A probabilistic framework for microarray data analysis: fundamental probability models and statistical inference.

Gene expression studies generate large quantities of data with the defining characteristic that the number of genes (whose expression profiles are to be determined) exceed the number of available replicates by several orders of magnitude. Standard spot-by-spot analysis still seeks to extract useful information for each gene on the basis of the number of available replicates, and thus plays to the weakness of microarrays. On the other hand, because of the data volume, treating the entire data set as an ensemble, and developing theoretical distributions for these ensembles provides a framework that plays instead to the strength of microarrays.

Use of a saponin based molluscicide to control Pomacea canaliculata snails in Southern Brazil.

Pomacea canaliculata snails pose a severe problem to direct seeded rice cultivated in Southern Brazil. Control of this snail is nowadays performed with toxic chemicals such as copper sulfate and fungicides such as fentin. A novel natural molluscicide based on alkali modified quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa) saponins was tested under laboratory conditions.

An exploratory study of peat and sawdust as enhancers in the (bio)degradation of n-dodecane.

Current practice for dealing with oil spills involves the use of adsorbent materials to contain the pollution prior to bioremediation of the contaminated soil and adsorbent. This work presents a study of the effects of bioavailable carbon sources in the adsorbents peat and sawdust as organic nutrients for microorganisms specialized in degrading n-dodecane in soil and sawdust contaminated with hydrocarbon mixtures. An experimental bioremediation system was developed using n-dodecane, biomass adapted to n-dodecane, inorganic nutrients and the two adsorbents (sterilized).

MAPK cascade possesses decoupled controllability of signal amplification and duration.

The three important characteristics of the output signal of mitogen activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade are time delay between stimulus and response, amplitude gain, and duration of the output signal. In this study, we performed a sensitivity analysis on the computational model of epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR) activated MAPK cascade developed by Schoeberl and co-workers (1) to identify the sensitive steps of the pathway affecting these characteristics. We show that the signaling network is sensitive in a decoupled manner, which provides the ability to control its output amplitude and duration one at a time.