Analyzing the paradigmatic cases of two persons with a disorder of consciousness: reflections on the legal and ethical perspectives.

Background: Media have increasingly reported on the difficulties associated with end-of-life decision-making in patients with Disorders of Consciousness (DOC), contextualizing such dilemma in detailed accounts of the patient's life. Two of the first stories debated in the scientific community were those related to the cases of two women, one American, the other Italian, who captured attention of millions of people in the first years of this third millennium.

Methods: Much has been written about the challenges of surrogate decision-making for patients in DOC, but less has been written comparing these challenges across legal systems and cultures.

A roadmap to surgery in osteogenesis imperfecta: results of an international collaboration of patient organizations and interdisciplinary care teams.

Background and purpose - Involvement of patient organizations is steadily increasing in guidelines for treatment of various diseases and conditions for better care from the patient's viewpoint and better comparability of outcomes. For this reason, the Osteogenesis Imperfecta Federation Europe and the Care4BrittleBones Foundation convened an interdisciplinary task force of 3 members from patient organizations and 12 healthcare professionals from recognized centers for interdisciplinary care for children and adults with osteogenesis imperfecta (OI) to develop guidelines for a basic roadmap to surgery in OI.Methods - All information from 9 telephone conferences, expert consultations, and face-to-face meetings during the International Conference for Quality of Life for Osteogenesis Imperfecta 2019 was used by the task force to define themes and associated recommendations.

Providing high-quality care remotely to patients with rare bone diseases during COVID-19 pandemic.

During the COVID-19 outbreak, the European Reference Network on Rare Bone Diseases (ERN BOND) coordination team and Italian rare bone diseases healthcare professionals created the "COVID-19 Helpline for Rare Bone Diseases" in an attempt to provide high-quality information and expertise on rare bone diseases remotely to patients and healthcare professionals. The present position statement describes the key characteristics of the Helpline initiative, along with the main aspects and topics that recurrently emerged as central for rare bone diseases patients and professionals. The main topics highlighted are general recommendations, pulmonary complications, drug treatment, trauma, pregnancy, children and elderly people, and patient associations role.

From Neandertals to modern humans: New data on the Uluzzian.

Having thrived in Eurasia for 350,000 years Neandertals disappeared from the record around 40,000-37,000 years ago, after modern humans entered Europe. It was a complex process of population interactions that included cultural exchanges and admixture between Neandertals and dispersing groups of modern humans. In Europe Neandertals are always associated with the Mousterian while the Aurignacian is associated with modern humans only.

NIR persistent luminescence of lanthanide ion-doped rare-earth oxycarbonates: the effect of dopants.

A series of luminescent rare-earth ion-doped hexagonal II-type Gd oxycarbonate phosphors Gd2-xRExO2CO3 (RE = Eu(3+), Yb(3+), Dy(3+)) have been successfully synthesized by thermal decomposition of the corresponding mixed oxalates. The Yb(3+) doped Gd-oxycarbonate has evidenced a high persistent luminescence in the NIR region, that is independent from the temperature and makes this materials particular attractive as optical probes for bioimaging.

HIV shedding in cervico-vaginal secretions in pregnant women.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to evaluate the presence of HIV-1 in cervico-vaginal secretions of pregnant as compared to non-pregnant HIV-seropositive women.

Patients And Methods: We compared 43 known HIV seropositive pregnant patients versus 241 age-matched (± 2 years) control non-pregnant HIV-seropositive subjects. In pregnant patients blood and cervico-vaginal samples were obtained during each trimester of pregnancy.

A computational framework for qualitative simulation of nonlinear dynamical models of gene-regulatory networks.

Background: Due to the huge amount of information at genomic level made recently available by high-throughput experimental technologies, networks of regulatory interactions between genes and gene products, the so-called gene-regulatory networks, can be uncovered. Most networks of interest are quite intricate because of both the high dimension of interacting elements and the complexity of the kinds of interactions between them. Then, mathematical and computational modeling frameworks are a must to predict the network behavior in response to environmental stimuli.

Hepatitis C virus infection and myositis: a virus localization study.

We report a case of myositis associated with chronic hepatitis C virus infection. Muscle biopsy and immunohistochemistry showed perifascicular atrophy, few necrotic and regenerating fibres, scarce perivascular infiltrates, deposits of immunoglobulin G, C3, fibrinogen and MAC in muscle vessel walls, and non-uniform expression of major histocompatibility complex-I antigens among muscle fibres. Hepatitis C virus NS3 antigen and hepatitis C virus RNA were detected in infiltrating cells but not within muscle fibres or endothelial cells.

A 9359 bp fragment from the right arm of Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosome VII includes the FOL2 and YTA7 genes and three unknown open reading frames.

In the framework of the EU programme for systematic sequencing of the Saccharomyces cervisiae genome we determined the sequence of a 9359 bp fragment of the right arm of chromosome VII. Five open reading frames (ORFs) of at least 300 nucleotides were found in this region. YGR267c encodes a protein with significant similarity to the enzyme GTP-cyclohydrolase I, that controls the first step in the biosynthetic pathway leading to various pterins and shows a high degree of sequence conservation from bacteria to mammals.

Human neoplastic Schwann cells: changes in the expression of neurotrophins and their low-affinity receptor p75.

Neurotrophins are known to influence Schwann cells during development and to promote peripheral nerve regeneration after axonal damage. In neoplastic conditions. Schwann cells from experimentally-induced schwannomas appear to retain their responsiveness to nerve growth factor (NGF), although the role of neurotrophins in the neoplastic process in poorly understood.

Analysis of a 17.9 kb region from Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosome VII reveals the presence of eight open reading frames, including BRF1 (TFIIIB70) and GCN5 genes.

We report the nucleotide sequence of a 17,893 bp DNA segment from the right arm of Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosome VII. This fragment begins at 482 kb from the centromere. The sequence includes the BRF1 gene, encoding TFIIIB70, the 5' portion of the GCN5 gene, an open reading frame (ORF) previously identified as ORF MGA1, whose translation product shows similarity to heat-shock transcription factors and five new ORFs.

Nucleotide sequence of 9.2 kb left of CRY1 on yeast chromosome III from strain AB972: evidence for a Ty insertion and functional analysis of open reading frame YCR28.

We report the 9210 bp sequence from a segment of yeast chromosome III cloned from strain AB972 in lambda PM3270. Analysis of this sequence and its comparison with the one derived from the corresponding segment of strain XJ24-24A revealed that the AB972 region contains a duplication of about 2 kb and a Ty element, which are not found in XJ24-24A and cause a quite significant rearrangement of the whole region. We performed functional analysis of YCR28, the largest open reading frame we found in both AB972 and XJ24-24A.

A gene tightly linked to CEN6 is important for growth of Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Transcriptional analysis of the region flanking the left boundary of the centromere of chromosome VI revealed the presence of a gene immediately adjacent to CEN6. The transcription of the gene is directed toward the centromere, and nucleotide sequence analysis showed that the coding region terminates only 50 bp away from CEN6. Our results extend to chromosome VI the observation that centromere-flanking regions of S.

Role of conserved sequence elements in yeast centromere DNA.

Conserved sequence features in Saccharomyces cerevisiae CEN DNA are confined to a region of approximately 120 bp. The highly conserved 8 bp at the left (PuTCACPuTG) constitute the left boundary of a functional CEN DNA as shown by the analysis of a series of Bal31 deletions. The right boundary of a functional CEN DNA lies within the conserved 25 bp at the right (TGT-T-TG--TTCCGAA-----AAA) or a few base pairs further outside of the 120-bp region.

Centromeric DNA from chromosome VI in Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains.

The functional sequence from the centromere in chromosome VI ( CEN6 ) of Saccharomyces cerevisiae was narrowed down to a stretch of 500 bp by a Bal31 deletion approach. The DNA sequence in this region shows three long stretches, 40 bp, 96 bp, and 63 bp of 85% and more AT pairs and a pyrimidine purine bias in the individual single strands. We assume that the CEN6 functional sequences encompass these AT-rich stretches because this part shows striking similarities to sequence elements common to CEN3 and CEN11 DNA.

Hycanthone as a specific frameshift mutagen in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Reversion of mutations of different molecular nature was studied after treatment with hycanthone in mild conditions (0.05--0.4 mM, 4 h in the dark, pH 7.

Effect of X-irradiation on frameshift and missense mutations in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

In cell populations of Saccharomyces cerevisiae homogeneous for sensitivity to X-irradiation, induction of base insertions/deletions and base substitutions was quantitatively analyzed in a reversion system. The repair mechanisms phenotypically unexpressed in the sensitive cell fraction and fully operating in resistant cells did not affect point mutations of either type.

Molecular specificity of x-radiation and its repair in Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Molecular specificity of soft X-radiation has been studied in yeast by analyzing the transitions UAA in equilibrium UAG and nonsense leads to sense mutations in the codon tyr7-1. Synchronized cell populations in the most radiosensitive and radioresistant stages were compared: they did not show any qualitative or quantitative differences in their sensitivities to the mutagenic action of X-rays. We conclude that repair mechanisms, which remain unexpressed in the sensitive cells, do not affect point mutations of the base-substitution type.