules and developmentally inclined signaling pathways may offer many avenues for pharmacological advances. Understanding the molecular basis of abnormal HH signaling in cancer will provide an opportunity to inhibit the deregulated pathway in many aggressive and therapeutically challenging cancers where promising options are not available.

  3. fMRI and DTI in delayed development of number processing; fMRT und DTI bei Entwicklungsverzoegerung der Zahlenverarbeitung

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Krick, C.M.; Neuhaus, A.; Klewin, C.; Woerner, T.; Kreis, S.; Reith, W. [Universitaetsklinikum des Saarlandes, Klinik fuer Diagnostische und Interventionelle Neuroradiologie, Homburg/Saar (Germany)

    2015-09-15

    The neuronal correlate of the current cultural performance arose from developmental processes that can be observed by functional and anatomical magnetic resonance imaging. The velocity of these maturation processes occurs differently between adolescents, causing implications for both school career and academic performance. Regarding spatial-numerical cognition the myelinization of the superior longitudinal bundle appears to be crucial because this fiber connection intermediates between the linguistic nature of number words and conception of their spatial-numerical magnitude. The neuroscientific observation of anatomical brain maturation and its influence on school-relevant number processing may be helpful for educational purposes as well as for school psychology. (orig.) [German] Das neuronale Fundament unserer Kulturleistungen ist einem Entwicklungsprozess unterworfen, der ueber funktionelle und anatomische Magnetresonanzbildgebung beobachtet werden kann. Diese Reifungsprozesse verlaufen bei verschiedenen Jugendlichen unterschiedlich rasch, sodass sich darueber auch Wechselwirkungen mit der Schullaufbahn und schulischen Leistungen ergeben. Im Fall der raeumlich-numerischen Kognition spielt u. a. die Myelinisierung des Fasciculus longitudinalis superior eine entscheidende Rolle, weil diese Faserverbindung fuer das Vermitteln zwischen sprachlichem Zahlenkode und numerischer Groessenvorstellung relevant ist. Die neurowissenschaftliche Darstellung anatomischer Reifeprozesse und deren Einfluss auf die schulrelevanten Prozesse der Zahlenverarbeitung koennen im Lichte paedagogischer oder schulpsychologischer Ueberlegungen dienlich erscheinen. (orig.)

  4. On-chip, photon-number-resolving, telecommunication-band detectors for scalable photonic information processing

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Gerrits, Thomas; Lita, Adriana E.; Calkins, Brice; Tomlin, Nathan A.; Fox, Anna E.; Linares, Antia Lamas; Mirin, Richard P.; Nam, Sae Woo [National Institute of Standards and Technology, Boulder, Colorado, 80305 (United States); Thomas-Peter, Nicholas; Metcalf, Benjamin J.; Spring, Justin B.; Langford, Nathan K.; Walmsley, Ian A. [Clarendon Laboratory, University of Oxford, Parks Road, Oxford OX1 3PU (United Kingdom); Gates, James C.; Smith, Peter G. R. [Optoelectronics Research Centre, University of Southampton, Highfield SO17 1BJ (United Kingdom)

    2011-12-15

    Integration is currently the only feasible route toward scalable photonic quantum processing devices that are sufficiently complex to be genuinely useful in computing, metrology, and simulation. Embedded on-chip detection will be critical to such devices. We demonstrate an integrated photon-number-resolving detector, operating in the telecom band at 1550 nm, employing an evanescently coupled design that allows it to be placed at arbitrary locations within a planar circuit. Up to five photons are resolved in the guided optical mode via absorption from the evanescent field into a tungsten transition-edge sensor. The detection efficiency is 7.2{+-}0.5 %. The polarization sensitivity of the detector is also demonstrated. Detailed modeling of device designs shows a clear and feasible route to reaching high detection efficiencies.

  5. The mutator pathway is a feature of immunodeficiency-related lymphomas

    Science.gov (United States)

    Duval, Alex; Raphael, Martine; Brennetot, Caroline; Poirel, Helene; Buhard, Olivier; Aubry, Alban; Martin, Antoine; Krimi, Amor; Leblond, Veronique; Gabarre, Jean; Davi, Frederic; Charlotte, Frederic; Berger, Francoise; Gaidano, Gianluca; Capello, Daniela; Canioni, Danielle; Bordessoule, Dominique; Feuillard, Jean; Gaulard, Philippe; Delfau, Marie Helene; Ferlicot, Sophie; Eclache, Virginie; Prevot, Sophie; Guettier, Catherine; Lefevre, Pascale Cornillet; Adotti, Francoise; Hamelin, Richard

    2004-01-01

    The mutator phenotype caused by defects in the mismatch repair system is observed in a subset of solid neoplasms characterized by widespread microsatellite instability-high (MSI-H). It is known to be very rare in non-Hodgkin lymphomas (NHL), whereas mutator NHL is the most frequent tumor subtype in mismatch repair-deficient mice. By screening a series of 603 human NHL with specific markers of the mutator phenotype, we found here 12 MSI-H cases (12/603, 2%). Of interest, we demonstrated that this phenotype was specifically associated with immunodeficiency-related lymphomas (ID-RL), because it was observed in both posttransplant lymphoproliferative disorders (9/111, 8.1%) and HIV infection-related lymphomas (3/128, 2.3%) but not in a large series of NHL arising in the general population (0/364) (P < 0.0001). The MSI pathway is known to lead to the production of hundreds of abnormal protein neoantigens that are generated in MSI-H neoplasms by frameshift mutations of a number of genes containing coding microsatellite sequences. As expected, MSI-H ID-RL were found to harbor such genetic alterations in 12 target genes with a putative role in lymphomagenesis. The observation that the MSI-H phenotype was restricted to HIV infection-related lymphomas and posttransplant lymphoproliferative disorders suggests the existence of the highly immunogenic mutator pathway as a novel oncogenic process in lymphomagenesis whose role is favored when host immunosurveillance is reduced. Because MSI-H-positive cases were found to be either Epstein-Barr virus-positive or -negative, the mutator pathway should act synergistically or not with this other oncogenic factor, playing an important role in ID-RL. PMID:15047891

  6. Representing number in the real-time processing of agreement: Self-paced reading evidence from Arabic

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Matthew A. Tucker

    2015-04-01

    Full Text Available In the processing of subject-verb agreement, non-subject plural nouns following a singular subject sometimes attract the agreement with the verb, despite not being grammatically licensed to do so. This phenomenon generates agreement errors in production and an increased tendency to fail to notice such errors in comprehension, thereby providing a window into the representation of grammatical number in working memory during sentence processing. Research in this topic, however, is primarily done in related languages with similar agreement systems. In order to increase the cross-linguistic coverage of the processing of agreement, we conducted a self-paced reading study in Modern Standard Arabic. We report robust agreement attraction errors in relative clauses, a configuration not particularly conducive to the generation of such errors for all possible lexicalizations. In particular, we examined the speed with which readers retrieve a subject controller for both grammatical and ungrammatical agreeing verbs in sentences where verbs are preceded by two NPs, one of which is a local non-subject NP that can act as a distractor for the successful resolution of subject-verb agreement. Our results suggest that the frequency of errors is modulated by the kind of plural formation strategy used on the attractor noun: nouns which form plurals by suffixation condition high rates of attraction, whereas nouns which form their plurals by internal vowel change (ablaut generate lower rates of errors and reading-time attraction effects of smaller magnitudes. Furthermore, we show some evidence that these agreement attraction effects are mostly contained in the right tail of reaction time distributions. We also present modeling data in the ACT-R framework which supports a view of these ablauting patterns wherein they are differentially specified for number and evaluate the consequences of possible representations for theories of grammar and parsing.

  7. Cation binding to 15-TBA quadruplex DNA is a multiple-pathway cation-dependent process

    Science.gov (United States)

    Reshetnikov, Roman V.; Sponer, Jiri; Rassokhina, Olga I.; Kopylov, Alexei M.; Tsvetkov, Philipp O.; Makarov, Alexander A.; Golovin, Andrey V.

    2011-01-01

    A combination of explicit solvent molecular dynamics simulation (30 simulations reaching 4 µs in total), hybrid quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics approach and isothermal titration calorimetry was used to investigate the atomistic picture of ion binding to 15-mer thrombin-binding quadruplex DNA (G-DNA) aptamer. Binding of ions to G-DNA is complex multiple pathway process, which is strongly affected by the type of the cation. The individual ion-binding events are substantially modulated by the connecting loops of the aptamer, which play several roles. They stabilize the molecule during time periods when the bound ions are not present, they modulate the route of the ion into the stem and they also stabilize the internal ions by closing the gates through which the ions enter the quadruplex. Using our extensive simulations, we for the first time observed full spontaneous exchange of internal cation between quadruplex molecule and bulk solvent at atomistic resolution. The simulation suggests that expulsion of the internally bound ion is correlated with initial binding of the incoming ion. The incoming ion then readily replaces the bound ion while minimizing any destabilization of the solute molecule during the exchange. PMID:21893589

  8. Bioactive Fraction of Geopropolis from Melipona scutellaris Decreases Neutrophils Migration in the Inflammatory Process: Involvement of Nitric Oxide Pathway

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marcelo Franchin

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available The aim of this study was to evaluate the activity of the ethanolic extract of geopropolis (EEGP from Melipona scutellaris and its fractions on the modulation of neutrophil migration in the inflammatory process, and the participation of nitric oxide (NO pathway, as well as to check the chemical profile of the bioactive fraction. EEGP and its aqueous fraction decreased neutrophil migration in the peritoneal cavity and also the interaction of leukocytes (rolling and adhesion with endothelial cells. The levels of chemokines CXCL1/KC and CXCL2/MIP-2 were not altered after treatment with EEGP and the aqueous fraction. It was found that the injection of NO pathway antagonists abolished the EEGP and the aqueous fraction inhibitory activity on the neutrophil migration. The expression of intercellular adhesion molecule type 1 (ICAM-1 was reduced, and nitrite levels increased after treatment with EEGP and aqueous fraction. In the carrageenan-induced paw edema model, EEGP and the aqueous fraction showed antiedema activity. No pattern of flavonoid and phenolic acid commonly found in propolis samples of Apis mellifera could be detected in the aqueous fraction samples. These data indicate that the aqueous fraction found has promising bioactive substances with anti-inflammatory activity.

  9. Bioactive Fraction of Geopropolis from Melipona scutellaris Decreases Neutrophils Migration in the Inflammatory Process: Involvement of Nitric Oxide Pathway.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Franchin, Marcelo; da Cunha, Marcos Guilherme; Denny, Carina; Napimoga, Marcelo Henrique; Cunha, Thiago Mattar; Bueno-Silva, Bruno; Matias de Alencar, Severino; Ikegaki, Masaharu; Luiz Rosalen, Pedro

    2013-01-01

    The aim of this study was to evaluate the activity of the ethanolic extract of geopropolis (EEGP) from Melipona scutellaris and its fractions on the modulation of neutrophil migration in the inflammatory process, and the participation of nitric oxide (NO) pathway, as well as to check the chemical profile of the bioactive fraction. EEGP and its aqueous fraction decreased neutrophil migration in the peritoneal cavity and also the interaction of leukocytes (rolling and adhesion) with endothelial cells. The levels of chemokines CXCL1/KC and CXCL2/MIP-2 were not altered after treatment with EEGP and the aqueous fraction. It was found that the injection of NO pathway antagonists abolished the EEGP and the aqueous fraction inhibitory activity on the neutrophil migration. The expression of intercellular adhesion molecule type 1 (ICAM-1) was reduced, and nitrite levels increased after treatment with EEGP and aqueous fraction. In the carrageenan-induced paw edema model, EEGP and the aqueous fraction showed antiedema activity. No pattern of flavonoid and phenolic acid commonly found in propolis samples of Apis mellifera could be detected in the aqueous fraction samples. These data indicate that the aqueous fraction found has promising bioactive substances with anti-inflammatory activity.

  10. Learning resistance mutation pathways of HIV

    OpenAIRE

    Ramon, Jan; Dubrovskaya, Snezhana; Blockeel, Hendrik

    2007-01-01

    We propose a novel machine learning algorithm for learning mutation pathways of viruses from a population of viral DNA strands. More specifically, given a number of sequences, the algorithm constructs a phylogenetic tree that expresses the ancestry of the sequences, and at the same time builds a model describing dependencies between mutations that is consistent with the data as well as the phylogenetic tree. Our approach extends existing approaches for phylogenetic tree construction by not as...

  11. EarthConnections: Integrating Community Science and Geoscience Education Pathways for More Resilient Communities.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Manduca, C. A.

    2017-12-01

    To develop a diverse geoscience workforce, the EarthConnections collective impact alliance is developing regionally focused, Earth education pathways. These pathways support and guide students from engagement in relevant, Earth-related science at an early age through the many steps and transitions to geoscience-related careers. Rooted in existing regional activities, pathways are developed using a process that engages regional stakeholders and community members with EarthConnections partners. Together they connect, sequence, and create multiple learning opportunities that link geoscience education and community service to address one or more local geoscience issues. Three initial pilots are demonstrating different starting points and strategies for creating pathways that serve community needs while supporting geoscience education. The San Bernardino pilot is leveraging existing academic relationships and programs; the Atlanta pilot is building into existing community activities; and the Oklahoma Tribal Nations pilot is co-constructing a pathway focus and approach. The project is using pathway mapping and a collective impact framework to support and monitor progress. The goal is to develop processes and activities that can help other communities develop similar community-based geoscience pathways. By intertwining Earth education with local community service we aspire to increase the resilience of communities in the face of environmental hazards and limited Earth resources.

  12. Assessing invasion process through pathway and vector analysis: case of saltcedar (Tamarix spp.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Evangelina Natale

    2012-12-01

    Full Text Available Biological invasions are one of the most pervasive environmental threats to native ecosystems worldwide. The spontaneous spread ofsaltcedar is a particular threat to biodiversity conservation in arid and semiarid environments. In Argentina, three species belonging to this genus have been recognized as invaders. The aim of the present study was to identify main dispersal vectors and pathways to refine risk analysis and increase our ability to predict new areas at risk of Tamarix establishment. We surveyed and categorized 223 populations, 39% as invasive, 26% as established, 21% as contained and 14% as detected in nature. Dispersion of saltcedar was found to be associated with watercourses and human-driven disturbances; in addition roads were found to be relevant for the introduction of propagules in newenvironments. Considering the potential impact of saltcedar invasion and that it is an easily wind-dispersed invasive, it is necessary toimplement strategies to monitor dispersal pathways and take actions to eliminate invasion foci, particularly in vulnerable and highconservation value areas.

  13. Consolidity: Stack-based systems change pathway theory elaborated

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hassen Taher Dorrah

    2014-06-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents an elaborated analysis for investigating the stack-based layering processes during the systems change pathway. The system change pathway is defined as the path resulting from the combinations of all successive changes induced on the system when subjected to varying environments, activities, events, or any excessive internal or external influences and happenings “on and above” its normal stands, situations or set-points during its course of life. The analysis is essentially based on the important overall system paradigm of “Time driven-event driven-parameters change”. Based on this paradigm, it is considered that any affected activity, event or varying environment is intelligently self-recorded inside the system through an incremental consolidity-scaled change in system parameters of the stack-based layering types. Various joint stack-based mathematical and graphical approaches supported by representable case studies are suggested for the identification, extraction, and processing of various stack-based systems changes layering of different classifications and categorizations. Moreover, some selected real life illustrative applications are provided to demonstrate the (infinite stack-based identification and recognition of the change pathway process in the areas of geology, archeology, life sciences, ecology, environmental science, engineering, materials, medicine, biology, sociology, humanities, and other important fields. These case studies and selected applications revealed that there are general similarities of the stack-based layering structures and formations among all the various research fields. Such general similarities clearly demonstrate the global concept of the “fractals-general stacking behavior” of real life systems during their change pathways. Therefore, it is recommended that concentrated efforts should be expedited toward building generic modular stack-based systems or blocks for the mathematical

  14. Role of Membrane Biophysics in Alzheimer's - related cell pathways

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Donghui eZhu

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available Cellular membrane alterations are commonly observed in many diseases, including Alzheimer’s disease (AD. Membrane biophysical properties, such as membrane molecular order, membrane fluidity, organization of lipid rafts, and adhesion between membrane and cytoskeleton, play an important role in various cellular activities and functions. While membrane biophysics impacts a broad range of cellular pathways, this review addresses the role of membrane biophysics in amyloid-β peptide aggregation, Aβ-induced oxidative pathways, amyloid precursor protein processing, and cerebral endothelial functions in AD. Understanding the mechanism(s underlying the effects of cell membrane properties on cellular processes should shed light on the development of new preventive and therapeutic strategies for this devastating disease.

  15. Identification of altered pathways in breast cancer based on individualized pathway aberrance score.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shi, Sheng-Hong; Zhang, Wei; Jiang, Jing; Sun, Long

    2017-08-01

    The objective of the present study was to identify altered pathways in breast cancer based on the individualized pathway aberrance score (iPAS) method combined with the normal reference (nRef). There were 4 steps to identify altered pathways using the iPAS method: Data preprocessing conducted by the robust multi-array average (RMA) algorithm; gene-level statistics based on average Z ; pathway-level statistics according to iPAS; and a significance test dependent on 1 sample Wilcoxon test. The altered pathways were validated by calculating the changed percentage of each pathway in tumor samples and comparing them with pathways from differentially expressed genes (DEGs). A total of 688 altered pathways with Ppathways were involved in the total 688 altered pathways, which may validate the present results. In addition, there were 324 DEGs and 155 common genes between DEGs and pathway genes. DEGs and common genes were enriched in the same 9 significant terms, which also were members of altered pathways. The iPAS method was suitable for identifying altered pathways in breast cancer. Altered pathways (such as KIF and PLK mediated events) were important for understanding breast cancer mechanisms and for the future application of customized therapeutic decisions.

  16. Pathway analysis for intracellular Porphyromonas gingivalis using a strain ATCC 33277 specific database

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Wang Tiansong

    2009-09-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Porphyromonas gingivalis is a Gram-negative intracellular pathogen associated with periodontal disease. We have previously reported on whole-cell quantitative proteomic analyses to investigate the differential expression of virulence factors as the organism transitions from an extracellular to intracellular lifestyle. The original results with the invasive strain P. gingivalis ATCC 33277 were obtained using the genome sequence available at the time, strain W83 [GenBank: AE015924]. We present here a re-processed dataset using the recently published genome annotation specific for strain ATCC 33277 [GenBank: AP009380] and an analysis of differential abundance based on metabolic pathways rather than individual proteins. Results Qualitative detection was observed for 1266 proteins using the strain ATCC 33277 annotation for 18 hour internalized P. gingivalis within human gingival epithelial cells and controls exposed to gingival cell culture medium, an improvement of 7% over the W83 annotation. Internalized cells showed increased abundance of proteins in the energy pathway from asparagine/aspartate amino acids to ATP. The pathway producing one short chain fatty acid, propionate, showed increased abundance, while that of another, butyrate, trended towards decreased abundance. The translational machinery, including ribosomal proteins and tRNA synthetases, showed a significant increase in protein relative abundance, as did proteins responsible for transcription. Conclusion Use of the ATCC 33277 specific genome annotation resulted in improved proteome coverage with respect to the number of proteins observed both qualitatively in terms of protein identifications and quantitatively in terms of the number of calculated abundance ratios. Pathway analysis showed a significant increase in overall protein synthetic and transcriptional machinery in the absence of significant growth. These results suggest that the interior of host cells

  17. The role of fingers in number processing in young children

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Anne eLafay

    2013-07-01

    Full Text Available The aim of the present study was to investigate the relationship between finger counting and numerical processing in 4- to 7-year-old children. Children were assessed on a variety of numerical tasks and we examined the correlations between their rates of success and their frequency of finger use in a counting task. We showed that children’s performance on finger pattern comparison and identification tasks did not correlate with the frequency of finger use. However, this last variable correlated with the percentages of correct responses in an enumeration task (i.e., Give-N task, even when the age of children was entered as a covariate in the analysis. Despite this correlation, we showed that some children who never used their fingers in the counting task were able to perform optimally in the enumeration task. Overall, our results support the conclusion that finger counting is useful but not necessary to develop accurate symbolic numerical skills. Moreover, our results suggest that the use of fingers in a counting task is related to the ability of children in a dynamic enumeration task but not to static tasks involving recognition or comparison of finger patterns. Therefore, it could be that the link between fingers and numbers remain circumscribed to counting tasks and do not extent to static finger montring situations.

  18. Development of an image-based screening system for inhibitors of the plastidial MEP pathway and of protein geranylgeranylation

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hartmann, Michael; Gas-Pascual, Elisabet; Hemmerlin, Andrea; Rohmer, Michel; Bach, Thomas J.

    2015-01-01

    In a preceding study we have recently established an in vivo visualization system for the geranylgeranylation of proteins in a stably transformed tobacco BY-2 cell line, which involves expressing a dexamethasone-inducible GFP fused to the prenylable, carboxy-terminal basic domain of the rice calmodulin CaM61, which naturally bears a CaaL geranylgeranylation motif (GFP-BD-CVIL). By using pathway-specific inhibitors it was there demonstrated that inhibition of the methylerythritol phosphate (MEP) pathway with oxoclomazone and fosmidomycin, as well as inhibition of protein geranylgeranyl transferase type 1 (PGGT-1), shifted the localization of the GFP-BD-CVIL protein from the membrane to the nucleus. In contrast, the inhibition of the mevalonate (MVA) pathway with mevinolin did not affect this localization. Furthermore, in this initial study complementation assays with pathway-specific intermediates confirmed that the precursors for the cytosolic isoprenylation of this fusion protein are predominantly provided by the MEP pathway. In order to optimize this visualization system from a more qualitative assay to a statistically trustable medium or a high-throughput screening system, we established now new conditions that permit culture and analysis in 96-well microtiter plates, followed by fluorescence microscopy. For further refinement, the existing GFP-BD-CVIL cell line was transformed with an estradiol-inducible vector driving the expression of a RFP protein, C-terminally fused to a nuclear localization signal (NLS-RFP). We are thus able to quantify the total number of viable cells versus the number of inhibited cells after various treatments. This approach also includes a semi-automatic counting system, based on the freely available image processing software. As a result, the time of image analysis as well as the risk of user-generated bias is reduced to a minimum. Moreover, there is no cross-induction of gene expression by dexamethasone and estradiol, which is an

  19. Winding through the WNT pathway during cellular development and demise.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Li, F; Chong, Z Z; Maiese, K

    2006-01-01

    In slightly over a period of twenty years, our comprehension of the cellular and molecular mechanisms that govern the Wnt signaling pathway continue to unfold. The Wnt proteins were initially implicated in viral carcinogenesis experiments associated with mammary tumors, but since this period investigations focusing on the Wnt pathways and their transmembrane receptors termed Frizzled have been advanced to demonstrate the critical nature of Wnt for the development of a variety of cell populations as well as the potential of the Wnt pathway to avert apoptotic injury. In particular, Wnt signaling plays a significant role in both the cardiovascular and nervous systems during embryonic cell patterning, proliferation, differentiation, and orientation. Furthermore, modulation of Wnt signaling under specific cellular influences can either promote or prevent the early and late stages of apoptotic cellular injury in neurons, endothelial cells, vascular smooth muscle cells, and cardiomyocytes. A number of downstream signal transduction pathways can mediate the biological response of the Wnt proteins that include Dishevelled, beta-catenin, intracellular calcium, protein kinase C, Akt, and glycogen synthase kinase-3beta. Interestingly, these cellular cascades of the Wnt-Frizzled pathways can participate in several neurodegenerative, vascular, and cardiac disorders and may be closely integrated with the function of trophic factors. Identification of the critical elements that modulate the Wnt-Frizzled signaling pathway should continue to unlock the potential of Wnt pathway for the development of new therapeutic options against neurodegenerative and vascular diseases.

  20. Interaction of Adverse Disease Related Pathways in Hypertrophic Cardiomyopathy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rowin, Ethan J; Maron, Martin S; Chan, Raymond H; Hausvater, Anais; Wang, Wendy; Rastegar, Hassan; Maron, Barry J

    2017-12-15

    Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HC) has been characterized as a generally progressive genetic heart disease, creating an ominous perspective for patients and managing cardiologists. We explored the HC disease burden and interaction of adverse clinical pathways to clarify patient expectations over long time periods in the contemporary therapeutic era. We studied 1,000 consecutive HC patients (52 ± 17 years) at Tufts Medical Center, followed 9.3 ± 8 years from diagnosis, employing a novel disease pathway model: 46% experienced a benign course free of adverse pathways, but 42% of patients progressed along 1 major pathway, most commonly refractory heart failure to New York Heart Association class III or IV requiring surgical myectomy (or alcohol ablation) or heart transplant; repetitive or permanent atrial fibrillation; and least commonly arrhythmic sudden death events. Eleven percent experienced 2 of these therapeutic end points at different times in their clinical course, most frequently the combination of advanced heart failure and atrial fibrillation, whereas only 1% incurred all 3 pathways. Freedom of progression from 1 to 2 disease pathways, or from 2 to 3 was 80% and 93% at 5 years, respectively. Annual HC-related mortality did not differ according to the number of pathways: 1 (0.8%), 2 (0.8%), or 3 (2.4%) (p = 0.56), and 93% of patients were in New York Heart Association classes I or II at follow-up. In conclusion, it is uncommon for HC patients to experience multiple adverse (but treatable) disease pathways, underscoring the principle that HC is not a uniformly progressive disease. These observations provide a measure of clarity and/or reassurance to patients regarding the true long-term disease burden of HC. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  1. Use of an activated beta-catenin to identify Wnt pathway target genes in caenorhabditis elegans, including a subset of collagen genes expressed in late larval development.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jackson, Belinda M; Abete-Luzi, Patricia; Krause, Michael W; Eisenmann, David M

    2014-04-16

    The Wnt signaling pathway plays a fundamental role during metazoan development, where it regulates diverse processes, including cell fate specification, cell migration, and stem cell renewal. Activation of the beta-catenin-dependent/canonical Wnt pathway up-regulates expression of Wnt target genes to mediate a cellular response. In the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans, a canonical Wnt signaling pathway regulates several processes during larval development; however, few target genes of this pathway have been identified. To address this deficit, we used a novel approach of conditionally activated Wnt signaling during a defined stage of larval life by overexpressing an activated beta-catenin protein, then used microarray analysis to identify genes showing altered expression compared with control animals. We identified 166 differentially expressed genes, of which 104 were up-regulated. A subset of the up-regulated genes was shown to have altered expression in mutants with decreased or increased Wnt signaling; we consider these genes to be bona fide C. elegans Wnt pathway targets. Among these was a group of six genes, including the cuticular collagen genes, bli-1 col-38, col-49, and col-71. These genes show a peak of expression in the mid L4 stage during normal development, suggesting a role in adult cuticle formation. Consistent with this finding, reduction of function for several of the genes causes phenotypes suggestive of defects in cuticle function or integrity. Therefore, this work has identified a large number of putative Wnt pathway target genes during larval life, including a small subset of Wnt-regulated collagen genes that may function in synthesis of the adult cuticle.

  2. NAD+ salvage pathway in cancer metabolism and therapy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kennedy, Barry E; Sharif, Tanveer; Martell, Emma; Dai, Cathleen; Kim, Youra; Lee, Patrick W K; Gujar, Shashi A

    2016-12-01

    Nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD + ) is an essential coenzyme for various physiological processes including energy metabolism, DNA repair, cell growth, and cell death. Many of these pathways are typically dysregulated in cancer cells, making NAD + an intriguing target for cancer therapeutics. NAD + is mainly synthesized by the NAD + salvage pathway in cancer cells, and not surprisingly, the pharmacological targeting of the NAD + salvage pathway causes cancer cell cytotoxicity in vitro and in vivo. Several studies have described the precise consequences of NAD + depletion on cancer biology, and have demonstrated that NAD+ depletion results in depletion of energy levels through lowered rates of glycolysis, reduced citric acid cycle activity, and decreased oxidative phosphorylation. Additionally, depletion of NAD + causes sensitization of cancer cells to oxidative damage by disruption of the anti-oxidant defense system, decreased cell proliferation, and initiation of cell death through manipulation of cell signaling pathways (e.g., SIRT1 and p53). Recently, studies have explored the effect of well-known cancer therapeutics in combination with pharmacological depletion of NAD + levels, and found in many cases a synergistic effect on cancer cell cytotoxicity. In this context, we will discuss the effects of NAD + salvage pathway inhibition on cancer cell biology and provide insight on this pathway as a novel anti-cancer therapeutic target. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  3. White matter pathways in persistent developmental stuttering: Lessons from tractography.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kronfeld-Duenias, Vered; Civier, Oren; Amir, Ofer; Ezrati-Vinacour, Ruth; Ben-Shachar, Michal

    2018-03-01

    Fluent speech production relies on the coordinated processing of multiple brain regions. This highlights the role of neural pathways that connect distinct brain regions in producing fluent speech. Here, we aim to investigate the role of the white matter pathways in persistent developmental stuttering (PDS), where speech fluency is disrupted. We use diffusion weighted imaging and tractography to compare the white matter properties between adults who do and do not stutter. We compare the diffusion properties along 18 major cerebral white matter pathways. We complement the analysis with an overview of the methodology and a roadmap of the pathways implicated in PDS according to the existing literature. We report differences in the microstructural properties of the anterior callosum, the right inferior longitudinal fasciculus and the right cingulum in people who stutter compared with fluent controls. Persistent developmental stuttering is consistently associated with differences in bilateral distributed networks. We review evidence showing that PDS involves differences in bilateral dorsal fronto-temporal and fronto-parietal pathways, in callosal pathways, in several motor pathways and in basal ganglia connections. This entails an important role for long range white matter pathways in this disorder. Using a wide-lens analysis, we demonstrate differences in additional, right hemispheric pathways, which go beyond the replicable findings in the literature. This suggests that the affected circuits may extend beyond the known language and motor pathways. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  4. Reconstitution of an efficient thymidine salvage pathway in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Vernis, L.; Piskur, Jure; Diffley, J.F.X.

    2003-01-01

    The budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae is unable to incorporate exogenous nucleosides into DNA. We have made a number of improvements to existing strategies to reconstitute an efficient thymidine salvage pathway in yeast. We have constructed strains that express both a nucleoside kinase as well...

  5. Personality and creativity : The dual pathway to creativity model and a research agenda

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Baas, Matthijs; Roskes, Marieke; Sligte, Daniel; Nijstad, Bernard A.; De Dreu, Carsten K W

    2013-01-01

    To better understand the relation between personality traits and creativity, we invoke the Dual-Pathway to Creativity model (DPCM) that identifies two pathways to creative outcomes: (1) flexible processing of information (cognitive flexibility) and (2) persistent probing, and systematically and

  6. Inhibition of the isoprenoid biosynthesis pathway; detection of intermediates by UPLC-MS/MS

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Henneman, Linda; van Cruchten, Arno G.; Kulik, Willem; Waterham, Hans R.

    2011-01-01

    The isoprenoid biosynthesis pathway provides the cell with a variety of compounds which are involved in multiple cellular processes. Inhibition of this pathway with statins and bisphosphonates is widely applied in the treatment of hypercholesterolemia and metabolic bone disease, respectively. In

  7. Efficacy and efficiency of a lean cataract pathway: a comparative study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    van Vliet, Ellen Joan; Sermeus, Walter; van Gaalen, Claudia M; Sol, Johannes C A; Vissers, Jan M H

    2010-12-01

    The demand for cataract surgery is rising, calling for pathways that have good access and are cost-effective. Lean thinking is a management strategy, aimed at improving quality while reducing costs. Lean production processes are designed to identify gaps between expected and actual performance. To analyse the efficacy and efficiency of a lean cataract pathway. Lean care delivered to a prospective cohort (616 cataract patients) was compared (1) with traditional care delivered to a historical cohort (591 cataract patients) and (2) with expected lean care in the prospective cohort. To evaluate efficacy, the authors analysed how many patients received care that adhered to the lean pathway's specifications. To evaluate efficiency, the authors analysed how often patients visited the hospital and how many additional patients could access the pathway. In the lean pathway, patient visits decreased by 23%, and access to the cataract pathway increased with 42%. A 40% decrease in patient visits and a 76% increase in access could have been realised if healthcare staff would have adhered to the lean pathway's specifications. Lean pathways can realise large improvements, and still have a significant gap between expected and actual care delivery. The challenge for healthcare teams is not to improve care delivery by using lean pathways as opposed to using traditional pathways, but to strive for optimal performance by consistently adhering to the specifications of the lean pathway.

  8. Stochastic Modeling of the Clathrin-dependent and -independent Endocytic Pathways

    Science.gov (United States)

    Deng, Hua; Dutta, Prashanta; Liu, Jin

    2017-11-01

    Endocytosis is one of the important processes that bioparticles use to enter the cells. During endocytosis the membrane-bound vesicles are formed by the invagination of plasma membrane as a result of interactions among many proteins and cytoskeletons. The clathrin-mediated endocytosis is one of the most significant form of endocytosis, where the dynamic assembly of clathrin-coated pits play a critical role. While herpes simplex virus-1 has recently shown to infect cell by a novel phagocytosis-like endocytic pathway where actin polymerization may facilitate the viral entry. In this work, we propose a stochastic model for both clathrin-dependent and -independent endocytic pathways based on Monte Carlo simulations. The important roles of clathrin coating and actin cytoskeleton as well as the impact of other biological parameters are studied. Our preliminary results indicate that there exist an intermediate particle size and ligand density that maximize the internalization efficiency. Below a critical size or surface ligand density, it is difficult for the entry of a single particle, which means clustering may needed for more efficient internalization. We also find that lower membrane bending rigidity may help promote the bioparticle entry. Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number R01GM122081.

  9. FON2 SPARE1 redundantly regulates floral meristem maintenance with FLORAL ORGAN NUMBER2 in rice.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Takuya Suzaki

    2009-10-01

    Full Text Available CLAVATA signaling restricts stem cell identity in the shoot apical meristem (SAM in Arabidopsis thaliana. In rice (Oryza sativa, FLORAL ORGAN NUMBER2 (FON2, closely related to CLV3, is involved as a signaling molecule in a similar pathway to negatively regulate stem cell proliferation in the floral meristem (FM. Here we show that the FON2 SPARE1 (FOS1 gene encoding a CLE protein functions along with FON2 in maintenance of the FM. In addition, FOS1 appears to be involved in maintenance of the SAM in the vegetative phase, because constitutive expression of FOS1 caused termination of the vegetative SAM. Genetic analysis revealed that FOS1 does not need FON1, the putative receptor of FON2, for its action, suggesting that FOS1 and FON2 may function in meristem maintenance as signaling molecules in independent pathways. Initially, we identified FOS1 as a suppressor that originates from O. sativa indica and suppresses the fon2 mutation in O. sativa japonica. FOS1 function in japonica appears to be compromised by a functional nucleotide polymorphism (FNP at the putative processing site of the signal peptide. Sequence comparison of FOS1 in about 150 domesticated rice and wild rice species indicates that this FNP is present only in japonica, suggesting that redundant regulation by FOS1 and FON2 is commonplace in species in the Oryza genus. Distribution of the FNP also suggests that this mutation may have occurred during the divergence of japonica from its wild ancestor. Stem cell maintenance may be regulated by at least three negative pathways in rice, and each pathway may contribute differently to this regulation depending on the type of the meristem. This situation contrasts with that in Arabidopsis, where CLV signaling is the major single pathway in all meristems.

  10. Biochemical research elucidating metabolic pathways in Pneumocystis*

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kaneshiro E.S.

    2010-12-01

    Full Text Available Advances in sequencing the Pneumocystis carinii genome have helped identify potential metabolic pathways operative in the organism. Also, data from characterizing the biochemical and physiological nature of these organisms now allow elucidation of metabolic pathways as well as pose new challenges and questions that require additional experiments. These experiments are being performed despite the difficulty in doing experiments directly on this pathogen that has yet to be subcultured indefinitely and produce mass numbers of cells in vitro. This article reviews biochemical approaches that have provided insights into several Pneumocystis metabolic pathways. It focuses on 1 S-adenosyl-L-methionine (AdoMet; SAM, which is a ubiquitous participant in numerous cellular reactions; 2 sterols: focusing on oxidosqualene cyclase that forms lanosterol in P. carinii; SAM:sterol C-24 methyltransferase that adds methyl groups at the C-24 position of the sterol side chain; and sterol 14α-demethylase that removes a methyl group at the C-14 position of the sterol nucleus; and 3 synthesis of ubiquinone homologs, which play a pivotal role in mitochondrial inner membrane and other cellular membrane electron transport.

  11. Autophagy: More Than a Nonselective Pathway

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Fulvio Reggiori

    2012-01-01

    Full Text Available Autophagy is a catabolic pathway conserved among eukaryotes that allows cells to rapidly eliminate large unwanted structures such as aberrant protein aggregates, superfluous or damaged organelles, and invading pathogens. The hallmark of this transport pathway is the sequestration of the cargoes that have to be degraded in the lysosomes by double-membrane vesicles called autophagosomes. The key actors mediating the biogenesis of these carriers are the autophagy-related genes (ATGs. For a long time, it was assumed that autophagy is a bulk process. Recent studies, however, have highlighted the capacity of this pathway to exclusively eliminate specific structures and thus better fulfil the catabolic necessities of the cell. We are just starting to unveil the regulation and mechanism of these selective types of autophagy, but what it is already clearly emerging is that structures targeted to destruction are accurately enwrapped by autophagosomes through the action of specific receptors and adaptors. In this paper, we will briefly discuss the impact that the selective types of autophagy have had on our understanding of autophagy.

  12. Transcriptome profiling in engrailed-2 mutant mice reveals common molecular pathways associated with autism spectrum disorders.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sgadò, Paola; Provenzano, Giovanni; Dassi, Erik; Adami, Valentina; Zunino, Giulia; Genovesi, Sacha; Casarosa, Simona; Bozzi, Yuri

    2013-12-19

    Transcriptome analysis has been used in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) to unravel common pathogenic pathways based on the assumption that distinct rare genetic variants or epigenetic modifications affect common biological pathways. To unravel recurrent ASD-related neuropathological mechanisms, we took advantage of the En2-/- mouse model and performed transcriptome profiling on cerebellar and hippocampal adult tissues. Cerebellar and hippocampal tissue samples from three En2-/- and wild type (WT) littermate mice were assessed for differential gene expression using microarray hybridization followed by RankProd analysis. To identify functional categories overrepresented in the differentially expressed genes, we used integrated gene-network analysis, gene ontology enrichment and mouse phenotype ontology analysis. Furthermore, we performed direct enrichment analysis of ASD-associated genes from the SFARI repository in our differentially expressed genes. Given the limited number of animals used in the study, we used permissive criteria and identified 842 differentially expressed genes in En2-/- cerebellum and 862 in the En2-/- hippocampus. Our functional analysis revealed that the molecular signature of En2-/- cerebellum and hippocampus shares convergent pathological pathways with ASD, including abnormal synaptic transmission, altered developmental processes and increased immune response. Furthermore, when directly compared to the repository of the SFARI database, our differentially expressed genes in the hippocampus showed enrichment of ASD-associated genes significantly higher than previously reported. qPCR was performed for representative genes to confirm relative transcript levels compared to those detected in microarrays. Despite the limited number of animals used in the study, our bioinformatic analysis indicates the En2-/- mouse is a valuable tool for investigating molecular alterations related to ASD.

  13. Molecular pathways and therapeutic targets in lung cancer

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shtivelman, Emma; Hensing, Thomas; Simon, George R.; Dennis, Phillip A.; Otterson, Gregory A.; Bueno, Raphael; Salgia, Ravi

    2014-01-01

    Lung cancer is still the leading cause of cancer death worldwide. Both histologically and molecularly lung cancer is heterogeneous. This review summarizes the current knowledge of the pathways involved in the various types of lung cancer with an emphasis on the clinical implications of the increasing number of actionable molecular targets. It describes the major pathways and molecular alterations implicated in the development and progression of non-small cell lung cancer (adenocarcinoma and squamous cancer), and of small cell carcinoma, emphasizing the molecular alterations comprising the specific blueprints in each group. The approved and investigational targeted therapies as well as the immune therapies, and clinical trials exploring the variety of targeted approaches to treatment of lung cancer are the main focus of this review. PMID:24722523

  14. Impacts of visitor number on Kangaroos housed in free-range exhibits.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sherwen, Sally L; Hemsworth, Paul H; Butler, Kym L; Fanson, Kerry V; Magrath, Michael J L

    2015-01-01

    Free range exhibits are becoming increasingly popular in zoos as a means to enhance interaction between visitors and animals. However very little research exists on the impacts of visitors on animal behaviour and stress in free range exhibits. We investigated the effects of visitor number on the behaviour and stress physiology of Kangaroo Island (KI) Kangaroos, Macropus fuliginosus fuliginosus, and Red Kangaroos, Macropus rufus, housed in two free range exhibits in Australian zoos. Behavioural observations were conducted on individual kangaroos at each site using instantaneous scan sampling to record activity (e.g., vigilance, foraging, resting) and distance from the visitor pathway. Individually identifiable faecal samples were collected at the end of each study day and analysed for faecal glucocorticoid metabolite (FGM) concentration. When visitor number increased, both KI Kangaroos and Red Kangaroos increased the time spent engaged in visitor-directed vigilance and KI Kangaroos also increased the time spent engaged in locomotion and decreased the time spent resting. There was no effect of visitor number on the distance kangaroos positioned themselves from the visitor pathway or FGM concentration in either species. While there are limitations in interpreting these results in terms of fear of visitors, there was no evidence of adverse effects animal welfare in these study groups based on avoidance behaviour or stress physiology under the range of visitor numbers that we studied. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

  15. Age-related functional changes in domain-specific medial temporal lobe pathways.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Berron, David; Neumann, Katja; Maass, Anne; Schütze, Hartmut; Fliessbach, Klaus; Kiven, Verena; Jessen, Frank; Sauvage, Magdalena; Kumaran, Dharshan; Düzel, Emrah

    2018-05-01

    There is now converging evidence from studies in animals and humans that the medial temporal lobes (MTLs) harbor anatomically distinct processing pathways for object and scene information. Recent functional magnetic resonance imaging studies in humans suggest that this domain-specific organization may be associated with a functional preference of the anterior-lateral part of the entorhinal cortex (alErC) for objects and the posterior-medial entorhinal cortex (pmErC) for scenes. As MTL subregions are differentially affected by aging and neurodegenerative diseases, the question was raised whether aging may affect the 2 pathways differentially. To address this possibility, we developed a paradigm that allows the investigation of object memory and scene memory in a mnemonic discrimination task. A group of young (n = 43) and healthy older subjects (n = 44) underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging recordings during this novel task, while they were asked to discriminate exact repetitions of object and scene stimuli from novel stimuli that were similar but modified versions of the original stimuli ("lures"). We used structural magnetic resonance images to manually segment anatomical components of the MTL including alErC and pmErC and used these segmented regions to analyze domain specificity of functional activity. Across the entire sample, object processing was associated with activation of the perirhinal cortex (PrC) and alErC, whereas for scene processing, activation was more predominant in the parahippocampal cortex and pmErC. Functional activity related to mnemonic discrimination of object and scene lures from exact repetitions was found to overlap between processing pathways and suggests that while the PrC-alErC pathway was more involved in object discrimination, both pathways were involved in the discrimination of similar scenes. Older adults were behaviorally less accurate than young adults in discriminating similar lures from exact repetitions, but this

  16. minepath.org: a free interactive pathway analysis web server.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Koumakis, Lefteris; Roussos, Panos; Potamias, George

    2017-07-03

    ( www.minepath.org ) is a web-based platform that elaborates on, and radically extends the identification of differentially expressed sub-paths in molecular pathways. Besides the network topology, the underlying MinePath algorithmic processes exploit exact gene-gene molecular relationships (e.g. activation, inhibition) and are able to identify differentially expressed pathway parts. Each pathway is decomposed into all its constituent sub-paths, which in turn are matched with corresponding gene expression profiles. The highly ranked, and phenotype inclined sub-paths are kept. Apart from the pathway analysis algorithm, the fundamental innovation of the MinePath web-server concerns its advanced visualization and interactive capabilities. To our knowledge, this is the first pathway analysis server that introduces and offers visualization of the underlying and active pathway regulatory mechanisms instead of genes. Other features include live interaction, immediate visualization of functional sub-paths per phenotype and dynamic linked annotations for the engaged genes and molecular relations. The user can download not only the results but also the corresponding web viewer framework of the performed analysis. This feature provides the flexibility to immediately publish results without publishing source/expression data, and get all the functionality of a web based pathway analysis viewer. © The Author(s) 2017. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of Nucleic Acids Research.

  17. Breast tumor copy number aberration phenotypes and genomic instability

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Fridlyand, Jane; Jain, Ajay N; McLennan, Jane; Ziegler, John; Chin, Koei; Devries, Sandy; Feiler, Heidi; Gray, Joe W; Waldman, Frederic; Pinkel, Daniel; Albertson, Donna G; Snijders, Antoine M; Ylstra, Bauke; Li, Hua; Olshen, Adam; Segraves, Richard; Dairkee, Shanaz; Tokuyasu, Taku; Ljung, Britt Marie

    2006-01-01

    Genomic DNA copy number aberrations are frequent in solid tumors, although the underlying causes of chromosomal instability in tumors remain obscure. Genes likely to have genomic instability phenotypes when mutated (e.g. those involved in mitosis, replication, repair, and telomeres) are rarely mutated in chromosomally unstable sporadic tumors, even though such mutations are associated with some heritable cancer prone syndromes. We applied array comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) to the analysis of breast tumors. The variation in the levels of genomic instability amongst tumors prompted us to investigate whether alterations in processes/genes involved in maintenance and/or manipulation of the genome were associated with particular types of genomic instability. We discriminated three breast tumor subtypes based on genomic DNA copy number alterations. The subtypes varied with respect to level of genomic instability. We find that shorter telomeres and altered telomere related gene expression are associated with amplification, implicating telomere attrition as a promoter of this type of aberration in breast cancer. On the other hand, the numbers of chromosomal alterations, particularly low level changes, are associated with altered expression of genes in other functional classes (mitosis, cell cycle, DNA replication and repair). Further, although loss of function instability phenotypes have been demonstrated for many of the genes in model systems, we observed enhanced expression of most genes in tumors, indicating that over expression, rather than deficiency underlies instability. Many of the genes associated with higher frequency of copy number aberrations are direct targets of E2F, supporting the hypothesis that deregulation of the Rb pathway is a major contributor to chromosomal instability in breast tumors. These observations are consistent with failure to find mutations in sporadic tumors in genes that have roles in maintenance or manipulation of the genome

  18. Deciphering chemotaxis pathways using cross species comparisons

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Armitage Judith P

    2010-01-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Chemotaxis is the process by which motile bacteria sense their chemical environment and move towards more favourable conditions. Escherichia coli utilises a single sensory pathway, but little is known about signalling pathways in species with more complex systems. Results To investigate whether chemotaxis pathways in other bacteria follow the E. coli paradigm, we analysed 206 species encoding at least 1 homologue of each of the 5 core chemotaxis proteins (CheA, CheB, CheR, CheW and CheY. 61 species encode more than one of all of these 5 proteins, suggesting they have multiple chemotaxis pathways. Operon information is not available for most bacteria, so we developed a novel statistical approach to cluster che genes into putative operons. Using operon-based models, we reconstructed putative chemotaxis pathways for all 206 species. We show that cheA-cheW and cheR-cheB have strong preferences to occur in the same operon as two-gene blocks, which may reflect a functional requirement for co-transcription. However, other che genes, most notably cheY, are more dispersed on the genome. Comparison of our operons with shuffled equivalents demonstrates that specific patterns of genomic location may be a determining factor for the observed in vivo chemotaxis pathways. We then examined the chemotaxis pathways of Rhodobacter sphaeroides. Here, the PpfA protein is known to be critical for correct partitioning of proteins in the cytoplasmically-localised pathway. We found ppfA in che operons of many species, suggesting that partitioning of cytoplasmic Che protein clusters is common. We also examined the apparently non-typical chemotaxis components, CheA3, CheA4 and CheY6. We found that though variants of CheA proteins are rare, the CheY6 variant may be a common type of CheY, with a significantly disordered C-terminal region which may be functionally significant. Conclusions We find that many bacterial species potentially have multiple

  19. Can we safely target the WNT pathway?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kahn, Michael

    2015-01-01

    WNT–β-catenin signalling is involved in a multitude of developmental processes and the maintenance of adult tissue homeostasis by regulating cell proliferation, differentiation, migration, genetic stability and apoptosis, as well as by maintaining adult stem cells in a pluripotent state. Not surprisingly, aberrant regulation of this pathway is therefore associated with a variety of diseases, including cancer, fibrosis and neurodegeneration. Despite this knowledge, therapeutic agents specifically targeting the WNT pathway have only recently entered clinical trials and none has yet been approved. This Review examines the problems and potential solutions to this vexing situation and attempts to bring them into perspective. PMID:24981364

  20. Gadolinium photoionization process

    Science.gov (United States)

    Paisner, Jeffrey A.; Comaskey, Brian J.; Haynam, Christopher A.; Eggert, Jon H.

    1993-01-01

    A method is provided for selective photoionization of the odd-numbered atomic mass gadolinium isotopes 155 and 157. The selective photoionization is accomplished by circular or linear parallel polarized laser beam energy effecting a three-step photoionization pathway.

  1. Bonding pathways of high-pressure chemical transformations

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Hu Anguang; Zhang Fan

    2013-01-01

    A three-stage bonding pathway towards high-pressure chemical transformations from molecular precursors or intermediate states has been identified by first-principles simulations. With the evolution of principal stress tensor components in the response of chemical bonding to compressive loading, the three stages can be defined as the van der Waals bonding destruction, a bond breaking and forming reaction, and equilibrium of new bonds. The three-stage bonding pathway leads to the establishment of a fundamental principle of chemical bonding under compression. It reveals that during high-pressure chemical transformation, electrons moving away from functional groups follow anti-addition, collision-free paths to form new bonds in counteracting the local stress confinement. In applying this principle, a large number of molecular precursors were identified for high-pressure chemical transformations, resulting in new materials. (fast track communication)

  2. Overview of CO2 valorization pathways. Final document

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Tridant Bel, Jean-Philippe; Pairin, Cecile; Darcet, Cecile; Thybaud, Nathalie; Lebain, David; David, Marc; Morin, Dominique; Bigeon, Philippe; Mansilla, Christine; Amouroux, Jacques; De Witte, Marc; Ungerer, Philippe; Jarrin, Jacques; Blancheton, Jean-Paul; Rene, Francois; Farret, Regis; Gimenez, Michel; Sassi, William; Clin, Francois; Clodic, Denis; Desnost, Carole; Gresser, Robert; Yacono, Charles

    2010-06-01

    Reducing the emissions of the main anthropogenic greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, is one of the major challenges of this century. The growth in energy demand does not allow, at the present time, the use of fossil fuels to be avoided. As a consequence, carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a solution with great potential and is the subject of many pilot projects. In this field, France is now well positioned, despite a strongly de-carbonated electricity. As a complement to these actions, it is also possible to reuse the CO 2 molecule, considering it as a raw material, as a source of carbon. CO 2 recovery in order to produce chemical compounds is then similar to recycling and would involve an environmental benefit and an economic opportunity at the same time. In this context, the French Agency for Energy and Environment (ADEME) and the French public authorities (MEEDDM, MSR, etc.) asked ALCIMED to better understand the different pathways of CO 2 recycling and to identify the main development opportunities of such technologies in France. The results of the study also relied on the knowledge and experience of a steering committee composed of key figures from the institutional and industrial sectors. A cross-sectional analysis of the literature and telephone interviews with experts (industrial and institutional) conducted to the identification of 12 pathways of carbon dioxide recycling, that have been divided into three segments: the use of CO 2 without processing, chemical processing and biological processing. The technological, economic and environmental factors have been evaluated for each pathway, and key stakeholders and related projects have been complemented. A first analysis has been then conducted in order to compare the different pathways to each other. In addition, ALCIMED and the members of the steering committee of this study have led a first discussion on the position of France in regard to carbon dioxide recycling, putting in light industrial and

  3. The Fanconi Anemia BRCA Pathway as a Predictor of Benefit from Bevacizumab in a Large Phase 3 Clinical Trial in Ovarian Cancer

    Science.gov (United States)

    2014-12-01

    1 AWARD NUMBER: W81XWH-13-1-0421 TITLE: The Fanconi Anemia BRCA Pathway as a Predictor of Benefit from Bevacizumab in a Large Phase III Clinical...DATES COVERED 30Sep2013 - 29Sep2015 4. TITLE AND SUBTITLE 5a. CONTRACT NUMBER W81XWH-13-1-0421 The Fanconi Anemia BRCA Pathway as a Predictor of...another upfront clinical trial GOG262. We found that germline or somatic mutations in the BRCA- Fanconi anemia pathway was significantly associated with

  4. Processing of Gender and Number Agreement in Russian as a Second Language: The Devil Is in the Details

    Science.gov (United States)

    Romanova, Natalia; Gor, Kira

    2017-01-01

    The study investigated the processing of Russian gender and number agreement by native (n = 36) and nonnative (n = 36) participants using a visual lexical decision task with priming. The design included a baseline condition that helped dissociate the underlying components of priming (facilitation and inhibition). The results showed no differences…

  5. Automatically visualise and analyse data on pathways using PathVisioRPC from any programming environment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bohler, Anwesha; Eijssen, Lars M T; van Iersel, Martijn P; Leemans, Christ; Willighagen, Egon L; Kutmon, Martina; Jaillard, Magali; Evelo, Chris T

    2015-08-23

    Biological pathways are descriptive diagrams of biological processes widely used for functional analysis of differentially expressed genes or proteins. Primary data analysis, such as quality control, normalisation, and statistical analysis, is often performed in scripting languages like R, Perl, and Python. Subsequent pathway analysis is usually performed using dedicated external applications. Workflows involving manual use of multiple environments are time consuming and error prone. Therefore, tools are needed that enable pathway analysis directly within the same scripting languages used for primary data analyses. Existing tools have limited capability in terms of available pathway content, pathway editing and visualisation options, and export file formats. Consequently, making the full-fledged pathway analysis tool PathVisio available from various scripting languages will benefit researchers. We developed PathVisioRPC, an XMLRPC interface for the pathway analysis software PathVisio. PathVisioRPC enables creating and editing biological pathways, visualising data on pathways, performing pathway statistics, and exporting results in several image formats in multiple programming environments. We demonstrate PathVisioRPC functionalities using examples in Python. Subsequently, we analyse a publicly available NCBI GEO gene expression dataset studying tumour bearing mice treated with cyclophosphamide in R. The R scripts demonstrate how calls to existing R packages for data processing and calls to PathVisioRPC can directly work together. To further support R users, we have created RPathVisio simplifying the use of PathVisioRPC in this environment. We have also created a pathway module for the microarray data analysis portal ArrayAnalysis.org that calls the PathVisioRPC interface to perform pathway analysis. This module allows users to use PathVisio functionality online without having to download and install the software and exemplifies how the PathVisioRPC interface can be

  6. Crosstalk of Autophagy and the Secretory Pathway and Its Role in Diseases.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zahoor, Muhammad; Farhan, Hesso

    2018-01-01

    The secretory and autophagic pathways are two fundamental, evolutionary highly conserved endomembrane processes. Typically, secretion is associated with biosynthesis and delivery of proteins. In contrast, autophagy is usually considered as a degradative pathway. Thus, an analogy to metabolic pathways is evident. Anabolic (biosynthetic) and catabolic (degradative) pathways are usually intimately linked and intertwined, and likewise, the secretory and autophagy pathways are intertwined. Investigation of this link is an emerging area of research, and we will provide an overview of some of the major advances that have been made to contribute to understanding of how secretion regulates autophagy and vice versa. Finally, we will highlight evidence that supports a potential involvement of the autophagy-secretion crosstalk in human diseases. © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  7. RNF4-mediated polyubiquitination regulates the Fanconi anemia/BRCA pathway.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xie, Jenny; Kim, Hyungjin; Moreau, Lisa A; Puhalla, Shannon; Garber, Judy; Al Abo, Muthana; Takeda, Shunichi; D'Andrea, Alan D

    2015-04-01

    The Fanconi anemia/BRCA (FA/BRCA) pathway is a DNA repair pathway that is required for excision of DNA interstrand cross-links. The 17 known FA proteins, along with several FA-associated proteins (FAAPs), cooperate in this pathway to detect, unhook, and excise DNA cross-links and to subsequently repair the double-strand breaks generated in the process. In the current study, we identified a patient with FA with a point mutation in FANCA, which encodes a mutant FANCA protein (FANCAI939S). FANCAI939S failed to bind to the FAAP20 subunit of the FA core complex, leading to decreased stability. Loss of FAAP20 binding exposed a SUMOylation site on FANCA at amino acid residue K921, resulting in E2 SUMO-conjugating enzyme UBC9-mediated SUMOylation, RING finger protein 4-mediated (RNF4-mediated) polyubiquitination, and proteasome-mediated degradation of FANCA. Mutation of the SUMOylation site of FANCA rescued the expression of the mutant protein. Wild-type FANCA was also subject to SUMOylation, RNF4-mediated polyubiquitination, and degradation, suggesting that regulated release of FAAP20 from FANCA is a critical step in the normal FA pathway. Consistent with this model, cells lacking RNF4 exhibited interstrand cross-linker hypersensitivity, and the gene encoding RNF4 was epistatic with the other genes encoding members of the FA/BRCA pathway. Together, the results from our study underscore the importance of analyzing unique patient-derived mutations for dissecting complex DNA repair processes.

  8. Synthetic lethality between gene defects affecting a single non-essential molecular pathway with reversible steps.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Andrei Zinovyev

    2013-04-01

    Full Text Available Systematic analysis of synthetic lethality (SL constitutes a critical tool for systems biology to decipher molecular pathways. The most accepted mechanistic explanation of SL is that the two genes function in parallel, mutually compensatory pathways, known as between-pathway SL. However, recent genome-wide analyses in yeast identified a significant number of within-pathway negative genetic interactions. The molecular mechanisms leading to within-pathway SL are not fully understood. Here, we propose a novel mechanism leading to within-pathway SL involving two genes functioning in a single non-essential pathway. This type of SL termed within-reversible-pathway SL involves reversible pathway steps, catalyzed by different enzymes in the forward and backward directions, and kinetic trapping of a potentially toxic intermediate. Experimental data with recombinational DNA repair genes validate the concept. Mathematical modeling recapitulates the possibility of kinetic trapping and revealed the potential contributions of synthetic, dosage-lethal interactions in such a genetic system as well as the possibility of within-pathway positive masking interactions. Analysis of yeast gene interaction and pathway data suggests broad applicability of this novel concept. These observations extend the canonical interpretation of synthetic-lethal or synthetic-sick interactions with direct implications to reconstruct molecular pathways and improve therapeutic approaches to diseases such as cancer.

  9. Synergy between methylerythritol phosphate pathway and mevalonate pathway for isoprene production in Escherichia coli.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yang, Chen; Gao, Xiang; Jiang, Yu; Sun, Bingbing; Gao, Fang; Yang, Sheng

    2016-09-01

    Isoprene, a key building block of synthetic rubber, is currently produced entirely from petrochemical sources. In this work, we engineered both the methylerythritol phosphate (MEP) pathway and the mevalonate (MVA) pathway for isoprene production in E. coli. The synergy between the MEP pathway and the MVA pathway was demonstrated by the production experiment, in which overexpression of both pathways improved the isoprene yield about 20-fold and 3-fold, respectively, compared to overexpression of the MEP pathway or the MVA pathway alone. The (13)C metabolic flux analysis revealed that simultaneous utilization of the two pathways resulted in a 4.8-fold increase in the MEP pathway flux and a 1.5-fold increase in the MVA pathway flux. The synergy of the dual pathway was further verified by quantifying intracellular flux responses of the MEP pathway and the MVA pathway to fosmidomycin treatment and mevalonate supplementation. Our results strongly suggest that coupling of the complementary reducing equivalent demand and ATP requirement plays an important role in the synergy of the dual pathway. Fed-batch cultivation of the engineered strain overexpressing the dual pathway resulted in production of 24.0g/L isoprene with a yield of 0.267g/g of glucose. The synergy of the MEP pathway and the MVA pathway also successfully increased the lycopene productivity in E. coli, which demonstrates that it can be used to improve the production of a broad range of terpenoids in microorganisms. Copyright © 2016 International Metabolic Engineering Society. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  10. Reproduction numbers of infectious disease models

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pauline van den Driessche

    2017-08-01

    Full Text Available This primer article focuses on the basic reproduction number, ℛ0, for infectious diseases, and other reproduction numbers related to ℛ0 that are useful in guiding control strategies. Beginning with a simple population model, the concept is developed for a threshold value of ℛ0 determining whether or not the disease dies out. The next generation matrix method of calculating ℛ0 in a compartmental model is described and illustrated. To address control strategies, type and target reproduction numbers are defined, as well as sensitivity and elasticity indices. These theoretical ideas are then applied to models that are formulated for West Nile virus in birds (a vector-borne disease, cholera in humans (a disease with two transmission pathways, anthrax in animals (a disease that can be spread by dead carcasses and spores, and Zika in humans (spread by mosquitoes and sexual contacts. Some parameter values from literature data are used to illustrate the results. Finally, references for other ways to calculate ℛ0 are given. These are useful for more complicated models that, for example, take account of variations in environmental fluctuation or stochasticity. Keywords: Basic reproduction number, Disease control, West Nile virus, Cholera, Anthrax, Zika virus

  11. Using adaptive processes and adverse outcome pathways to develop meaningful, robust, and actionable environmental monitoring programs.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arciszewski, Tim J; Munkittrick, Kelly R; Scrimgeour, Garry J; Dubé, Monique G; Wrona, Fred J; Hazewinkel, Rod R

    2017-09-01

    The primary goals of environmental monitoring are to indicate whether unexpected changes related to development are occurring in the physical, chemical, and biological attributes of ecosystems and to inform meaningful management intervention. Although achieving these objectives is conceptually simple, varying scientific and social challenges often result in their breakdown. Conceptualizing, designing, and operating programs that better delineate monitoring, management, and risk assessment processes supported by hypothesis-driven approaches, strong inference, and adverse outcome pathways can overcome many of the challenges. Generally, a robust monitoring program is characterized by hypothesis-driven questions associated with potential adverse outcomes and feedback loops informed by data. Specifically, key and basic features are predictions of future observations (triggers) and mechanisms to respond to success or failure of those predictions (tiers). The adaptive processes accelerate or decelerate the effort to highlight and overcome ignorance while preventing the potentially unnecessary escalation of unguided monitoring and management. The deployment of the mutually reinforcing components can allow for more meaningful and actionable monitoring programs that better associate activities with consequences. Integr Environ Assess Manag 2017;13:877-891. © 2017 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC). © 2017 The Authors. Integrated Environmental Assessment and Management Published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Society of Environmental Toxicology & Chemistry (SETAC).

  12. On the relation between grammatical number and cardinal numbers in development.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sarnecka, Barbara W

    2014-01-01

    This mini-review focuses on the question of how the grammatical number system of a child's language may help the child learn the meanings of cardinal number words (e.g., "one" and "two"). Evidence from young children learning English, Russian, Japanese, Mandarin, Slovenian, or Saudi Arabic suggests that trajectories of number-word learning differ for children learning different languages. Children learning English, which distinguishes between singular and plural, seem to learn the meaning of the cardinal number "one" earlier than children learning Japanese or Mandarin, which have very little singular/plural marking. Similarly, children whose languages have a singular/dual/plural system (Slovenian and Saudi Arabic) learn the meaning of "two" earlier than English-speaking children. This relation between grammatical and cardinal number may shed light on how humans acquire cardinal-number concepts. There is an ongoing debate about whether mental symbols for small cardinalities (concepts for "oneness," "twoness," etc.) are innate or learned. Although an effect of grammatical number on number-word learning does not rule out nativist accounts, it seems more consistent with constructivist accounts, which portray the number-learning process as one that requires significant conceptual change.

  13. Reconstructing phylogeny by aligning multiple metabolic pathways using functional module mapping

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Huang, Yiran; Zhong, Cheng; Lin, H.X.; Wang, Jianyi; Peng, Yuzhong

    2018-01-01

    Comparison of metabolic pathways provides a systematic way for understanding the evolutionary and phylogenetic relationships in systems biology. Although a number of phylogenetic methods have been developed, few efforts have been made to provide a unified phylogenetic framework that sufficiently

  14. The role of the TOR pathway in mediating the link between nutrition and longevity.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lushchak, Oleh; Strilbytska, Olha; Piskovatska, Veronika; Storey, Kenneth B; Koliada, Alexander; Vaiserman, Alexander

    2017-06-01

    The target of rapamycin (TOR) pathway integrates signals from extracellular and intracellular agents, such as growth factors, nutrients, mediators of energy balance, oxygen availability and other environmental cues. It allows the regulation of multiple cellular processes including protein and lipid synthesis, ribosome biogenesis, autophagy and metabolic processes. Being conserved across different phyla, TOR regulates longevity of various organisms in response to dietary conditions. In this review we described the main components of the TOR pathway and its upstream effectors and downstream processes in relation to aging. The potential contribution of the TOR pathway in lifespan-extending effects of varied dietary interventions, and the anti-aging drugs rapamycin and metformin direct or indirect regulation of TOR activity in yeasts, worms, flies and mammals are also discussed. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  15. Responses of Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 to heterologous biosynthetic pathways

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Vavitsas, Konstantinos; Rue, Emil Østergaard; Stefánsdóttir, Lára Kristín

    2017-01-01

    BACKGROUND: There are an increasing number of studies regarding genetic manipulation of cyanobacteria to produce commercially interesting compounds. The majority of these works study the expression and optimization of a selected heterologous pathway, largely ignoring the wholeness and complexity...... different compounds, the cyanogenic glucoside dhurrin and the diterpenoid 13R-manoyl oxide in Synechocystis PCC 6803. We used genome-scale metabolic modelling to study fluxes in individual reactions and pathways, and we determined the concentrations of key metabolites, such as amino acids, carotenoids...

  16. Cocoa procyanidins modulate transcriptional pathways linked to inflammation and metabolism in human dendritic cells

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Midttun, Helene L E; Ramsay, Aina; Mueller-Harvey, Irene

    2018-01-01

    the mechanistic basis of this inhibition, here we conducted transcriptomic analysis on DCs cultured with either LPS or LPS combined with oligomeric cocoa PC. Procyanidins suppressed a number of genes encoding cytokines and chemokines such as CXCL1, but also genes involved in the cGMP pathway such as GUCY1A3...... (encoding guanylate cyclase soluble subunit alpha-3). Upregulated genes were involved in diverse metabolic pathways, but notably two of the four most upregulated genes (NMB, encoding neuromedin B and ADCY3, encoding adenyl cyclase type 3) were involved in the cAMP signalling pathway. Gene-set enrichment...... analysis demonstrated that upregulated gene pathways were primarily involved in nutrient transport, carbohydrate metabolism and lysosome function, whereas down-regulated gene pathways involved cell cycle, signal transduction and gene transcription, as well as immune function. qPCR analysis verified...

  17. Pathway enrichment analysis approach based on topological structure and updated annotation of pathway.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yang, Qian; Wang, Shuyuan; Dai, Enyu; Zhou, Shunheng; Liu, Dianming; Liu, Haizhou; Meng, Qianqian; Jiang, Bin; Jiang, Wei

    2017-08-16

    Pathway enrichment analysis has been widely used to identify cancer risk pathways, and contributes to elucidating the mechanism of tumorigenesis. However, most of the existing approaches use the outdated pathway information and neglect the complex gene interactions in pathway. Here, we first reviewed the existing widely used pathway enrichment analysis approaches briefly, and then, we proposed a novel topology-based pathway enrichment analysis (TPEA) method, which integrated topological properties and global upstream/downstream positions of genes in pathways. We compared TPEA with four widely used pathway enrichment analysis tools, including database for annotation, visualization and integrated discovery (DAVID), gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA), centrality-based pathway enrichment (CePa) and signaling pathway impact analysis (SPIA), through analyzing six gene expression profiles of three tumor types (colorectal cancer, thyroid cancer and endometrial cancer). As a result, we identified several well-known cancer risk pathways that could not be obtained by the existing tools, and the results of TPEA were more stable than that of the other tools in analyzing different data sets of the same cancer. Ultimately, we developed an R package to implement TPEA, which could online update KEGG pathway information and is available at the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN): https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/TPEA/. © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  18. Evolutionary Rate Heterogeneity of Primary and Secondary Metabolic Pathway Genes in Arabidopsis thaliana.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mukherjee, Dola; Mukherjee, Ashutosh; Ghosh, Tapash Chandra

    2015-11-10

    Primary metabolism is essential to plants for growth and development, and secondary metabolism helps plants to interact with the environment. Many plant metabolites are industrially important. These metabolites are produced by plants through complex metabolic pathways. Lack of knowledge about these pathways is hindering the successful breeding practices for these metabolites. For a better knowledge of the metabolism in plants as a whole, evolutionary rate variation of primary and secondary metabolic pathway genes is a prerequisite. In this study, evolutionary rate variation of primary and secondary metabolic pathway genes has been analyzed in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. Primary metabolic pathway genes were found to be more conserved than secondary metabolic pathway genes. Several factors such as gene structure, expression level, tissue specificity, multifunctionality, and domain number are the key factors behind this evolutionary rate variation. This study will help to better understand the evolutionary dynamics of plant metabolism. © The Author(s) 2015. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution.

  19. Precise generation of systems biology models from KEGG pathways.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wrzodek, Clemens; Büchel, Finja; Ruff, Manuel; Dräger, Andreas; Zell, Andreas

    2013-02-21

    The KEGG PATHWAY database provides a plethora of pathways for a diversity of organisms. All pathway components are directly linked to other KEGG databases, such as KEGG COMPOUND or KEGG REACTION. Therefore, the pathways can be extended with an enormous amount of information and provide a foundation for initial structural modeling approaches. As a drawback, KGML-formatted KEGG pathways are primarily designed for visualization purposes and often omit important details for the sake of a clear arrangement of its entries. Thus, a direct conversion into systems biology models would produce incomplete and erroneous models. Here, we present a precise method for processing and converting KEGG pathways into initial metabolic and signaling models encoded in the standardized community pathway formats SBML (Levels 2 and 3) and BioPAX (Levels 2 and 3). This method involves correcting invalid or incomplete KGML content, creating complete and valid stoichiometric reactions, translating relations to signaling models and augmenting the pathway content with various information, such as cross-references to Entrez Gene, OMIM, UniProt ChEBI, and many more.Finally, we compare several existing conversion tools for KEGG pathways and show that the conversion from KEGG to BioPAX does not involve a loss of information, whilst lossless translations to SBML can only be performed using SBML Level 3, including its recently proposed qualitative models and groups extension packages. Building correct BioPAX and SBML signaling models from the KEGG database is a unique characteristic of the proposed method. Further, there is no other approach that is able to appropriately construct metabolic models from KEGG pathways, including correct reactions with stoichiometry. The resulting initial models, which contain valid and comprehensive SBML or BioPAX code and a multitude of cross-references, lay the foundation to facilitate further modeling steps.

  20. Market access pathways for cell therapies in France.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rémuzat, Cécile; Toumi, Mondher; Jørgensen, Jesper; Kefalas, Panos

    2015-01-01

    ) system through Missions of General Interest and Support to Contracting (MIGAC). For minimally manipulated cells, four different funding processes are applicable, depending on the type of activity: (1) inclusion in a DRG; (2) inclusion in the list of products and services qualifying for reimbursement (LPPR) (as a medical device); (3) an annual lump sum provided by regional health agencies; and (4) a financial allowance under Missions of General Interest (MIG). Cell therapy is a diverse and promising category of medical interventions. Its heterogeneity and complexity mean that several funding options and market access pathways apply. The main challenges facing cell therapies relate to (1) the identification of the most appropriate path to reimbursement, and (2) price setting, whereas high manufacturing costs of these therapies will dictate a high price that could only be achieved by a product that leads to important additional patient benefits compared to available treatment options. More specific funding options could emerge as the number of cell therapies increases and the authorities face the need to structure and stabilise funding. It will be vital for manufacturers to have a clear understanding of the various temporary funding opportunities early in a product's lifecycle for the adoption of a stepwise approach to secure permanent funding. Furthermore, due to the very limited Health Technology Assessment (HTA) bodies experience for cell therapies, manufacturers should enter into dialogues with HTA agencies at an early stage to optimise market access conditions.

  1. PathText: a text mining integrator for biological pathway visualizations

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kemper, Brian; Matsuzaki, Takuya; Matsuoka, Yukiko; Tsuruoka, Yoshimasa; Kitano, Hiroaki; Ananiadou, Sophia; Tsujii, Jun'ichi

    2010-01-01

    Motivation: Metabolic and signaling pathways are an increasingly important part of organizing knowledge in systems biology. They serve to integrate collective interpretations of facts scattered throughout literature. Biologists construct a pathway by reading a large number of articles and interpreting them as a consistent network, but most of the models constructed currently lack direct links to those articles. Biologists who want to check the original articles have to spend substantial amounts of time to collect relevant articles and identify the sections relevant to the pathway. Furthermore, with the scientific literature expanding by several thousand papers per week, keeping a model relevant requires a continuous curation effort. In this article, we present a system designed to integrate a pathway visualizer, text mining systems and annotation tools into a seamless environment. This will enable biologists to freely move between parts of a pathway and relevant sections of articles, as well as identify relevant papers from large text bases. The system, PathText, is developed by Systems Biology Institute, Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, National Centre for Text Mining (University of Manchester) and the University of Tokyo, and is being used by groups of biologists from these locations. Contact: brian@monrovian.com. PMID:20529930

  2. Prokaryotic Heme Biosynthesis: Multiple Pathways to a Common Essential Product.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dailey, Harry A; Dailey, Tamara A; Gerdes, Svetlana; Jahn, Dieter; Jahn, Martina; O'Brian, Mark R; Warren, Martin J

    2017-03-01

    The advent of heme during evolution allowed organisms possessing this compound to safely and efficiently carry out a variety of chemical reactions that otherwise were difficult or impossible. While it was long assumed that a single heme biosynthetic pathway existed in nature, over the past decade, it has become clear that there are three distinct pathways among prokaryotes, although all three pathways utilize a common initial core of three enzymes to produce the intermediate uroporphyrinogen III. The most ancient pathway and the only one found in the Archaea converts siroheme to protoheme via an oxygen-independent four-enzyme-step process. Bacteria utilize the initial core pathway but then add one additional common step to produce coproporphyrinogen III. Following this step, Gram-positive organisms oxidize coproporphyrinogen III to coproporphyrin III, insert iron to make coproheme, and finally decarboxylate coproheme to protoheme, whereas Gram-negative bacteria first decarboxylate coproporphyrinogen III to protoporphyrinogen IX and then oxidize this to protoporphyrin IX prior to metal insertion to make protoheme. In order to adapt to oxygen-deficient conditions, two steps in the bacterial pathways have multiple forms to accommodate oxidative reactions in an anaerobic environment. The regulation of these pathways reflects the diversity of bacterial metabolism. This diversity, along with the late recognition that three pathways exist, has significantly slowed advances in this field such that no single organism's heme synthesis pathway regulation is currently completely characterized. Copyright © 2017 American Society for Microbiology.

  3. DEGAS: de novo discovery of dysregulated pathways in human diseases.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Igor Ulitsky

    Full Text Available BACKGROUND: Molecular studies of the human disease transcriptome typically involve a search for genes whose expression is significantly dysregulated in sick individuals compared to healthy controls. Recent studies have found that only a small number of the genes in human disease-related pathways show consistent dysregulation in sick individuals. However, those studies found that some pathway genes are affected in most sick individuals, but genes can differ among individuals. While a pathway is usually defined as a set of genes known to share a specific function, pathway boundaries are frequently difficult to assign, and methods that rely on such definition cannot discover novel pathways. Protein interaction networks can potentially be used to overcome these problems. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We present DEGAS (DysrEgulated Gene set Analysis via Subnetworks, a method for identifying connected gene subnetworks significantly enriched for genes that are dysregulated in specimens of a disease. We applied DEGAS to seven human diseases and obtained statistically significant results that appear to home in on compact pathways enriched with hallmarks of the diseases. In Parkinson's disease, we provide novel evidence for involvement of mRNA splicing, cell proliferation, and the 14-3-3 complex in the disease progression. DEGAS is available as part of the MATISSE software package (http://acgt.cs.tau.ac.il/matisse. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: The subnetworks identified by DEGAS can provide a signature of the disease potentially useful for diagnosis, pinpoint possible pathways affected by the disease, and suggest targets for drug intervention.

  4. Random number generation

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Coveyou, R.R.

    1974-01-01

    The subject of random number generation is currently controversial. Differing opinions on this subject seem to stem from implicit or explicit differences in philosophy; in particular, from differing ideas concerning the role of probability in the real world of physical processes, electronic computers, and Monte Carlo calculations. An attempt is made here to reconcile these views. The role of stochastic ideas in mathematical models is discussed. In illustration of these ideas, a mathematical model of the use of random number generators in Monte Carlo calculations is constructed. This model is used to set up criteria for the comparison and evaluation of random number generators. (U.S.)

  5. Cation binding to 15-TBA quadruplex DNA is a multiple-pathway cation-dependent process.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Reshetnikov, Roman V; Sponer, Jiri; Rassokhina, Olga I; Kopylov, Alexei M; Tsvetkov, Philipp O; Makarov, Alexander A; Golovin, Andrey V

    2011-12-01

    A combination of explicit solvent molecular dynamics simulation (30 simulations reaching 4 µs in total), hybrid quantum mechanics/molecular mechanics approach and isothermal titration calorimetry was used to investigate the atomistic picture of ion binding to 15-mer thrombin-binding quadruplex DNA (G-DNA) aptamer. Binding of ions to G-DNA is complex multiple pathway process, which is strongly affected by the type of the cation. The individual ion-binding events are substantially modulated by the connecting loops of the aptamer, which play several roles. They stabilize the molecule during time periods when the bound ions are not present, they modulate the route of the ion into the stem and they also stabilize the internal ions by closing the gates through which the ions enter the quadruplex. Using our extensive simulations, we for the first time observed full spontaneous exchange of internal cation between quadruplex molecule and bulk solvent at atomistic resolution. The simulation suggests that expulsion of the internally bound ion is correlated with initial binding of the incoming ion. The incoming ion then readily replaces the bound ion while minimizing any destabilization of the solute molecule during the exchange. © The Author(s) 2011. Published by Oxford University Press.

  6. Metabolic pathway alignment between species using a comprehensive and flexible similarity measure

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    de Ridder Dick

    2008-12-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Comparative analysis of metabolic networks in multiple species yields important information on their evolution, and has great practical value in metabolic engineering, human disease analysis, drug design etc. In this work, we aim to systematically search for conserved pathways in two species, quantify their similarities, and focus on the variations between them. Results We present an efficient framework, Metabolic Pathway Alignment and Scoring (M-PAS, for identifying and ranking conserved metabolic pathways. M-PAS aligns all reactions in entire metabolic networks of two species and assembles them into pathways, taking mismatches, gaps and crossovers into account. It uses a comprehensive scoring function, which quantifies pathway similarity such that we can focus on different pathways given different biological motivations. Using M-PAS, we detected 1198 length-four pathways fully conserved between Saccharomyces cerevisiae and Escherichia coli, and also revealed 1399 cases of a species using a unique route in otherwise highly conserved pathways. Conclusion Our method efficiently automates the process of exploring reaction arrangement possibilities, both between species and within species, to find conserved pathways. We not only reconstruct conventional pathways such as those found in KEGG, but also discover new pathway possibilities. Our results can help to generate hypotheses on missing reactions and manifest differences in highly conserved pathways, which is useful for biology and life science applications.

  7. A novel method to identify hub pathways of rheumatoid arthritis based on differential pathway networks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wei, Shi-Tong; Sun, Yong-Hua; Zong, Shi-Hua

    2017-09-01

    The aim of the current study was to identify hub pathways of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) using a novel method based on differential pathway network (DPN) analysis. The present study proposed a DPN where protein‑protein interaction (PPI) network was integrated with pathway‑pathway interactions. Pathway data was obtained from background PPI network and the Reactome pathway database. Subsequently, pathway interactions were extracted from the pathway data by building randomized gene‑gene interactions and a weight value was assigned to each pathway interaction using Spearman correlation coefficient (SCC) to identify differential pathway interactions. Differential pathway interactions were visualized using Cytoscape to construct a DPN. Topological analysis was conducted to identify hub pathways that possessed the top 5% degree distribution of DPN. Modules of DPN were mined according to ClusterONE. A total of 855 pathways were selected to build pathway interactions. By filtrating pathway interactions of weight values >0.7, a DPN with 312 nodes and 791 edges was obtained. Topological degree analysis revealed 15 hub pathways, such as heparan sulfate/heparin‑glycosaminoglycan (HS‑GAG) degradation, HS‑GAG metabolism and keratan sulfate degradation for RA based on DPN. Furthermore, hub pathways were also important in modules, which validated the significance of hub pathways. In conclusion, the proposed method is a computationally efficient way to identify hub pathways of RA, which identified 15 hub pathways that may be potential biomarkers and provide insight to future investigation and treatment of RA.

  8. Assessing and Modulating Kynurenine Pathway Dynamics in Huntington's Disease: Focus on Kynurenine 3-Monooxygenase.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sathyasaikumar, Korrapati V; Breda, Carlo; Schwarcz, Robert; Giorgini, Flaviano

    2018-01-01

    The link between disturbances in kynurenine pathway (KP) metabolism and Huntington's disease (HD) pathogenesis has been explored for a number of years. Several novel genetic and pharmacological tools have recently been developed to modulate key regulatory steps in the KP such as the reaction catalyzed by the enzyme kynurenine 3-monooxygenase (KMO). This insight has offered new options for exploring the mechanistic link between this metabolic pathway and HD, and provided novel opportunities for the development of candidate drug-like compounds. Here, we present an overview of the field, focusing on some novel approaches for interrogating the pathway experimentally.

  9. Lepton number violation in theories with a large number of standard model copies

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Kovalenko, Sergey; Schmidt, Ivan; Paes, Heinrich

    2011-01-01

    We examine lepton number violation (LNV) in theories with a saturated black hole bound on a large number of species. Such theories have been advocated recently as a possible solution to the hierarchy problem and an explanation of the smallness of neutrino masses. On the other hand, the violation of the lepton number can be a potential phenomenological problem of this N-copy extension of the standard model as due to the low quantum gravity scale black holes may induce TeV scale LNV operators generating unacceptably large rates of LNV processes. We show, however, that this issue can be avoided by introducing a spontaneously broken U 1(B-L) . Then, due to the existence of a specific compensation mechanism between contributions of different Majorana neutrino states, LNV processes in the standard model copy become extremely suppressed with rates far beyond experimental reach.

  10. Autism spectrum disorders and drug addiction: Common pathways, common molecules, distinct disorders?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Patrick E. Rothwell

    2016-02-01

    Full Text Available Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs and drug addiction do not share substantial comorbidity or obvious similarities in etiology or symptomatology. It is thus surprising that a number of recent studies implicate overlapping neural circuits and molecular signaling pathways in both disorders. The purpose of this review is to highlight this emerging intersection and consider implications for understanding the pathophysiology of these seemingly distinct disorders. One area of overlap involves neural circuits and neuromodulatory systems in the striatum and basal ganglia, which play an established role in addiction and reward but are increasingly implicated in clinical and preclinical studies of ASDs. A second area of overlap relates to molecules like Fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP and methyl CpG-binding protein-2 (MECP2, which are best known for their contribution to the pathogenesis of syndromic ASDs, but have recently been shown to regulate behavioral and neurobiological responses to addictive drug exposure. These shared pathways and molecules point to common dimensions of behavioral dysfunction, including the repetition of behavioral patterns and aberrant reward processing. The synthesis of knowledge gained through parallel investigations of ASDs and addiction may inspire the design of new therapeutic interventions to correct common elements of striatal dysfunction.

  11. Autism Spectrum Disorders and Drug Addiction: Common Pathways, Common Molecules, Distinct Disorders?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rothwell, Patrick E

    2016-01-01

    Autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) and drug addiction do not share substantial comorbidity or obvious similarities in etiology or symptomatology. It is thus surprising that a number of recent studies implicate overlapping neural circuits and molecular signaling pathways in both disorders. The purpose of this review is to highlight this emerging intersection and consider implications for understanding the pathophysiology of these seemingly distinct disorders. One area of overlap involves neural circuits and neuromodulatory systems in the striatum and basal ganglia, which play an established role in addiction and reward but are increasingly implicated in clinical and preclinical studies of ASDs. A second area of overlap relates to molecules like Fragile X mental retardation protein (FMRP) and methyl CpG-binding protein-2 (MECP2), which are best known for their contribution to the pathogenesis of syndromic ASDs, but have recently been shown to regulate behavioral and neurobiological responses to addictive drug exposure. These shared pathways and molecules point to common dimensions of behavioral dysfunction, including the repetition of behavioral patterns and aberrant reward processing. The synthesis of knowledge gained through parallel investigations of ASDs and addiction may inspire the design of new therapeutic interventions to correct common elements of striatal dysfunction.

  12. Multiple intracellular signaling pathways orchestrate adipocytic differentiation of human bone marrow stromal stem cells

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Ayesh Hafez Ali, Dalia; Abuelreich, Sarah; Alkeraishan, Nora

    2018-01-01

    during adipocyte differentiation of human bone marrow stromal (mesenchymal) stem cells (hMSCs) and identified 2,589 up-regulated and 2,583 down-regulated mRNA transcripts. Pathway analysis on the up-regulated gene list untraveled enrichment in multiple signaling pathways including insulin receptor......Bone marrow adipocyte formation plays a role in bone homeostasis and whole body energy metabolism. However, the transcriptional landscape and signaling pathways associated with adipocyte lineage commitment and maturation are not fully delineated. Thus, we performed global gene expression profiling...... signaling, focal Adhesion, metapathway biotransformation, a number of metabolic pathways e.g. selenium metabolism, Benzo(a)pyrene metabolism, fatty acid, triacylglycerol, ketone body metabolism, tryptophan metabolism, and catalytic cycle of mammalian flavin-containing monooxygenase (FMOs). On the other hand...

  13. Generation of computationally predicted Adverse Outcome Pathway networks through integration of publicly available in vivo, in vitro, phenotype, and biological pathway data.

    Science.gov (United States)

    The Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) framework is becoming a widely used tool for organizing and summarizing the mechanistic information connecting molecular perturbations by environmental stressors with adverse ecological and human health outcomes. However, the conventional process...

  14. Cross-Cultural and Intra-Cultural Differences in Finger-Counting Habits and Number Magnitude Processing: Embodied Numerosity in Canadian and Chinese University Students

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kyle Richard Morrissey

    2016-04-01

    Full Text Available Recent work in numerical cognition has shown-that number magnitude is not entirely abstract, and at least partly rooted in embodied and situated experiences, including finger-counting. The current study extends previous cross-cultural research to address within-culture individual differences in finger counting habits. Results indicated that Canadian participants demonstrated an additional cognitive load when comparing numbers that require more than one hand to represent, and this pattern of performance is further modulated by whether they typically start counting on their left hand or their right hand. Chinese students typically count on only one hand and so show no such effect, except for an increase in errors, similar to that seen in Canadians, for those whom self-identify as predominantly two-hand counters. Results suggest that the impact of finger counting habits extend beyond cultural experience and concord in predictable ways with differences in number magnitude processing for specific number-digits. We conclude that symbolic number magnitude processing is partially rooted in learned finger-counting habits, consistent with a motor simulation account of embodied numeracy and that argument is supported by both cross-cultural and within-culture differences in finger-counting habits.

  15. DMPD: Parallel pathways of virus recognition. [Dynamic Macrophage Pathway CSML Database

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available 16713969 Parallel pathways of virus recognition. Tenoever BR, Maniatis T. Immunity.... 2006 May;24(5):510-2. (.png) (.svg) (.html) (.csml) Show Parallel pathways of virus recognition. PubmedID 1...6713969 Title Parallel pathways of virus recognition. Authors Tenoever BR, Maniatis T. Publication Immunity.

  16. Mathematical modeling of the Phoenix Rising pathway.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Chad Liu

    2014-02-01

    Full Text Available Apoptosis is a tightly controlled process in mammalian cells. It is important for embryogenesis, tissue homoeostasis, and cancer treatment. Apoptosis not only induces cell death, but also leads to the release of signals that promote rapid proliferation of surrounding cells through the Phoenix Rising (PR pathway. To quantitatively understand the kinetics of interactions of different molecules in this pathway, we developed a mathematical model to simulate the effects of various changes in the PR pathway on the secretion of prostaglandin E2 (PGE2, a key factor for promoting cell proliferation. These changes include activation of caspase 3 (C3, caspase 7 (C7, and nuclear factor κB (NFκB. In addition, we simulated the effects of cyclooxygenase-2 (COX2 inhibition and C3 knockout on the level of secreted PGE2. The model predictions on PGE2 in MEF and 4T1 cells at 48 hours after 10-Gray radiation were quantitatively consistent with the experimental data in the literature. Compared to C7, the model predicted that C3 activation was more critical for PGE2 production. The model also predicted that PGE2 production could be significantly reduced when COX2 expression was blocked via either NFκB inactivation or treatment of cells with exogenous COX2 inhibitors, which led to a decrease in the rate of conversion from arachidonic acid to prostaglandin H2 in the PR pathway. In conclusion, the mathematical model developed in this study yielded new insights into the process of tissue regrowth stimulated by signals from apoptotic cells. In future studies, the model can be used for experimental data analysis and assisting development of novel strategies/drugs for improving cancer treatment or normal tissue regeneration.

  17. Pancreatic cancer genomes reveal aberrations in axon guidance pathway genes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Biankin, Andrew V; Waddell, Nicola; Kassahn, Karin S; Gingras, Marie-Claude; Muthuswamy, Lakshmi B; Johns, Amber L; Miller, David K; Wilson, Peter J; Patch, Ann-Marie; Wu, Jianmin; Chang, David K; Cowley, Mark J; Gardiner, Brooke B; Song, Sarah; Harliwong, Ivon; Idrisoglu, Senel; Nourse, Craig; Nourbakhsh, Ehsan; Manning, Suzanne; Wani, Shivangi; Gongora, Milena; Pajic, Marina; Scarlett, Christopher J; Gill, Anthony J; Pinho, Andreia V; Rooman, Ilse; Anderson, Matthew; Holmes, Oliver; Leonard, Conrad; Taylor, Darrin; Wood, Scott; Xu, Qinying; Nones, Katia; Fink, J Lynn; Christ, Angelika; Bruxner, Tim; Cloonan, Nicole; Kolle, Gabriel; Newell, Felicity; Pinese, Mark; Mead, R Scott; Humphris, Jeremy L; Kaplan, Warren; Jones, Marc D; Colvin, Emily K; Nagrial, Adnan M; Humphrey, Emily S; Chou, Angela; Chin, Venessa T; Chantrill, Lorraine A; Mawson, Amanda; Samra, Jaswinder S; Kench, James G; Lovell, Jessica A; Daly, Roger J; Merrett, Neil D; Toon, Christopher; Epari, Krishna; Nguyen, Nam Q; Barbour, Andrew; Zeps, Nikolajs; Kakkar, Nipun; Zhao, Fengmei; Wu, Yuan Qing; Wang, Min; Muzny, Donna M; Fisher, William E; Brunicardi, F Charles; Hodges, Sally E; Reid, Jeffrey G; Drummond, Jennifer; Chang, Kyle; Han, Yi; Lewis, Lora R; Dinh, Huyen; Buhay, Christian J; Beck, Timothy; Timms, Lee; Sam, Michelle; Begley, Kimberly; Brown, Andrew; Pai, Deepa; Panchal, Ami; Buchner, Nicholas; De Borja, Richard; Denroche, Robert E; Yung, Christina K; Serra, Stefano; Onetto, Nicole; Mukhopadhyay, Debabrata; Tsao, Ming-Sound; Shaw, Patricia A; Petersen, Gloria M; Gallinger, Steven; Hruban, Ralph H; Maitra, Anirban; Iacobuzio-Donahue, Christine A; Schulick, Richard D; Wolfgang, Christopher L; Morgan, Richard A; Lawlor, Rita T; Capelli, Paola; Corbo, Vincenzo; Scardoni, Maria; Tortora, Giampaolo; Tempero, Margaret A; Mann, Karen M; Jenkins, Nancy A; Perez-Mancera, Pedro A; Adams, David J; Largaespada, David A; Wessels, Lodewyk F A; Rust, Alistair G; Stein, Lincoln D; Tuveson, David A; Copeland, Neal G; Musgrove, Elizabeth A; Scarpa, Aldo; Eshleman, James R; Hudson, Thomas J; Sutherland, Robert L; Wheeler, David A; Pearson, John V; McPherson, John D; Gibbs, Richard A; Grimmond, Sean M

    2012-11-15

    Pancreatic cancer is a highly lethal malignancy with few effective therapies. We performed exome sequencing and copy number analysis to define genomic aberrations in a prospectively accrued clinical cohort (n = 142) of early (stage I and II) sporadic pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma. Detailed analysis of 99 informative tumours identified substantial heterogeneity with 2,016 non-silent mutations and 1,628 copy-number variations. We define 16 significantly mutated genes, reaffirming known mutations (KRAS, TP53, CDKN2A, SMAD4, MLL3, TGFBR2, ARID1A and SF3B1), and uncover novel mutated genes including additional genes involved in chromatin modification (EPC1 and ARID2), DNA damage repair (ATM) and other mechanisms (ZIM2, MAP2K4, NALCN, SLC16A4 and MAGEA6). Integrative analysis with in vitro functional data and animal models provided supportive evidence for potential roles for these genetic aberrations in carcinogenesis. Pathway-based analysis of recurrently mutated genes recapitulated clustering in core signalling pathways in pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma, and identified new mutated genes in each pathway. We also identified frequent and diverse somatic aberrations in genes described traditionally as embryonic regulators of axon guidance, particularly SLIT/ROBO signalling, which was also evident in murine Sleeping Beauty transposon-mediated somatic mutagenesis models of pancreatic cancer, providing further supportive evidence for the potential involvement of axon guidance genes in pancreatic carcinogenesis.

  18. Optokinetic Stimulation Modulates Neglect for the Number Space: Evidence from Mental Number Interval Bisection

    Science.gov (United States)

    Priftis, Konstantinos; Pitteri, Marco; Meneghello, Francesca; Umiltà, Carlo; Zorzi, Marco

    2012-01-01

    Behavioral, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging data support the idea that numbers are represented along a mental number line (MNL), an analogical, visuospatial representation of number magnitude. The MNL is left-to-right oriented in Western cultures, with small numbers on the left and larger numbers on the right. Left neglect patients are impaired in the mental bisection of numerical intervals, with a bias toward larger numbers that are relatively to the right on the MNL. In the present study we investigated the effects of optokinetic stimulation (OKS) – a technique inducing visuospatial attention shifts by means of activation of the optokinetic nystagmus – on number interval bisection. One patient with left neglect following right-hemisphere stroke (BG) and four control patients with right-hemisphere damage, but without neglect, performed the number interval bisection task in three conditions of OKS: static, leftward, and rightward. In the static condition, BG misbisected to the right of the true midpoint. BG misbisected to the left following leftward OKS, and again to the right of the midpoint following rightward OKS. Moreover, the variability of BG’s performance was smaller following both leftward and rightward OKS, suggesting that the attentional bias induced by OKS reduced the “indifference zone” that is thought to underlie the length effect reported in bisection tasks. We argue that shifts of visuospatial attention, induced by OKS, may affect number interval bisection, thereby revealing an interaction between the processing of the perceptual space and the processing of the number space. PMID:22363280

  19. The Marginal Distributions of a Crossing Time and Renewal Numbers Related with Two Poisson Processes are as Ph-Distributions

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Mir G. H. Talpur

    2006-01-01

    Full Text Available In this paper we consider, how to find the marginal distributions of crossing time and renewal numbers related with two poisson processes by using probability arguments. The obtained results show that the one-dimension marginal distributions are N+1 order PH-distributions.

  20. Distinct Escape Pathway by Hepatitis C Virus Genotype 1a from a Dominant CD8+ T Cell Response by Selection of Altered Epitope Processing.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Walker, Andreas; Skibbe, Kathrin; Steinmann, Eike; Pfaender, Stephanie; Kuntzen, Thomas; Megger, Dominik A; Groten, Svenja; Sitek, Barbara; Lauer, Georg M; Kim, Arthur Y; Pietschmann, Thomas; Allen, Todd M; Timm, Joerg

    2016-01-01

    Antiviral CD8(+) T cells are a key component of the adaptive immune response against HCV, but their impact on viral control is influenced by preexisting viral variants in important target epitopes and the development of viral escape mutations. Immunodominant epitopes highly conserved across genotypes therefore are attractive for T cell based prophylactic vaccines. Here, we characterized the CD8(+) T cell response against the highly conserved HLA-B*51-restricted epitope IPFYGKAI1373-1380 located in the helicase domain of NS3 in people who inject drugs (PWID) exposed predominantly to HCV genotypes 1a and 3a. Despite this epitope being conserved in both genotypes, the corresponding CD8(+) T cell response was detected only in PWID infected with genotype 3a and HCV-RNA negative PWID, but not in PWID infected with genotype 1a. In genotype 3a, the detection of strong CD8(+) T cell responses was associated with epitope variants in the autologous virus consistent with immune escape. Analysis of viral sequences from multiple cohorts confirmed HLA-B*51-associated escape mutations inside the epitope in genotype 3a, but not in genotype 1a. Here, a distinct substitution in the N-terminal flanking region located 5 residues upstream of the epitope (S1368P; P = 0.00002) was selected in HLA-B*51-positive individuals. Functional assays revealed that the S1368P substitution impaired recognition of target cells presenting the endogenously processed epitope. The results highlight that, despite an epitope being highly conserved between two genotypes, there are major differences in the selected viral escape pathways and the corresponding T cell responses. HCV is able to evolutionary adapt to CD8(+) T cell immune pressure in multiple ways. Beyond selection of mutations inside targeted epitopes, this study demonstrates that HCV inhibits epitope processing by modification of the epitope flanking region under T cell immune pressure. Selection of a substitution five amino acids upstream of the

  1. Atmospheric Pathway Screening Analysis for Saltstone Disposal Facility Vault 4

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    COOK, JAMES

    2004-01-01

    A sequential screening process using a methodology developed by the National Council on Radiation Protection and Measurements, professional judgment and process knowledge has been used to produce a list of radionuclides requiring detailed analysis to derive disposal limits for the Saltstone Disposal Facility based on the atmospheric pathway

  2. DMPD: Signaling pathways activated by microorganisms. [Dynamic Macrophage Pathway CSML Database

    Lifescience Database Archive (English)

    Full Text Available 17303405 Signaling pathways activated by microorganisms. Takeuchi O, Akira S. Curr ...Opin Cell Biol. 2007 Apr;19(2):185-91. Epub 2007 Feb 15. (.png) (.svg) (.html) (.csml) Show Signaling pathways activated by microorg...anisms. PubmedID 17303405 Title Signaling pathways activated by microorganisms. Auth

  3. Rehabilitative skilled forelimb training enhances axonal remodeling in the corticospinal pathway but not the brainstem-spinal pathways after photothrombotic stroke in the primary motor cortex.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Okabe, Naohiko; Himi, Naoyuki; Maruyama-Nakamura, Emi; Hayashi, Norito; Narita, Kazuhiko; Miyamoto, Osamu

    2017-01-01

    Task-specific rehabilitative training is commonly used for chronic stroke patients. Axonal remodeling is believed to be one mechanism underlying rehabilitation-induced functional recovery, and significant roles of the corticospinal pathway have previously been demonstrated. Brainstem-spinal pathways, as well as the corticospinal tract, have been suggested to contribute to skilled motor function and functional recovery after brain injury. However, whether axonal remodeling in the brainstem-spinal pathways is a critical component for rehabilitation-induced functional recovery is not known. In this study, rats were subjected to photothrombotic stroke in the caudal forelimb area of the primary motor cortex and received rehabilitative training with a skilled forelimb reaching task for 4 weeks. After completion of the rehabilitative training, the retrograde tracer Fast blue was injected into the contralesional lower cervical spinal cord. Fast blue-positive cells were counted in 32 brain areas located in the cerebral cortex, hypothalamus, midbrain, pons, and medulla oblongata. Rehabilitative training improved motor performance in the skilled forelimb reaching task but not in the cylinder test, ladder walk test, or staircase test, indicating that rehabilitative skilled forelimb training induced task-specific recovery. In the histological analysis, rehabilitative training significantly increased the number of Fast blue-positive neurons in the ipsilesional rostral forelimb area and secondary sensory cortex. However, rehabilitative training did not alter the number of Fast blue-positive neurons in any areas of the brainstem. These results indicate that rehabilitative skilled forelimb training enhances axonal remodeling selectively in the corticospinal pathway, which suggests a critical role of cortical plasticity, rather than brainstem plasticity, in task-specific recovery after subtotal motor cortex destruction.

  4. Elucidating novel dysfunctional pathways in Alzheimer's disease by integrating loci identified in genetic and epigenetic studies

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Adam R. Smith

    2016-06-01

    Full Text Available Alzheimer's disease is a complex neurodegenerative disorder. A large number of genome-wide association studies have been performed, which have been supplemented more recently by the first epigenome-wide association studies, leading to the identification of a number of novel loci altered in disease. Twin studies have shown monozygotic twin discordance for Alzheimer's disease (Gatz et al., 2006, leading to the conclusion that a combination of genetic and epigenetic mechanisms is likely to be involved in disease etiology (Lunnon & Mill, 2013. This review focuses on identifying overlapping pathways between published genome-wide association studies and epigenome-wide association studies, highlighting dysfunctional synaptic, lipid metabolism, plasma membrane/cytoskeleton, mitochondrial, and immune cell activation pathways. Identifying common pathways altered in genetic and epigenetic studies will aid our understanding of disease mechanisms and identify potential novel targets for pharmacological intervention.

  5. Electronic SSKIN pathway: reducing device-related pressure ulcers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Campbell, Natalie

    2016-08-11

    This article describes how an interprofessional project in a London NHS Foundation Trust was undertaken to develop an intranet-based medical device-related pressure ulcer prevention and management pathway for clinical staff working across an adult critical care directorate, where life-threatening events require interventions using medical devices. The aim of this project was to improve working policies and processes to define key prevention strategies and provide clinicians with a clear, standardised approach to risk and skin assessment, equipment use, documentation and reporting clinical data using the Trust's CareVue (electronic medical records), Datix (incident reporting and risk-management tool) and eTRACE (online clinical protocol ordering) systems. The process included the development, trial and local implementation of the pathway using collaborative teamwork and the SSKIN care bundle tool. The experience of identifying issues, overcoming challenges, defining best practice and cascading SSKIN awareness training is shared.

  6. On the Relation Between Grammatical Number and Cardinal Numbers in Development

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Barbara W Sarnecka

    2014-10-01

    Full Text Available This mini-review focuses on the question of how the grammatical number system of a child’s language may help the child learn the meanings of cardinal number words (e.g., ‘one’ and ‘two’. Evidence from young children learning English, Russian, Japanese, Mandarin, Slovenian or Saudi Arabic suggests that trajectories of number-word learning differ for children learning different languages. Children learning English, which distinguishes between singular and plural, seem to learn the meaning of the cardinal number ‘one’ earlier than children learning Japanese or Mandarin, which have very little singular/plural marking. Similarly, children whose languages have a singular/dual/plural system (Slovenian and Saudi Arabic learn the meaning of ‘two’ earlier than English-speaking children. This relation between grammatical and cardinal number may shed light on how humans acquire cardinal-number concepts. There is an ongoing debate about whether mental symbols for small cardinalities (concepts for ‘oneness,’ ‘twoness,’ etc. are innate or learned. Although an effect of grammatical number on number-word learning does not rule out nativist accounts, it seems more consistent with constructivist accounts, which portray the number-learning process as one that requires significant conceptual change.

  7. PSFC: a Pathway Signal Flow Calculator App for Cytoscape [version 2; referees: 2 approved

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Lilit Nersisyan

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available Cell signaling pathways are sequences of biochemical reactions that propagate an input signal, such as a hormone binding to a cell-surface receptor, into the cell to trigger a reactive process. Assessment of pathway activities is crucial for determining which pathways play roles in disease versus normal conditions. To date various pathway flow/perturbation assessment tools are available, however they are constrained to specific algorithms and specific data types. There are no accepted standards for evaluation of pathway activities or simulation of flow propagation events in pathways, and the results of different software are difficult to compare. Here we present Pathway Signal Flow Calculator (PSFC, a Cytoscape app for calculation of a pathway signal flow based on the pathway topology and node input data. The app provides a rich framework for customization of different signal flow algorithms to allow users to apply various approaches within a single computational framework.

  8. Pathways to Mesoporous Resin/Carbon Thin Films with Alternating Gyroid Morphology

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Zhang, Qi [Department; Matsuoka, Fumiaki [Department; Suh, Hyo Seon [Institute; Materials; Beaucage, Peter A. [Department; Xiong, Shisheng [Institute; Materials; Smilgies, Detlef-M. [Cornell; Tan, Kwan Wee [Department; School; Werner, Jörg G. [Department; Nealey, Paul F. [Institute; Materials; Wiesner, Ulrich B. [Department

    2017-12-19

    Three-dimensional (3D) mesoporous thin films with sub-100 nm periodic lattices are of increasing interest as templates for a number of nanotechnology applications, yet are hard to achieve with conventional top-down fabrication methods. Block copolymer self-assembly derived mesoscale structures provide a toolbox for such 3D template formation. In this work, single (alternating) gyroidal and double gyroidal mesoporous thin-film structures are achieved via solvent vapor annealing assisted co-assembly of poly(isoprene-block-styrene-block-ethylene oxide) (PI-b-PS-b-PEO, ISO) and resorcinol/phenol formaldehyde resols. In particular, the alternating gyroid thin-film morphology is highly desirable for potential template backfilling processes as a result of the large pore volume fraction. In situ grazing-incidence small-angle X-ray scattering during solvent annealing is employed as a tool to elucidate and navigate the pathway complexity of the structure formation processes. The resulting network structures are resistant to high temperatures provided an inert atmosphere. The thin films have tunable hydrophilicity from pyrolysis at different temperatures, while pore sizes can be tailored by varying ISO molar mass. A transfer technique between substrates is demonstrated for alternating gyroidal mesoporous thin films, circumventing the need to re-optimize film formation protocols for different substrates. Increased conductivity after pyrolysis at high temperatures demonstrates that these gyroidal mesoporous resin/carbon thin films have potential as functional 3D templates for a number of nanomaterials applications.

  9. The Reactome pathway knowledgebase.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Croft, David; Mundo, Antonio Fabregat; Haw, Robin; Milacic, Marija; Weiser, Joel; Wu, Guanming; Caudy, Michael; Garapati, Phani; Gillespie, Marc; Kamdar, Maulik R; Jassal, Bijay; Jupe, Steven; Matthews, Lisa; May, Bruce; Palatnik, Stanislav; Rothfels, Karen; Shamovsky, Veronica; Song, Heeyeon; Williams, Mark; Birney, Ewan; Hermjakob, Henning; Stein, Lincoln; D'Eustachio, Peter

    2014-01-01

    Reactome (http://www.reactome.org) is a manually curated open-source open-data resource of human pathways and reactions. The current version 46 describes 7088 human proteins (34% of the predicted human proteome), participating in 6744 reactions based on data extracted from 15 107 research publications with PubMed links. The Reactome Web site and analysis tool set have been completely redesigned to increase speed, flexibility and user friendliness. The data model has been extended to support annotation of disease processes due to infectious agents and to mutation.

  10. KEGGtranslator: visualizing and converting the KEGG PATHWAY database to various formats.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wrzodek, Clemens; Dräger, Andreas; Zell, Andreas

    2011-08-15

    The KEGG PATHWAY database provides a widely used service for metabolic and nonmetabolic pathways. It contains manually drawn pathway maps with information about the genes, reactions and relations contained therein. To store these pathways, KEGG uses KGML, a proprietary XML-format. Parsers and translators are needed to process the pathway maps for usage in other applications and algorithms. We have developed KEGGtranslator, an easy-to-use stand-alone application that can visualize and convert KGML formatted XML-files into multiple output formats. Unlike other translators, KEGGtranslator supports a plethora of output formats, is able to augment the information in translated documents (e.g. MIRIAM annotations) beyond the scope of the KGML document, and amends missing components to fragmentary reactions within the pathway to allow simulations on those. KEGGtranslator is freely available as a Java(™) Web Start application and for download at http://www.cogsys.cs.uni-tuebingen.de/software/KEGGtranslator/. KGML files can be downloaded from within the application. clemens.wrzodek@uni-tuebingen.de Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

  11. Creating a Structured Adverse Outcome Pathway Knowledgebase via Ontology-Based Annotations

    Science.gov (United States)

    The Adverse Outcome Pathway (AOP) framework is increasingly used to integrate data based on traditional and emerging toxicity testing paradigms. As the number of AOP descriptions has increased, so has the need to define the AOP in computable terms. Herein, we present a comprehens...

  12. Hurricane Sandy and Adaptation Pathways in New York: Lessons from a First-Responder City

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rosenzweig, Cynthia; Solecki, William

    2014-01-01

    Two central issues of climate change have become increasingly evident: Climate change will significantly affect cities; and rapid global urbanization will increase dramatically the number of individuals, amount of critical infrastructure, and means of economic production that are exposed and vulnerable to dynamic climate risks. Simultaneously, cities in many settings have begun to emerge as early adopters of climate change action strategies including greenhouse gas mitigation and adaptation. The objective of this paper is to examine and analyze how officials of one city - the City of New York - have integrated a flexible adaptation pathways approach into the municipality's climate action strategy. This approach has been connected with the City's ongoing response to Hurricane Sandy, which struck in the October 2012 and resulted in damages worth more than US$19 billion. A case study narrative methodology utilizing the Wise et al. conceptual framework (see this volume) is used to evaluate the effectiveness of the flexible adaptation pathways approach in New York City. The paper finds that Hurricane Sandy serves as a ''tipping point'' leading to transformative adaptation due to the explicit inclusion of increasing climate change risks in the rebuilding effort. The potential for transferability of the approach to cities varying in size and development stage is discussed, with elements useful across cities including the overall concept of flexible adaptation pathways, the inclusion of the full metropolitan region in the planning process, and the co-generation of climate-risk information by stakeholders and scientists.

  13. Pathways Intern Report

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huggett, Daniel James

    2017-01-01

    The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) provides a formal training program for prospective employees titled, Pathways Intern Employment. The Pathways program targets graduate and undergraduate students who strive to become an active contributor to NASA's goal of space exploration. The report herein provides an account of Daniel Huggett's Pathways experience for the Spring and Summer 2017 semesters.

  14. Reiterative Recombination for the in vivo assembly of libraries of multigene pathways.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wingler, Laura M; Cornish, Virginia W

    2011-09-13

    The increasing sophistication of synthetic biology is creating a demand for robust, broadly accessible methodology for constructing multigene pathways inside of the cell. Due to the difficulty of rationally designing pathways that function as desired in vivo, there is a further need to assemble libraries of pathways in parallel, in order to facilitate the combinatorial optimization of performance. While some in vitro DNA assembly methods can theoretically make libraries of pathways, these techniques are resource intensive and inherently require additional techniques to move the DNA back into cells. All previously reported in vivo assembly techniques have been low yielding, generating only tens to hundreds of constructs at a time. Here, we develop "Reiterative Recombination," a robust method for building multigene pathways directly in the yeast chromosome. Due to its use of endonuclease-induced homologous recombination in conjunction with recyclable markers, Reiterative Recombination provides a highly efficient, technically simple strategy for sequentially assembling an indefinite number of DNA constructs at a defined locus. In this work, we describe the design and construction of the first Reiterative Recombination system in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and we show that it can be used to assemble multigene constructs. We further demonstrate that Reiterative Recombination can construct large mock libraries of at least 10(4) biosynthetic pathways. We anticipate that our system's simplicity and high efficiency will make it a broadly accessible technology for pathway construction and render it a valuable tool for optimizing pathways in vivo.

  15. Stratification of clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) genomes by gene-directed copy number alteration (CNA) analysis.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thiesen, H-J; Steinbeck, F; Maruschke, M; Koczan, D; Ziems, B; Hakenberg, O W

    2017-01-01

    Tumorigenic processes are understood to be driven by epi-/genetic and genomic alterations from single point mutations to chromosomal alterations such as insertions and deletions of nucleotides up to gains and losses of large chromosomal fragments including products of chromosomal rearrangements e.g. fusion genes and proteins. Overall comparisons of copy number alterations (CNAs) presented in 48 clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC) genomes resulted in ratios of gene losses versus gene gains between 26 ccRCC Fuhrman malignancy grades G1 (ratio 1.25) and 20 G3 (ratio 0.58). Gene losses and gains of 15762 CNA genes were mapped to 795 chromosomal cytoband loci including 280 KEGG pathways. CNAs were classified according to their contribution to Fuhrman tumour gradings G1 and G3. Gene gains and losses turned out to be highly structured processes in ccRCC genomes enabling the subclassification and stratification of ccRCC tumours in a genome-wide manner. CNAs of ccRCC seem to start with common tumour related gene losses flanked by CNAs specifying Fuhrman grade G1 losses and CNA gains favouring grade G3 tumours. The appearance of recurrent CNA signatures implies the presence of causal mechanisms most likely implicated in the pathogenesis and disease-outcome of ccRCC tumours distinguishing lower from higher malignant tumours. The diagnostic quality of initial 201 genes (108 genes supporting G1 and 93 genes G3 phenotypes) has been successfully validated on published Swiss data (GSE19949) leading to a restricted CNA gene set of 171 CNA genes of which 85 genes favour Fuhrman grade G1 and 86 genes Fuhrman grade G3. Regarding these gene sets overall survival decreased with the number of G3 related gene losses plus G3 related gene gains. CNA gene sets presented define an entry to a gene-directed and pathway-related functional understanding of ongoing copy number alterations within and between individual ccRCC tumours leading to CNA genes of prognostic and predictive value.

  16. Fluocinolone acetonide partially restores the mineralization of LPS-stimulated dental pulp cells through inhibition of NF-κB pathway and activation of AP-1 pathway

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Zhongning; Jiang, Ting; Wang, Xinzhi; Wang, Yixiang

    2013-01-01

    BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE Fluocinolone acetonide (FA) is commonly used as a steroidal anti-inflammatory drug. We recently found that in dental pulp cells (DPCs) FA has osteo-/odonto-inductive as well as anti-inflammatory effects. However, the mechanism by which FA induces these effects in DPCs is poorly understood. EXPERIMENTAL APPROACH The effect of FA on the mineralization of DPCs during inflammatory conditions and the underlying mechanism were investigated by real-time PCR, Western blot, EMSA, histochemical staining, immunostaining and pathway blockade assays. KEY RESULTS FA significantly inhibited the inflammatory response in LPS-treated DPCs not only by down-regulating the expression of pro–inflammation-related genes, but also by up-regulating the expression of the anti-inflammatory gene PPAR-γ and mineralization-related genes. Moreover, histochemical staining and immunostaining showed that FA could partially restore the expressions of alkaline phosphatase, osteocalcin and dentin sialophosphoprotein (DSPP) and mineralization in LPS-stimulated DPCs. Real-time PCR and Western blot analysis revealed that FA up-regulated DSPP and runt-related transcription factor 2 expression by inhibiting the expression of phosphorylated-NF-κB P65 and activating activator protein-1 (AP-1) (p-c-Jun and Fra-1). These results were further confirmed through EMSA, by detection of NF-κB DNA-binding activity and pathway blockade assays using a NF-κB pathway inhibitor, AP-1 pathway inhibitor and glucocorticoid receptor antagonist. CONCLUSIONS AND IMPLICATIONS Inflammation induced by LPS suppresses the mineralization process in DPCs. FA partially restored this osteo-/odonto-genesis process in LPS-treated DPCs and had an anti-inflammatory effect through inhibition of the NF-κB pathway and activation of the AP-1 pathway. Hence, FA is a potential new treatment for inflammation-associated bone/teeth diseases. PMID:24024985

  17. Autoimmunity and autoinflammation: A systems view on signaling pathway dysregulation profiles.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Arsen Arakelyan

    Full Text Available Autoinflammatory and autoimmune disorders are characterized by aberrant changes in innate and adaptive immunity that may lead from an initial inflammatory state to an organ specific damage. These disorders possess heterogeneity in terms of affected organs and clinical phenotypes. However, despite the differences in etiology and phenotypic variations, they share genetic associations, treatment responses and clinical manifestations. The mechanisms involved in their initiation and development remain poorly understood, however the existence of some clear similarities between autoimmune and autoinflammatory disorders indicates variable degrees of interaction between immune-related mechanisms.Our study aims at contributing to a holistic, pathway-centered view on the inflammatory condition of autoimmune and autoinflammatory diseases. We have evaluated similarities and specificities of pathway activity changes in twelve autoimmune and autoinflammatory disorders by performing meta-analysis of publicly available gene expression datasets generated from peripheral blood mononuclear cells, using a bioinformatics pipeline that integrates Self Organizing Maps and Pathway Signal Flow algorithms along with KEGG pathway topologies.The results reveal that clinically divergent disease groups share common pathway perturbation profiles. We identified pathways, similarly perturbed in all the studied diseases, such as PI3K-Akt, Toll-like receptor, and NF-kappa B signaling, that serve as integrators of signals guiding immune cell polarization, migration, growth, survival and differentiation. Further, two clusters of diseases were identified based on specifically dysregulated pathways: one gathering mostly autoimmune and the other mainly autoinflammatory diseases. Cluster separation was driven not only by apparent involvement of pathways implicated in adaptive immunity in one case, and inflammation in the other, but also by processes not explicitly related to immune

  18. Optimizing a magnetic resonance care pathway: A strategy for radiography managers

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Castillo, J.; Caruana, C.J.; Morgan, P.S.; Westbrook, C.

    2015-01-01

    Purpose: This study reports the optimization of a local MR care pathway. A search of the literature did not result in any studies regarding the optimization of MRI care pathways through a formal research process. Discussions with international MR radiographers indicated that such development is often carried out using informal methods that are highly dependent on local conditions, that are rarely reported in the public domain and the validities of which are therefore not open to scrutiny; in addition, care pathways need to be specific to local healthcare needs and culture. In this study, the authors propose a formal documented methodology for developing a local MRI care pathway based on the well-established nominal group technique. Methods and materials: A nominal group technique was conducted amongst a multi-professional panel. Results: 14 participants accepted the invitation to participate: an executive from the principal public general hospital, a manager from the national Ministry for Health, a service development manager from the allied healthcare professional sector, 2 senior physiotherapists, 3 nursing officers, 3 MRI radiographers, 2 medical physicists, 1 radiologist. Ten optimization related issues were identified and ranked in order of decreasing importance. Highest ranking scores were assigned to patient safety, education of referrers and use of quality criteria. The NGT method also brought forward novel themes in particular the need for a radiographer's technical report and the need for referrers to indicate pain levels of patients. Conclusion: The design of an MR care pathway was successfully optimized using a collaborative multi-stakeholder approach. - Highlights: • We optimized an MRI clinical pathway using a nominal group technique. • The NGT brought forward novel themes such as the introduction of radiographer technical report. • The MRI clinical pathway will help management to establish knowledge, skills and competences.

  19. Biological Conversion of Sugars to Hydrocarbons Technology Pathway

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Davis, Ryan; Biddy, Mary J.; Tan, Eric; Tao, Ling; Jones, Susanne B.

    2013-03-31

    In support of the Bioenergy Technologies Office, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) are undertaking studies of biomass conversion technologies to identify barriers and target research toward reducing conversion costs. Process designs and preliminary economic estimates for each of these pathway cases were developed using rigorous modeling tools (Aspen Plus and Chemcad). These analyses incorporated the best information available at the time of development, including data from recent pilot and bench-scale demonstrations, collaborative industrial and academic partners, and published literature and patents. This technology pathway case investigates the biological conversion of biomass derived sugars to hydrocarbon biofuels, utilizing data from recent literature references and information consistent with recent pilot scale demonstrations at NREL. Technical barriers and key research needs have been identified that should be pursued for the pathway to become competitive with petroleum-derived gasoline, diesel and jet range hydrocarbon blendstocks.

  20. A geographically-diverse collection of 418 human gut microbiome pathway genome databases

    KAUST Repository

    Hahn, Aria S.

    2017-04-11

    Advances in high-throughput sequencing are reshaping how we perceive microbial communities inhabiting the human body, with implications for therapeutic interventions. Several large-scale datasets derived from hundreds of human microbiome samples sourced from multiple studies are now publicly available. However, idiosyncratic data processing methods between studies introduce systematic differences that confound comparative analyses. To overcome these challenges, we developed GutCyc, a compendium of environmental pathway genome databases (ePGDBs) constructed from 418 assembled human microbiome datasets using MetaPathways, enabling reproducible functional metagenomic annotation. We also generated metabolic network reconstructions for each metagenome using the Pathway Tools software, empowering researchers and clinicians interested in visualizing and interpreting metabolic pathways encoded by the human gut microbiome. For the first time, GutCyc provides consistent annotations and metabolic pathway predictions, making possible comparative community analyses between health and disease states in inflammatory bowel disease, Crohn’s disease, and type 2 diabetes. GutCyc data products are searchable online, or may be downloaded and explored locally using MetaPathways and Pathway Tools.

  1. Pathways to designing and running an operational flood forecasting system: an adventure game!

    Science.gov (United States)

    Arnal, Louise; Pappenberger, Florian; Ramos, Maria-Helena; Cloke, Hannah; Crochemore, Louise; Giuliani, Matteo; Aalbers, Emma

    2017-04-01

    In the design and building of an operational flood forecasting system, a large number of decisions have to be taken. These include technical decisions related to the choice of the meteorological forecasts to be used as input to the hydrological model, the choice of the hydrological model itself (its structure and parameters), the selection of a data assimilation procedure to run in real-time, the use (or not) of a post-processor, and the computing environment to run the models and display the outputs. Additionally, a number of trans-disciplinary decisions are also involved in the process, such as the way the needs of the users will be considered in the modelling setup and how the forecasts (and their quality) will be efficiently communicated to ensure usefulness and build confidence in the forecasting system. We propose to reflect on the numerous, alternative pathways to designing and running an operational flood forecasting system through an adventure game. In this game, the player is the protagonist of an interactive story driven by challenges, exploration and problem-solving. For this presentation, you will have a chance to play this game, acting as the leader of a forecasting team at an operational centre. Your role is to manage the actions of your team and make sequential decisions that impact the design and running of the system in preparation to and during a flood event, and that deal with the consequences of the forecasts issued. Your actions are evaluated by how much they cost you in time, money and credibility. Your aim is to take decisions that will ultimately lead to a good balance between time and money spent, while keeping your credibility high over the whole process. This game was designed to highlight the complexities behind decision-making in an operational forecasting and emergency response context, in terms of the variety of pathways that can be selected as well as the timescale, cost and timing of effective actions.

  2. Inhibition of the adrenomedullin/nitric oxide signaling pathway in early diabetic retinopathy.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Blom, Jan J; Giove, Thomas J; Favazza, Tara L; Akula, James D; Eldred, William D

    2011-06-01

    The nitric oxide (NO) signaling pathway is integrally involved in visual processing and changes in the NO pathway are measurable in eyes of diabetic patients. The small peptide adrenomedullin (ADM) can activate a signaling pathway to increase the enzyme activity of neuronal nitric oxide synthase (nNOS). ADM levels are elevated in eyes of diabetic patients and therefore, ADM may play a role in the pathology of diabetic retinopathy. The goal of this research was to test the effects of inhibiting the ADM/NO signaling pathway in early diabetic retinopathy. Inhibition of this pathway decreased NO production in high-glucose retinal cultures. Treating diabetic mice with the PKC β inhibitor ruboxistaurin for 5 weeks lowered ADM mRNA levels and ADM-like immunoreactivity and preserved retinal function as assessed by electroretinography. The results of this study indicate that inhibiting the ADM/NO signaling pathway prevents neuronal pathology and functional losses in early diabetic retinopathy.

  3. Logical knowledge representation of regulatory relations in biomedical pathways

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Zambach, Sine; Hansen, Jens Ulrik

    2010-01-01

    Knowledge on regulatory relations, in for example regulatory pathways in biology, is used widely in experiment design by biomedical researchers and in systems biology. The knowledge has typically either been represented through simple graphs or through very expressive differential equation...... simulations of smaller parts of a pathway. In this work we suggest a knowledge representation of the most basic relations in regulatory processes regulates, positively regulates and negatively regulates in logics based on a semantic analysis. We discuss the usage of these relations in biology and in articial...... intelligence for hypothesis development in drug discovery....

  4. Modular and Stochastic Approaches to Molecular Pathway Models of ATM, TGF beta, and WNT Signaling

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cucinotta, Francis A.; O'Neill, Peter; Ponomarev, Artem; Carra, Claudio; Whalen, Mary; Pluth, Janice M.

    2009-01-01

    Deterministic pathway models that describe the biochemical interactions of a group of related proteins, their complexes, activation through kinase, etc. are often the basis for many systems biology models. Low dose radiation effects present a unique set of challenges to these models including the importance of stochastic effects due to the nature of radiation tracks and small number of molecules activated, and the search for infrequent events that contribute to cancer risks. We have been studying models of the ATM, TGF -Smad and WNT signaling pathways with the goal of applying pathway models to the investigation of low dose radiation cancer risks. Modeling challenges include introduction of stochastic models of radiation tracks, their relationships to more than one substrate species that perturb pathways, and the identification of a representative set of enzymes that act on the dominant substrates. Because several pathways are activated concurrently by radiation the development of modular pathway approach is of interest.

  5. The addition of sugar beet to ethanol pathway in GHGenius

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    2007-01-01

    Developed by Natural Resources Canada, the GHGenius model is used to estimate the life cycle emissions of primary greenhouse gases (GHGs) as well as the criteria pollutants from combustion sources. The model can be used to analyze the emissions from conventional and alternatively fuelled combustion engines and fuel cell powered trucks and vehicles, as well as light duty powered electric vehicles. Over 140 vehicle and fuel combinations can be used. This paper examined the effects of adding energy used to produce materials consumed in the production of alternative fuels in GHGenius energy balance calculations, as well as vehicle emission calculations on a carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) eq/GJ of fuel consumed basis. This paper also examined the addition of sugar beet ethanol pathways to GHGenius. Energy balances were obtained and a number of process improvements to sugar beet ethanol processing were examined as sensitivity cases. GHGenius was used to calculate the energy consumption of each stage in the production cycle. Estimates included the energy required to produce the chemicals used in the ethanol processing procedure. Results were then compared with results obtained from gasoline, corn and wheat ethanols. Results of the study showed that energy balances were lower than corn or wheat ethanol. Feedstock transmission and processing requirements were also higher due to the higher moisture content of the feedstock. The results of several European studies considering the use of sugar beet ethanol were also included. 17 tabs., 9 figs

  6. Formation of longitudinal axon pathways in Caenorhabditis elegans.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hutter, Harald

    2017-11-18

    The small number of neurons and the simple architecture of the Caenorhabditis elegans (C. elegans) nervous system enables researchers to study axonal pathfinding at the level of individually identified axons. Axons in C. elegans extend predominantly along one of the two major body axes, the anterior-posterior axis and the dorso-ventral axis. This review will focus on axon navigation along the anterior-posterior axis, leading to the establishment of the longitudinal axon tracts, with a focus on the largest longitudinal axon tract, the ventral nerve cord (VNC). In the VNC, axons grow out in a stereotypic order, with early outgrowing axons (pioneers) playing an important role in guiding later outgrowing (follower) axons. Genetic screens have identified a number of genes specifically affecting the formation of longitudinal axon tracts. These genes include secreted proteins, putative receptors and adhesion molecules, as well as intracellular proteins regulating the cell's response to guidance cues. In contrast to dorso-ventral navigation, no major general guidance cues required for the establishment of longitudinal pathways have been identified so far. The limited penetrance of defects found in many mutants affecting longitudinal navigation suggests that guidance cues act redundantly in this process. The majority of the axon guidance genes identified in C. elegans are evolutionary conserved, i.e. have homologs in other animals, including vertebrates. For a number of these genes, a role in axon guidance has not been described outside C. elegans. Taken together, studies in C. elegans contribute to a fundamental understanding of the molecular basis of axonal navigation that can be extended to other animals, including vertebrates and probably humans as well. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

  7. Enzyme sequence similarity improves the reaction alignment method for cross-species pathway comparison

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Ovacik, Meric A. [Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Department, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854 (United States); Androulakis, Ioannis P., E-mail: yannis@rci.rutgers.edu [Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Department, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854 (United States); Biomedical Engineering Department, Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854 (United States)

    2013-09-15

    Pathway-based information has become an important source of information for both establishing evolutionary relationships and understanding the mode of action of a chemical or pharmaceutical among species. Cross-species comparison of pathways can address two broad questions: comparison in order to inform evolutionary relationships and to extrapolate species differences used in a number of different applications including drug and toxicity testing. Cross-species comparison of metabolic pathways is complex as there are multiple features of a pathway that can be modeled and compared. Among the various methods that have been proposed, reaction alignment has emerged as the most successful at predicting phylogenetic relationships based on NCBI taxonomy. We propose an improvement of the reaction alignment method by accounting for sequence similarity in addition to reaction alignment method. Using nine species, including human and some model organisms and test species, we evaluate the standard and improved comparison methods by analyzing glycolysis and citrate cycle pathways conservation. In addition, we demonstrate how organism comparison can be conducted by accounting for the cumulative information retrieved from nine pathways in central metabolism as well as a more complete study involving 36 pathways common in all nine species. Our results indicate that reaction alignment with enzyme sequence similarity results in a more accurate representation of pathway specific cross-species similarities and differences based on NCBI taxonomy.

  8. Enzyme sequence similarity improves the reaction alignment method for cross-species pathway comparison

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Ovacik, Meric A.; Androulakis, Ioannis P.

    2013-01-01

    Pathway-based information has become an important source of information for both establishing evolutionary relationships and understanding the mode of action of a chemical or pharmaceutical among species. Cross-species comparison of pathways can address two broad questions: comparison in order to inform evolutionary relationships and to extrapolate species differences used in a number of different applications including drug and toxicity testing. Cross-species comparison of metabolic pathways is complex as there are multiple features of a pathway that can be modeled and compared. Among the various methods that have been proposed, reaction alignment has emerged as the most successful at predicting phylogenetic relationships based on NCBI taxonomy. We propose an improvement of the reaction alignment method by accounting for sequence similarity in addition to reaction alignment method. Using nine species, including human and some model organisms and test species, we evaluate the standard and improved comparison methods by analyzing glycolysis and citrate cycle pathways conservation. In addition, we demonstrate how organism comparison can be conducted by accounting for the cumulative information retrieved from nine pathways in central metabolism as well as a more complete study involving 36 pathways common in all nine species. Our results indicate that reaction alignment with enzyme sequence similarity results in a more accurate representation of pathway specific cross-species similarities and differences based on NCBI taxonomy

  9. A simple biosynthetic pathway for large product generation from small substrate amounts

    Science.gov (United States)

    Djordjevic, Marko; Djordjevic, Magdalena

    2012-10-01

    A recently emerging discipline of synthetic biology has the aim of constructing new biosynthetic pathways with useful biological functions. A major application of these pathways is generating a large amount of the desired product. However, toxicity due to the possible presence of toxic precursors is one of the main problems for such production. We consider here the problem of generating a large amount of product from a potentially toxic substrate. To address this, we propose a simple biosynthetic pathway, which can be induced in order to produce a large number of the product molecules, by keeping the substrate amount at low levels. Surprisingly, we show that the large product generation crucially depends on fast non-specific degradation of the substrate molecules. We derive an optimal induction strategy, which allows as much as three orders of magnitude increase in the product amount through biologically realistic parameter values. We point to a recently discovered bacterial immune system (CRISPR/Cas in E. coli) as a putative example of the pathway analysed here. We also argue that the scheme proposed here can be used not only as a stand-alone pathway, but also as a strategy to produce a large amount of the desired molecules with small perturbations of endogenous biosynthetic pathways.

  10. A simple biosynthetic pathway for large product generation from small substrate amounts

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Djordjevic, Marko [Institute of Physiology and Biochemistry, Faculty of Biology, University of Belgrade (Serbia); Djordjevic, Magdalena [Institute of Physics Belgrade, University of Belgrade (Serbia)

    2012-10-01

    A recently emerging discipline of synthetic biology has the aim of constructing new biosynthetic pathways with useful biological functions. A major application of these pathways is generating a large amount of the desired product. However, toxicity due to the possible presence of toxic precursors is one of the main problems for such production. We consider here the problem of generating a large amount of product from a potentially toxic substrate. To address this, we propose a simple biosynthetic pathway, which can be induced in order to produce a large number of the product molecules, by keeping the substrate amount at low levels. Surprisingly, we show that the large product generation crucially depends on fast non-specific degradation of the substrate molecules. We derive an optimal induction strategy, which allows as much as three orders of magnitude increase in the product amount through biologically realistic parameter values. We point to a recently discovered bacterial immune system (CRISPR/Cas in E. coli) as a putative example of the pathway analysed here. We also argue that the scheme proposed here can be used not only as a stand-alone pathway, but also as a strategy to produce a large amount of the desired molecules with small perturbations of endogenous biosynthetic pathways. (paper)

  11. A simple biosynthetic pathway for large product generation from small substrate amounts

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Djordjevic, Marko; Djordjevic, Magdalena

    2012-01-01

    A recently emerging discipline of synthetic biology has the aim of constructing new biosynthetic pathways with useful biological functions. A major application of these pathways is generating a large amount of the desired product. However, toxicity due to the possible presence of toxic precursors is one of the main problems for such production. We consider here the problem of generating a large amount of product from a potentially toxic substrate. To address this, we propose a simple biosynthetic pathway, which can be induced in order to produce a large number of the product molecules, by keeping the substrate amount at low levels. Surprisingly, we show that the large product generation crucially depends on fast non-specific degradation of the substrate molecules. We derive an optimal induction strategy, which allows as much as three orders of magnitude increase in the product amount through biologically realistic parameter values. We point to a recently discovered bacterial immune system (CRISPR/Cas in E. coli) as a putative example of the pathway analysed here. We also argue that the scheme proposed here can be used not only as a stand-alone pathway, but also as a strategy to produce a large amount of the desired molecules with small perturbations of endogenous biosynthetic pathways. (paper)

  12. Signal Transduction Pathways that Regulate CAB Gene Expression

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Chory, Joanne

    2004-12-31

    The process of chloroplast differentiation, involves the coordinate regulation of many nuclear and chloroplast genes. The cues for the initiation of this developmental program are both extrinsic (e.g., light) and intrinsic (cell-type and plastid signals). During this project period, we utilized a molecular genetic approach to select for Arabidopsis mutants that did not respond properly to environmental light conditions, as well as mutants that were unable to perceive plastid damage. These latter mutants, called gun mutants, define two retrograde signaling pathways that regulate nuclear gene expression in response to chloroplasts. A major finding was to identify a signal from chloroplasts that regulates nuclear gene transcription. This signal is the build-up of Mg-Protoporphyrin IX, a key intermediate of the chlorophyll biosynthetic pathway. The signaling pathways downstream of this signal are currently being studied. Completion of this project has provided an increased understanding of the input signals and retrograde signaling pathways that control nuclear gene expression in response to the functional state of chloroplasts. These studies should ultimately influence our abilities to manipulate plant growth and development, and will aid in the understanding of the developmental control of photosynthesis.

  13. Signal Transduction Pathways that Regulate CAB Gene Expression

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Chory, Joanne

    2006-01-16

    The process of chloroplast differentiation, involves the coordinate regulation of many nuclear and chloroplast genes. The cues for the initiation of this developmental program are both extrinsic (e.g., light) and intrinsic (cell-type and plastid signals). During this project period, we utilized a molecular genetic approach to select for Arabidopsis mutants that did not respond properly to environmental light conditions, as well as mutants that were unable to perceive plastid damage. These latter mutants, called gun mutants, define two retrograde signaling pathways that regulate nuclear gene expression in response to chloroplasts. A major finding was to identify a signal from chloroplasts that regulates nuclear gene transcription. This signal is the build-up of Mg-Protoporphyrin IX, a key intermediate of the chlorophyll biosynthetic pathway. The signaling pathways downstream of this signal are currently being studied. Completion of this project has provided an increased understanding of the input signals and retrograde signaling pathways that control nuclear gene expression in response to the functional state of chloroplasts. These studies should ultimately influence our abilities to manipulate plant growth and development, and will aid in the understanding of the developmental control of photosynthesis.

  14. Gene expression meta-analysis identifies metastatic pathways and transcription factors in breast cancer

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Thomassen, Mads; Tan, Qihua; Kruse, Torben A

    2008-01-01

    Metastasis is believed to progress in several steps including different pathways but the determination and understanding of these mechanisms is still fragmentary. Microarray analysis of gene expression patterns in breast tumors has been used to predict outcome in recent studies. Besides classification of outcome, these global expression patterns may reflect biological mechanisms involved in metastasis of breast cancer. Our purpose has been to investigate pathways and transcription factors involved in metastasis by use of gene expression data sets. We have analyzed 8 publicly available gene expression data sets. A global approach, 'gene set enrichment analysis' as well as an approach focusing on a subset of significantly differently regulated genes, GenMAPP, has been applied to rank pathway gene sets according to differential regulation in metastasizing tumors compared to non-metastasizing tumors. Meta-analysis has been used to determine overrepresentation of pathways and transcription factors targets, concordant deregulated in metastasizing breast tumors, in several data sets. The major findings are up-regulation of cell cycle pathways and a metabolic shift towards glucose metabolism reflected in several pathways in metastasizing tumors. Growth factor pathways seem to play dual roles; EGF and PDGF pathways are decreased, while VEGF and sex-hormone pathways are increased in tumors that metastasize. Furthermore, migration, proteasome, immune system, angiogenesis, DNA repair and several signal transduction pathways are associated to metastasis. Finally several transcription factors e.g. E2F, NFY, and YY1 are identified as being involved in metastasis. By pathway meta-analysis many biological mechanisms beyond major characteristics such as proliferation are identified. Transcription factor analysis identifies a number of key factors that support central pathways. Several previously proposed treatment targets are identified and several new pathways that may

  15. MAP kinase pathways in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gustin, M. C.; Albertyn, J.; Alexander, M.; Davenport, K.; McIntire, L. V. (Principal Investigator)

    1998-01-01

    A cascade of three protein kinases known as a mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade is commonly found as part of the signaling pathways in eukaryotic cells. Almost two decades of genetic and biochemical experimentation plus the recently completed DNA sequence of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae genome have revealed just five functionally distinct MAPK cascades in this yeast. Sexual conjugation, cell growth, and adaptation to stress, for example, all require MAPK-mediated cellular responses. A primary function of these cascades appears to be the regulation of gene expression in response to extracellular signals or as part of specific developmental processes. In addition, the MAPK cascades often appear to regulate the cell cycle and vice versa. Despite the success of the gene hunter era in revealing these pathways, there are still many significant gaps in our knowledge of the molecular mechanisms for activation of these cascades and how the cascades regulate cell function. For example, comparison of different yeast signaling pathways reveals a surprising variety of different types of upstream signaling proteins that function to activate a MAPK cascade, yet how the upstream proteins actually activate the cascade remains unclear. We also know that the yeast MAPK pathways regulate each other and interact with other signaling pathways to produce a coordinated pattern of gene expression, but the molecular mechanisms of this cross talk are poorly understood. This review is therefore an attempt to present the current knowledge of MAPK pathways in yeast and some directions for future research in this area.

  16. Diverse exocytic pathways for mast cell mediators.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Xu, Hao; Bin, Na-Ryum; Sugita, Shuzo

    2018-04-17

    Mast cells play pivotal roles in innate and adaptive immunities but are also culprits in allergy, autoimmunity, and cardiovascular diseases. Mast cells respond to environmental changes by initiating regulated exocytosis/secretion of various biologically active compounds called mediators (e.g. proteases, amines, and cytokines). Many of these mediators are stored in granules/lysosomes and rely on intricate degranulation processes for release. Mast cell stabilizers (e.g. sodium cromoglicate), which prevent such degranulation processes, have therefore been clinically employed to treat asthma and allergic rhinitis. However, it has become increasingly clear that different mast cell diseases often involve multiple mediators that rely on overlapping but distinct mechanisms for release. This review illustrates existing evidence that highlights the diverse exocytic pathways in mast cells. We also discuss strategies to delineate these pathways so as to identify unique molecular components which could serve as new drug targets for more effective and specific treatments against mast cell-related diseases. © 2018 The Author(s). Published by Portland Press Limited on behalf of the Biochemical Society.

  17. Decoding Signal Processing at the Single-Cell Level

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Wiley, H. Steven

    2017-12-01

    The ability of cells to detect and decode information about their extracellular environment is critical to generating an appropriate response. In multicellular organisms, cells must decode dozens of signals from their neighbors and extracellular matrix to maintain tissue homeostasis while still responding to environmental stressors. How cells detect and process information from their surroundings through a surprisingly limited number of signal transduction pathways is one of the most important question in biology. Despite many decades of research, many of the fundamental principles that underlie cell signal processing remain obscure. However, in this issue of Cell Systems, Gillies et al present compelling evidence that the early response gene circuit can act as a linear signal integrator, thus providing significant insight into how cells handle fluctuating signals and noise in their environment.

  18. cPath: open source software for collecting, storing, and querying biological pathways

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Gross Benjamin E

    2006-11-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background Biological pathways, including metabolic pathways, protein interaction networks, signal transduction pathways, and gene regulatory networks, are currently represented in over 220 diverse databases. These data are crucial for the study of specific biological processes, including human diseases. Standard exchange formats for pathway information, such as BioPAX, CellML, SBML and PSI-MI, enable convenient collection of this data for biological research, but mechanisms for common storage and communication are required. Results We have developed cPath, an open source database and web application for collecting, storing, and querying biological pathway data. cPath makes it easy to aggregate custom pathway data sets available in standard exchange formats from multiple databases, present pathway data to biologists via a customizable web interface, and export pathway data via a web service to third-party software, such as Cytoscape, for visualization and analysis. cPath is software only, and does not include new pathway information. Key features include: a built-in identifier mapping service for linking identical interactors and linking to external resources; built-in support for PSI-MI and BioPAX standard pathway exchange formats; a web service interface for searching and retrieving pathway data sets; and thorough documentation. The cPath software is freely available under the LGPL open source license for academic and commercial use. Conclusion cPath is a robust, scalable, modular, professional-grade software platform for collecting, storing, and querying biological pathways. It can serve as the core data handling component in information systems for pathway visualization, analysis and modeling.

  19. Midwifery 2030: a woman's pathway to health. What does this mean?

    Science.gov (United States)

    ten Hoope-Bender, Petra; Lopes, Sofia Tavares Castro; Nove, Andrea; Michel-Schuldt, Michaela; Moyo, Nester T; Bokosi, Martha; Codjia, Laurence; Sharma, Sheetal; Homer, Caroline

    2016-01-01

    The 2014 State of the World's Midwifery report included a new framework for the provision of woman-centred sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn and adolescent health care, known as the Midwifery2030 Pathway. The Pathway was designed to apply in all settings (high-, middle- and low-income countries, and in any type of health system). In this paper, we describe the process of developing the Midwifery2030 Pathway and explain the meaning of its different components, with a view to assisting countries with its implementation. The Pathway was developed by a process of consultation with an international group of midwifery experts. It considers four stages of a woman's reproductive life: (1) pre-pregnancy, (2) pregnancy, (3) labour and birth, and (4) postnatal, and describes the care that women and adolescents need at each stage. Underpinning these four stages are ten foundations, which describe the systems, services, workforce and information that need to be in place in order to turn the Pathway from a vision into a reality. These foundations include: the policy and working environment in which the midwifery workforce operates, the effective coverage of sexual, reproductive, maternal, newborn and adolescent services (i.e. going beyond availability and ensuring accessibility, acceptability and high quality), financing mechanisms, collaboration between different sectors and different levels of the health system, a focus on primary care nested within a functional referral system when needed, pre- and in-service education for the workforce, effective regulation of midwifery and strengthened leadership from professional associations. Strengthening of all of these foundations will enable countries to turn the Pathway from a vision into reality. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

  20. In Silico Analysis of Putrefaction Pathways in Bacteria and Its Implication in Colorectal Cancer

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Harrisham Kaur

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available Fermentation of undigested proteins in human gastrointestinal tract (gut by the resident microbiota, a process called bacterial putrefaction, can sometimes disrupt the gut homeostasis. In this process, essential amino acids (e.g., histidine, tryptophan, etc. that are required by the host may be utilized by the gut microbes. In addition, some of the products of putrefaction, like ammonia, putrescine, cresol, indole, phenol, etc., have been implicated in the disease pathogenesis of colorectal cancer (CRC. We have investigated bacterial putrefaction pathways that are known to be associated with such metabolites. Results of the comprehensive in silico analysis of the selected putrefaction pathways across bacterial genomes revealed presence of these pathways in limited bacterial groups. Majority of these bacteria are commonly found in human gut. These include Bacillus, Clostridium, Enterobacter, Escherichia, Fusobacterium, Salmonella, etc. Interestingly, while pathogens utilize almost all the analyzed pathways, commensals prefer putrescine and H2S production pathways for metabolizing the undigested proteins. Further, comparison of the putrefaction pathways in the gut microbiomes of healthy, carcinoma and adenoma datasets indicate higher abundances of putrefying bacteria in the carcinoma stage of CRC. The insights obtained from the present study indicate utilization of possible microbiome-based therapies to minimize the adverse effects of gut microbiome in enteric diseases.