19 results match your criteria: "Future Business Centre[Affiliation]"

Impaired kinase signalling leads to various diseases, including cancer. At the same time, kinases make up the majority of the druggable genome and targeting kinase activity has proven to be a successful first-line therapy for many cancers. Among the best-studied kinases are the mitogen-activated protein kinases (MAPKs), which regulate cell proliferation, differentiation, motility, and survival.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Insectivorous predators, including birds and bats, play crucial roles in trophic cascades. However, previous research on these cascades has often relied on permanent predator exclosures, which prevent the isolation of specific effects of birds and bats, given their different activity patterns throughout the day. Moreover, limited knowledge exists regarding the variations in individual effects of these predators under different biotic and abiotic conditions, such as changes in elevation.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: The world faces a major infectious disease challenge. Interest in the discovery, design, or development of antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) as an alternative approach for the treatment of bacterial infections has increased. Insects are a good source of AMPs which are the main effector molecules of their innate immune system.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: There is a global need to develop new therapies to treat infectious diseases and tackle the rise in antimicrobial resistance. To date, the larvae of the Black Solider Fly, Hermetia illucens, have the largest repertoire of antimicrobial peptides derived from insects. Antimicrobial peptides are of particular interest in the exploration of alternative antimicrobials due to their potent action and reduced propensity to induce resistance compared with more traditional antibiotics.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Diffuse and concentrated nitrogen sewage pollution in island environments with differing treatment systems.

Sci Rep

March 2023

Isles of Scilly Wildlife Trust, Trenoweth, St Mary's, Isles of Scilly, TR21 0NS, UK.

Macroalgae is an under-utilised tool as a bioindicator of anthropogenic nitrogen loading to the coastal environment in the UK. This study compared two island systems-Jersey (Channel Islands) and St Mary's (Isles of Scilly) to assess how differing sewerage infrastructure affects nitrogen loading. A total of 831 macroalgae samples of Fucus vesiculosus and Ulva sp.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Accurate monitoring of battery cell state of charge (SoC) and state of health (SoH) is vital to the safe and effective operation of rechargeable battery systems such as those in electric vehicles yet remains a challenge while the system is in use. A new surface-mounted sensor enabling simple and rapid monitoring of lithium-ion battery cell SoC and SoH is demonstrated. Small changes in cell volume brought about by the expansion and contraction of electrode materials during charge and discharge are detected through monitoring the changes in electrical resistance of a graphene film in the sensor.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The receptor binding domain(s) (RBD) of spike (S) proteins of SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2 (severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus) undergoes closed to open transition to engage with host ACE2 receptors. In this study, using multi atomistic (equilibrium) and targeted (non-equilibrium) molecular dynamics simulations, we have compared energetics of RBD opening pathways in full-length (modeled from cryo-EM structures) S proteins of SARS-CoV-1 and SARS-CoV-2. Our data indicate that amino acid variations at the RBD interaction interface can culminate into distinct free energy landscapes of RBD opening in these S proteins.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Kinases still remain the most favorable members of the druggable genome, and there are an increasing number of kinase inhibitors approved by the FDA to treat a variety of cancers. Here, we summarize recent developments in targeting kinases and pseudokinases with some examples. Targeting the cell cycle machinery garnered significant clinical success, however, a large section of the kinome remains understudied.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Copy number variations (CNVs) are genomic structural variations (deletions, duplications, or translocations) that represent the 4.8-9.5% of human genome variation in healthy individuals.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Printing of highly conductive tracks at low cost is of primary importance for the emerging field of flexible, plastic, and large-area electronics. Commonly, this is achieved by printing of metallic conductive inks, often based on Ag or Cu nanoparticles dispersed in organic solvents. The solvents, which must be safely removed, have particular storage and handling requirements, thus increasing the process costs.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The functional electrical stimulation (FES) bicycle race was an event at the Cybathlon, held in Zurich October 2016. BerkelBike BV (The Netherlands) in collaboration with Imperial College London entered a spinal cord injury pilot who had tetraplegia to compete in this event. The BerkelBike Pro is a commercially available FES capable recumbent which is normally driven by the arm- and leg power.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Identifying large expansions of short tandem repeats (STRs), such as those that cause amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and fragile X syndrome, is challenging for short-read whole-genome sequencing (WGS) data. A solution to this problem is an important step toward integrating WGS into precision medicine. We developed a software tool called ExpansionHunter that, using PCR-free WGS short-read data, can genotype repeats at the locus of interest, even if the expanded repeat is larger than the read length.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Scientific research relies on computer software, yet software is not always developed following practices that ensure its quality and sustainability. This manuscript does not aim to propose new software development best practices, but rather to provide simple recommendations that encourage the adoption of existing best practices. Software development best practices promote better quality software, and better quality software improves the reproducibility and reusability of research.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Summary: The vast, uncoordinated proliferation of bioinformatics resources (databases, software tools, training materials etc.) makes it difficult for users to find them. To facilitate their discovery, various services are being developed to collect such resources into registries.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs) are prepared from natural graphite by a simple and low-cost liquid phase high shear exfoliation method. The as-prepared GNPs are used as a counter electrode (CE) material for dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSCs). To confirm the Exfoliated GNPs, structural and morphological studies are carried out using X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and selected area electron diffraction (SAED) studies.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Cancer is first and foremost a disease of the genome. Specific genetic signatures within a tumour are prognostic of disease outcome, reflect subclonal architecture and intratumour heterogeneity, inform treatment choices and predict the emergence of resistance to targeted therapies. Minimally invasive liquid biopsies can give temporal resolution to a tumour's genetic profile and allow the monitoring of treatment response through levels of circulating tumour DNA (ctDNA).

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

There is no unified place where genomics researchers can search through all available raw genomic data in a way similar to OMIM for genes or Uniprot for proteins. With the recent increase in the amount of genomic data that is being produced and the ever-growing promises of precision medicine, this is becoming more and more of a problem. DNAdigest is a charity working to promote efficient sharing of human genomic data to improve the outcome of genomic research and diagnostics for the benefit of patients.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Beyond research: a primer for considerations on using viral metagenomics in the field and clinic.

Front Microbiol

April 2015

Theoretical Biology and Bioinformatics, Utrecht University, Utrecht Netherlands ; Centre for Molecular and Biomolecular Informatics, Radboud Institute for Molecular Life Sciences, Radboud University Medical Centre, Nijmegen Netherlands ; Department of Marine Biology, Institute of Biology, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro Brazil.

Powered by recent advances in next-generation sequencing technologies, metagenomics has already unveiled vast microbial biodiversity in a range of environments, and is increasingly being applied in clinics for difficult-to-diagnose cases. It can be tempting to suggest that metagenomics could be used as a "universal test" for all pathogens without the need to conduct lengthy serial testing using specific assays. While this is an exciting prospect, there are issues that need to be addressed before metagenomic methods can be applied with rigor as a diagnostic tool, including the potential for incidental findings, unforeseen consequences for trade and regulatory authorities, privacy and cultural issues, data sharing, and appropriate reporting of results to end-users.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

DNAdigest's mission is to investigate and address the issues hindering efficient and ethical genomic data sharing in the human genomics research community. We conducted contextual interviews with human genomics researchers in clinical, academic or industrial R&D settings about their experience with accessing and sharing human genomic data. The qualitative interviews were followed by an online survey which provided quantitative support for our findings.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF