Publications by authors named "Pitluk Z"

Article Synopsis
  • Bartter syndrome is a rare genetic disorder affecting kidney function by impairing electrolyte reabsorption, leading to potentially fatal conditions like hyponatremia and dehydration, with type II linked to mutations in the KCNJ1 gene.
  • The study focused on identifying new, uncharacterized mutations in KCNJ1 that may cause disease by using genomic databases and advanced computational tools to analyze phenotypic and genomic data, particularly from the UK Biobank, NIH TOPMed, and ClinVar.
  • Two mutations were highlighted: G228E, which destabilizes the potassium channel ROMK and leads to its degradation, and T300R, which is resistant to ER degradation but shows impaired channel activity, suggesting that these findings can help
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Article Synopsis
  • Bartter syndrome is a rare genetic disorder affecting kidney function by disrupting electrolyte reabsorption, leading to severe health issues if untreated, including fatal hyponatremia and hypokalemia.
  • The study focuses on Bartter syndrome type II, which is linked to mutations in the ROMK gene; researchers identified over 40 associated mutations but most remain poorly understood.
  • Utilizing genomic databases and computational tools, the study discovered four new mutations in ROMK that affect its stability and function, with some mutations leading to premature degradation of the protein while others demonstrated resistance to degradation.
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Background: Single-cell (sc) sequencing performs unbiased profiling of individual cells and enables evaluation of less prevalent cellular populations, often missed using bulk sequencing. However, the scale and the complexity of the sc datasets poses a great challenge in its utility and this problem is further exacerbated when working with larger datasets typically generated by consortium efforts. As the scale of single cell datasets continues to increase exponentially, there is an unmet technological need to develop database platforms that can evaluate key biological hypotheses by querying extensive single-cell datasets.

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We describe a new model for collaborative access, exploration, and analyses of the Medical Information Mart for Intensive Care - III (MIMIC III) database for translational clinical research. The proposed model addresses the significant disconnect between data collection at the point of care and translational clinical research. It addresses problems of data integration, preprocessing, normalization, analyses (along with associated compute back-end), and visualization.

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Decisions in drug development are made on the basis of determinations of cause and effect from experimental observations that span drug development phases. Despite advances in our powers of observation, the ability to determine compound mechanisms from large-scale multi-omic technologies continues to be a major bottleneck. This can only be overcome by utilizing computational learning methods that identify from compound data the circuits and connections between drug-affected molecular constituents and physiological observables.

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Eukaryotic cell cycles are controlled by the activities of cyclin-dependent kinases (cdks). The major cdk in budding yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, is Cdc28p. Activation of Cdc28p requires phosphorylation on threonine 169 and binding to a cyclin.

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CDC34 (UBC3) encodes a ubiquitin-conjugating (E2) enzyme required for transition from the G1 phase to the S phase of the budding yeast cell cycle. CDC34 consists of a 170-residue catalytic N-terminal domain onto which is appended an acidic C-terminal domain. A portable determinant of cell cycle function resides in the C-terminal domain, but determinants for specific function must reside in the N-terminal domain as well.

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A role for heterooligomeric TCP1 complex as a chaperonin in the eukaryotic cytosol has recently been suggested both by structural similarities with other chaperonins and by in vitro experiments showing it to mediate ATP-dependent folding of actin, tubulin, and luciferase. Here we present the primary structure of a second subunit of the complex and present genetic and functional analyses. The TCP1 beta amino acid sequence, predicted from the cloned gene, bears 35% identity to TCP1, termed here TCP1 alpha, containing the same highly conserved residues found in the collective sequence of chaperonins.

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To further define the transcriptional regulation of the P38 promoter in the minute virus of mice (MVM) genome, we constructed a series of internal deletion and linker scanning mutations. The mutant P38 constructs were assayed for transcriptional activity in vitro by primer extension analysis with nuclear extracts from murine A92L fibroblasts. Mutations which disrupted the GC box and TATA box severely reduced transcription in vitro.

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The P4 promoter of the parvovirus minute virus of mice contains a single degenerate GC box sequence which binds the transcription factor Sp1 with high affinity. The two promoters of murine Sp1 were affinity purified, and their interactions with the P4 promoter were examined. Several unusual features were observed.

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The kinetics of dithionite reduction of the oxidized heme nonapeptide fragment of horse heart cytochrome c have been measured as a function of ionic strength at pH 7 and pH 9 by the stopped-flow technique. Dithionite concentration dependences indicate that the radical anion monomer, SO2-., is the active reductant.

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