A 2-year-old with a hepatic abscess secondary to an ascending retrocecal appendicitis: case report and review of the literature.

Background: Diagnosing appendicitis within the pediatric population can be challenging, whether it be a neonate with irritability or a toddler with flank pain. Symptoms may mimic a viral illness, constipation, urinary tract infection, or intussusception, all of which are more common in this age group when compared with appendicitis. While a ruptured appendicitis can result in an intra-abdominal abscess, peritonitis, and/or shock, the development of a pyogenic hepatic abscess is extremely rare.

Chest pain while gardening: a Stanford type A dissection involving the aortic root extending into the iliac arteries-an uncommon and potentially catastrophic disease process.

Background: An aortic dissection is an uncommon and potentially catastrophic disease process that carries with it a high morbidity and mortality. The inciting event is a tear in the intimal lining of the aorta. This allows passage of blood through the tear and into the aortic media, resulting in the creation of a false lumen.

High-output congestive heart failure: a potentially deadly complication of thyroid storm.

Hyperthyroidism, thyrotoxicosis and thyroid storm are a continuum of disease. A life-threatening and potentially fatal manifestation of thyrotoxicosis is thyroid storm. Thyroid storm is considered rare with an occurrence rate of 1-2% of all patients with hyperthyroidism, making a high index of suspicion important in the early recognition of this debilitating complication.

Ginger and turmeric expressed sequence tags identify signature genes for rhizome identity and development and the biosynthesis of curcuminoids, gingerols and terpenoids.

Background: Ginger (Zingiber officinale) and turmeric (Curcuma longa) accumulate important pharmacologically active metabolites at high levels in their rhizomes. Despite their importance, relatively little is known regarding gene expression in the rhizomes of ginger and turmeric.

Results: In order to identify rhizome-enriched genes and genes encoding specialized metabolism enzymes and pathway regulators, we evaluated an assembled collection of expressed sequence tags (ESTs) from eight different ginger and turmeric tissues.

An elm EST database for identifying leaf beetle egg-induced defense genes.

Background: Plants can defend themselves against herbivorous insects prior to the onset of larval feeding by responding to the eggs laid on their leaves. In the European field elm (Ulmus minor), egg laying by the elm leaf beetle ( Xanthogaleruca luteola) activates the emission of volatiles that attract specialised egg parasitoids, which in turn kill the eggs. Little is known about the transcriptional changes that insect eggs trigger in plants and how such indirect defense mechanisms are orchestrated in the context of other biological processes.

Comparative functional genomic analysis of Solanum glandular trichome types.

Glandular trichomes play important roles in protecting plants from biotic attack by producing defensive compounds. We investigated the metabolic profiles and transcriptomes to characterize the differences between different glandular trichome types in several domesticated and wild Solanum species: Solanum lycopersicum (glandular trichome types 1, 6, and 7), Solanum habrochaites (types 1, 4, and 6), Solanum pennellii (types 4 and 6), Solanum arcanum (type 6), and Solanum pimpinellifolium (type 6). Substantial chemical differences in and between Solanum species and glandular trichome types are likely determined by the regulation of metabolism at several levels.

Incorporation of non-natural nucleotides into template-switching oligonucleotides reduces background and improves cDNA synthesis from very small RNA samples.

Background: The template switching PCR (TS-PCR) method of cDNA synthesis represents one of the most straightforward approaches to generating full length cDNA for sequencing efforts. However, when applied to very small RNA samples, such as those obtained from tens or hundreds of cells, this approach leads to high background and low cDNA yield due to concatamerization of the TS oligo.

Results: In this study, we describe the application of nucleotide isomers that form non-standard base pairs in the template switching oligo to prevent background cDNA synthesis.

Studies of a biochemical factory: tomato trichome deep expressed sequence tag sequencing and proteomics.

Shotgun proteomics analysis allows hundreds of proteins to be identified and quantified from a single sample at relatively low cost. Extensive DNA sequence information is a prerequisite for shotgun proteomics, and it is ideal to have sequence for the organism being studied rather than from related species or accessions. While this requirement has limited the set of organisms that are candidates for this approach, next generation sequencing technologies make it feasible to obtain deep DNA sequence coverage from any organism.

An intact sequence-specific DNA-binding domain is required for human cytomegalovirus-mediated sequestration of p53 and may promote in vivo binding to the viral genome during infection.

The p53 protein is stabilized during infection of primary human fibroblasts with human cytomegalovirus (HCMV). However, the p53 in HCMV-infected cells is unable to activate its downstream targets. HCMV accomplishes this inactivation, at least in part, by sequestering p53 into viral replication centers within the cell's nucleus soon after they are established.