Publications by authors named "Nicole de Gregorio"

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is the most common type of dementia, characterized by the abnormal accumulation of protein aggregates in the brain, known as neurofibrillary tangles and amyloid-β (Aβ) plaques. It is believed that an imbalance between cerebral and peripheral pools of Aβ may play a relevant role in the deposition of Aβ aggregates. Therefore, in this study, we aimed to evaluate the effect of the removal of Aβ from blood plasma on the accumulation of amyloid plaques in the brain.

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Progressive accumulation of α-Synuclein (αSyn) in Lewy bodies (LBs) and loss of dopaminergic (DA) neurons are the hallmark pathological features of Parkinson's disease (PD). Although currently available in vitro and in vivo models have provided crucial information about PD pathogenesis, the mechanistic link between the progressive accumulation of αSyn into LBs and the loss of DA neurons is still unclear. To address this, it is critical to model LB formation and DA neuron loss, the two key neuropathological aspects of PD, in a relevant in vitro system.

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Molecular fragmentation methods have revolutionized quantum chemistry. Here, we use a graph-theoretically generated molecular fragmentation method, to obtain accurate and efficient representations for multidimensional potential energy surfaces and the quantum time-evolution operator, which plays a critical role in quantum chemical dynamics. In doing so, we find that the graph-theoretic fragmentation approach naturally reduces the potential portion of the time-evolution operator into a tensor network that contains a stream of coupled lower-dimensional propagation steps to potentially achieve quantum dynamics with reduced complexity.

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Background: Testicular aches have been reported to occur on exposure to high altitude (HA). As a painful expression of venous congestion at the pampiniform plexus, varicocele (VC) might be a consequence of cardiovascular adjustments at HA. Chile's National Social Security Regulatory Body (SUSESO) emphasized evaluating this condition in the running follow-up study "Health effects of exposure to chronic intermittent hypoxia in Chilean mining workers.

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We present a multitopology molecular fragmentation approach, based on graph theory, to calculate multidimensional potential energy surfaces in agreement with post-Hartree-Fock levels of theory but at the density functional theory cost. A molecular assembly is coarse-grained into a set of graph-theoretic nodes that are then connected with edges to represent a collection of locally interacting subsystems up to an arbitrary order. Each of the subsystems is treated at two levels of electronic structure theory, the result being used to construct many-body expansions that are embedded within an ONIOM scheme.

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In obesity, skeletal muscle mitochondrial activity changes to cope with increased nutrient availability. Autophagy has been proposed as an essential mechanism involved in the regulation of mitochondrial metabolism. Still, the contribution of autophagy to mitochondrial adaptations in skeletal muscle during obesity is unknown.

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Aims: Despite the broad pharmacological arsenal to treat hypertension, chronic patients may develop irreversible cardiac remodeling and fibrosis. Angiotensin II, the main peptide responsible for the Renin-Angiotensin-Aldosterone-System, has been closely linked to cardiac remodeling, hypertrophy, fibrosis, and hypertension, and some of these effects are induced by inflammatory mediators. Resolvin-D1 (RvD1) elicits potent anti-inflammatory and pro-resolving effects in various pathological models.

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Previous results evidenced acute exposure to high altitude (HA) weakening the relation between daily melatonin cycle and the respiratory quotient. This review deals with the threat extreme environments pose on body time order, particularly concerning energy metabolism. Working at HA, at poles, or in space challenge our ancestral inborn body timing system.

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We present two methods that address the computational complexities arising in hydrogen transfer reactions in enzyme active sites. To address the challenge of reactive rare events, we begin with an ab initio molecular dynamics adaptation of the Caldeira-Leggett system-bath Hamiltonian and apply this approach to the study of the hydrogen transfer rate-determining step in soybean lipoxygenase-1. Through direct application of this method to compute an ensemble of classical trajectories, we discuss the critical role of isoleucine-839 in modulating the primary hydrogen transfer event in SLO-1.

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We present an approach to reduce the computational complexity and storage pertaining to quantum nuclear wave functions and potential energy surfaces. The method utilizes tensor networks implemented through sequential singular value decompositions. Two specific forms of tensor networks are considered to adaptively compress the data in multidimensional quantum nuclear wave functions and potential energy surfaces.

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High altitude (HA) exposure may affect human health and performance by involving the body timing system. Daily variations of melatonin may disrupt by HA exposure, thereby possibly affecting its relations with a metabolic parameter like the respiratory quotient (RQ). Sea level (SL) volunteers (7 women and 7 men, 21.

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We present two sampling measures to gauge critical regions of potential energy surfaces. These sampling measures employ (a) the instantaneous quantum wavepacket density, an approximation to the (b) potential surface, its (c) gradients, and (d) a Shannon information theory based expression that estimates the local entropy associated with the quantum wavepacket. These four criteria together enable a directed sampling of potential surfaces that appears to correctly describe the local oscillation frequencies, or the local Nyquist frequency, of a potential surface.

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Objective: The aim of this study is to evaluate the effect of preeclampsia on the level of lipid peroxidation, activity and expression of both plasma membrane Ca(2+)- and Na(+), K(+)-ATPases in syncytiotrophoblast.

Methods: The level of lipid peroxidation was estimated by measuring TBARS. ATPase activities were quantified by a colorimetric method measuring the amount of inorganic phosphate during the assay.

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Purpose: To discern whether arrhythmogenesis at high-altitude (HA) may differ depending on ascent or descent, as well as on age.

Methods: Male subjects (37.9±12.

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Potassium channels play important physiological roles in human syncytiotrophoblasts (hSTBs) from placenta, an epithelium responsible for maternal-fetal exchange. Basal and apical plasma membranes differ in their lipid and protein composition, and the latter contains cholesterol-enriched microdomains. In placental tissue, the specific localization of potassium channels is unknown.

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Intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) and preeclampsia (PE) are leading causes of perinatal and maternal morbidity and mortality. Previously we reported the expression of lipid rafts in classical microvillous membrane (MVM) and light microvillous membrane (LMVM), two subdomains in apical membrane from the human placental syncytiotrophoblast (hSTB), which constitute the epithelium responsible for maternal-fetal transport. Here the aim was to study the raft and cytoskeletal proteins from PE and IUGR.

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