Upregulated wnt-11 and mir-21 expression trigger epithelial mesenchymal transition in aggressive prostate cancer cells

Prostate cancer (PCa) is the second-leading cause of cancer-related death among men. microRNAs have been identified as having potential roles in tumorigenesis. An oncomir, miR-21, is commonly highly upregulated in many cancers, including PCa, and showed correlation with the Wnt-signaling axis to increase invasion. Wnt-11 is a developmentally regulated gene and has been found to be upregulated in PCa, but its mechanism is unknown. The present study aimed to investigate the roles of miR-21 and Wnt-11 in PCa in vivo and in vitro. First, different Gleason score PCa tissue samples were used; both miR-21 and Wnt-11 expressions correlate with high Gleason scores in PCa patient tissues. This data then was confirmed with formalin-fixed paraffin cell blocks using PCa cell lines LNCaP and PC3. Cell survival and colony formation studies proved that miR-21 involves in cells’ behaviors, as well as the epithelial-mesenchymal transition. Consistent with the previous data, silencing miR-21 led to significant inhibition of cellular invasiveness. Overall, these results suggest that miR-21 plays a significant role related to Wnt-11 in the pathophysiology of PCa

Mental disorders frequency alternative and complementary medicine usage among patients with hypertension and type 2 diabetes mellitus

Objectives: Diabetes mellitus (DM) and hypertension (HT) are chronic disorders with which mental disorders may coexist and for which patients may resort to alternative medicine use. Alternative and complementary medicine is a treatment option that patients tend to use. This study is to determine the prevalence of mental disorders among patients diagnosed with DM and HT and their use of alternative medicine methods.Materials and Methods The study was conducted in a primary care setting. The data were collected from the Family Health Center No. 4 at Çankaya, Ankara, Turkey. It involved patients aged between 18 and 65, who were on follow‑up treatment for DM and HT. Patients accepted to participate in the study were administered the sociodemographic data form, the Primary Care Evaluation of Mental Disorders (PRIME‑MD) questionnaire and the alternative medicine inquiry form.Participants: One hundred and sixteen patients with HT and 119 patients with DM (type 2) were recruited for the study.Results: In this study, 47.4% of HT patients and 53.8% of the DM patients were diagnosed with a PRIME‑MD. The most commonly encountered disorder was mood disorders, in 37.1% of the HT patients and 45.4% of the DM patients. In this study, four HT patients (0.3%) and no DM patients stated that they resorted to complimentary medicine, which can use be used alongside conventional medical treatment and may help to feel better and cope better with any chronic condition. All four HT patients were using multivitamin combinations to support the treatment. As the alternative medicine usage was described as treatment used instead of conventional medical treatment we did not find any patient using alternative medicine.Conclusions: Mental disorders may coexist with HT and DM. Some of the HT and DM patients suffering from a mental disorder seek psychiatric support, while others do not. We believe that it is important to examine patients for mental disorders, while being followed‑up for a chronic disease.Keywords: Alternative medicine, diabetes mellitus, hypertension, mental disorde

HotPoint: hot spot prediction server for protein interfaces

The energy distribution along the protein–protein interface is not homogenous; certain residues contribute more to the binding free energy, called ‘hot spots’. Here, we present a web server, HotPoint, which predicts hot spots in protein interfaces using an empirical model. The empirical model incorporates a few simple rules consisting of occlusion from solvent and total knowledge-based pair potentials of residues. The prediction model is computationally efficient and achieves high accuracy of 70%. The input to the HotPoint server is a protein complex and two chain identifiers that form an interface. The server provides the hot spot prediction results, a table of residue properties and an interactive 3D visualization of the complex with hot spots highlighted. Results are also downloadable as text files. This web server can be used for analysis of any protein–protein interface which can be utilized by researchers working on binding sites characterization and rational design of small molecules for protein interactions. HotPoint is accessible at http://prism.ccbb.ku.edu.tr/hotpoint

General Complementarities on Complete Partial Orders

Cataloged from PDF version of article.This paper proves the existence of a Nash equilibrium for extended (semi-) uniform g-modular games, i.e., non-cooperative games where the strategy space is a complete partially ordered set, and the best reply correspondence satisfies certain monotonicity requirements

General complementarities on complete partial orders

This paper proves the existence of a Nash equilibrium for extended (semi-) uniform g-modular games, i.e., non-cooperative games where the strategy space is a complete partially ordered set, and the best reply correspondence satisfies certain monotonicity requirements. © 2014 Keskin et al.; licensee Springer

Identification of genetic variation in the major histocompatibility complex gene region in Turkish sheep breeds

The major histocompatibility complex (MHC) in sheep, Ovar-Mhc, remains poorly characterized relative to other domestic animals. However, its basic structure is similar to that of other mammals, comprising class I, II and III regions. In this study, the Ovine MHC class II DRB1 and DRB3 genes were amplified by polymerase chain reaction in eight sheep breeds reared in Turkey. Informative restriction fragment length polymorphisms (RFLPs) were obtained with five restriction enzymes for DRB1 and with two restriction enzymes for DRB3. The digestion of DRB1 exon 2 with NciI, SacI, SacII, Hin1I each produced three genotypes and two alleles (viz., a and b) with frequencies of 0.69 and 0.31; 0.65 and 0.35; 0.91 and 0.09; 0.57 and 0.43, respectively. The digestion of DRB1 exon 2 with DdeI produced four genotypes and three alleles (viz., a, b and c) with frequencies of 0.62, 0.28 and 0.10, respectively. On the other hand, the digestion of DRB3 exon 2 with NdeII and BsaI each produced three genotypes and two alleles (viz., a and b) with frequencies of 0.72 and 0.28; 0.96 and 0.04, respectively. This study presents the genetic profiles of the exon 2 region of the MHC DRB1 and DRB3 genes in native Turkish sheep breeds.Keywords: DRB1, DRB3, polymerase chain reaction (PCR), restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP

HotRegion: a database of predicted hot spot clusters

Hot spots are energetically important residues at protein interfaces and they are not randomly distributed across the interface but rather clustered. These clustered hot spots form hot regions. Hot regions are important for the stability of protein complexes, as well as providing specificity to binding sites. We propose a database called HotRegion, which provides the hot region information of the interfaces by using predicted hot spot residues, and structural properties of these interface residues such as pair potentials of interface residues, accessible surface area (ASA) and relative ASA values of interface residues of both monomer and complex forms of proteins. Also, the 3D visualization of the interface and interactions among hot spot residues are provided. HotRegion is accessible at http://prism.ccbb.ku.edu.tr/hotregion

Pion wave functions from holographic QCD and the role of infrared renormalons in photon-photon collisions

In this article, we calculate the contribution of the higher-twist Feynman diagrams to the large-$p_T$ inclusive single pion production cross section in photon-photon collisions in case of the running coupling and frozen coupling approaches within holographic QCD. We compare the resummed higher-twist cross sections with the ones obtained in the framework of the frozen coupling approach and leading-twist cross section. Also, we show that in the context of frozen coupling approach a higher-twist contribution to the photon-photon collisions cross section is normalized in terms of the pion electromagnetic form factor.Comment: 21 pages, 15 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:0709.2072 by other author