The identification of small proteins and proteins produced from unannotated open reading frames (called alternative proteins or AltProts) has changed our vision of the proteome and has attracted more and more attention from the scientific community. Despite several studies investigating particular AltProts in diseases and demonstrating their importance in such context, we are still missing data on their expression and functions in many pathologies. Among these, pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is a particularly relevant case to study alternative proteins.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDermatologie (Heidelb)
November 2024
Unlabelled: Underutilized sheep and goat breeds can adapt to challenging environments due to their genetics. Integrating publicly available genomic datasets with new data will facilitate genetic diversity analyses; however, this process is complicated by data discrepancies, such as outdated assembly versions or different data formats. Here, we present the SMARTER-database, a collection of tools and scripts to standardize genomic data and metadata, mainly from SNP chip arrays on global small ruminant populations, with a focus on reproducibility.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFLymphoid malignancies are complex diseases with distinct biological behaviors, clinical presentations, and treatment responses. Ongoing research and advancements in biotechnology enhance the understanding and management of these malignancies, moving towards more personalized approaches for diagnosis and treatment. Nanotechnology has emerged as a promising tool to improve some limitations of conventional diagnostics as well as treatment strategies for lymphoid malignancies.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: Semen cryopreservation is the most popular practice for semen production for artificial insemination and fertilization in cattle. The Seminal plasma contains extracellular vesicles (spEVs) which modulate sperm viability and function during oocyte fecundation. The study of spEVs in frozen-thawed semen doses may yield novel indicators for predicting bull fertility, but the presence of the semen extender may hinder molecular profiling of spEVs.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBacterial microcompartments (BMCs) are self-assembling protein megacomplexes that encapsulate metabolic pathways. Although approximately 20% of sequenced bacterial genomes contain operons encoding putative BMCs, few have been thoroughly characterized, nor any in the most studied strains. We used an interdisciplinary approach to gain deep molecular and functional insights into the ethanolamine utilization (Eut) BMC system encoded by the operon in K-12.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFChimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cells represent a revolutionary immunotherapy that allows specific tumor recognition by a unique single-chain fragment variable (scFv) derived from monoclonal antibodies (mAbs). scFv selection is consequently a fundamental step for CAR construction, to ensure accurate and effective CAR signaling toward tumor antigen binding. However, conventional in vitro and in vivo biological approaches to compare different scFv-derived CARs are expensive and labor-intensive.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBreeding animals able to effectively respond to stress could be a long-term, sustainable, and affordable strategy to improve resilience and welfare in livestock systems. In the present study, the concentrations of 29 plasma biomarkers were used as candidate endophenotypes for metabolic stress response in single-SNP, gene- and haplotype-based GWAS using 739 healthy lactating Italian Holstein cows and 88,271 variants. Significant genetic associations were found in all the 3 GWAS approaches for plasma γ-glutamyl transferase concentration on BTA17, for paraoxonase on BTA4, and for alkaline phosphatase and zinc on BTA2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInterest in the health consequences of climate change (global warming, heatwaves) has increased in the neurological community. This review addresses the impact of elevated ambient temperatures and heatwaves on patients with neurological and mental health disorders, including multiple sclerosis, synucleinopathies, dementia, epilepsies, mental health, and stroke. Patients with such conditions are highly vulnerable during heatwaves because of functional disorders affecting sleep, thermoregulation, autonomic system reactivity, mood, and cognitive ability.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe question of how local adaptation takes place remains a fundamental question in evolutionary biology. The variation of allele frequencies in genes under selection over environmental gradients remains mainly theoretical and its empirical assessment would help understanding how adaptation happens over environmental clines. To bring new insights to this issue we set up a broad framework which aimed to compare the adaptive trajectories over environmental clines in two domesticated mammal species co-distributed in diversified landscapes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOne-third of newly diagnosed adult acute myeloid leukaemia (AML) carry mutations, which frequently occur together with nucleophosmin () mutations and are associated with worse prognosis. inhibitors are widely used in clinics with limitations due to drug resistance. AML cells carrying mutations in both mouse models and patients present low expression of GATA1, a gene involved in haematopoietic changes preceding AML.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIn the last decade, several studies aimed at dissecting the genetic architecture of local small ruminant breeds to discover which variations are involved in the process of adaptation to environmental conditions, a topic that has acquired priority due to climate change. Considering that traditional breeds are a reservoir of such important genetic variation, improving the current knowledge about their genetic diversity and origin is the first step forward in designing sound conservation guidelines. The genetic composition of North-Western European archetypical goat breeds is still poorly exploited.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Randomized clinical trials in non-critically ill COVID-19 patients showed that therapeutic-dose heparin increased survival with reduced organ support as compared with usual-care thromboprophylaxis, albeit with increased bleeding risk. The purpose of the study is to assess the safety of intermediate dose enoxaparin in hospitalized patients with moderate to severe COVID-19.
Methods: A phase II single-arm interventional prospective study including patients receiving intermediate dose enoxaparin once daily according to body weight: 60 mg for 45-60 kg, 80 mg for 61-100 kg or 100 mg for > 100 kg for 14 days, with dose adjustment according to anti-factor Xa activity (target range: 0.
Introduction: Constitutive activation of -wild-type (NT1-WT) signaling is associated with poor outcomes in chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL), and mutation (c.7541_7542delCT), which potentiates NOTCH1 signaling, worsens the prognosis. However, the specific mechanisms of NOTCH1 deregulation are still poorly understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe African Goat Improvement Network (AGIN) is a collaborative group of scientists focused on genetic improvement of goats in small holder communities across the African continent. The group emerged from a series of workshops focused on enhancing goat productivity and sustainability. Discussions began in 2011 at the inaugural workshop held in Nairobi, Kenya.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBreast cancer (BC) is the most common cancer and the leading cause of cancer death in women worldwide. Since the discovery of the highly penetrant susceptibility genes and , many other predisposition genes that confer a moderate risk of BC have been identified. Advances in multigene panel testing have allowed the simultaneous sequencing of with these genes in a cost-effective way.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Chronic lymphocytic leukemia (CLL) is an incurable disorder associated with alterations in several pathways essential for survival and proliferation. Despite the advances made in CLL therapy with the new target agents, in some cases, relapses and resistance could occur, making the discovery of new alternatives to manage CLL refractoriness necessary. To provide new therapeutic strategies for CLL, we investigated the anti-leukemic activity of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs), whose impact on CLL cells has been poorly explored.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSevere Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a respiratory virus that causes COVID-19 disease, with an estimated global mortality of approximately 2%. While global response strategies, which are predominantly reliant on regular vaccinations, have shifted from zero COVID to living with COVID, there is a distinct lack of broad-spectrum direct acting antiviral therapies that maintain efficacy across evolving SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern. This is of most concern for immunocompromised and immunosuppressed individuals who lack robust immune responses following vaccination, and others at risk for severe COVID and long-COVID.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAbout 20% of adults worldwide have gallstones which are solid conglomerates in the biliary tree made of cholesterol monohydrate crystals, mucin, calcium bilirubinate, and protein aggregates. About 20% of gallstone patients will definitively develop gallstone disease, a condition which consists of gallstone-related symptoms and/or complications requiring medical therapy, endoscopic procedures, and/or cholecystectomy. Gallstones represent one of the most prevalent digestive disorders in Western countries and patients with gallstone disease are one of the largest categories admitted to European hospitals.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInhomogeneous environments are rather ubiquitous in nature, often implying anomalies resulting in deviation from Gaussianity of diffusion processes. While sub- and superdiffusion are usually due to contrasting environmental features (hindering or favoring the motion, respectively), they are both observed in systems ranging from the micro- to the cosmological scale. Here we show how a model encompassing sub- and superdiffusion in an inhomogeneous environment exhibits a critical singularity in the normalized generator of the cumulants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAnomalous diffusion phenomena occur on length scales spanning from intracellular to astrophysical ranges. A specific form of decay at a large argument of the probability density function of rescaled displacement (scaling function) is derived and shown to imply universal singularities in the normalized cumulant generator. Exact calculations for continuous time random walks provide paradigmatic examples connected with singularities of second order phase transitions.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF