Diabetes: Screening, Diagnosis, and Prevention of Type 2 Diabetes.

From 2013-2016, 34.5% of US adults had prediabetes. The U.

Diabetes: Type 1 Diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes is defined as a state of hyperglycemia due to insulin deficiency caused by autoimmune pancreatic beta-cell destruction. The risk among individuals in the general population has been estimated at 0.5%.

A Pilot Screen of a Novel Peptide Hormone Library Identified Candidate GPR83 Ligands.

The identification of novel peptide hormones by functional screening is challenging because posttranslational processing is frequently required to generate biologically active hormones from inactive precursors. We developed an approach for functional screening of novel potential hormones by expressing them in endocrine host cells competent for posttranslational processing. Candidate preprohormones were selected by bioinformatics analysis, and stable endocrine host cell lines were engineered to express the preprohormones.

The renal adverse effects of cancer immunotherapy.

Over the past decade, the development and clinical use of immunotherapy agents has increased exponentially. As clinical experience builds with these agents so too does our understanding of the associated adverse effects. In particular, the effects of immunotherapy on the kidneys, individual nephrons, and kidney function remain less well described than the adverse effects on barrier organ systems such as the gastrointestinal tract and skin.

Integration of Microbiology, Pharmacology, Immunology, and Infectious Disease Using Active Teaching and Self-Directed Learning.

In an era of decreasing basic science curriculum at medical schools, we sought to re-imagine how to optimally deliver three core basic science disciplines (microbiology, pharmacology, and immunology) together with infectious disease in a 5-week course. This course, developed as part of a new 1-year pre-clinical basic science curriculum at the recently established Dell Medical School (DMS) at the University of Texas at Austin, featured a fully integrated curriculum in which the majority of the sessions were team-taught. This course, in line with the goals and missions of DMS, presented material using primarily self-directed and active learning approaches.

Introduction to Mindfulness: Evidence-Based Medicine Lecture and Active Session.

Introduction: There is a growing body of evidence regarding the effectiveness of mindfulness practices and the benefits for the resilience of patients and medical professionals. Thus, there is a need to educate medical students in this technique and its benefits, but there are no readily available resources that emphasize the current evidence. We developed an introductory session for the mindfulness technique as an evidenced-based medicine lecture combined with an active mindfulness exercise.

Deorphanization of the human leukocyte tyrosine kinase (LTK) receptor by a signaling screen of the extracellular proteome.

There are many transmembrane receptor-like proteins whose ligands have not been identified. A strategy for finding ligands when little is known about their tissue source is to screen each extracellular protein individually expressed in an array format by using a sensitive functional readout. Taking this approach, we have screened a large collection (3,191 proteins) of extracellular proteins for their ability to activate signaling of an orphan receptor, leukocyte tyrosine kinase (LTK).

Microscopic superfluidity in 4He clusters stirred by a rotating impurity molecule.

The effective moment of inertia of a CO impurity molecule in 4HeN and p-(H2)N solvent clusters initially increases with N but then commences a nonclassical decrease at N=4 (4He) or N=6 (p-H2). This suggests molecule-solvent decoupling and a transition to microscopic superfluidity. However, the quantum decoupling mechanism has not been elucidated.

Controlling feature selection in random forests of decision trees using a genetic algorithm: classification of class I MHC peptides.

Feature selection is an important challenge in many classification problems, especially if the number of features greatly exceeds the number of examples available. We have developed a procedure--GenForest--which controls feature selection in random forests of decision trees by using a genetic algorithm. This approach was tested through our entry into the Comparative Evaluation of Prediction Algorithms 2006 (CoEPrA) competition (accessible online at: http://www.

Discovery of a cytokine and its receptor by functional screening of the extracellular proteome.

To understand the system of secreted proteins and receptors involved in cell-cell signaling, we produced a comprehensive set of recombinant secreted proteins and the extracellular domains of transmembrane proteins, which constitute most of the protein components of the extracellular space. Each protein was tested in a suite of assays that measured metabolic, growth, or transcriptional responses in diverse cell types. The pattern of responses across assays was analyzed for the degree of functional selectivity of each protein.

E. coli selection of human genes encoding secreted and membrane proteins based on cDNA fusions to a leaderless beta-lactamase reporter.

Although several signal peptide-trapping methods have been devised and used to detect signal sequences, none have relied on using E.coli to identify eukaryotic proteins with signal peptides. Here, we describe a system for selecting human secreted and membrane proteins in E.