A snapshot of exhaled nitric oxide and asthma characteristics: experience from high to low income countries

Nitric oxide is a gas produced in the airways of asthmatic subjects and related to T2 inflammation. It can be measured as fractional nitric oxide (FeNO) in the exhaled air and used as a non-invasive, easy to evaluate, rapid marker. It is now widely used in many settings to determine airway inflammation. The aim of this narrative review is to report relationship between FeNO and the physiopathologic characteristics of asthmatic patients. Factors affecting FeNO levels have also been analysed as well as the impact of corticosteroid, target therapies and rehabilitation programs. Considering the availability of the test, spreading this methodology to low income countries has also been considered as a possibility for evaluating airway inflammation and monitoring adherence to inhaled corticosteroid therapy. PubMed data search has been performed restricted to English language papers. Research was limited to studies in adults unless studies in children were the only ones reported for a particular issue. This revision could be useful to summarize the role of FeNO in relation to asthma characteristics and help in the use of FeNO in different clinical settings particularly in low income countries

SdeK, a Histidine Kinase Required for Myxococcus xanthus Development

The sdeK gene is essential to the Myxococcus xanthus developmental process. We reported previously, based on sequence analysis (A. G. Garza, J. S. Pollack, B. Z. Harris, A. Lee, I. M. Keseler, E. F. Licking, and M. Singer, J. Bacteriol. 180:4628–4637, 1998), that SdeK appears to be a histidine kinase. In the present study, we have conducted both biochemical and genetic analyses to test the hypothesis that SdeK is a histidine kinase. An SdeK fusion protein containing an N-terminal polyhistidine tag (His-SdeK) displays the biochemical characteristics of a histidine kinase. Furthermore, histidine 286 of SdeK, the putative site of phosphorylation, is required for both in vitro and in vivo protein activity. The results of these assays have led us to conclude that SdeK is indeed a histidine kinase. The developmental phenotype of a ΔsdeK1 strain could not be rescued by codevelopment with wild-type cells, indicating that the defect is not due to the mutant's inability to produce an extracellular signal. Furthermore, the ΔsdeK1 mutant was found to produce both A- and C-signal, based on A-factor and codevelopment assays with a csgA mutant, respectively. The expression patterns of several Tn5lacZ transcriptional fusions were examined in the ΔsdeK1-null background, and we found that all C-signal-dependent fusions assayed also required SdeK for full expression. Our results indicate that SdeK is a histidine kinase that is part of a signal transduction pathway which, in concert with the C-signal transduction pathway, controls the activation of developmental-gene expression required to progress past the aggregation stage

Beyond Shakespeare's land of ire: Revisiting Ireland in English Renaissance drama

There has been much critical work on the symbolic centrality of Ireland to English Renaissance literature and drama. To focus on the latter, Shakespeare's histories have been read topically in terms of the contemporaneous Irish wars and also more historically, in terms of English colonialism in Ireland. Topical readings have been followed by allegorical approaches with, for instance, attention to Othello's “ghostly Irish subtext” (Hadfield, 1997) or Troilus and Cressida's memories of Elizabethan conflict in Ireland (Parker, 1996). Such interpretations suggest scholarly imaginativeness, the discovery of surprising meaning about a text we thought we knew, albeit within a Shakespeare‐centric frame. They further suggest the capacity of Ireland to enter a play's imaginary— as problem, as image, as other world. At stake here, then, are interrelated questions about what Ireland is doing in English Renaissance drama, where and when we expect to find it, and how we read it. This essay re‐examines the question of why and how Ireland features in plays by Shakespeare and other early modern dramatists. This deceptively simple question is intended to revisit some assumptions that underpin current critical understandings. Why Ireland features in plays has been largely understood as a function of historical contexts and processes: critics and scholars have turned to these as an important site of explanation, with the early modern colonialist discourse on Ireland given special prominence as a determinant of meaning. However, this focus has sidelined other considerations. This article argues for a broadening of context, beyond a focus on topical resonance, to allow for a consideration of dramatic genre and form, the imitative nature of dramatic writing, and the theatre companies themselves, as important factors that shaped how a text and context like Ireland and the Irish found its way into a play. This approach treats representations as a series of reciprocal markings, intertextual echoes, and foregrounds the capacity of a play to make meaning within its own frame. The objective here is less about discounting the political and ideological work of Renaissance plays than about exploring their possibilities to (re)imagine the early modern “land of ire.