Tetra­aqua­diazido­cobalt(II) 3,3′-dicarb­oxy­l­ato-1,1′-ethyl­enedipyridinium

The asymmetric unit of the title compound, [Co(N3)2(H2O)4]·C14H12N2O4, comprises half of the cobalt(II) complex mol­ecule and a half of the 3,3′-dicarboxyl­ato-1,1′-ethyl­enedipyridinium mol­ecule. The CoII atom is located on an inversion centre and hence the complex mol­ecule adopts a centrosymmetric trans-octa­hedral geometry. The zwitterionic organic mol­ecule is also centrosymmetric with the centre of the C—C bond of the ethyl­ene moiety coinciding with an inversion centre. The adduct of metal complex and organic mol­ecule is associated into a three-dimenional network through O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds

Optical Imaging of Bacterial Infections

The rise in multidrug resistant (MDR) bacteria has become a global crisis. Rapid and accurate diagnosis of infection will facilitate antibiotic stewardship and preserve our ability to treat and cure patients from bacterial infection. Direct in situ imaging of bacteria offers the prospect of accurately diagnosing disease and monitoring patient outcomes and response to treatment in real-time. There have been many recent advances in the field of optical imaging of infection; namely in specific probe and fluorophore design. This combined with the advances in imaging device technology render direct optical imaging of infection a feasible approach for accurate diagnosis in the clinic. Despite this, there are currently no licensed molecular probes for clinical optical imaging of infection. Here we report some of the most promising and interesting probes and approaches under development for this purpose, which have been evaluated in in vivo models within the laboratory setting

Diagnostic, prognostic and predictive value of cell-free miRNAs in prostate cancer : A systematic review

Publisher Copyright: © 2016 Endzeliņš et al.Prostate cancer, the second most frequently diagnosed cancer in males worldwide, is estimated to be diagnosed in 1.1 million men per year. Introduction of PSA testing substantially improved early detection of prostate cancer, however it also led to overdiagnosis and subsequent overtreatment of patients with an indolent disease. Treatment outcome and management of prostate cancer could be improved by the development of non-invasive biomarker assays that aid in increasing the sensitivity and specificity of prostate cancer screening, help to distinguish aggressive from indolent disease and guide therapeutic decisions. Prostate cancer cells release miRNAs into the bloodstream, where they exist incorporated into ribonucleoprotein complexes or extracellular vesicles. Later, cell-free miRNAs have been found in various other biofluids. The initial RNA sequencing studies suggested that most of the circulating cell-free miRNAs in healthy individuals are derived from blood cells, while specific disease-associated miRNA signatures may appear in the circulation of patients affected with various diseases, including cancer. This raised a hope that cell-free miRNAs may serve as non-invasive biomarkers for prostate cancer. Indeed, a number of cell-free miRNAs that potentially may serve as diagnostic, prognostic or predictive biomarkers have been discovered in blood or other biofluids of prostate cancer patients and need to be validated in appropriately designed longitudinal studies and clinical trials. In this review, we systematically summarise studies investigating cell-free miRNAs in biofluids of prostate cancer patients and discuss the utility of the identified biomarkers in various clinical scenarios. Furthermore, we discuss the possible mechanisms of miRNA release into biofluids and outline the biological questions and technical challenges that have arisen from these studies.publishersversionPeer reviewe

Dark Matter in the Milky Way's Dwarf Spheroidal Satellites

The Milky Way's dwarf spheroidal satellites include the nearest, smallest and least luminous galaxies known. They also exhibit the largest discrepancies between dynamical and luminous masses. This article reviews the development of empirical constraints on the structure and kinematics of dSph stellar populations and discusses how this phenomenology translates into constraints on the amount and distribution of dark matter within dSphs. Some implications for cosmology and the particle nature of dark matter are discussed, and some topics/questions for future study are identified.Comment: A version with full-resolution figures is available at http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~mwalker/mwdsph_review.pdf; 70 pages, 22 figures; invited review article to be published in Vol. 5 of the book "Planets, Stars, and Stellar Systems", published by Springe

The PLATO 2.0 mission

PLATO 2.0 has recently been selected for ESA's M3 launch opportunity (2022/24). Providing accurate key planet parameters (radius, mass, density and age) in statistical numbers, it addresses fundamental questions such as: How do planetary systems form and evolve? Are there other systems with planets like ours, including potentially habitable planets? The PLATO 2.0 instrument consists of 34 small aperture telescopes (32 with 25 s readout cadence and 2 with 2.5 s candence) providing a wide field-of-view (2232 deg 2) and a large photometric magnitude range (4-16 mag). It focusses on bright (4-11 mag) stars in wide fields to detect and characterize planets down to Earth-size by photometric transits, whose masses can then be determined by ground-based radial-velocity follow-up measurements. Asteroseismology will be performed for these bright stars to obtain highly accurate stellar parameters, including masses and ages. The combination of bright targets and asteroseismology results in high accuracy for the bulk planet parameters: 2 %, 4-10 % and 10 % for planet radii, masses and ages, respectively. The planned baseline observing strategy includes two long pointings (2-3 years) to detect and bulk characterize planets reaching into the habitable zone (HZ) of solar-like stars and an additional step-and-stare phase to cover in total about 50 % of the sky. PLATO 2.0 will observe up to 1,000,000 stars and detect and characterize hundreds of small planets, and thousands of planets in the Neptune to gas giant regime out to the HZ. It will therefore provide the first large-scale catalogue of bulk characterized planets with accurate radii, masses, mean densities and ages. This catalogue will include terrestrial planets at intermediate orbital distances, where surface temperatures are moderate. Coverage of this parameter range with statistical numbers of bulk characterized planets is unique to PLATO 2.0. The PLATO 2.0 catalogue allows us to e.g.: - complete our knowledge of planet diversity for low-mass objects, - correlate the planet mean density-orbital distance distribution with predictions from planet formation theories,- constrain the influence of planet migration and scattering on the architecture of multiple systems, and - specify how planet and system parameters change with host star characteristics, such as type, metallicity and age. The catalogue will allow us to study planets and planetary systems at different evolutionary phases. It will further provide a census for small, low-mass planets. This will serve to identify objects which retained their primordial hydrogen atmosphere and in general the typical characteristics of planets in such low-mass, low-density range. Planets detected by PLATO 2.0 will orbit bright stars and many of them will be targets for future atmosphere spectroscopy exploring their atmosphere. Furthermore, the mission has the potential to detect exomoons, planetary rings, binary and Trojan planets. The planetary science possible with PLATO 2.0 is complemented by its impact on stellar and galactic science via asteroseismology as well as light curves of all kinds of variable stars, together with observations of stellar clusters of different ages. This will allow us to improve stellar models and study stellar activity. A large number of well-known ages from red giant stars will probe the structure and evolution of our Galaxy. Asteroseismic ages of bright stars for different phases of stellar evolution allow calibrating stellar age-rotation relationships. Together with the results of ESA's Gaia mission, the results of PLATO 2.0 will provide a huge legacy to planetary, stellar and galactic science

Selection shapes the robustness of ligand-binding amino acids

The phenotypes of biological systems are to some extent robust to genotypic changes. Such robustness exists on multiple levels of biological organization. We analyzed this robustness for two categories of amino acids in proteins. Specifically, we studied the codons of amino acids that bind or do not bind small molecular ligands. We asked to what extent codon changes caused by mutation or mistranslation may affect physicochemical amino acid properties or protein folding. We found that the codons of ligand-binding amino acids are on average more robust than those of non-binding amino acids. Because mistranslation is usually more frequent than mutation, we speculate that selection for error mitigation at the translational level stands behind this phenomenon. Our observations suggest that natural selection can affect the robustness of very small units of biological organization

Progression of native coronary artery disease at 10 years: Insights from a randomized study of medical versus surgical therapy for angina

AbstractRepeat coronary angiography was performed in 42 patients 10 years after randomization to medical (n = 21) or surgical (n = 21) therapy for chronic angina. The native coronary arteries were classified into 15 angiographic segments and 3 arterial trunks for analysis of progression of coronary artery disease.The incidence rate of disease progression in coronary segments was 24% and 28% in medically and surgically treated patients, respectively (p :: NS). Grafted segments showed a 38% rate of disease progression, which was higher than the 18% rate for nongrafted segments (p < 0.001) and the overall rate of 21% for medically treated patients (p < 0.01). Similarly, 29 (94%) of 31 grafted arteries exhibited disease progression compared with 19 (59%) of 32 nongrafted arteries (p < 0.01) and 42 (67%) of 63 arteries in medically treated patients (p < 0.01). In grafted vessels, disease progression occurred more often in arteries proximal (84%) to the anastomosis than in arteries distal (16%) to graft insertion (p < 0.001). Progression occurred in 46% of proximal segments compared with 23% of distal segments (p < 0.02). Progression was seen in 23 (55%) of 43 segments with an occluded graft compared with 30 (31%) of 96 segments with a patent graft (p < 0.02).Ten years after randomization, medically and surgically treated patients showed a comparable rate of disease progression in coronary segments. However, surgical therapy appeared to significantly accelerate atherosclerotic progression in the grafted vessels, especially in the proximal portions. Occluded grafts also correlated with an adverse effect on disease progression. These long-term effects should be taken into consideration when aortocoronary bypass surgery is contemplated