The Quarterly Review of Biology, Volume 85, Issue 3, Page 344-345, September 2010. (Source: QRB Latest Issue)

The Quarterly Review of Biology, Volume 85, Issue 3, Page 345, September 2010. (Source: QRB Latest Issue)

The Quarterly Review of Biology, Volume 85, Issue 3, Page 319-340, September 2010.

ABSTRACT Assessing the biodiversity of macroinvertebrate fauna in freshwater ecosystems is an essential component of both basic ecological inquiry and applied ecological assessments. Aspects of taxonomic diversity and composition in freshwater communities are widely used to quantify water quality and measure the efficacy of remediation and restoration efforts. The accuracy and precision of biodiversity assessments based on standard morphological identifications are often limited by taxonomic resolution and sample size. Morphologically based identifications are laborious and costly, significantly constraining the sample sizes that can be processed. We suggest that the development of an assay platform ba…

Studies have demonstrated that angiotensin II (Ang II) can regulate intestinal fluid and electrolyte transport and control intestinal wall muscular activity. Ang II is also a proinflammatory mediator that participates in inflammatory responses such as apoptosis, angiogenesis, and vascular remodeling; accumulating evidence suggests that this hormone may be involved in gastrointestinal (GI) inflammation and carcinogenesis. Ang II binds to two distinct G protein-coupled receptor subtypes, the AT1R and AT2R, which are widely expressed in the GI system. Together these studies suggest that Ang II-AT1R/-AT2R actions may play an important role in GI tract physiology and pathophysiology. Currently it is not known whether miRNAs can regulate the expression of the human AT1R (hAT1R) in the GI system….

Identifying significant differentially expressed genes of a disease can help understand the disease at the genomic level. A hierarchical statistical model named multi-class kernel-imbedded Gaussian process (mKIGP) is developed under a Bayesian framework for a multi-class classification problem using microarray gene expression data. Specifically, based on a multinomial probit regression setting, an empirically adaptive algorithm with a cascading structure is designed to find appropriate featuring kernels, to discover potentially significant genes, and to make optimal tumor/cancer class predictions. A Gibbs sampler is adopted as the core of the algorithm to perform Bayesian inferences. A prescreening procedure is implemented to alleviate the computational complexity. The simulated examples s…

Conclusions  Polypropylene mesh was superior to cadaveric fascia lata using objective anatomic outcomes. Success rates of mesh and fascia
were comparable using a clinical definition that combined symptoms with anatomic measures.

Content Type Journal ArticleDOI 10.1007/s00192-010-1249-3Authors
Susan B. Tate, Division of Urogynecology and Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, & Women’s Health, University of Louisville School of Medicine, Louisville, KY USALinda Blackwell, Division of Urogynecology and Reconstructive Pelvic Surgery, Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology, & Women’s Health, University of Louisville School of Medicine, Louisville, KY USADouglas J. Lorenz, Department of Bioinformatics and Biostatistics, University of Louisvi…

Conclusions:
The CMASA is an accurate algorithm for detecting local protein structural similarity, and it holds several advantages in predicting enzyme active sites. The CMASA can be used in large-scale enzyme active site annotation. The CMASA can be available by the mail-based server (http://159.226.149.45/other1/CMASA/CMASA.htm). (Source: BioMed Central)

Conclusions
We demonstrate how combining different ‘-omics’ datasets aids in the identification of key biological pathways: chronic hypoxia resulted in a pronounced adaptive response at the transcript and the protein level to keep metabolite levels steady. This preservation of metabolic homoeostasis is likely to contribute to the long-term survival of the hibernating myocardium. (Source: Heart)

In this study we used computer molecular modelling and bioinformatics to investigate the potential effect of C242T polymorphism on the 3-D protein structure of the p22phox. Based on the published sequence data of p22phox and the principle of regulated prediction algorithms, we found that p22phox consists of two domains: an N-terminal transmembrane domain (124 a.a.) and a C-terminal cytoplasmic domain (71 a.a.). In its most stable form, it has three transmembrane helices leading to an extracellular N-terminus and an extracellular loop between helices two and three. The C242T polymorphism causes a change of His72 to Tyr72. This change results in significant morphological changes of the extracellular loop of the p22phox, which is in the putative interactive region of the p22phox with the cata…

In recent years, Boolean-network-model-based approaches to dynamical analysis of complex biological networks such as gene regulatory networks have been extensively studied. One of the fundamental problems in control theory of such networks is the problem of determining whether a given substance quantity can be arbitrarily controlled by operating the other substance quantities, which we call the controllability problem. This paper proposes a polynomial-time algorithm for solving this problem. Although the algorithm is based on a sufficient condition for controllability, it is easily computable for a wider class of large-scale biological networks compared with the existing approaches. A key to this success in our approach is to give up computing Boolean operations in a rigorous way and to ex…