Hypertrophic cardiomyopathy (HCM) remains the leading cause of sudden cardiac death in the young. Early markers for HCM are important to identify individuals at risk. The aim of this study was to investigate novel serum biomarkers reflecting myocardial remodeling, microfibrosis, and vascular endotheliopathy in the early stages of familial HCM in young patients. Twenty-three HCM patients, 16 HCM-ri

The maternal temperature is normally increasing during delivery. Maternal fever in labor is a common problem.Such fever could represent a chorioamnionitis (CAM), leading to an increased risk of neonatal encephalopathy andsubsequent cerebral palsy, as well as other complications. There are also noninfectious reasons for elevatedtemperature during delivery. There is no fetal heart rate that is speci

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an opportunistic bacterium that causes debilitating infections when the immune defence is compromised. It possesses an arsenal of virulence traits to colonize most compartments of the body and is often highly resistant against commonly used antimicrobial drugs.Outer membrane vesicles (OMV) are spheres released from Gram-negative bacteria. They are packed with proteins, in

Following a macroeconomic stabilization and consistent economicgrowth during the 2000s, Brazil experienced a continuous decrease on povertyincidence for the first time in its contemporary history. While the literatureemphasizes the importance of economic growth alongside social developmentto fight poverty, the Brazilian experience also displays strong governmentaction through expanding social cove

As an oral bacterial pathogen, Streptococcus mutans has been known as the aetiologic agent of human dental caries. Among a total of 1960 identified proteins within the genome of this organism, there are about 500 without any known functions. One of these proteins, SMU.440, has very few homologs in the current protein databases and it does not fall into any protein functional families. Phylogenetic

As a substrate of extracellular signal-related kinase (ERK), the p90 ribosome S6 kinase 1 (RSK1) is at the terminus of the Ras/ERK pathway. Residues 411-735 of human RSK1, covering the C-terminal serine/threonine kinase catalytic domain and the functionally important tail, were cloned into an Escherichia coli expression vector. The protein was expressed, purified and crystallized. The crystals dif

A large-scale, high-efficiency and low-cost platform based on a Beckman Coulter Biomek FX and custom-made automation systems for structural genomics has been set up at Peking University, Beijing, People's Republic of China. This platform has the capacity to process up to 2000 genes per year for structural and functional analyses. Bacillus subtilis, a model organism for Gram-positive bacteria, and

We report primer pairs for 30 new gene regions in the nuclear genomes of Lepidoptera that can be amplified using a standard PCR protocol. The new primers were tested across diverse Lepidoptera, including nonditrysians and a wide selection of ditrysians. These new gene regions give a total of 11,043 bp of DNA sequence data and they show similar variability to traditionally used nuclear gene regions

The aim of this study was to provide in vivo experimental evidence for the proposed biological significance of the creatine kinase (CK)/phosphocreatine (PCr) system in the energy metabolism of skeletal muscle. As a test system we compared hindlimb muscle of knockout mice lacking the cytosolic M-type (M-CK(-)/(-)), the mitochondrial ScMit-type (ScCKmit(-)/(-)), or both creatine kinase isoenzymes (C

The double sign anomaly in hydrogenated amorphous silicon, observed by LeComber et.al. [1] in 1977, has remained puzzling ever since. Recently we attacked this problem from two different directions using the equation-of-motion method. Calculations reproduce the double sign anomaly and were rationalised in terms of the behaviour of the spectral function. In a new type of calculation the motion of a