Challenges in assessing national radiotherapy costs: application of the ESTRO-HERO model in Spain.

Background And Purpose: The aim was to estimate the cost of the external beam radiotherapy (EBRT) in public health care centers in Catalonia (Spain), according to the ESTRO-HERO costing model for 2018.

Materials And Methods: Personnel, equipment, and activity data from 2018 from the 11 RT centers were used, incorporating European mean values adapted to the Catalan context. Secondly, EBRT costs were estimated, incorporating 2023 fractionation technique and scheme usage percentages.

Landscape of antisense genes in the human genome and identification of new human hepatic antisense RNAs by long-read sequencing.

Background: Protein-coding genes have been considered the functional part of the genome, although they represent only 2% of the genome. In contrast, more than 90% of the genome produces non-coding RNA (ncRNA), including antisense (AS) genes, a type of long non-coding genes (encoding transcripts > 200 nucleotides) located on the opposite strand of coding genes. Therefore, antisense RNA (asRNA) can be complementary to the counterpart sense RNA, supporting a regulatory role with potential pathogenic consequences, as their deregulation has been associated with cardiovascular disease, cancer, and diabetes.

Identification of heat stress-related genomic regions by genome-wide association study in Solanum tuberosum.

The climate crisis impairs yield and quality of crucial crops like potatoes. We investigated the effects of heat stress on five morpho-physiological parameters in a diverse panel of 178 potato cultivars under glasshouse conditions. Overall, heat stress increased shoot elongation and green fresh weight, but reduced tuber yield, starch content and harvest index.