Microsimulation model of CT versus MRI surveillance of Bosniak IIF renal cystic lesions: should effects of radiation exposure affect selection of imaging strategy?

Objective: The objective of this study was to quantify the effects of radiation-induced cancer risks in patients with Bosniak category IIF lesions undergoing CT versus MRI surveillance.

Materials And Methods: We developed a Markov-Monte Carlo model to determine life expectancy losses attributable to radiation-induced cancers in hypothetical patients undergoing CT versus MRI surveillance of Bosniak IIF lesions. Our model tracked hypothetical patients as they underwent imaging surveillance for up to 5 years, accounting for potential lesion progression and treatment.

Total synthesis of a functional designer eukaryotic chromosome.

Rapid advances in DNA synthesis techniques have made it possible to engineer viruses, biochemical pathways and assemble bacterial genomes. Here, we report the synthesis of a functional 272,871-base pair designer eukaryotic chromosome, synIII, which is based on the 316,617-base pair native Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosome III. Changes to synIII include TAG/TAA stop-codon replacements, deletion of subtelomeric regions, introns, transfer RNAs, transposons, and silent mating loci as well as insertion of loxPsym sites to enable genome scrambling.

Observation versus initial treatment for men with localized, low-risk prostate cancer: a cost-effectiveness analysis.

Background: Observation is underutilized among men with localized, low-risk prostate cancer.

Objective: To assess the costs and benefits of observation versus initial treatment.

Design: Decision analysis simulating treatment or observation.

Patient and societal value functions for the testing morbidities index.

Background: We developed preference-based and summated scale scoring for the Testing Morbidities Index (TMI) classification, which addresses short-term effects on quality of life from diagnostic testing before, during, and after testing procedures.

Methods: The two TMI preference functions use multiattribute value techniques; one is patient-based and the other has a societal perspective, informed by 206 breast biopsy patients and 466 (societal) subjects. Because of a lack of standard short-term methods for this application, we used the visual analog scale (VAS).

CLONEQC: lightweight sequence verification for synthetic biology.

Synthetic biology projects aim to produce physical DNA that matches a designed target sequence. Chemically synthesized oligomers are generally used as the starting point for building larger and larger sequences. Due to the error rate of chemical synthesis, these oligomers can have many differences from the target sequence.