While advancements in critical care and burn treatment have improved over the decades, elderly burn victims continue to face high mortality rates. Measurements of frailty among patients have become popular tools for predicting burn outcomes over chronological age. In this report, we provide a case of a non-frail octogenarian burn victim who deteriorated rapidly during treatment, suggesting that frailty alone is not sufficient in predicting outcomes in older burn patients.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiosynthesis in bioreactors plays a vital role in many applications, but tools for accurate monitoring of the cells are still lacking. By engineering the cells such that their conditions are reported through fluorescence, it is possible to fill in the gap using fluorescence diffuse optical tomography (fDOT). However, the spatial accuracy of the reconstruction can still be limited, due to e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCorrect elaboration of N-linked glycans in the secretory pathway of human cells is essential in physiology. Early N-glycan biosynthesis follows an assembly line principle before undergoing crucial elaboration points that feature the sequential incorporation of the sugar -acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc). The activity of GlcNAc transferase V (MGAT5) primes the biosynthesis of an N-glycan antenna that is heavily upregulated in cancer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEukaryotic mRNAs are characterized by terminal 5' cap structures and 3' polyadenylation sites, which are essential for posttranscriptional processing, translation initiation, and stability. Here, we describe a novel biosensor method designed to detect the presence of both cap structures and polyadenylation sites on mRNA molecules. This novel biosensor is sensitive to mRNA degradation and can quantitatively determine capping levels of mRNA molecules within a mixture of capped and uncapped mRNA molecules.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF