A Role of Variance in Interferon Genes to Disease Severity in COVID-19 Patients.

The rapid rise and global consequences of the novel coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) have again brought the focus of the scientific community on the possible host factors involved in patient response and outcome to exposure to the virus. The disease severity remains highly unpredictable, and individuals with none of the aforementioned risk factors may still develop severe COVID-19. It was shown that genotype-related factors like an ABO Blood Group affect COVID-19 severity, and the risk of infection with SARS-CoV-2 was higher for patients with blood type A and lower for patients with blood type O.

Hepatic gene expression of Caucasian and African-American patients with obesity-related non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Background/aim: There is increasing data suggesting that African Americans with NAFLD tend to have less progressive liver disease. The aim of this study is to assess differences in the hepatic gene expression of African-American and Caucasian patients with NAFLD who had undergone bariatric surgery.

Methods: A total of 94 patients (81 NAFLD and 13 weight-matched controls with normal liver biopsy) were included.

Widespread distribution of tetracycline resistance genes in a confined animal feeding facility.

We sought to determine the distribution of resistance and the tetracycline resistance genes among bacteria isolated from a swine confined animal feeding facility where tetracycline-containing feed had been in use for over 20 years. Samples collected from feed, hogs, hog houses, waste lagoon, soil, surface water and well water were screened for the presence of (a) resistant Escherichia coli and enterococci and (b) tetracycline-resistant strains of all species. Genomic DNA was extracted from the latter strain collection and fragments from 16S rDNA and ten tetracycline resistance genes (tetA, tetB, tetC, tetE, tetH, tetL, tetM, tetS, tetT and rumB) were polymerase chain reaction-amplified and a partial nucleotide sequence was obtained.

Esophagin and proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) are biomarkers of human esophageal neoplastic progression.

PCNA and esophagin have been implicated in the multistep process of carcinogenesis, but simultaneous characterization of these proteins in the early stages of esophageal neoplastic progression has yet to be undertaken. In morphologically normal esophageal epithelium, esophagin stains the granular layer cells, principally in their cell membrane portions. PCNA, in contrast, stains the nuclei of cells in the parabasal and basal layers.

Loss of heterozygosity and mutational analyses of the ACTRII gene locus in human colorectal tumors.

The activin type II receptorgene (ACTRII) is mutated in 58.1% of microsatellite-unstable (MSI-H) colorectal cancers and is a close relative of the TGFbeta-1 type II receptor, which is known to be involved in both MSI-H and non-MSI-H colorectal carcinogenesis. We therefore sought to determine whether ACTRII was involved in non-MSI-H colorectal cancers.

An LOH and mutational investigation of the ST7 gene locus in human esophageal carcinoma.

Frequent loss of heterozygosity (LOH) on human chromosome 7q31 has been reported in numerous malignancies. Suppressor of tumorigenicity 7 (ST7) has been identified as a candidate tumor suppressor gene in this region. To identify whether 7q31 and genetic alterations of ST7 were involved in human esophageal carcinogenesis, we performed LOH mapping of a 5.

Hypermethylation of HPP1 is associated with hMLH1 hypermethylation in gastric adenocarcinomas.

The HPP1 gene was initially discovered because of its frequent hypermethylation in hyperplastic colon polyps, but it is also hypermethylated in colorectal adenomas and carcinomas. Expression of the DNA mismatch repair gene hMLH1 is diminished or absent in some hyperplastic polyps, and it has been suggested that HPP1 inactivation is associated with the progression of microsatellite-unstable colorectal tumors. We sought then to determine the prevalence of HPP1 silencing by DNA methylation in gastric adenocarcinomas and to define any association of this event with microsatellite instability (MSI) or hMLH1 hypermethylation.

Instabilotyping reveals unique mutational spectra in microsatellite-unstable gastric cancers.

Microsatellite instability (MSI) within coding regions causes frameshift mutations (FSMs). This type of mutation may inactivate tumor suppressor genes in cancers with frequent MSI (MSI-H cancers). To identify novel FSMs in gastric carcinogenesis in an unbiased and comprehensive manner, we screened for this type of mutation at 154 coding region repeat loci in 18 MSI-H gastric cancers.

Artificial neural networks and gene filtering distinguish between global gene expression profiles of Barrett's esophagus and esophageal cancer.

cDNAmicroarrays, combined with bioinformatics analyses, are becomingincreasingly used in current medical research. Existing analytic methods,particularly those that are unsupervised, often have difficulty recognizing subtle differences among predefined subgroups. In contrast, supervised methods, such as Artificial Neural Networks (ANNs), are able to recognize subtly different biological entities.