Efficacy and safety of pharmacological treatment of the with clinically apparent bacteriuria and asymptomatic bacteriuria in the pregnant women

The article explores the problem of urinary tract infection in pregnant women. It presents the statistical analysis of the frequency of different forms of urinary tract infection during pregnancy. Our data is compared to the statistics given by other national and international researcher

Applications for protein sequence–function evolution data: mRNA/protein expression analysis and coding SNP scoring tools

The vast amount of protein sequence data now available, together with accumulating experimental knowledge of protein function, enables modeling of protein sequence and function evolution. The PANTHER database was designed to model evolutionary sequence–function relationships on a large scale. There are a number of applications for these data, and we have implemented web services that address three of them. The first is a protein classification service. Proteins can be classified, using only their amino acid sequences, to evolutionary groups at both the family and subfamily levels. Specific subfamilies, and often families, are further classified when possible according to their functions, including molecular function and the biological processes and pathways they participate in. The second application, then, is an expression data analysis service, where functional classification information can help find biological patterns in the data obtained from genome-wide experiments. The third application is a coding single-nucleotide polymorphism scoring service. In this case, information about evolutionarily related proteins is used to assess the likelihood of a deleterious effect on protein function arising from a single substitution at a specific amino acid position in the protein. All three web services are available at

Carbamylated darbepoetin in combination with ethoxydol attenuates doxorubicin-induced cardiomyopathy in rats

Doxorubicin is the drug of choice in the treatment of many malignant neoplasms, but its use is limited due to the risk of developing severe cardiomyopathy. This problem necessitates the prevention, early diagnosis and treatment of cardiomyopath

Cryopreservation of primary trypsinized fibroblast cells of chicken embryos using various cryoprotectants

Cryopreservation is the optimal way to store cells at ultra-low temperatures. Cryoprotectants are added to cell culture suspension to reduce cell death due to exposure to low temperatures. Cryoprotective media contain combinations of various cryoprotectants. Ethylene glycol, glycerin, dimethyl sulfoxide, sucrose, dextran, propylene  glycol, albumin, polyvinylpyrrolidone and blood serum can be used as cryoprotectants. For cryopreservation it is necessary  to select a cryoprotectant that ensures the highest survival of cells after storage and thawing. The paper presents  the results of experiments  on comparing the effectiveness of dimethyl sulfoxide, ethylene  glycol and glycerin in cryopreservation  of primary trypsinized chicken embryo fibroblasts. As a result of cell suspension  equillibration  (incubation  at room temperature) with serum and the specified cryoprotectants at different concentrations, the suspension variants containing different cryoprotectant and serum ratios were selected for freezing. Previously, it was found that after 12 months of observation, when using dimethyl sulfoxide as a cryoprotectant,  the largest number of surviving cells (46%) was observed in a suspension  containing  20% fetal serum and 10% dimethyl sulfoxide. The amount of surviving  cells if 10% fetal serum  and 5% ethylene  glycol were included in the cryoprotective mixture was slightly lower and amounted  to 36% after 12 months of observation. Glycerin is shown  to have weak protective properties as regards chicken embryo fibroblast cells. After 8 months of storage, the amount of surviving cells in a suspension containing 10% serum and 5% glycerin was 22%, no live cells were found in this mixture if stored longer. The proliferative properties of cells and their sensitivity to viruses remained within the 12 months  of the experiment

The PANTHER database of protein families, subfamilies, functions and pathways

PANTHER is a large collection of protein families that have been subdivided into functionally related subfamilies, using human expertise. These subfamilies model the divergence of specific functions within protein families, allowing more accurate association with function (ontology terms and pathways), as well as inference of amino acids important for functional specificity. Hidden Markov models (HMMs) are built for each family and subfamily for classifying additional protein sequences. The latest version, 5.0, contains 6683 protein families, divided into 31 705 subfamilies, covering ∼90% of mammalian protein-coding genes. PANTHER 5.0 includes a number of significant improvements over previous versions, most notably (i) representation of pathways (primarily signaling pathways) and association with subfamilies and individual protein sequences; (ii) an improved methodology for defining the PANTHER families and subfamilies, and for building the HMMs; (iii) resources for scoring sequences against PANTHER HMMs both over the web and locally; and (iv) a number of new web resources to facilitate analysis of large gene lists, including data generated from high-throughput expression experiments. Efforts are underway to add PANTHER to the InterPro suite of databases, and to make PANTHER consistent with the PIRSF database. PANTHER is now publicly available without restriction at http://panther.appliedbiosystems.com

Enabling magnetic resonance imaging of hollow-core microstructured optical fibers via nanocomposite coating

Optical fibers are widely used in bioimaging systems as flexible endoscopes capable of low-invasive penetration inside hollow tissue cavities. Here, we report on the technique which allows magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of hollow-core microstructured fibers (HC-MFs), paving the way for combing MRI and optical bioimaging. Our approach is based on Layer-by-Layer assembly of oppositely charged polyelectrolytes and magnetite nanoparticles on the inner core surface of HC-MFs. Incorporation of magnetite nanoparticles into polyelectrolyte layers renders HC-MFs visible for MRI and induces the red-shift in their transmission spectra. Specifically, the transmission shifts up to 60 nm have been revealed for the several-layers composite coating along with the high-quality contrast of HC-MFs in MRI scans. Our results shed light on marrying fiber-based endoscopy with MRI that opens novel possibilities for minimally invasive clinical diagnostics and surgical procedures in vivo.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

Strusture, biomass and production of the biotic component of the ecosystem of an growing eutrophic reservoir

Using our own data and data from the literature, we assessed the total biomass of the biotic component of the ecosystem of the Ivankovo Reservoir (Upper Volga, Russia), a eutrophic reservoir which is becoming overgrown with macrophytes. The biotic component of freshwater ecosystems is formed by communities of multicellular and unicellular organisms and viruses in the water layer (plankton) and bottom sediments (benthos) and also macrophytes and autotrophic and heterotrophic organisms growing on their surface (epiphyton). The biomass of the biotic component of the Ivankovo Reservoir equaled 39,853 tons С. Plankton, benthos and macrophytes with epiphyton equaled 3.6%, 41.6% and 54.8% of the total biomass respectively. We determined the contribution of higher aquatic plants, algae, cyanobacteria, heterotrophic bacteria, viruses, protozoans, multicellular invertebrates and fish to the formation of total biomass. The largest share was taken up by higher aquatic plants (54.5%). The second largest share was taken by heterotrophic bacteria (37.4%), most of which live in the bottom sediments. The high concentration of bacteria and invertebrates in the bottom sediments indicate significant provision of the organic substrates from the water column. The biomass of fish, the highest trophic link in the reservoir, equaled 15.0% of the biomass of their potential food substrates, invertebrate animals, and 0.7% of the total biomass of the biotic component. The greater part of the autochthonous organic compound in the reservoir is formed as a result of activity of phytoplankton, which provides 69.4% of total primary production of macrophytes, phytoepiphyton, phytoplankton and phytobenthos. The total primary production during the vegetation period was approximately forty times higher than the annual production of the fish. Currently, the share in the phytoplankton of large colonial cyanobacteria not consumed by zooplankton, the share of non-heterocystic species of cyanobacteria capable of heterotrophic feeding and the share of mixotrophic flagellates is increasing. Eutrophication of the reservoir is significantly stimulated by the development of macrophytes, and, presumably, the contribution of macrophytes to the total primary production of the reservoir will continue to increase