A novel PCFT gene mutation (p.Cys66LeufsX99) causing hereditary folate malabsorption

Hereditary folate malabsorption (HFM) is a rare autosomal recessive disorder which is characterized by impaired intestinal folate malabsorption and impaired folate transport into the central nervous system. Mutations in the intestinal folate transporter PCFT have been reported previously in only 10 individuals with this disorder. The purpose of the current study was to describe the clinical phenotype and determine the molecular basis for this disorder in a family with four affected individuals. A consanguineous family of Pakistani origin with autosomal recessive HFM was ascertained and clinically phenotyped. After genetic linkage studies all coding exons of the PCFT gene were screened for mutations by direct sequencing. The clinical phenotype of four affected patients is described. Direct sequencing of PCFT revealed a novel homozygous frameshift mutation (c.194dupG) at a mononucleotide repeat in exon 1 predicted to result in a truncated protein (p.Cys66LeufsX99). This report extends current knowledge on the phenotypic manifestations of HFM and the PCFT mutation spectrum

XASH-3, a novel Xenopus achaete-scute homolog, provides an early marker of planar neural induction and position along the mediolateral axis of the neural plate

We have isolated a novel Xenopus homolog of the Drosophila achaete-scute genes, called XASH-3. XASH-3 expression is neural specific and is detected as early as stage 11 1/2, making it one of the earliest markers of neural induction so far described. Moreover, XASH-3 expression within the neural plate is regionally restricted. Transverse bands of XASH-3 mRNA mark discrete positions along the anteroposterior axis, while longitudinal bands mark a discrete position along the mediolateral axis. This latter site of XASH-3 expression appears to demarcate the prospective sulcus limitans, a boundary zone that later separates the functionally distinct dorsal (alar) and ventral (basal) regions of the spinal cord. In sandwich explants lacking any underlying mesoderm, XASH-3 is expressed in longitudinal stripes located lateral to the midline. This provides the first indication that planar or midline-derived inductive signals are sufficient to establish at least some aspects of positional identity along the mediolateral axis of the neural plate. By contrast, the transverse stripes of XASH-3 expression are not detected, suggesting that this aspect of anteroposterior neural pattern is lost or delayed in the absence of vertically passed signals. The restricted mediolateral expression of XASH-3 suggests that mediolateral patterning of the neural plate is an early event, and that this regionalization can be achieved in the absence of inducing signals derived from underlying mesoderm

Explorations into the nature of insulin binding to oxidized dextran : this thesis was presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Chemistry at Massey University

The results reported in this thesis comprise an investigation into the conjugation of insulin to oxidized dextran, various release studies from the conjugates, and an attempt to interpret the binding nature of the conjugates. A model system involving the sustained release from insulin-dextran conjugates has been employed in this study. For insulin, up to 3 potential sites only (A1-Gly. B1-Phe and B29-Lys) were expected to bind to oxidized dextran. The rate of release and the maintenance of activity of the released protein are vital to such systems. Success in the interpretation of the binding nature of the conjugate will allow us to investigate its relationship to the rate of release. The desired rate of release for the sustained release of protein could then be achieved, once the projected binding could be obtained. Activation of dextran was achieved by periodate oxidation to give levels of 8%, 16% and 27% oxidized dextran. Insulin was chosen for its relatively 'uncomplicated' structure and few possible sites available for binding with activated dextran. Insulin was bound to the dextran through imine bonds. Complex formation was examined under a wide range of conditions. Initial studies were begun with the determination of a desirable basic molar ratio. A molar ratio of insulin to 8% activated dextran of 10 : 1 arose from this set of experiments. Insulin was bound to 27% activated dextran at pH 7.4, pH 9 and pH 10. In the cases of pH 9 and pH 10, many more lower MW complexes were formed than at pH 7.4. It seemed that the higher the pH of formation, the more crosslinks occurred between an insulin molecule and dextran molecules in the lower MW range. Approximate physiological pHs (pH 7.1-7.8) were used for complex formation in all subsequent experiments. Release studies were carried out under approximate physiological conditions (pH 7.4, 37°C). Immediate release was observed upon isolation by size exclusion chromatography. The greatest release occurred in the first 24 hours for all three activation levels. The higher the activation level of dextran, the lower the level of release. An equilibrium was established after several days' release and studies at 37°C produced the expected result: greater release relative to ambient. A number of studies were carried out with complex after sodium cyanoborohydride had been used to reduce the imine bonds. The first set of experiments on the reduced complexes was enzymatic cleavage studies, which employed trypsin and α-chvmotrypsin. The results for trypsin digestion of the reduced insulin-27% oxidized dextran complex indicated partial binding had occurred at B29-Lys, in combination with full binding at B1 and/or Al. Amino acid analysis results of the isolated complex after trypsin digestion indicated about 90% binding occurred at B29-Lys for the complex, which formed at pH 7.1. The results of α-chymotrypsin digestion study were shown questionable due to its incomplete cleavage. The reduced complexes were analyzed by amino acid analysis. The insulin-27% activated dextran complexes formed at pH 7.4, pH 9 and pH 10 showed similar extents of binding at B1-Phe, indicating B1 might be the prime binding site. There was more binding at B29 and A1 for the pH 9 than at pH 7.4 case. At pH 10 abnormal values arose. The studies for the complexes of insulin with 16% and 27% activated dextran indicated the more highly activated the dextran, the greater the binding at B29 and A1. Trials with the 2, 4-dinitrophenyl-derivativatization method proved to be a useful way to examine the degree of B1 and B29 binding from the amino acid analysis results of complex. The insulin-16% activated dextran complex formed at pH 7.1 was found to be about 100% binding at B1, 60% at A1 and 50% at B29. Oxidative and reductive cleavage studies of A and B chains of insulin and the complex were carried out to investigate the level of A1 binding. After chemical cleavage of the three disulfide bonds in insulin and subsequent chromatography, the amino acid analysis results for the treated complexes indicated a significant proportion of A chain had bound to dextran, i.e. at A1. An estimation of 60-70% of A1 binding was achieved for this study. This exploratory study has shown that varied complex formation conditions such as the level of activation of dextran, pH, and temperature could alter the extent of binding between insulin and dextran molecules. Amino acid analysis of the reduced complex was a useful method to interpret the binding

A Speech Recognizer based on Multiclass SVMs with HMM-Guided Segmentation

Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) is essentially a problem of pattern classification, however, the time dimension of the speech signal has prevented to pose ASR as a simple static classification problem. Support Vector Machine (SVM) classifiers could provide an appropriate solution, since they are very well adapted to high-dimensional classification problems. Nevertheless, the use of SVMs for ASR is by no means straightforward, mainly because SVM classifiers require an input of fixed-dimension. In this paper we study the use of a HMM-based segmentation as a mean to get the fixed-dimension input vectors required by SVMs, in a problem of isolated-digit recognition. Different configurations for all the parameters involved have been tested. Also, we deal with the problem of multi-class classification (as SVMs are initially binary classifers), studying two of the most popular approaches: 1-vs-all and 1-vs-1

Mir-34a-5p Mediates Cross-Talk between M2 Muscarinic Receptors and Notch-1/EGFR Pathways in U87MG Glioblastoma Cells: Implication in Cell Proliferation

Glioblastoma (GBM) is the most aggressive human brain tumor. The high growth potential and decreased susceptibility to apoptosis of the glioma cells is mainly dependent on genetic amplifications or mutations of oncogenic or pro-apoptotic genes, respectively. We have previously shown that the activation of the M2 acetylcholine muscarinic receptors inhibited cell proliferation and induced apoptosis in two GBM cell lines and cancer stem cells. The aim of this study was to delve into the molecular mechanisms underlying the M2-mediated cell proliferation arrest. Exploiting U87MG and U251MG cell lines as model systems, we evaluated the ability of M2 receptors to interfere with Notch-1 and EGFR pathways, whose activation promotes GBM proliferation. We demonstrated that the activation of M2 receptors, by agonist treatment, counteracted Notch and EGFR signaling, through different regulatory cascades depending, at least in part, on p53 status. Only in U87MG cells, which mimic p53-wild type GBMs, did M2 activation trigger a molecular circuitry involving p53, Notch-1, and the tumor suppressor mir-34a-5p. This regulatory module negatively controls Notch-1, which affects cell proliferation mainly through the Notch-1/EGFR axis. Our data highlighted, for the first time, a molecular circuitry that is deregulated in the p53 wild type GBM, based on the cross-talk between M2 receptor and the Notch-1/EGFR pathways, mediated by mir-34a-5p

Expression of Tryptophan 2,3-Dioxygenase in Metastatic Uveal Melanoma

Uveal melanoma (UM) is the most common primary eye malignancy in adults and up to 50% of patients subsequently develop systemic metastasis. Metastatic uveal melanoma (MUM) is highly resistant to immunotherapy. One of the mechanisms for resistance would be the immune-suppressive tumor microenvironment. Here, we have investigated the role of tryptophan 2,3-dioxygenase (TDO) in UM. Both TDO and indoleamine 2,3-dioxygenase (IDO) catalyze tryptophan and produce kynurenine, which could cause inhibition of T cell immune responses. We first studied the expression of TDO on tumor tissue specimens obtained from UM hepatic metastasis. High expression of TDO protein was confirmed in all hepatic metastasis. TDO was positive in both normal hepatocytes and the tumor cells with relatively higher expression in tumor cells. On the other hand, IDO protein remained undetectable in all of the MUM specimens. UM cell lines established from metastasis also expressed TDO protein and increasing kynurenine levels were detected in the supernatant of MUM cell culture. In TCGA database, higher TDO2 expression in primary UM significantly correlated to BAP1 mutation and monosomy 3. These results indicate that TDO might be one of the key mechanisms for resistance to immunotherapy in UM

Silencing of the Na+/H+ exchanger 1(NHE-1) prevents cardiac structural and functional remodeling induced by angiotensin II

Chronic activation of the renin angiotensin system (RAS) favors several cardiac diseases, among which myocardial hypertrophy occupies an outstanding place. In this context, the hyperactivity of the cardiac Na+/H+ (NHE-1) exchanger plays a key role. The pathologic remodeling of the myocardium constitutes an independent risk factor for morbidity and mortality with continuously increasing healthcare cost. Therefore, the development of better therapeutic strategies emerges as highly mandatory. Our goal was to prevent angiotensin II (ANGII)-induced cardiac hypertrophy by NHE-1 gene silencing in Wistar rats. The intramyocardial injection of a lentivirus coding a specific small interference RNA (l-shNHE1) significantly reduced NHE-1 expression exclusively in the heart (~ 50 %) and prevented cardiac remodeling in rats exposed to chronic infusion of ANG II (heart weigh/tibia length: 24,03 ± 0,7915 mg/mm vs 28,45 ± 0,9779 mg/mm and collagen volume fraction 2,526 ± 0,5003 vs 5,982 ± 1,043 in l-shNHE1 + ANGII and ANGII, respectively).Interestingly, this was accompanied by an improvement in cardiac function determined by echocardiography even though blood pressure remained elevated (Fractional shortening 0,5960 ± 0,4228 vs -0,9567± 0,06888 and blood pressure at the end of ANGII treatment 141,2 ± 6,117 mm Hg vs 134,1 ± 6,723 mm Hg ; in l-shNHE1 + ANGII and ANGII, respectively). ANGII infusion increased myocardial NADPH oxidase activity but the l-shNHE1 injection prevented oxidative stressas revealed by the normalization of lipid peroxidation (T-BARS 12,40 ± 2,887.vs 23,05 ± 1,537 in lshNHE1 + ANGII and ANGII, respectively). These results allow as to propose the partial silencing of the cardiac NHE-1 through lentiviralinjection as a promising tool in the prevention of ANGII-induced cardiac hypertrophy.Fil: Medina, Andrés Javier. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Centro de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares "Dr. Horacio Eugenio Cingolani". Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Médicas. Centro de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares "Dr. Horacio Eugenio Cingolani"; ArgentinaFil: Pinilla, Oscar Andres. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Centro de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares "Dr. Horacio Eugenio Cingolani". Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Médicas. Centro de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares "Dr. Horacio Eugenio Cingolani"; ArgentinaFil: Portiansky, Enrique Leo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Veterinarias; ArgentinaFil: Caldiz, Claudia Irma. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Centro de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares "Dr. Horacio Eugenio Cingolani". Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Médicas. Centro de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares "Dr. Horacio Eugenio Cingolani"; ArgentinaFil: Ennis, Irene Lucia. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - La Plata. Centro de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares "Dr. Horacio Eugenio Cingolani". Universidad Nacional de La Plata. Facultad de Ciencias Médicas. Centro de Investigaciones Cardiovasculares "Dr. Horacio Eugenio Cingolani"; Argentin

An Immunologic Investigation of Bisalbuminemia : A Genetically Transmitted Serum Protein Anomaly

29 leaves. Advisor: Michael MyszewskiThe problem. Bisalbuminemia was investigated in an Iowa family by testing for hematological and immunologic abnormalities to determine associations between bisalbuminemia and connective tissue (collagen) and/or autoimmune diseases. Physiochemical properties of the anomalous albumin fraction were compared to normal serum albumin. Procedure. Cellulose acetate electrophoresis was used to determine the genotypes from which was established the genetic pedigree of the bisalbumin trait. Sera of family members was screened using the following tests: Complete blood count; sedimentation rate; hematocrit; antistreptolysin 0 titer; rheumatoid factor; LE preparation; VDRL; C-reactive protein and fluorescent anti-nuclear antibody analysis. Physiochemical characterization of the anomalous albumin fraction included an agar-gel diffusion study and measurement of the relative binding ability of normal and abnornal albumins using I125-thyroxine. Findings. Bisalbuminemia was found in seven of fourteen members of an Iowa family and was presumed to have been present in one deceased member of the family. The anomaly, transmitted as an autosomal codominant, was observed in the heterozygous state. The anomalous albumin fraction, albumin B, replaces one-half of the normal serum albumin and was found to be an albumin by agar-gel diffusion. Tests commonly associated with connective tissue and autoimmune diseases failed to show a relationship between the disease groups and bisalbuminemia. Addition of I125-thyroxine to bisalbumin sera resulted in excess thyroxine binding to albumin B with greater affinity than to normal albumin. Conclusions. The anomalous albumin B is assumed to be the result of a mutation of a gene responsible for the synthesis of normal serum albumin. The bisalbuminemia analyzed in this family study does not appear to be associated with the connective tissue and/or autoimmune diseases or any marked clinical abnormalities