Leishmaniasis is a neglected tropical disease caused by protozoans of the Leishmania genus, against which no effective treatment or control is available. Like other eukaryotes, parasite telomeres are maintained by telomerase, a ribonucleoprotein complex vital for genome stability. Its protein component, TERT (telomerase reverse transcriptase), presents four structural and functional domains, with the TEN (Telomerase N-terminal) and TRBD (Telomerase RNA-binding) located at its N-terminal.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhen a species is introduced in a new location, it is common for it to establish itself when it finds favorable conditions in the receptor community with regard to interspecific interactions with native species. The azooxanthellate corals coccinea and are invasive species introduced in the Caribbean Sea, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Brazilian Southwest Atlantic. They are successful competitors for space, have multiple reproductive modes, and have high larval dispersion and recruitment, but studies on food and trophic relationships of the genus are still scarce.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSubcutaneous (SAT) and visceral (VAT) adipose tissue dysfunction during the obesity onset can lead to increased expression of inflammatory molecules, and consequently to immune cell infiltration. The aim was to deeply characterize the T cells, those infiltrating SAT and VAT, compared to peripheral blood (PB), in individuals undergoing bariatric surgery. Forty-two adult individuals were recruited, SAT and VAT samples were collected.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPurpose: The analysis of acoustic parameters contributes to the characterisation of human communication development throughout the lifetime. The present paper intends to analyse suprasegmental features of European Portuguese in longitudinal conversational speech samples of three male public figures in uncontrolled environments across different ages, approximately 30 years apart.
Participants And Methods: Twenty prosodic features concerning intonation, intensity, rhythm, and pause measures were extracted semi-automatically from 360 speech intervals (3-4 interviews from each speaker x 30 speech intervals x 3 speakers) lasting between 3 to 6 s.
Differentiating subjects through the comparison of their recorded speech is a common endeavor in speaker characterization. When using an acoustic-based approach, this task typically involves scrutinizing specific acoustic parameters and assessing their discriminatory capacity. This experimental study aimed to evaluate the speaker discriminatory power of vowel formants-resonance peaks in the vocal tract-in two different speaking styles: Dialogue and Interview.
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