Comparative study of muscle-sparing latissimus dorsi vs breast implants following total mastectomy.

Introduction: With 60,000 cases per year, breast cancer is the most frequent type of cancer in France, and a quarter of these cases require mastectomy. Following the surgery, breast reconstruction can be indicated. Two of the available techniques are breast implants (BIs) and muscle-sparing latissimus dorsi (MSLD).

Recovery from adaptation to facial identity is larger for upright than inverted faces in the human occipito-temporal cortex.

Human faces look more similar to each other when they are presented upside-down, leading to an increase of error rates and response times during individual face discrimination tasks. Here we used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to test the hypothesis that this perceived similarity leads to a lower recovery from identity adaptation for inverted faces than for upright faces in face-sensitive areas of the occipito-temporal cortex. Ten subjects were presented with blocks of upright and inverted faces, with the same face identity repeated consecutively in half of the blocks, and different facial identities repeated in the other blocks.

Neural impact of the semantic content of visual mental images and visual percepts.

The existence of hemispheric lateralization of visual mental imagery remains controversial. In light of the literature, we used fMRI to test whether processing of mental images of object drawings preferentially engages the left hemisphere to compared non-object drawings. An equivalent comparison was also made while participants actually perceived object and non-object drawings.

Interaction of Diocleinae lectins with glycoproteins based in surface plasmon resonance.

Interaction of glucose/mannose-binding lectins in solution with immobilized glycoproteins was followed in real time using surface plasmon resonance technology. The lectins which share many biochemical and structural features could be clearly differentiated in terms of their specificity for complex glycoconjugates. The most prominent interaction of the lectins with PHA-E comparing with soybean agglutinin, both glycoproteins exhibiting high mannose oligosaccharides, suggests that the whole structure of the glycoproteins themselves, may interfere in affinity.

Impact of fMRI acoustic noise on the functional anatomy of visual mental imagery.

One drawback of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is that the subject must endure intense noise during testing. We examined the possible role of such noise on the activation of early visual cortex during visual mental imagery. We postulated that noise may require subjects to work harder to pay attention to the task, which in turn could alter the activation pattern found in a silent environment.

Characterization and molecular cloning of the lectin from Helianthus tuberosus.

A lectin called Helianthus tuberosus agglutinin or Heltuba has been isolated from tubers of the Jerusalem artichoke, a typical representative of the Asteraceae family. Heltuba is a tetrameric protein composed of four identical subunits of 15.5 kDa and exhibits a preferential specificity towards oligomannosides.

Inducibility of the SOS response in a recA730 or recA441 strain is restored by transformation with a new recA allele.

Escherichia coli RecA protein plays an essential role in both genetic recombination and SOS repair; in vitro RecA needs to bind ATP to promote both activities. Residue 264 is involved in this interaction; we have therefore created two new recA alleles, recA664 (Tyr264-->Glu) and recA665 (Tyr264-->His) bearing mutations at this site. As expected both mutations affected all RecA activities in vivo.

Characterization and localization of cis-diamminedichloro-platinum(II) adducts on a purified oligonucleotide containing the codons 12 and 13 of H-ras proto-oncogene.

The use of substrates containing well defined adducts at precise sites, is required to perform a careful analysis of the toxic and mutagenic potential of a lesion. As a first step in this direction the octamer 5'-d(CCGGCGGT), containing the sequence of the codons 12 d(GGC) and 13 d(GGT) of the human H-ras gene, was reacted with the antitumoral drug cis-diamminedichloroplatinum(II). The platinated products have been purified by HPLC.

Kinetic studies of the hydrolysis of platinum-DNA complexes by nuclease S1.

The antitumor agent cis-diamminedichloroplatinum(II) (cis-DDP) reacts covalently with DNA and disrupts its secondary structure. Damaged DNA, but not native DNA, is readily digested by S1 nuclease, an endonuclease specific for single stranded polynucleotides. We have measured S1 nuclease digestion of platinated DNA by the release of platinum-DNA adducts and compared it with digestion of unplatinated DNA.

Kinetics of the reaction of cis-platinum compounds with DNA in vitro.

The kinetics of the reaction of a series of cis-platinum(II) compounds with DNA in vitro has been studied using their ability to disturb the secondary structure of the macromolecule. The complexation modifies the stacking of the base pairs and causes an inhibition of the intercalation of ethidium bromide which is correlated with the number of platinum atoms bound per nucleotide. The compounds fall into three groups which react in a few minutes, in a few hours or in several days.

[Gallium sulfate and skin allografts in the mouse].

Survival of skin allografts in mice are prolonged when these animals are injected subcutaneously with gallium sulfate before and after the grafting. The average survival is then 17, 2 days whereas it is 12,5 days for controls. For mice treated with an immunodepressive drug such as cortisone acetate average survival is 13,4 days; it is 17 days when cortisone has been added to the metallic salt.

[Value and duration of the bone localization of gallium in the mouse].

Gallium was administered subcutaneously to mice, and was found to be localized essentially in the skeleton. It was measured in the bones of animals given daily injections of gallium sulfate. There was little or no mortality.