Breast Cancer Awareness and Uptake of Breast Cancer Screening Services Among Undergraduate Female Students in the Oldest University of Tanzania: A Cross-Sectional Study.

Background: Breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related death among women worldwide. Mortality from breast cancer can be reduced through early detection and prevention. Despite the availability of breast cancer screening methods, the uptake of screening services remains very low, especially in low-resource countries like Tanzania.

An oomycete NLP cytolysin forms transient small pores in lipid membranes.

Microbial plant pathogens secrete a range of effector proteins that damage host plants and consequently constrain global food production. Necrosis and ethylene-inducing peptide 1-like proteins (NLPs) are produced by numerous phytopathogenic microbes that cause important crop diseases. Many NLPs are cytolytic, causing cell death and tissue necrosis by disrupting the plant plasma membrane.

A biosynthetic route for polysialylating proteins in Escherichia coli.

Polysialic acid (polySia) is a posttranslational modification found on only a handful of proteins in the central nervous and immune systems. The addition of polySia to therapeutic proteins improves pharmacokinetics and reduces immunogenicity. To date, polysialylation of therapeutic proteins has only been achieved in vitro by chemical or chemoenzymatic strategies.

Evidence for a LOS and a capsular polysaccharide in Capnocytophaga canimorsus.

Capnocytophaga canimorsus is a dog's and cat's oral commensal which can cause fatal human infections upon bites or scratches. Infections mainly start with flu-like symptoms but can rapidly evolve in fatal septicaemia with a mortality as high as 40%. Here we present the discovery of a polysaccharide capsule (CPS) at the surface of C.

Partitioning of oleic acid into phosphatidylcholine membranes is amplified by strain.

Partitioning of fatty acids into phospholipid membranes is studied on giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) utilizing phase-contrast microscopy. With use of a micropipet, an individual GUV is transferred from a vesicle suspension in a mixed glucose/sucrose solution into an isomolar glycerol solution with a small amount of oleic acid added. Oleic acid molecules intercalate into the phospholipid membrane and thus increase the membrane area, while glycerol permeates into the vesicle interior and thus via osmotic inflation causes an increase of the vesicle volume.

Glycoengineering of host mimicking type-2 LacNAc polymers and Lewis X antigens on bacterial cell surfaces.

Bacterial carbohydrate structures play a central role in mediating a variety of host-pathogen interactions. Glycans can either elicit protective immune response or lead to escape of immune surveillance by mimicking host structures. Lipopolysaccharide (LPS), a major component on the surface of Gram-negative bacteria, is composed of a lipid A-core and the O-antigen polysaccharide.

The dynamics of melittin-induced membrane permeability.

The transport of co-encapsulated solutes through the melittin-induced pores in the membrane of giant phospholipid vesicles was studied, and the characteristics of the pore formation process were modeled. Molecules of two different sizes (dextran and the smaller, fluorescent marker Alexa Fluor) were encapsulated inside the vesicles. The chosen individual vesicles were then transferred by micromanipulation from the stock suspension to the environment with the melittin (MLT).

A microfluidic diffusion chamber for reversible environmental changes around flaccid lipid vesicles.

The reversible environmental changes around flaccid lipid vesicles represent a considerable experimental challenge, particularly because of remarkable softness of flaccid membranes, which can warp irreversibly under the slightest hydrodynamic flow. As a result, we have developed a microfluidic device for the controlled analysis of individual flaccid, giant lipid vesicles in a changing chemical environment. The setup combines the advantages of a flow-free microfluidic diffusion chamber and optical tweezers, which are used to load the sample vesicles into the chamber.

The genome and surface proteome of Capnocytophaga canimorsus reveal a key role of glycan foraging systems in host glycoproteins deglycosylation.

Capnocytophaga canimorsus are commensal Gram-negative bacteria from dog's mouth that cause rare but dramatic septicaemia in humans. C. canimorsus have the unusual property to feed on cultured mammalian cells, including phagocytes, by harvesting the glycan moiety of cellular glycoproteins.

The N-glycan glycoprotein deglycosylation complex (Gpd) from Capnocytophaga canimorsus deglycosylates human IgG.

C. canimorsus 5 has the capacity to grow at the expenses of glycan moieties from host cells N-glycoproteins. Here, we show that C.

Resistance of Capnocytophaga canimorsus to killing by human complement and polymorphonuclear leukocytes.

Capnocytophaga canimorsus is a bacterium of the canine oral flora known since 1976 to cause rare but severe septicemia and peripheral gangrene in patients that have been in contact with a dog. It was recently shown that these bacteria do not elicit an inflammatory response (H. Shin, M.

Prevalence of Capnocytophaga canimorsus in dogs and occurrence of potential virulence factors.

Capnocytophaga canimorsus is a Gram-negative commensal of dog's mouth causing severe human infections. A strain isolated from a human fatal infection was recently shown to have a sialidase, to inhibit the bactericidal activity of macrophages and to block the release of nitric oxide by LPS-stimulated macrophages. The present study aimed at determining the prevalence of C.

Capnocytophaga canimorsus: a human pathogen feeding at the surface of epithelial cells and phagocytes.

Capnocytophaga canimorsus, a commensal bacterium of the canine oral flora, has been repeatedly isolated since 1976 from severe human infections transmitted by dog bites. Here, we show that C. canimorsus exhibits robust growth when it is in direct contact with mammalian cells, including phagocytes.

Genetic tools for studying Capnocytophaga canimorsus.

Capnocytophaga canimorsus, a commensal bacterium from canine oral flora, has been isolated throughout the world from severe human infections caused by dog bites. Due to the low level of evolutionary relationship to Proteobacteria, genetic methods suitable for the genus Capnocytophaga needed to be established. Here, we show that Tn4351, derived from Bacteroides fragilis, could be introduced by conjugation into C.

The response of giant phospholipid vesicles to pore-forming peptide melittin.

The interaction between the pore-forming peptide melittin (MLT) and giant phospholipid vesicles was explored experimentally. Micromanipulation and direct optical observation of a vesicle (loaded with sucrose solution and suspended in isomolar glucose solution) enabled the monitoring of a single vesicle response to MLT. Time dependences of the vesicle size, shape and the composition of the inner solution were examined at each applied concentration of MLT (in the range from 1 to 60 microg/ml).

Escape from immune surveillance by Capnocytophaga canimorsus.

Capnocytophaga canimorsus, a commensal bacterium from dogs' mouths, can cause septicemia or meningitis in humans through bites or scratches. Here, we describe and characterize the inflammatory response of human and mouse macrophages on C. canimorsus infection.

General mutagenesis of F plasmid TraI reveals its role in conjugative regulation.

Bacteria commonly exchange genetic information by the horizontal transfer of conjugative plasmids. In gram-negative conjugation, a relaxase enzyme is absolutely required to prepare plasmid DNA for transit into the recipient via a type IV secretion system. Here we report a mutagenesis of the F plasmid relaxase gene traI using in-frame, 31-codon insertions.

Mechanisms of equinatoxin II-induced transport through the membrane of a giant phospholipid vesicle.

Protein equinatoxin II from sea anemone Actinia equina L. was used to form pores in phospholipid membranes. We studied the effect of these pores on the net transmembrane transport of sucrose and glucose by observing single giant (cell-size) vesicles under the phase contrast microscope.

Stepwise genetic changes associated with progression of nontumorigenic HPV-18 immortalized human prostate cancer-derived cell line to a malignant phenotype.

Cytogenetics, fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH), and comparative genomic hybridization (CGH) were used to identify genes that are involved in the development and progression of prostate cancer. For that purpose, we chose a cell line established in vitro from a prostatic adenocarcinoma which was nontumorigenic in nude mice and followed its progression to a tumorigenic cell line. Stepwise changes were observed in the cell line as it became tumorigenic.

PDX-1 and cell-cell contact act in synergy to promote delta-cell development in a human pancreatic endocrine precursor cell line.

Cell lines from the fetal and adult pancreas that were developed by retroviral transfer of the SV40T and ras(val12) oncogenes lose insulin expression but retain extremely low levels of somatostatin and glucagon mRNA. In contrast to expanded populations of primary human islet cells, none of them express the homeodomain transcription factor PDX-1. When that factor was expressed in the cell lines by retroviral-mediated gene transfer, one of the cell lines, TRM-6, derived from human fetal islets, exhibited a 10- to 100-fold increase in somatostatin gene expression.

Sustained proliferation of PDX-1+ cells derived from human islets.

Ex vivo expansion of human beta-cells is an important step toward the development of cell-based insulin delivery systems in type 1 diabetes. Here, we report that human pancreatic endocrine cells can be expanded through 15 cell doublings in vitro for an estimated total 30,000-fold increase in cell number. We believe that the cells resulting from these cultures are of beta-cell origin, since they uniformly express the transcription factor PDX-1 (STF-1, IDX-1, IPF-1), which is initially seen only in cells positive for insulin and negative for the ductal cell marker cytokeratin (CK)-19.

KSA antigen Ep-CAM mediates cell-cell adhesion of pancreatic epithelial cells: morphoregulatory roles in pancreatic islet development.

Cell adhesion molecules (CAMs) are important mediators of cell-cell interactions and regulate cell fate determination by influencing growth, differentiation, and organization within tissues. The human pancarcinoma antigen KSA is a glycoprotein of 40 kD originally identified as a marker of rapidly proliferating tumors of epithelial origin. Interestingly, most normal epithelia also express this antigen, although at lower levels, suggesting that a dynamic regulation of KSA may occur during cell growth and differentiation.

Phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase is a negative regulator of cellular differentiation.

Phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3K) has been shown to be an important mediator of intracellular signal transduction in mammalian cells. We show here, for the first time, that the blockade of PI3K activity in human fetal undifferentiated cells induced morphological and functional endocrine differentiation. This was associated with an increase in mRNA levels of insulin, glucagon, and somatostatin, as well as an increase in the insulin protein content and secretion in response to secretagogues.