The contribution of Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine for the knowledge of infection by the Human Immunodeficiency Virus

Saúde Global e Doenças TropicaisRESUMO Ao longo dos últimos 25 anos, o Instituto de Higiene e Medicina Tropical (IHMT) tem contribuído de forma significativa para o conhecimento da patogénese da infeção pelo vírus da imunodeficiência humana (VIH). Os estudos realizados abrangem vários aspetos da infeção como a caraterização da história evolutiva e diversidade genética doVIH em Portugal, e em alguns países de África; as alterações na dinâmica de transmissão da epidemia do VIH particularmente em populações de maior risco, a análise das mutações virais que conferem resistência aos antirretrovirais (INI e aos PI); caraterização da resposta humoral não neutralizante e neutralizante e o desenvolvimento de vacinas para a infeçãoVIH. ABSTRACT Over the past 25 years, the Institute of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (IHMT) has contributed significantly to the knowledge of the pathogenesis of infection by the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV). The studies cover various aspects of infection such as the characterization of the evolutionary history and genetic diversity of HIV in Portugal, and in some countries of Africa; changes in HIV transmission dynamics particularly in most-at-risk populations, analysis of viral mutations that confer resistance to antiretroviral drugs (INI and IP); characterization of the neutralizing and non-neutralizing immune response and development of vaccines for HIV infection.publishersversionpublishe

La carga familiar en una muestra de pacientes esquizofrénicos en tratamiento ambulatorio.

La atención a los pacientes psicóticos crónicos en la comunidad ha supuesto una sobrecarga para las familias sin que en general los profesionales de la psiquiatría parezcan dar a este hecho la importancia que tiene. Las familias de los esquizofrénicos crónicos están sobrecargadas, tanto por el malestar subjetivo que les ocasiona la conducta del enfermo y la ausencia de un desempeño adecuado de sus papeles sociales, como por los problemas que los pacientes crean en la vida habitual de las mismas. Se hace preciso atender las necesidades de estas familias ante esa situación de estrés crónico

La carga familiar en una muestra de pacientes esquizofrénicos en tratamiento ambulatorio.

La atención a los pacientes psicóticos crónicos en la comunidad ha supuesto una sobrecarga para las familias sin que en general los profesionales de la psiquiatría parezcan dar a este hecho la importancia que tiene. Las familias de los esquizofrénicos crónicos están sobrecargadas, tanto por el malestar subjetivo que les ocasiona la conducta del enfermo y la ausencia de un desempeño adecuado de sus papeles sociales, como por los problemas que los pacientes crean en la vida habitual de las mismas. Se hace preciso atender las necesidades de estas familias ante esa situación de estrés crónico

MSH3 polymorphisms and protein levels affect CAG repeat instability in huntington's disease mice

Expansions of trinucleotide CAG/CTG repeats in somatic tissues are thought to contribute to ongoing disease progression through an affected individual's life with Huntington's disease or myotonic dystrophy. Broad ranges of repeat instability arise between individuals with expanded repeats, suggesting the existence of modifiers of repeat instability. Mice with expanded CAG/CTG repeats show variable levels of instability depending upon mouse strain. However, to date the genetic modifiers underlying these differences have not been identified. We show that in liver and striatum the R6/1 Huntington's disease (HD) (CAG)~100 transgene, when present in a congenic C57BL/6J (B6) background, incurred expansion-biased repeat mutations, whereas the repeat was stable in a congenic BALB/cByJ (CBy) background. Reciprocal congenic mice revealed the Msh3 gene as the determinant for the differences in repeat instability. Expansion bias was observed in congenic mice homozygous for the B6 Msh3 gene on a CBy background, while the CAG tract was stabilized in congenics homozygous for the CBy Msh3 gene on a B6 background. The CAG stabilization was as dramatic as genetic deficiency of Msh2. The B6 and CBy Msh3 genes had identical promoters but differed in coding regions and showed strikingly different protein levels. B6 MSH3 variant protein is highly expressed and associated with CAG expansions, while the CBy MSH3 variant protein is expressed at barely detectable levels, associating with CAG stability. The DHFR protein, which is divergently transcribed from a promoter shared by the Msh3 gene, did not show varied levels between mouse strains. Thus, naturally occurring MSH3 protein polymorphisms are modifiers of CAG repeat instability, likely through variable MSH3 protein stability. Since evidence supports that somatic CAG instability is a modifier and predictor of disease, our data are consistent with the hypothesis that variable levels of CAG instability associated with polymorphisms of DNA repair genes may have prognostic implications for various repeat-associated diseases

IgTM: An algorithm to predict transmembrane domains and topology in proteins

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Due to their role of receptors or transporters, membrane proteins play a key role in many important biological functions. In our work we used Grammatical Inference (GI) to localize transmembrane segments. Our GI process is based specifically on the inference of Even Linear Languages.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We obtained values close to 80% in both specificity and sensitivity. Six datasets have been used for the experiments, considering different encodings for the input sequences. An encoding that includes the topology changes in the sequence (from inside and outside the membrane to it and vice versa) allowed us to obtain the best results. This software is publicly available at: <url>http://www.dsic.upv.es/users/tlcc/bio/bio.html</url></p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We compared our results with other well-known methods, that obtain a slightly better precision. However, this work shows that it is possible to apply Grammatical Inference techniques in an effective way to bioinformatics problems.</p

Can we predict personality in fish? searching for consistency over time and across contexts

The interest in animal personality, broadly defined as consistency of individual behavioural traits over time and across contexts, has increased dramatically over the last years. Individual differences in behaviour are no longer recognised as noise around a mean but rather as adaptive variation and thus, essentially, raw material for evolution. Animal personality has been considered evolutionary conserved and has been shown to be present in all vertebrates including fish. Despite the importance of evolutionary and comparative aspects in this field, few studies have actually documented consistency across situations in fish. In addition, most studies are done with individually housed fish which may pose additional challenges when interpreting data from social species. Here, we investigate, for the first time in fish, whether individual differences in behavioural responses to a variety of challenges are consistent over time and across contexts using both individual and grouped-based tests. Twenty-four juveniles of Gilthead seabream Sparus aurata were subjected to three individual-based tests: feed intake recovery in a novel environment, novel object and restraining and to two group-based tests: risk-taking and hypoxia. Each test was repeated twice to assess consistency of behavioural responses over time. Risk taking and escape behaviours during restraining were shown to be significantly consistent over time. In addition, consistency across contexts was also observed: individuals that took longer to recover feed intake after transfer into a novel environment exhibited higher escape attempts during a restraining test and escaped faster from hypoxia conditions. These results highlight the possibility to predict behaviour in groups from individual personality traits.European Commission [265957 COPEWELL]; European Social Fund of Andalusia; Foundation for Science and Technology, Portugal [SFRH/BPD/77210/2011]info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio