Media composition influences yeast one- and two-hybrid results

Although yeast two-hybrid experiments are commonly used to identify protein interactions, the frequent occurrence of false negatives and false positives hampers data interpretation. Using both yeast one-hybrid and two-hybrid experiments, we have identified potential sources of these problems: the media preparation protocol and the source of the yeast nitrogen base may not only impact signal range but also effect whether a result appears positive or negative. While altering media preparation may optimize signal differences for individual experiments, media preparation must be reported in detail to replicate studies and accurately compare results from different experiments

Contemporary status of insecticide resistance in the major Aedes vectors of arboviruses infecting humans (PLoS Negl Trop Dis)

Publisher Copyright: © 2021 Moyes et al.After the publication of this article [1] the authors noticed citation errors in Table 2. The citations for item 5 listed under pyrethroids and items 2, 3, and 4 listed under temephos refer to the wrong references and these citations have been corrected in the updated Table 2 below. The citations for items 1, 3 and 4 listed under pyrethroids and item 1 listed under temephos are also incorrect and should cite references that have been omitted from the reference list. These citations have been corrected in the updated Table 2 below and the following corre-sponding references 79–82 should be added to the reference list: 79. Bariami V, Jones CM, Poupardin R, Vontas J, Ranson H. Gene amplification, ABC trans-porters and cytochrome P450s: unraveling the molecular basis of pyrethroid resistance in the dengue vector, Aedes aegypti. PLoS Negl Trop Dis. 2012;6: e1692. pmid:22720108 80. Saavedra-Rodriguez K, Suarez AF, Salas IF, Strode C, Ranson H, Hemingway J, et al. Transcription of detoxification genes after permethrin selection in the mosquito Aedes aegypti. Insect Mol Biol. 2012;21: 61–77. pmid:22032702 81. David J-P, Faucon F, Chandor-Proust A, Poupardin R, Riaz MA, Bonin A, et al. Comparative analysis of response to selection with three insecticides in the dengue mosquito Aedes aegypti using mRNA sequencing. BMC Genomics. 2014;15: 174. pmid:24593293 82. Strode C, de Melo-Santos M, Magalhaes T, Araujo A, Ayres C. Expression profile of genes during resistance reversal in a temephos selected strain of the dengue vector, Aedes aegypti. PloS One. 2012;7: e39439. pmid: 22870187.publishersversionpublishe

Cross-Frequency Integration for Consonant and Vowel Identification in Bimodal Hearing

Purpose: Improved speech recognition in binaurally combined acoustic–electric stimulation (otherwise known as bimodal hearing) could arise when listeners integrate speech cues from the acoustic and electric hearing. The aims of this study were (a) to identify speech cues extracted in electric hearing and residual acoustic hearing in the low-frequency region and (b) to investigate cochlear implant (CI) users' ability to integrate speech cues across frequencies. Method: Normal-hearing (NH) and CI subjects participated in consonant and vowel identification tasks. Each subject was tested in 3 listening conditions: CI alone (vocoder speech for NH), hearing aid (HA) alone (low-pass filtered speech for NH), and both. Integration ability for each subject was evaluated using a model of optimal integration—the PreLabeling integration model (Braida, 1991). Results: Only a few CI listeners demonstrated bimodal benefit for phoneme identification in quiet. Speech cues extracted from the CI and the HA were highly redundant for consonants but were complementary for vowels. CI listeners also exhibited reduced integration ability for both consonant and vowel identification compared with their NH counterparts. Conclusion: These findings suggest that reduced bimodal benefits in CI listeners are due to insufficient complementary speech cues across ears, a decrease in integration ability, or both.National Organization for Hearing ResearchNational Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (U.S.) (Grant R03 DC009684-01)National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (U.S.) (Grant R01 DC007152-02

Replication and Meta-Analysis of GWAS Identified Susceptibility Loci in Kawasaki Disease Confirm the Importance of B Lymphoid Tyrosine Kinase (BLK) in Disease Susceptibility

10.1371/journal.pone.0072037PLoS ONE88-POLN

Caregiver awareness of reproductive health issues for women with intellectual disabilities

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Limited attention has been paid to the issue of reproductive health as it affects women with intellectual disabilities, despite reproductive health being a vital issue in public health policy for women in the general population. This paper describes caregiver awareness of reproductive health issues relative to women with intellectual disabilities who are being cared for in welfare institutions in Taiwan.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>The study employed a cross-sectional, questionnaire-based study which recruited 1,152 caregivers (response rate = 71.87%) from 32 registered disability welfare institutions in Taiwan. We classified their understanding/awareness of reproductive health issues into four domains: menstrual (1) and menopause (2) issues, sex education (3), and reproductive health services (4). Each domain had five associated yes/no questions and the total score for the four domains was out of a maximum of 20. Data were analyzed using SPSS 15.0 software.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We found that most of the caregivers were familiar with matters concerning sex education, menopause, and reproductive health services, but they lacked adequate understanding of issues associated with menstruation in women with ID. Many aspects of reproductive health such as "menstrual pain", "age at menarche", "masturbation", "diet during perimenopause", and "publicly available reproductive health services" were issues in which caregivers lacked adequate knowledge and required further instruction. Logistic regression analysis revealed that female caregivers with a university degree, and those who had experience assisting with reproductive health care were more inclined to have higher reproductive health awareness scores than their counterparts.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>This study highlights that service providers should offer appropriate reproductive health education to institutional caregivers, and that more attention be focused on the personal experiences and concerns of intellectually disabled women in future research.</p

Glucuronidation by UGT1A1 Is the Dominant Pathway of the Metabolic Disposition of Belinostat in Liver Cancer Patients

10.1371/journal.pone.0054522PLoS ONE81

Systematic comparison of plasma EBV DNA, anti-EBV antibodies and miRNA levels for early detection and prognosis of nasopharyngeal carcinoma

Nasopharyngeal carcinoma (NPC) is originated from the epithelial cells of nasopharynx, Epstein-Barr virus (EBV)-associated and has the highest incidence and mortality rates in Southeast Asia. Late presentation is a common issue and early detection could be the key to reduce the disease burden. Sensitivity of plasma EBV DNA, an established NPC biomarker, for Stage I NPC is controversial. Most newly reported NPC biomarkers have neither been externally validated nor compared to the established ones. This causes difficulty in planning for cost-effective early detection strategies. Our study systematically evaluated six established and four new biomarkers in NPC cases, population controls and hospital controls. We showed that BamHI-W 76 bp remains the most sensitive plasma biomarker, with 96.7% (29/30), 96.7% (58/60) and 97.4% (226/232) sensitivity to detect Stage I, early stage and all NPC, respectively. Its specificity was 94.2% (113/120) against population controls and 90.4% (113/125) against hospital controls. Diagnostic accuracy of BamHI-W 121 bp and ebv-miR-BART7-3p were validated. Hsa-miR-29a-3p and hsa-miR-103a-3p were not, possibly due to lower number of advanced stage NPC cases included in this subset. Decision tree modeling suggested that combination of BamHI-W 76 bp and VCA IgA or EA IgG may increase the specificity or sensitivity to detect NPC. EBNA1 99 bp could identify NPC patients with poor prognosis in early and advanced stage NPC. Our findings provided evidence for improvement in NPC screening strategies, covering considerations of opportunistic screening, combining biomarkers to increase sensitivity or specificity and testing biomarkers from single sampled specimen to avoid logistic problems of resampling

Cloning and Functional Analysis of FLJ20420: A Novel Transcription Factor for the BAG-1 Promoter

BAG-1 is an anti-apoptotic protein that interacts with a variety of cellular molecules to inhibit apoptosis. The mechanisms by which BAG-1 interacts with other proteins to inhibit apoptosis have been extensively explored. However, it is currently unknown how BAG-1 expression is regulated at the molecular level, especially in cancer cells. Here we reported to clone a novel down-regulated BAG-1 expression gene named FLJ20420 using hBAG-1 promoter as a probe to screen Human Hela 5′ cDNA library by Southernwestern blot. The FLJ20420 gene encodes a ∼26-kDa protein that is localized in both the cytoplasm and nucleus. We proved that FLJ20420 protein can specially bind hBAG-1 promoter region by EMSA in vivo and ChIP assay in vivo. Northern blot analysis revealed a low level of FLJ20420 transcriptional expression in normal human tissues (i.e., brain, placenta, lung, liver, kidney, pancreas and cervix), except for heart and skeletal muscles, which showed higher levels. Furthermore, enhanced FLJ20420 expression was observed in tumor cell lines (i.e., MDA468, BT-20, MCF-7, C33A, HeLa and Caski). Knockdown of endogenous FLJ20420 expression significantly increased BAG-1 expression in A549 and L9981 cells, and also significantly enhanced their sensitivity to cisplatin-induced apoptosis. A microarray assay of the FLJ20420 siRNA –transfectants showed altered expression of 505 known genes, including 272 upregulated and 233 downregulated genes. Finally, our gene array studies in lung cancer tissue samples revealed a significant increase in FLJ20420 expression in primary lung cancer relative to the paired normal lung tissue controls (p = 0.0006). The increased expression of FLJ20420 corresponded to a significant decrease in BAG-1 protein expression in the primary lung cancers, relative to the paired normal lung tissue controls (p = 0.0001). Taken together, our experiments suggest that FLJ20420 functions as a down-regulator of BAG-1 expression. Its abnormal expression may be involved in the oncogenesis of human malignancies such as lung cancer