A randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled phase II trial to explore the effects of a GABA-α5 NAM (basmisanil) on intellectual disability associated with Down syndrome.

Background: There are currently no pharmacological therapies to address the intellectual disability associated with Down syndrome. Excitatory/inhibitory imbalance has been hypothesized to contribute to impairments in cognitive functioning in Down syndrome. Negative modulation of the GABA-α5 receptor is proposed as a mechanism to attenuate GABAergic function and restore the excitatory/inhibitory balance.

Development of a novel duplex lateral flow test for simultaneous detection of casein and β-lactoglobulin in food.

Milk by-products such as whey and caseinate are widely used as ingredients or processing aids in food industry. However, since they could cause allergic reactions they are included in Allergen Control Plans. β-Lactoglobulin is the major whey protein and caseins are main proteins in milk.

Cysteine Mutational Studies Provide Insight into a Thiol-Based Redox Switch Mechanism of Metal and DNA Binding in FurA from Anabaena sp. PCC 7120.

Aims: The ferric uptake regulator (Fur) is the main transcriptional regulator of genes involved in iron homeostasis in most prokaryotes. FurA from Anabaena sp. PCC 7120 contains five cysteine residues, four of them arranged in two redox-active CXXC motifs.

Site-directed mutagenesis and spectral studies suggest a putative role of FurA from Anabaena sp. PCC 7120 as a heme sensor protein.

The transcriptional repressor Fur (ferric uptake regulator) is one of the most important switches regulating prokaryotic iron metabolism. Cyanobacterial FurA binds heme in the micromolar concentration range and this interaction negatively affects its in vitro DNA binding ability in a concentration-dependent manner. Using site-directed mutagenesis along with difference absorption UV-visible, circular dichroism and electronic paramagnetic resonance spectroscopies, we further analyse the nature of heme binding in FurA.

Using hybrid hierarchical K-means (HHK) clustering algorithm for protein sequence motif super-rule-tree (SRT) structure construction.

Many algorithms or techniques to discover motifs require a predefined fixed window size in advance. Because of the fixed size, these approaches often deliver a number of similar motifs simply shifted by some bases or including mismatches. To confront the mismatched motifs problem, we use the super-rule concept to construct a Super-Rule-Tree (SRT) by a modified Hybrid Hierarchical K-means (HHK) clustering algorithm, which requires no parameter set-up to identify the similarities and dissimilarities between the motifs.

Novel efficient granular computing models for protein sequence motifs and structure information discovery.

Protein sequence motifs have the potential to determine the conformation, function and activities of the proteins. In order to obtain protein sequence motifs which are universally conserved across protein family boundaries, unlike most popular motif discovering algorithms, our input dataset is extremely large. As a result, an efficient technique is demanded.

Mutants of Anabaena sp. PCC 7120 lacking alr1690 and alpha-furA antisense RNA show a pleiotropic phenotype and altered photosynthetic machinery.

Fur proteins are global regulators present in all prokaryotes. In Anabaena sp. PCC 7120 FurA controls iron uptake and modulates an important set of genes related primarily to photosynthesis, nitrogen metabolism and oxidative stress defense.

Distributed sequence alignment applications for the public computing architecture.

The public computer architecture shows promise as a platform for solving fundamental problems in bioinformatics such as global gene sequence alignment and data mining with tools such as the basic local alignment search tool (BLAST). Our implementation of these two problems on the Berkeley open infrastructure for network computing (BOINC) platform demonstrates a runtime reduction factor of 1.15 for sequence alignment and 16.

Cross-talk between iron and nitrogen regulatory networks in anabaena (Nostoc) sp. PCC 7120: identification of overlapping genes in FurA and NtcA regulons.

Nitrogen signalling in cyanobacteria involves a complex network in which the availability of iron plays an important role. In the nitrogen-fixing cyanobacterium Anabaena sp. PCC 7120, iron uptake is controlled by FurA, while NtcA is the master regulator of nitrogen metabolism and shows a mutual dependence with HetR in the first steps of heterocyst development.

FurA modulates gene expression of alr3808, a DpsA homologue in Nostoc (Anabaena) sp. PCC7120.

The DNA-binding protein from stationary phase (Dps) protein family plays an important role in protecting microorganisms from oxidative and nutritional stresses. In silico analysis of the promoter region of alr3808, a dpsA homologue from the cyanobacterium Nostoc sp. PCC7120 shows putative iron-boxes with high homology with those recognized by FurA (ferric uptake regulator).

Two cases of feline visceral and cutaneous leishmaniosis in Spain.

This paper describes clinical signs and lesions in two cases of leishmaniosis--one visceral and one cutaneous in the cat (Felis catus domesticus). The diagnosis was achieved by a combination of serology, light and electron microscopic studies. The vague nature of the clinical signs observed in both cases was particularly striking, and clinical features were similar to many other diseases commonly found in cats.

Effects of different subchronic treatments with lindane on some brush border enzymes in rat jejunum.

Subchronic lindane (gamma-HCH) intoxication by oral or s.c. injection over 7 and 15 days, induced a significant inhibition in rat jejunum maltase activity when the pesticide was administered at doses of 20 mg/kg b.

Effects of in situ and systemic lindane treatment on in vivo absorption of galactose and leucine in rat jejunum.

In vivo intestinal absorption of L-leucine is significantly decreased by the presence of lindane (0.3, 0.2 and 0.

Subtyping of Legionella pneumophila isolates by arbitrarily primed polymerase chain reaction.

Arbitrarily primed polymerase chain reaction (AP-PCR) was used to differentiate strains of Legionella pneumophila isolated from different water sources in a resort hotel in Benidorm, Alicante, Spain, where an outbreak of Legionnaires' disease occurred among a group of tourists between 65 and 80 years of age. All isolates were L. pneumophila serogroup 1, subtype Pontiac (Knoxville 1).

Effect of lindane on galactose and leucine transport in chicken enterocytes.

Lindane (gamma-hexachlorocyclohexane) influence on the in vitro intestinal transport of D-galactose and L-leucine has been studied in isolated chicken enterocytes. Animals were injected i.p.