Prevalence of Amphetamine-Type Stimulant Use and Related Factors among Methadone Maintenance Patients in Ho Chi Minh City Vietnam: A Cross-Sectional Study.

The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence of amphetamine-type stimulant use and associated factors among methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) patients. In 2018, a cross-sectional study was conducted on 967 MMT patients at two methadone clinics in Ho Chi Minh City that serve Vietnamese patients. Amphetamine-type stimulant use was assessed by rapid urine test and face-to-face interview using the Alcohol, Smoking, Substance Involvement Screening Test (ASSIST) tool.

Epigenetic regulation of spurious transcription initiation in Arabidopsis.

In plants, epigenetic regulation is critical for silencing transposons and maintaining proper gene expression. However, its impact on the genome-wide transcription initiation landscape remains elusive. By conducting a genome-wide analysis of transcription start sites (TSSs) using cap analysis of gene expression (CAGE) sequencing, we show that thousands of TSSs are exclusively activated in various epigenetic mutants of Arabidopsis thaliana and referred to as cryptic TSSs.

Computational reconstruction of transcriptional relationships from ChIP-chip data.

Unlabelled: Eukaryotic gene transcription is a complex process, which requires the orchestrated recruitment of a large number of proteins, such as sequence-specific DNA binding factors, chromatin remodelers and modifiers, and general transcription machinery, to regulatory regions. Previous works have shown that these regulatory proteins favor specific organizational theme along promoters. Details about how they cooperatively regulate transcriptional process, however, remain unclear.

Sequence-dependent histone variant positioning signatures.

Background: Nucleosome, the fundamental unit of chromatin, is formed by wrapping nearly 147bp of DNA around an octamer of histone proteins. This histone core has many variants that are different from each other by their biochemical compositions as well as biological functions. Although the deposition of histone variants onto chromatin has been implicated in many important biological processes, such as transcription and replication, the mechanisms of how they are deposited on target sites are still obscure.

Characterizing nucleosome dynamics from genomic and epigenetic information using rule induction learning.

Background: Eukaryotic genomes are packaged into chromatin, a compact structure containing fundamental repeating units, the nucleosomes. The mobility of nucleosomes plays important roles in many DNA-related processes by regulating the accessibility of regulatory elements to biological machineries. Although it has been known that various factors, such as DNA sequences, histone modifications, and chromatin remodelling complexes, could affect nucleosome stability, the mechanisms of how they regulate this stability are still unclear.