Exosomes in ascites from patients with human pancreatic cancer enhance remote metastasis partially through endothelial-mesenchymal transition.

Background: Despite advances in multidisciplinary treatment, the prognosis of pancreatic cancer remains poor. Since distant metastasis defines prognosis, elucidation of the mechanism of metastasis is important for improving survival. Exosomes are extracellular secretory vesicles and are responsible for intercellular communication.

Pancreatic cancer cell-derived exosomes induce epithelial-mesenchymal transition in human pancreatic cancer cells themselves partially via transforming growth factor β1.

Distant metastasis is a dismal prognostic factor of pancreatic cancer. Metastasis is established in several steps, but the mechanism underlying the very early stages remains unclear. Epithelial-mesenchymal transition (EMT) is involved in these stages.

Spatial dynamics and mixing of bluefin tuna in the Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea revealed using next-generation sequencing.

The Atlantic bluefin tuna is a highly migratory species emblematic of the challenges associated with shared fisheries management. In an effort to resolve the species' stock dynamics, a genomewide search for spatially informative single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) was undertaken, by way of sequencing reduced representation libraries. An allele frequency approach to SNP discovery was used, combining the data of 555 larvae and young-of-the-year (LYOY) into pools representing major geographical areas and mapping against a newly assembled genomic reference.

Correction: Atlantic Bluefin Tuna (Thunnus thynnus) Biometrics and Condition.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.

Atlantic Bluefin Tuna (Thunnus thynnus) Biometrics and Condition.

The compiled data for this study represents the first Atlantic and Mediterranean-wide effort to pool all available biometric data for Atlantic bluefin tuna (Thunnus thynnus) with the collaboration of many countries and scientific groups. Biometric relationships were based on an extensive sampling (over 140,000 fish sampled), covering most of the fishing areas for this species in the North Atlantic Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. Sensitivity analyses were carried out to evaluate the representativeness of sampling and explore the most adequate procedure to fit the weight-length relationship (WLR).

Sequence analysis of East Asian cagA of Helicobacter pylori isolated from asymptomatic healthy Japanese and Thai individuals.

CagA, especially East Asian type, is one of the most important virulence factors of Helicobacter pylori, which is believed to contribute to the gastric cancer development. There is extreme sequence heterogeneity on 3' region of cagA gene, demonstrated by the sequence analysis of cagA of H. pylori strains isolated from gastric disease patients.

Infection of less virulent Helicobacter pylori strains in asymptomatic healthy individuals in Thailand as a potential contributing factor to the Asian enigma.

In Thailand, gastric cancer incidence is considerably low despite the high prevalence of Helicobacter pylori infection. We investigated the prevalence of H. pylori infection and the genotypes of cagA by using 179 stool specimens obtained from asymptomatic Thai individuals.

Assessment of East Asian-type cagA-positive Helicobacter pylori using stool specimens from asymptomatic healthy Japanese individuals.

Recent investigations have suggested that CagA, a virulence factor of Helicobacter pylori and known to have multiple genotypes, plays a critical role in the development of stomach cancer. However, the prevalence of cagA-positive H. pylori strains and the cagA genotypes have not been well studied in healthy individuals because of the difficulty in collecting gastric specimens.