79 research outputs found
The role of histone arginine methylation in gene expression of airway smooth muscle cells in asthma
Introduction and objectives: Asthma is estimated to affect at least 300 million people globally. About 25% of the patients do not respond to therapy; therefore we need to develop novel treatments. ASM cells have a crucial role in asthma, contributing to airway remodelling, inflammation and airflow obstruction. We have previously shown that epigenetic histone modifications, particularly histone lysine acetylation and methylation regulate the secretion of inflammatory mediators from ASM cells. Here we tested the hypothesis that histone arginine changes are also involved. Protein arginine N-methyltransferases (PRMTs) are the enzymes which catalyse histone arginine methylation (HRme, the addition of a methyl group to arginine residues on the N-terminal tails of histones), and inhibiting them represents a strategy to reduce the secretion of inflammatory mediators from ASM cells.
Methods: Studies were performed in cultured human ASM cells from asthmatic and non-asthmatic donors at passage 6. PRMT expression in human ASM cells was investigated by qPCR. Protein levels of four PRMTs in human ASM cells were investigated by western blotting. The effect of inhibiting PRMTs on the secretion of eotaxin, IL-6, CXCL8 and IP-10 from healthy ASM cells, under basal conditions and following stimulation with TNF-α (1ng/ml), was investigated by ELISA.
Results: We found that ASM cells express the PRMT1, PRMT2, PRMT3, CARM1, PRMT5, PRMT6, PRMT7 and FBX011 mRNA and PRMT1, CARM1, PRMT5, and PRMT6 protein. The analysis showed no difference in the levels of expression between cells isolated from asthmatic and non-asthmatic donors. Two PRMT inhibitors, namely TCE5003 – a PRMT1 inhibitor, and 217531 - a CARM1 inhibitor, significantly reduced the secretion of inflammatory mediators from ASM cells.
Conclusions: ASM cells express a number of PRMTs at mRNA and protein levels. The inhibition of PRMTs results in the reduced secretion of inflammatory mediators from ASM cells. PRMTs may have an important role in regulating chemokine production from ASM cells in asthma, and are a promising target for future investigations in asthma
The effect of scleral search coil lens wear on the eye
BACKGROUND/AIM Scleral search coils are used to measure eye movements. A recent abstract suggests that the coil can affect the eye by decreasing visual acuity, increasing intraocular pressure, and damaging the corneal and conjunctival surface. Such findings, if repeated in all subjects, would cast doubt on the credibility of the search coil as a reliable investigative technique. The aim of this study was to reassess the effect of the scleral search coil on visual function.
METHODS Six volunteer subjects were selected to undergo coil wear and baseline measurements were taken of logMAR visual acuity, non-contact tonometry, keratometry, and slit lamp examination. Four drops of 0.4% benoxinate hydrochloride were instilled before insertion of the lens by an experienced clinician. The lens then remained on the eye for 30 minutes. Measurements of the four ocular health parameters were repeated after 15 and 30 minutes of lens wear. The lens was then removed and the health of the eye reassessed.
RESULTS No obvious pattern of change was found in logMAR visual acuity, keratometry, or intraocular pressure. The lens did produce changes to the conjunctival and corneal surfaces, but this was not considered clinically significant.
CONCLUSION Search coils do not appear to cause any significant effects on visual function. However, thorough prescreening of subjects and post-wear checks should be carried out on all coil wearers to ensure no adverse effects have been caused
Approach to the semiconductor cavity QED in high-Q regimes with q-deformed boson
The high density Frenkel exciton which interacts with a single mode
microcavity field is dealed with in the framework of the q-deformed boson. It
is shown that the q-defomation of bosonic commutation relations is satisfied
naturally by the exciton operators when the low density limit is deviated. An
analytical expression of the physical spectrum for the exciton is given by
using of the dressed states of the cavity field and the exciton. We also give
the numerical study and compare the theoretical results with the experimental
resultsComment: 6 pages, 2 figure
Plantas taniníferas e o controle de nematóides gastrintestinais de pequenos ruminantes
The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory
The Sudbury Neutrino Observatory is a second generation water Cherenkov
detector designed to determine whether the currently observed solar neutrino
deficit is a result of neutrino oscillations. The detector is unique in its use
of D2O as a detection medium, permitting it to make a solar model-independent
test of the neutrino oscillation hypothesis by comparison of the charged- and
neutral-current interaction rates. In this paper the physical properties,
construction, and preliminary operation of the Sudbury Neutrino Observatory are
described. Data and predicted operating parameters are provided whenever
possible.Comment: 58 pages, 12 figures, submitted to Nucl. Inst. Meth. Uses elsart and
epsf style files. For additional information about SNO see
http://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca . This version has some new reference
Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search
Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe
Prevalence of extracranial venous narrowing on catheter venography in people with multiple sclerosis, their siblings, and unrelated healthy controls: a blinded, case-control study
The role of histone arginine methylation in gene expression of airway smooth muscle cells in asthma
Introduction and objectives: Asthma is estimated to affect at least 300 million people globally. About 25% of the patients do not respond to therapy; therefore we need to develop novel treatments. ASM cells have a crucial role in asthma, contributing to airway remodelling, inflammation and airflow obstruction. We have previously shown that epigenetic histone modifications, particularly histone lysine acetylation and methylation regulate the secretion of inflammatory mediators from ASM cells. Here we tested the hypothesis that histone arginine changes are also involved. Protein arginine N-methyltransferases (PRMTs) are the enzymes which catalyse histone arginine methylation (HRme, the addition of a methyl group to arginine residues on the N-terminal tails of histones), and inhibiting them represents a strategy to reduce the secretion of inflammatory mediators from ASM cells.
Methods: Studies were performed in cultured human ASM cells from asthmatic and non-asthmatic donors at passage 6. PRMT expression in human ASM cells was investigated by qPCR. Protein levels of four PRMTs in human ASM cells were investigated by western blotting. The effect of inhibiting PRMTs on the secretion of eotaxin, IL-6, CXCL8 and IP-10 from healthy ASM cells, under basal conditions and following stimulation with TNF-α (1ng/ml), was investigated by ELISA.
Results: We found that ASM cells express the PRMT1, PRMT2, PRMT3, CARM1, PRMT5, PRMT6, PRMT7 and FBX011 mRNA and PRMT1, CARM1, PRMT5, and PRMT6 protein. The analysis showed no difference in the levels of expression between cells isolated from asthmatic and non-asthmatic donors. Two PRMT inhibitors, namely TCE5003 – a PRMT1 inhibitor, and 217531 - a CARM1 inhibitor, significantly reduced the secretion of inflammatory mediators from ASM cells.
Conclusions: ASM cells express a number of PRMTs at mRNA and protein levels. The inhibition of PRMTs results in the reduced secretion of inflammatory mediators from ASM cells. PRMTs may have an important role in regulating chemokine production from ASM cells in asthma, and are a promising target for future investigations in asthma
Cessation of electroencephalographic activity in animals exposed to a lethal dose of succinyldicholine
EEG recordings were obtained from anaesthetized elephant, buffalo, impala and rabbits before and after the administration of a lethal dose of scoline. All EEG activity ceased at an arterial haemoglobin-oxygen saturation of about 25% in the species studied. Unanaesthetized rabbits became unconscious at arterial Po2 of between 23 and 25 mmHg and died at arterial Po2 of between 19 and 23 mmHg. The margin between unconsciousness and death is thus narrow in rabbits and if this is generally true, the discomfort experienced after the administration of scoline will be perceived until shortly before death in any animal species
Relationship between ethylene adsorption isotherms and GC retention on Carbowax-coated porous graphite
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