Publications by authors named "Bilal Ersen Kerman"

Myelin is an essential component of the nervous system and myelin damage causes demyelination diseases. Myelin is a sheet of oligodendrocyte membrane wrapped around the neuronal axon. In the fluorescent images, experts manually identify myelin by co-localization of oligodendrocyte and axonal membranes that fit certain shape and size criteria.

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Automated screening systems in conjunction with machine learning-based methods are becoming an essential part of the healthcare systems for assisting in disease diagnosis. Moreover, manually annotating data and hand-crafting features for training purposes are impractical and time-consuming. We propose a segmentation and classification-based approach for assembling an automated screening system for the analysis of calcium imaging.

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Background: The plasticity of macrophages in the immune response is a dynamic situation dependent on external stimuli. The activation of macrophages both has beneficial and detrimental effects on mature oligodendrocytes (OLs) and myelin. The activation towards inflammatory macrophages has a critical role in the immune-mediated oligodendrocytes death in multiple sclerosis (MS) lesions.

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Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a demyelinating disorder that affects multiple regions of the central nervous system such as the brain, spinal cord, and optic nerves. Susceptibility to MS, as well as disease progression rates, displays marked patient-to-patient variability. To date, biomarkers that forecast differences in clinical phenotypes and outcomes have been limited.

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Disorders that disrupt myelin formation during development or in adulthood, such as multiple sclerosis and peripheral neuropathies, lead to severe pathologies, illustrating myelin's crucial role in normal neural functioning. However, although our understanding of glial biology is increasing, the signals that emanate from axons and regulate myelination remain largely unknown. To identify the core components of the myelination process, here we adopted a microarray analysis approach combined with laser-capture microdissection of spinal motoneurons during the myelinogenic phase of development.

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Apart from its potent antioxidant property, recent studies have revealed that melatonin promotes PI3K/Akt phosphorylation following focal cerebral ischemia (FCI) in mice. However, it is not clear (i) whether increased PI3K/Akt phosphorylation is a concomitant event or it directly contributes to melatonin's neuroprotective effect, and (ii) how melatonin regulates PI3K/Akt signaling pathway after FCI. In this study, we showed that Akt was intensively phosphorylated at the Thr308 activation loop as compared with Ser473 by melatonin after FCI.

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