Effect of some anticancer drugs on the growth of children with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia in Iraq

Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia (ALL) is the most common type of leukemia in children. It represents about 75% of all leukemia types in children less than 15 years old and peak incidence at (2-5) years old. The study was designed to evaluate the effect of chemotherapeutic regimens used for Iraqi children with ALL by assessing anthropometric parameters, oxidative state markers, and metabolic state. This prospective randomized clinical study was carried out on (30) newly diagnosed children with ALL (6 months – 8 years old) in Iraq. According to the FAB-classification, the patients grouped as L1 group (n=16) and L2 group (n=14). A healthy children (n=14) were involved and considered as a control group to compare their normal data with these of patients groups. The IGF-I, albumin, total serum protein, BMI, TAS, and LDH were determined at baseline, 1st, 2nd, and 3rd months of the treatment regimen. The results showed that the mean level of serum IGF-I in both patient groups was significantly lower than that of control children at baseline, and it is increased significantly after receiving treatment while no significance difference between patients of both groups. Serum albumin, total serum protein, and BMI showed no significant differences in both patient groups when compared with the control group at baseline and after receiving treatment, also, between patients of both groups. TAS showed a significant reduction at baseline and after receiving treatment of both patients’ groups when compared with the control children, and there was a significant difference between patients of both groups. For LDH, there was a significant elevation in the mean level at baseline for both patients’ groups when compared with the control children, while after receiving treatment a significant reduction noticed in both groups when compared with control children and no significance difference between patients of both groups. These results can give indication for the effect of chemotherapy on the growth and nutrition of ALL children through their effects on IGF-I, which has a direct effect on GH and the reduction in the levels of total proteins and albumin, which may affect BMI, while the reduction in TAS during chemotherapy treatment may result in disruption of cells metabolism which will affect the normal body homeostasis. Keywords: ALL, Growth, IGF-I, Chemotherapy

DOMMINO: a database of macromolecular interactions

With the growing number of experimentally resolved structures of macromolecular complexes, it becomes clear that the interactions that involve protein structures are mediated not only by the protein domains, but also by various non-structured regions, such as interdomain linkers, or terminal sequences. Here, we present DOMMINO (http://dommino.org), a comprehensive database of macromolecular interactions that includes the interactions between protein domains, interdomain linkers, N- and C-terminal regions and protein peptides. The database complements SCOP domain annotations with domain predictions by SUPERFAMILY and is automatically updated every week. The database interface is designed to provide the user with a three-stage pipeline to study macromolecular interactions: (i) a flexible search that can include a PDB ID, type of interaction, SCOP family of interacting proteins, organism name, interaction keyword and a minimal threshold on the number of contact pairs; (ii) visualization of subunit interaction network, where the user can investigate the types of interactions within a macromolecular assembly; and (iii) visualization of an interface structure between any pair of the interacting subunits, where the user can highlight several different types of residues within the interfaces as well as study the structure of the corresponding binary complex of subunits

Genome-Scale Analysis of Translation Elongation with a Ribosome Flow Model

We describe the first large scale analysis of gene translation that is based on a model that takes into account the physical and dynamical nature of this process. The Ribosomal Flow Model (RFM) predicts fundamental features of the translation process, including translation rates, protein abundance levels, ribosomal densities and the relation between all these variables, better than alternative (‘non-physical’) approaches. In addition, we show that the RFM can be used for accurate inference of various other quantities including genes' initiation rates and translation costs. These quantities could not be inferred by previous predictors. We find that increasing the number of available ribosomes (or equivalently the initiation rate) increases the genomic translation rate and the mean ribosome density only up to a certain point, beyond which both saturate. Strikingly, assuming that the translation system is tuned to work at the pre-saturation point maximizes the predictive power of the model with respect to experimental data. This result suggests that in all organisms that were analyzed (from bacteria to Human), the global initiation rate is optimized to attain the pre-saturation point. The fact that similar results were not observed for heterologous genes indicates that this feature is under selection. Remarkably, the gap between the performance of the RFM and alternative predictors is strikingly large in the case of heterologous genes, testifying to the model's promising biotechnological value in predicting the abundance of heterologous proteins before expressing them in the desired host

From China to Japan and Back Again: An Energetic Example of Bidirectional Sino-Japanese Esoteric Buddhist Transmission

Sino-Japanese religious discourse, more often than not, is treated as a unidirectional phenomenon. Academic treatments of pre-modern East Asian religion usually portray Japan as the passive recipient of Chinese Buddhist traditions, while explorations of Buddhist modernization efforts focus on how Chinese Buddhists utilized Japanese adoptions of Western understandings of religion. This paper explores a case where Japan was simultaneously the receptor and agent by exploring the Chinese revival of Tang-dynasty Zhenyan. This revival—which I refer to as Neo-Zhenyan—was actualized by Chinese Buddhist who received empowerment (Skt. abhiṣeka) under Shingon priests in Japan in order to claim the authority to found “Zhenyan” centers in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Malaysia, and even the USA. Moreover, in addition to utilizing Japanese Buddhist sectarianism to root their lineage in the past, the first known architect of Neo-Zhenyan, Wuguang (1918–2000), used energeticism, the thermodynamic theory propagated by the German chemist Freidrich Wilhelm Ostwald (1853–1932; 1919 Nobel Prize for Chemistry) that was popular among early Japanese Buddhist modernists, such as Inoue Enryō (1858–1919), to portray his resurrected form of Zhenyan as the most suitable form of Buddhism for the future. Based upon the circular nature of esoteric transmission from China to Japan and back to the greater Sinosphere and the use of energeticism within Neo-Zhenyan doctrine, this paper reveals the sometimes cyclical nature of Sino-Japanese religious influence. Data were gathered by closely analyzing the writings of prominent Zhenyan leaders alongside onsite fieldwork conducted in Taiwan from 2011–2019