Expression profiles of hydrophobic surfactant proteins in children with diffuse chronic lung disease

BACKGROUND: Abnormalities of the intracellular metabolism of the hydrophobic surfactant proteins SP-B and SP-C and their precursors may be causally linked to chronic childhood diffuse lung diseases. The profile of these proteins in the alveolar space is unknown in such subjects. METHODS: We analyzed bronchoalveolar lavage fluid by Western blotting for SP-B, SP-C and their proforms in children with pulmonary alveolar proteinosis (PAP, n = 15), children with no SP-B (n = 6), children with chronic respiratory distress of unknown cause (cRD, n = 7), in comparison to children without lung disease (n = 15) or chronic obstructive bronchitis (n = 19). RESULTS: Pro-SP-B of 25–26 kD was commonly abundant in all groups of subjects, suggesting that their presence is not of diagnostic value for processing defects. In contrast, pro-SP-B peptides cleaved off during intracellular processing of SP-B and smaller than 19–21 kD, were exclusively found in PAP and cRD. In 4 of 6 children with no SP-B, mutations of SFTPB or SPTPC genes were found. Pro-SP-C forms were identified at very low frequency. Their presence was clearly, but not exclusively associated with mutations of the SFTPB and SPTPC genes, impeding their usage as candidates for diagnostic screening. CONCLUSION: Immuno-analysis of the hydrophobic surfactant proteins and their precursor forms in bronchoalveolar lavage is minimally invasive and can give valuable clues for the involvement of processing abnormalities in pediatric pulmonary disorders

Managing climate change risks in New York City’s water system: assessment and adaptation planning

Adaptation to climate change, Climate mitigation, Risk management, Sea-level rise, Urban infrastructure, Water quality, Water supply, Sewer systems, Wastewater treatment,

Complete and Exact Peptide Sequence Analysis Based on Propositional Logic

Peptides are the short polymeric molecules constituting all the proteins. They are formed by the linking of amino acids, and the determination of the amino acid sequence of a peptide is a fundamental issue in many areas of chemistry, medicine and biology. Nowadays, the prevalent approach to this problem consists in using a mass spectrometry analysis. This gives information about the molecular weight of the full peptidic molecule and of its fragments. Such information should be used in order to find the sequence, but this constitutes, in the general case, a difficult mathematical problem. After a brief overview of the approaches proposed in literature, and of their features and limits, the chapter describes in detail a promising one based on propositional logic. Differently from the others, this approach can be proved to be complete and exact