Differential effects of intrinsic- versus extrinsic-first corrective exercise programs on morphometric outcomes and navicular drop in pediatric flatfoot.

Although the connection between muscular strength and flatfoot condition is well-established, the impact of corrective exercises on these muscles remains inadequately explored. This study aimed to assess the impact of intrinsic- versus extrinsic-first corrective exercise programs on muscle morphometry and navicular drop in boys with flexible flatfoot. Twenty-five boys aged 10-12 with flexible flatfoot participated, undergoing a 12-week corrective exercise program, with a shift in focus at six weeks.

Simulated Gastrointestinal Fluids Impact the Stability of Polymer-Functionalized Selenium Nanoparticles: Physicochemical Aspects.

Background: Selenium (Se) is a vital micronutrient for maintaining homeostasis in the human body. Selenium nanoparticles (SeNPs) have demonstrated improved bioavailability compared to both inorganic and organic forms of Se. Therefore, supplementing with elemental Se in its nano-form is highly promising for biomedical applications related to Se deficiency.

Treating Lateral Epicondylopathy With Dry Needling and Exercise: A Case Series.

Context: Lateral epicondylopathy (LE) is a common overuse injury affecting elbow, wrist, and hand function. It is characterized by weakness and pain in the muscles and tendons of the forearm responsible for the extension of your wrist and fingers. Trigger point dry needling is a technique reported to be beneficial in managing pain and dysfunction after LE diagnosis.

The membrane-binding bacterial toxin long direct repeat D inhibits protein translation.

Bacterial plasmids and chromosomes widely contain toxin-antitoxin (TA) loci, which are implicated in stress response, growth regulation and even tolerance to antibiotics and environmental stress. Type I TA systems consist of a stable toxin-expressing mRNA, which is counteracted by an unstable RNA antitoxin. The Long Direct Repeat (LDR-) D locus, a type I TA system of Escherichia Coli (E.

A Systematic Dry-Needling Treatment to Support Recovery Posttraining for Division I Ice Hockey Athletes: An Exploration Case Series.

Context: For this case series, 4 student-athletes (age range = 20-22 years) participating in National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I ice hockey served as cases. They were free of injury and participated in all team activities without restrictions.

Treatment: A dry needling (DN) lower extremity recovery protocol was completed for all athletes during a single session.

A Multisegmental Approach to Dry Needling Plantar Fasciitis: A Case Study.

Context: Plantar heel pain is a common problem affecting foot function, causing pain in the foot under the heel. Plantar fasciitis is commonly treated with conservative treatment, such as joint and soft tissue mobilization, self-stretching home programs, foot orthoses, and night splinting or booting. Dry needling (DN) has shown to be an effective method of treating plantar fasciitis (PF) in multiple randomized control trials.

Structural Fuzziness of the RNA-Organizing Protein SERF Determines a Toxic Gain-of-interaction.

The mechanisms by which protein complexes convert from functional to pathogenic are the subject of intensive research. Here, we report how functionally unfavorable protein interactions can be induced by structural fuzziness, i.e.

Increased Aggregation Tendency of Alpha-Synuclein in a Fully Disordered Protein Complex.

The recent discovery of biologically active fully disordered, so called random fuzzy protein-protein interactions leads to the question of how the high flexibility of these protein complexes correlates to aggregation and pathologic misfolding. We identify the structural mechanism by which a random fuzzy protein complex composed of the intrinsically disordered proteins alpha-Synuclein and SERF1a is able to potentiate cytotoxic aggregation. A structural model derived from an integrated NMR/SAXS analysis of the reconstituted aSyn:SERF1a complex enabled us to observe the partial deprotection of one precise aSyn amyloid nucleation element in the fully unstructured ensemble.

Common peripheral nerve injuries in sport: diagnosis and management.

Peripheral nerve injuries are unusual in sport but impact an athlete's safe return to play. Nerve injuries result from either acute trauma (most commonly in contact/collision sports) or from repetitive microtrauma and overuse. Diagnosis of overuse nerve injuries includes nerve localization and surrounding soft-tissue anatomy, and must account for possible causes of repetitive microtrauma, including biomechanics, equipment, training schedule, and recovery.

A cation-π interaction in a transmembrane helix of vacuolar ATPase retains the proton-transporting arginine in a hydrophobic environment.

Vacuolar ATPases are multisubunit protein complexes that are indispensable for acidification and pH homeostasis in a variety of physiological processes in all eukaryotic cells. An arginine residue (Arg) in transmembrane helix 7 (TM7) of subunit a of the yeast ATPase is known to be essential for proton translocation. However, the specific mechanism of its involvement in proton transport remains to be determined.

National Athletic Trainers' Association Position Statement: Evaluation, Management, and Outcomes of and Return-to- Play Criteria for Overhead Athletes With Superior Labral Anterior-Posterior Injuries.

Objective:   To present recommendations for the diagnosis, management, outcomes, and return to play of athletes with superior labral anterior-posterior (SLAP) injuries.

Background:   In overhead athletes, SLAP tears are common as either acute or chronic injuries. The clinical guidelines presented here were developed based on a systematic review of the current evidence and the consensus of the writing panel.

MOAG-4 promotes the aggregation of α-synuclein by competing with self-protective electrostatic interactions.

Aberrant protein aggregation underlies a variety of age-related neurodegenerative disorders, including Alzheimer's and Parkinson's diseases. Little is known, however, about the molecular mechanisms that modulate the aggregation process in the cellular environment. Recently, MOAG-4/SERF has been identified as a class of evolutionarily conserved proteins that positively regulates aggregate formation.

The yin and yang of amyloid aggregation.

Intra- and extra-cellular amyloid protein fibers are traditionally coupled to a series of devastating and incurable neurodegenerative disorders. Since the discovery of physiologically useful amyloids, our attention has been shifting from pure pathology to function, as amyloid aggregation seems to constitute a basis for the functional and dynamic assembly of biological structures. The following article summarizes how the cell profits from such an unconventional high-risk aggregation at the rim of physiologic utility and pathologic catastrophe.

Legal but lethal: functional protein aggregation at the verge of toxicity.

Many neurodegenerative disorders are linked to irreversible protein aggregation, a process that usually comes along with toxicity and serious cellular damage. However, it is emerging that protein aggregation can also serve for physiological purposes, as impressively shown for prions. While the aggregation of this protein family was initially considered exclusively toxic in mammalians organisms, it is now almost clear that many other proteins adopt prion-like attributes to rationally polymerize into higher order complexes with organized physiologic roles.

Hip and glenohumeral rotational range of motion in healthy professional baseball pitchers and position players.

Background: Research suggests that limitations in the hip motion of baseball players may lead to altered motion at the glenohumeral joint to maintain throwing velocity, thereby predisposing the upper extremity to injury.

Purpose: To measure and evaluate the correlation between hip and shoulder rotational range of motion (ROM) in healthy professional baseball players.

Study Design: Descriptive laboratory study.

SERF protein is a direct modifier of amyloid fiber assembly.

The inherent cytotoxicity of aberrantly folded protein aggregates contributes substantially to the pathogenesis of amyloid diseases. It was recently shown that a class of evolutionary conserved proteins, called MOAG-4/SERF, profoundly alter amyloid toxicity via an autonomous but yet unexplained mode. We show that the biological function of human SERF1a originates from its atypical ability to specifically distinguish between amyloid and nonamyloid aggregation.

Suggestions from the field for return to sports participation following anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction: American football.

Returning an American football player to sport after an anterior cruciate ligament reconstruction is challenging on several fronts. First, there are approximately 15 different positions a football player could play, depending on how specifically you define the positions on the field. Each of these positions has specific demands for optimal size, strength, power, body composition, cardiovascular fitness, and movement.

The neurotransmitter serotonin interrupts α-synuclein amyloid maturation.

Indolic derivatives can affect fibril growth of amyloid forming proteins. The neurotransmitter serotonin (5-HT) is of particular interest, as it is an endogenous molecule with a possible link to neuropsychiatric symptoms of Parkinson disease. A key pathomolecular mechanism of Parkinson disease is the misfolding and aggregation of the intrinsically unstructured protein α-synuclein.

Influence of phosphocholine alkyl chain length on peptide-micelle interactions and micellar size and shape.

The interaction with biological membranes is of functional importance for many peptides and proteins. Structural studies on such membrane-bound biomacromolecules are often carried out in solutions containing small membrane-mimetic assemblies of detergent molecules. To investigate the influence of the hydrophobic chain length on the structure, diffusional and dynamical behavior of a peptide bound to micelles, we studied the binding of three peptides to n-phosphocholines with n ranging from 8 to 16.

The molecular chaperone Hsp90 modulates intermediate steps of amyloid assembly of the Parkinson-related protein alpha-synuclein.

Alpha-synuclein is an intrinsically unstructured protein that binds to membranes, forms fibrils, and is involved in neurodegeneration. We used a reconstituted in vitro system to show that the molecular chaperone Hsp90 influenced alpha-synuclein vesicle binding and amyloid fibril formation, two processes that are tightly coupled to alpha-synuclein folding. Binding of Hsp90 to monomeric alpha-synuclein occurred in the low micromolar range, involving regions of alpha-synuclein that are critical for vesicle binding and amyloidogenesis.

Coimmunoprecipitation and proteomic analyses.

Defining protein-protein interaction networks is a major goal of proteomics. Here, we present a protocol for coimmunoprecipitation, a technique suitable for the isolation of whole protein complexes in vivo and their subsequent identification by either immunoblotting or mass spectrometric sequencing combined to database search.

A proteomic approach towards the Hsp90-dependent ubiquitinylated proteome.

Since many Hsp90 client proteins are key players in tumour pathways, the ubiquitylation and subsequent degradation of Hsp90-substrates as a consequence of pharmacologically inhibiting Hsp90 represents an innovative approach for cancer therapy. We therefore identified Hsp90-binding proteins which accumulated as ubiquityl-tagged aggregates in the detergent insoluble fraction of HeLa cells as a consequence of simultaneously inhibiting Hsp90 and the proteasome. 2-DE followed by nanoLC-MS/MS of trypsinised protein spots provided the Hsp90-dependent ubiquitylated proteome which was finally annotated and functionally classified.

A proteomic snapshot of the human heat shock protein 90 interactome.

Heat shock protein 90 (Hsp90) is a molecular chaperone which modulates several signalling pathways within a cell. By applying co-immunoprecipitation with endogeneous Hsp90, we were able to identify 39 novel protein interaction partners of this chaperone in human embryonic kidney cells (HEK293). Interestingly, levels of DNA-activated protein kinase catalytic subunit, an Hsp90 interaction partner found in this study, were found to be sensitive to Hsp90 inhibitor treatment only in HeLa cells but not in HEK293 cells referring to the tumorgenicity of this chaperone.