Pharmacologic modulation of experimentally induced allergic asthma

Allergic asthma is the most frequent disease of the respiratory tract. The aim of the current experimental and clinical studies was to find new sources of drugs able to control asthmatic inflammation and airway hyperresponsiveness. Our experimental studies were focused on efficiency evaluation of substances able to influence activities of ion channels, phosphodiesterase (PDE) isoforms, substances from the group of polyphenols and NO metabolism modulators during experimentally induced allergic asthma

MOLECULAR DETECTION OF PHYTOPLASMAS IN APPLE WITH RUBBERY WOOD SYMPTOMS

Rubbery wood is a severe disease which affects both apple and pear trees and may cause severe losses in some countries. The affected plants show a partial lack of lignification of young branches which gives the plant a typical prostrate appearance. In longitudinal sections of flower petioles and green prebursted shoots from grafts or diseased trees, strong fluorescent areas associated with DNA due to phytoplasmas or to other infectious agents were observed using fluorescent microscopy-DAPI technique. Round structures resembling phytoplasmas were also observed under the scanning electron microscope. Further analyses were performed to verify the presence of phytoplasma and allow their molecular identification. Samples from two source plants from the Czech Republic and one from Canada were employed in direct and nested polymerase chain reaction assays together with apple proliferation samples and group specific control phytoplasma strains as positive controls. General ribosomal primer pairs employed were R16F1/R0 and R16F2/R2, while group-specific primer pairs were R16(I)F1/R1, R16(III)F2/R1, R16(V)F1/R1 and R16(X)F1/R1. A DNA fragment of 1.2 kb was produced from some of the rubbery wood samples and from apple proliferation samples as well as from the positive controls when nested PCR was carried out with the primer pair R16F2/R2. The amplification with specific primers yielded a 1.1 kb fragment from the rubbery wood samples amplified using primer pairs R16(I)F1/R1. RFLP analysis confirmed that phytoplasmas that belong to the aster yellows group (16SrI) were present. PCR experiments with primers that amplify a chromosomal portion of aster yellows group phytoplasmas followed by Southern hybridization with the homologous DNA probe confirmed the presence, in some of the apple rubbery wood samples, of phytoplasma that belong to the aster yellows group

Phytoplasma detection and identification: from 16S ribosomal gene to multiple gene identification.

Phytoplasmas are bacteria lacking cell wall that are located in the phloem of plants and in the hemolymph of insect vectors. The phytoplasma classification scheme is based on PCR/RFLP analyses of 16S rDNA: a reliable tool for the differentiation that has become the most comprehensive and widely accepted classification system. On the other hand, the \u2018Candidatus Phytoplasma\u2019 species description, recently under adoption, refers to 16S rRNA gene sequence with a threshold <97.5% similarity to that of any previously described \u2018Ca. Phytoplasma\u2019 species. However because of the highly conserved nature of the 16S rDNA, many biologically or ecologically distinct phytoplasma strains, which may warrant designation of a new taxon may fail to meet this requirement. Additional unique biological properties such as antibody specificity, host range and vector transmission specificity as well as other molecular criteria need to be included for speciation. Some additional tools for phylogenetic analyses and finer strain differentiation of phytoplasmas such as rp, secY, tuf, groEL genes, and the 16S-23S rRNA intergenic spacer region sequences are now used as supplementary tools and multilocus analyses is providing useful and reliable information in combination with 16SrDNA for phytoplasma strains differentiation

The representation of program synthesis in higher order logic

Systems built for automated program construction aim at the formalization of the programming process in order to produce better software. Their implementations, however, suffer from problems similar to those they are intended to solve. Due to a lack of abstraction in the formalization of deductive mechanisms involved in programming reasoning tools for the development of program synthesizers are not yet available. For that, systems capable of formal reasoning about both programs and programming methods are needed. In this paper we develop principles of a formal theory on reasoning about programs and program construction within a unified higher order framework. By an exemplified formalization of principal approaches to program synthesis we will show that a higher degree of abstraction leads to clearer insights into the meta-mathematics of program construction. Ridding the representation of deductive methods from superfluous context also results in simpler, sometimes almost trivial, proofs. Simplicity is one of the most important features of the formal theory and quite valuable if one considers the wide range of intended applications. We present the theory in a highly formalized form built on top of Intuitionistic Type Theory. This allows us to straightforwardly implemented the concepts developed here with a proof system for Type Theory and derive verified implementations of deductive mechanisms from mechanically proven theorems