Multimodal cues displayed by submissive rats promote prosocial choices by dominants.

Animals often display prosocial behaviors, performing actions that benefit others. Although prosociality is essential for social bonding and cooperation, we still know little about how animals integrate behavioral cues from those in need to make decisions that increase their well-being. To address this question, we used a two-choice task where rats can provide rewards to a conspecific in the absence of self-benefit and investigated which conditions promote prosociality by manipulating the social context of the interacting animals.

A comprehensive study of calcific aortic stenosis: from rabbit to human samples.

The global incidence of calcific aortic stenosis (CAS) is increasing owing, in part, to a growing elderly population. The condition poses a great challenge to public health, because of the multiple comorbidities of these older patients. Using a rabbit model of CAS, we sought to characterize protein alterations associated with calcified valve tissue that can be ultimately measured in plasma as non-invasive biomarkers of CAS.

Molecular and immunological characterization of the first allergenic lipocalin in hamster: the major allergen from Siberian hamster (Phodopus sungorus).

The most frequent pet allergy is to cat and dog, but in recent years, it has become increasingly popular to have other pets, and the risk of exposure to new allergens is more prevalent. The list of new pets includes hamsters, and one of the most popular hamsters is the Siberian hamster (Phodopus sungorus). The aim of this study was the characterization and cloning of the major allergen from this hamster.

30μm spatial resolution protein MALDI MSI: In-depth comparison of five sample preparation protocols applied to human healthy and atherosclerotic arteries.

Tissue preparation is the key to a successful MALDI mass spectrometry imaging experiment. A number of different tissue preparations methods have recently been reported for increased sensitivity and/or high spatial resolution analysis. In order to better benchmark these methods in terms of the information content and their suitability for analyzing small tissues containing small but distinct regions, we have performed an extensive comparison using technical and biological repeats as well as a fully randomized measuring sequence.

Urine 2DE proteome analysis in healthy condition and kidney disease.

Urine is a source of potential markers of disease. In the context of renal disease, urine is particularly important as it may directly reflect kidney injury. Current markers of renal dysfunction lack both optimal specificity and sensitivity, and improved technologies and approaches are needed.

Diabetic nephropathy induces changes in the proteome of human urinary exosomes as revealed by label-free comparative analysis.

Unlabelled: Diabetic nephropathy (DN) is a major complication of diabetes mellitus (DM), the most frequent cause of end-stage renal disease (ESRD). Exosomes isolated from urine are considered a rich non-invasive source of markers for renal events. Proteinuria associated with DN patients at advanced stages may result in "contamination" of exosomal fraction by co-precipitation of high abundance urine proteins, making it enormously difficult to obtain a reliable comparison of healthy individuals and DN patients and to detect minor proteins.

Identification of a urine metabolomic signature in patients with advanced-stage chronic kidney disease.

The prevalence of chronic kidney disease (CKD) is increasing and frequently progresses to end-stage renal disease. There is an urgent demand to discover novel markers of disease that allow monitoring disease progression and, eventually, response to treatment. To identify such markers, and as a proof of principle, we determined if a metabolite signature corresponding to CKD can be found in urine.

Identification of thaumatin-like protein and aspartyl protease as new major allergens in lettuce (Lactuca sativa).

Scope: Today, about 2-8% of the population of Western countries exhibits some type of food allergy whose impact ranges from localized symptoms confined to the oral mucosa to severe anaphylactic reactions. Consumed worldwide, lettuce is a Compositae family vegetable that can elicit allergic reactions. To date, however, only one lipid transfer protein has been described in allergic reaction to lettuce.