Exploring gene expression biomarker candidates for neurobehavioral impairment from total sleep deprivation.

Background: Although sleep deprivation is associated with neurobehavioral impairment that may underlie significant risks to performance and safety, there is no reliable biomarker test to detect dangerous levels of impairment from sleep loss in humans. This study employs microarrays and bioinformatics analyses to explore candidate gene expression biomarkers associated with total sleep deprivation (TSD), and more specifically, the phenotype of neurobehavioral impairment from TSD. Healthy adult volunteers were recruited to a sleep laboratory for seven consecutive days (six nights).

Proceedings of the 2013 MidSouth Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society (MCBIOS) Conference.

The tenth annual conference of the MidSouth Computational Biology and Bioinformatics Society (MCBIOS 2013), "The 10th Anniversary in a Decade of Change: Discovery in a Sea of Data", took place at the Stoney Creek Inn & Conference Center in Columbia, Missouri on April 5-6, 2013. This year's Conference Chairs were Gordon Springer and Chi-Ren Shyu from the University of Missouri and Edward Perkins from the US Army Corps of Engineers Engineering Research and Development Center, who is also the current MCBIOS President (2012-3). There were 151 registrants and a total of 111 abstracts (51 oral presentations and 60 poster session abstracts).

Microarray characterization of gene expression changes in blood during acute ethanol exposure.

Background: As part of the civil aviation safety program to define the adverse effects of ethanol on flying performance, we performed a DNA microarray analysis of human whole blood samples from a five-time point study of subjects administered ethanol orally, followed by breathalyzer analysis, to monitor blood alcohol concentration (BAC) to discover significant gene expression changes in response to the ethanol exposure.

Methods: Subjects were administered either orange juice or orange juice with ethanol. Blood samples were taken based on BAC and total RNA was isolated from PaxGene™ blood tubes.

Resolution of aviation forensic toxicology findings with the aid of DNA profiling.

Body components of aviation accident fatalities are often scattered, disintegrated, commingled, contaminated, and/or putrefied at accident scenes. These situations may impose difficulties in victim identification/tissue matching. The prevalence of misidentification in relation to aviation accident forensic toxicology has not been well established.

Examining smoking-induced differential gene expression changes in buccal mucosa.

Background: Gene expression changes resulting from conditions such as disease, environmental stimuli, and drug use, can be monitored in the blood. However, a less invasive method of sample collection is of interest because of the discomfort and specialized personnel necessary for blood sampling especially if multiple samples are being collected. Buccal mucosa cells are easily collected and may be an alternative sample material for biomarker testing.

The genome of the versatile nitrogen fixer Azorhizobium caulinodans ORS571.

Background: Biological nitrogen fixation is a prokaryotic process that plays an essential role in the global nitrogen cycle. Azorhizobium caulinodans ORS571 has the dual capacity to fix nitrogen both as free-living organism and in a symbiotic interaction with Sesbania rostrata. The host is a fast-growing, submergence-tolerant tropical legume on which A.

Mating factor linkage and genome evolution in basidiomycetous pathogens of cereals.

Sex in basidiomycete fungi is controlled by tetrapolar mating systems in which two unlinked gene complexes determine up to thousands of mating specificities, or by bipolar systems in which a single locus (MAT) specifies different sexes. The genus Ustilago contains bipolar (Ustilago hordei) and tetrapolar (Ustilago maydis) species and sexual development is associated with infection of cereal hosts. The U.

Introns and splicing elements of five diverse fungi.

Genomic sequences and expressed sequence tag data for a diverse group of fungi (Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, Aspergillus nidulans, Neurospora crassa, and Cryptococcus neoformans) provided the opportunity to accurately characterize conserved intronic elements. An examination of large intron data sets revealed that fungal introns in general are short, that 98% or more of them belong to the canonical splice site (ss) class (5'GU..

FELINES: a utility for extracting and examining EST-defined introns and exons.

FELINES (Finding and Examining Lots of Intron 'N' Exon Sequences) is a utility written to automate construction and analysis of high quality intron and exon sequence databases produced from EST (expressed sequence tag) to genomic sequence alignments. We demonstrated the various programs of the FELINES utility by creating intron and exon sequence databases for the fungal organism Schizosaccharomyces pombe from alignments of EST to genomic sequences. In addition, we analyzed our constructed S.