Publications by authors named "I J Falk"
Multiple sclerosis (MS) is an inflammatory demyelinating disease of the central nervous system (CNS) and is a leading non-traumatic cause of disability in young adults. The 18 kDa Translocator Protein (TSPO) is a mitochondrial protein and positron emission tomography (PET)-imaging target that is highly expressed in MS brain lesions. It is used as an inflammatory biomarker and has been proposed as a therapeutic target.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArchaeal bipolar tetraether lipids (BTLs) are among the most unusual lipids occurring in nature because of their presumed ability to span the entire membrane to form a monolayer structure. It is believed that because of their unique structural organization and chemical stability, BTLs offer extraordinary adaptation to archaea to thrive in the most extreme milieus. BTLs have also received considerable attention for development of novel membrane-based materials.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCompared to Genome-Wide Association Studies (GWAS) for common variants, single-marker association analysis for rare variants is underpowered. Set-based association analyses for rare variants are powerful tools that capture some of the missing heritability in trait association studies. We extend the convex-optimized SKAT (cSKAT) test set procedure which learns from data the optimal convex combination of kernels, to the full Generalised Linear Model (GLM) setting with arbitrary non-genetic covariates.
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- Microglial activation is crucial in diseases that involve neuroinflammation and neurodegeneration, with PET scans using TSPO to detect inflammation in the brain, although interpreting these results can be tricky.* -
- The study finds that while TSPO expression increases in activated microglia in mouse models, it doesn't change in human diseases, indicating a difference in how TSPO is regulated across species.* -
- Genetic differences in TSPO expression linked to the transcription factor AP1 are noted, suggesting that human TSPO-PET signals are more about the presence of inflammatory cells rather than their activation state.*
Archaeal glycerol dibiphytanyl glycerol tetraethers (GDGT) are some of the most unusual membrane lipids identified in nature. These amphiphiles are the major constituents of the membranes of numerous Archaea, some of which are extremophilic organisms. Due to their unique structures, there has been significant interest in studying both the biophysical properties and the biosynthesis of these molecules.
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