Publications by authors named "Berger B"

Background: C-reactive protein (CRP) represents a routine diagnostic marker of inflammation. Dissociation of native pentameric CRP (pCRP) into the monomeric structure (mCRP) liberates proinflammatory features, presumably contributing to excessive immune cell activation via unknown molecular mechanisms.

Results: In a multi-translational study of systemic inflammation, we found a time- and inflammation-dependent pCRP dissociation into mCRP.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Membrane proteins, especially extracellular domains, are key therapeutic targets due to their role in cell communication and associations. Yet, their functions and interactions often remain unclear. This study presents a general method to discover interactions of membrane proteins with immune cells and subsequently to deorphanize their respective receptors.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Protein kinases are important drug targets, yet specific inhibitors have been developed for only a fraction of the more than 500 human kinases. A major challenge in designing inhibitors for highly related kinases is selectivity. Unlike their non-covalent counterparts, covalent inhibitors offer the advantage of selectively targeting structurally similar kinases by modifying specific protein side chains, particularly non-conserved cysteines.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: In recent years, human microbiome research has flourished and has drawn attention from both healthcare professionals and general consumers as the human microbiome is now recognized as having a significant influence on human health. This has led to the emergence of companies offering microbiome testing services. Some of these services are sold directly to the consumer via companies' websites or via medical laboratory websites.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Unlabelled: is considered one of the most challenging, drug-resistant, opportunistic pathogens partly due to its ability to synthesize robust biofilms. Biofilm is a mixture of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS) that encapsulates microbial cells, leading to immune evasion, antibiotic resistance, and thus higher risk of infection. In the cystic fibrosis lung environment, undergoes a mucoid transition, defined by overproduction of the exopolysaccharide alginate.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Introduction: Today, accessing information on health issues is easier than ever. However, the flood of information can make decision-making difficult. Information can influence the intention for an action, yet the action often remains unpredictable.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Protein-protein interaction (PPI) networks are a fundamental resource for modeling cellular and molecular function, and a large and sophisticated toolbox has been developed to leverage their structure and topological organization to predict the functional roles of under-studied genes, proteins, and pathways. However, the overwhelming majority of experimentally-determined interactions from which such networks are constructed come from a small number of well-studied model organisms. Indeed, most species lack even a single experimentally-determined interaction in these databases, much less a network to enable the analysis of cellular function, and methods for computational PPI prediction are too noisy to apply directly.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • PFAS (Per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances) are harmful chemicals known for not breaking down easily in the environment and are found in high amounts in drinking water and various contaminated sites.
  • There is a rising demand for effective methods to detect PFAS, especially PFOA, in environmental samples like surface water.
  • This study presents a biosensor using human liver fatty acid binding protein that can quickly and efficiently identify PFOA levels in water samples from areas near Loring Airforce Base without needing complex sample preparation.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Object: Tumors in the temporo-mesial region often extend into the insula and vice versa. The present study investigated the results of a surgical strategy that combines principles of tumor and epilepsy surgery.

Methods: We retrospectively analyzed 157 consecutive patients with intrinsic brain tumors in the temporo-mesial region, with varying degrees of extensions into the insula (44 patients, 28.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

There is an increasing demand within the pharmaceutical and cosmetic industries for biofriendly lipid-based active ingredient delivery systems. Micelles, liposomes, and lipid nanoparticles are currently the most used systems despite their limitations. Oleosomes, also known as lipid droplets, are promising alternatives to the existing strategies.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Importance: Surrogate misunderstanding of patient survival prognosis in the intensive care unit (ICU) is associated with poor patient and surrogate outcomes. Shared decision-making (SDM) may reduce misunderstanding.

Objective: To evaluate the association between SDM-aligned communication and prognostic misunderstanding.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Molecular dynamics (MD) is a powerful technique for studying microscopic phenomena, but its computational cost has driven significant interest in the development of deep learning-based surrogate models. We introduce generative modeling of molecular trajectories as a paradigm for learning flexible multi-task surrogate models of MD from data. By conditioning on appropriately chosen frames of the trajectory, we show such generative models can be adapted to diverse tasks such as forward simulation, transition path sampling, and trajectory upsampling.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The science of developmental psychopathology has made outstanding progress over the past 40 years in understanding adaptive and maladaptive developmental processes across the life span. Yet most of this work has been researcher driven with little involvement of community partners in the research process, limiting the potential public health significance of our work. To continue to advance the field we must move beyond the physical and conceptual walls of our research laboratories and into the real world.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The Heisenberg uncertainty principle dictates that the position and momentum of an object cannot be simultaneously measured with arbitrary precision, giving rise to an apparent limitation known as the standard quantum limit (SQL). Gravitational-wave detectors use photons to continuously measure the positions of freely falling mirrors and so are affected by the SQL. We investigated the performance of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) after the experimental realization of frequency-dependent squeezing designed to surpass the SQL.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Supported lipid bilayers (SLBs) are useful structures for mimicking cellular membranes, and they can be integrated with a variety of sensors. Although there are a variety of methods for forming SLBs, many of these methods come with limitations in terms of the lipid compositions that can be employed and the substrates upon which the SLBs can be deposited. Here we demonstrate the use of an all-aqueous chaotropic agent exchange process that can be used to form SLBs on two different substrate materials: SiO, which is compatible with traditional SLB formation by vesicle fusion, and AlO, which is not compatible with vesicle fusion.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Lithium is a critical mineral in a wide range of current technologies, and demand continues to grow with the transition to a green economy. Current lithium mining and extraction practices are often highly ecologically damaging, in part due to the large amount of water and energy they consume. Biomineralization is a natural process that transforms inorganic precursors to minerals.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Particularly older people are affected by mobility restrictions and can go through the process of gradually becoming bedridden. This can potentially lead to extensive consequences for the individuals involved, which must be considered in their care.

Aims: To bundle nursing implications related to the phenomenon of being bedridden in the field of long-term care and to provide impulses for research in nursing science.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Immunological priming-in the context of either prior infection or vaccination-elicits protective responses against subsequent Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) infection. However, the changes that occur in the lung cellular milieu post-primary Mtb infection and their contributions to protection upon reinfection remain poorly understood. Using clinical and microbiological endpoints in a non-human primate reinfection model, we demonstrated that prior Mtb infection elicited a long-lasting protective response against subsequent Mtb exposure and was CD4 T cell dependent.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • The rapid increase in biomedical data raises significant privacy issues, leading to the creation of data silos due to inadequate protection in traditional frameworks.
  • Privacy-enhancing technologies (PETs) offer solutions to safeguard sensitive data while allowing for analysis and sharing, thereby promoting broader usage in the field.
  • The review covers key applications of PETs, recent advancements, and highlights challenges and social factors that need to be addressed for wider acceptance in biomedical data science.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Polypharmacy and the resulting problems lead to considerable consequences for those affected. There are also considerable problems with the medication management.

Objective: Which interventions and programs for optimizing the supply of medication are available for nursing homes and which implementation problems can be expected?

Material And Method: A literature search was carried out for interventional studies in nursing homes in Germany, with a focus on improving medication safety.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This official guideline was published and coordinated by the DGGG, OEGGG and SGGG with the involvement of other medical societies. The aim was to provide a consensus-based overview of non-hormonal forms of contraception based on an evaluation of the relevant literature. The first part of these summarized statements and recommendations presents natural family planning methods such as lactational amenorrhea, barrier methods and coitus interruptus.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

This official guideline was published and coordinated by the DGGG, OEGGG and SGGG with the involvement of other medical societies. The aim was to provide a consensus-based overview of non-hormonal forms of contraception based on an evaluation of the relevant literature. The first part of these summarized statements and recommendations presents natural family planning methods such as lactational amenorrhea, barrier methods and coitus interruptus.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF
Article Synopsis
  • Finding relatives in genomic studies is tough when data is spread across multiple organizations with sharing restrictions.
  • SF-Relate is a new federated algorithm that uses a unique hashing approach to efficiently and securely identify genetic relatives by grouping individuals into buckets and only comparing those in the same group.
  • It ensures privacy through multiparty homomorphic encryption, allowing secure computation of relatedness without any private data being shared, successfully identifying 97% of close relatives in large datasets like the UK Biobank.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Macrocyclization of acyclic compounds is a powerful strategy for improving inhibitor potency and selectivity. Here we have optimized 2-aminopyrimidine-based macrocycles to use these compounds as chemical tools for the ephrin kinase family. Starting with a promiscuous macrocyclic inhibitor, , we performed a structure-guided activity relationship and selectivity study using a panel of over 100 kinases.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF