Distribution of selenium in the soil–plant– groundwater system: Factors controlling its bio-accumulation

Selenium (Se) is an essential micronutrient for humans and animals, but both Se excess and deficiency can cause various health risks. Since Greece is among the European countries where people have very low Se-serum, the present study is focused on the Se distribution in cultivated and non-cultivated plants and relative soil coming from the Neogene basins of Greece (Assopos-Thiva and Attica), aiming to define potential Se-source/es and factors controlling Se bio-accumulation and enrichment in food. The dry weight Se values are relatively low (0.1–0.9 mg/kg) with the highest Se contents in garlic, beet and lettuce from the Assopos basin, where the translocation percentage [(mplant/msoil) × 100] for Se, P and S is much higher compared to non-cultivated Attica basin. There is a diversity between the Se source in soil and coastal groundwater which is used for irrigation in the cultivated Assopos–Thiva basin. The soil pH and oxidizing conditions (Eh) are considered the main driving force to make Se available for plant uptake. Potential sources for Se in Greece are Fe-Cu-Znsulphide ores and peat deposits in northern Greece, with a Se content ranging from decades to hundreds of mg/kg. Application of the leaching testing protocol is necessary to select the most appropriate proportion of additives to improve the Se deficiencies in agricultural soil. © 2020 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland

Evaluation of inflammatory cytokines in malignant and benign pleural effusions

We measured the levels of inflammatory cytokines interleukin-lα (IL-lα), interleukin-lß (IL-lß), interleukin-2 (IL-2), interleukin-6 (IL-6), interleukin-8 (IL-8), and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) in pleural effusions and serum in 65 consecutive patients: 32 with malignant pleural effusion (MPE) (group A), and 33 with inflammatory benign pleural effusion (BPE) (group B). Serum levels of 15 healthy individuals served as control. Concentrations of IL-lα were higher in serum compared to pleural fluid in both groups (47.1±33.9 vs. 25.9±1.7 fmol/ml, p<0.001, in group A; and 39.9±30.9 vs. 25.4±16.3 fmol/ml, p<0.02, in group B). Similarly, concentrations of IL-lß and IL-2 were significantly higher in serum compared to pleural fluid in both groups. In contrast, IL-6, IL-8 and TNF-α were found at high concentration in MPE in comparison to serum IL-6: 171.8±60.4 vs. 7.2±7 fmol/ml (p<0.001), IL-8: 1175.15±2385.6 vs. 285.2±187.2 pg/ml (p<0.05), TNF-α: 204.9±82.9 vs. 79.4±31.9 fmol/ml (p<0.001). Similarly, pleural concentrations of IL-6, IL-8 and TNF-α were higher in BPE patients in comparison to serum IL-6: 124.3±56.2 vs. 8.6±6.4 fmol/ml (p<0.001) IL-8: 2109.2±4121.5 vs. 291.6±197.9 pg/ml (p<0.02), TNF-α: 183.8±28.2 vs. 86.2±23.9 fmol/ml (p<0.001). These data suggest that IL-6, IL-8 and TNF-α might be secreted locally at the site of active disease both in benign and malignant pleural effusions

Effect of cA2 anti-tumor necrosis factor-α antibody therapy on hematopoiesis of patients with myelodysplastic syndromes

Purpose: Tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α) plays a prominent role in the pathophysiology of myelodysplastic syndromes (MDS). The aim of this study was to explore the biological and immunoregulatory effect of the treatment with the anti-tumor necrosis factor-α monoclonal antibody cA2 on bone marrow (BM) progenitor/precursor and stromal cells and lymphocyte subsets, as well as the clinical response in MDS patients. Experimental Design: Ten low-intermediate risk MDS patients received i.v. cA2 (3 mg/kg) at weeks 0, 2, 6, and 12. The number, survival, and clonogenic potential of BM progenitor/precursor cells, the hematopoiesis-supporting capacity of BM stromal cells, and the lymphocyte activation status were investigated in the patients at baseline and following treatment using flow cytometry, clonogenic assays, and long-term BM cultures (LTBMC). Clinical response was evaluated according to standardized criteria. Results: cA2 administration reduced the proportion of apoptotic and Fas+ cells in the CD34+ cell compartment (P = 0.0215 and P = 0.0344, respectively) and increased the clonogenic potential of BM mononuclear and CD34+ cells (P = 0.0399 and P = 0.0304, respectively) compared with baseline. The antibody reduced tumor necrosis factor-α levels in LTBMC supernatants (P = 0.0043) and significantly improved the hematopoiesis-supporting capacity of LTBMC adherent cells. The proportion of activated peripheral blood and BM T-lymphocytes decreased significantly after treatment, suggesting an immunomodulatory effect of cA2. Two patients displayed minor hematologic responses whereas the remaining patients displayed stable disease with no disease progression. Conclusions: The encouraging biological insights from cA2 administration may be useful in conducting further clinical trials using cA2 for selected MDS patients, particularly those with evidence of immune-mediated inhibition of hematopoiesis. © 2006 American Association for Cancer Research

UniProt-Related Documents (UniReD): assisting wet lab biologists in their quest on finding novel counterparts in a protein network

The in-depth study of protein–protein interactions (PPIs) is of key importance for understanding how cells operate. Therefore, in the past few years, many experimental as well as computational approaches have been developed for the identification and discovery of such interactions. Here, we present UniReD, a user-friendly, computational prediction tool which analyses biomedical literature in order to extract known protein associations and suggest undocumented ones. As a proof of concept, we demonstrate its usefulness by experimentally validating six predicted interactions and by benchmarking it against public databases of experimentally validated PPIs succeeding a high coverage. We believe that UniReD can become an important and intuitive resource for experimental biologists in their quest for finding novel associations within a protein network and a useful tool to complement experimental approaches (e.g. mass spectrometry) by producing sorted lists of candidate proteins for further experimental validation. UniReD is available at http://bioinformatics.med.uoc.gr/unired/. © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of NAR Genomics and Bioinformatics