Hydrogel-Based Colorimetric Assay for Multiplexed MicroRNA Detection in a Microfluidic Device

Although microRNA (miRNA) expression levels provide important information regarding disease states owing to their unique dysregulation patterns in tissues, translation of miRNA diagnostics into point-of-care (POC) settings has been limited by practical challenges. Her; we developed a hydrogel-based microfluidic platform for colorimetric profiling of miRNAs, without the use of complex external equipment for fluidics and imaging. For sensitive and reliable measurement without the risk of sequence bias, we employed a gold deposition-based signal amplification scheme and dark-field imaging, and seamlessly integrated a previously developed miRNA assay scheme into this platform. The assay demonstrated a limit of detection of 260 fM, along with multiplexing of small panels of miRNAs in healthy and cancer samples. We anticipate this versatile platform to facilitate a broad range of POC profiling of miRNAs in cancer-associated dysregulation with high-confidence by exploiting the unique features of hydrogel substrate in an on-chip format and colorimetric analysis

The relation of Karl Barth's understanding of revelation to that of Søren Kierkegaard

The purpose of this study is to consider the relation between Karl Barth's understanding and that of Søren Kierkegaard. This study defended the thesis, that even though the later Barth's position was closer to Kierkegaard than was that of the early Barth, the later Barth's position was still different from that of Kierkegaard. To show that this is the case, an attempt was made to analyse Barth's early position and his later position on revelation in their relation to Kierkegaard. Firstly, I examined the early Barth's understanding of revelation through an analysis of The Epistle of the Romans (second edition of 1922) with special reference to its relation to Kierkegaard. In this consideration, I took three salient concepts which were central to the early Barth's understanding of revelation and are relevant to Kierkegaard Moment, History and Paradox. Through the analysis of these three concepts, I showed that even though the early Barth and Kierkegaard used the same terminology, the meaning which they gave to these terms was different from one another. Accordingly, their understandings of revelation were also different from one another. I then turned my attention to the later Barth, especially after the publication of the first volume of the Church Dogmatics in 1932, for the purpose of drawing out the later Barth's understanding of revelation. In this consideration, I argued that even though the later Barth recognized the historicity and temporality of revelation and seemed to emphasize the incarnation, the historicity and the incarnation which the later Barth recognized, were different from Kierkegaard's understanding of the historicity of revelation and of the incarnation. The differences between their concepts of the historicity and temporality, made for the difference between their understandings of revelation. In the third chapter, I attempted to explore Kierkegaard's understanding of revelation. Throughout this chapter, I was especially concerned with the three characteristics, which Kierkegaard wanted to emphasize in his understanding of revelation; the paradoxicality of revelation, revelation as the absolute fact, and the historicity of revelation. I thus concluded that even though the later Barth's view of revelation was close to that of Kierkegaard, even the later Barth has a different understanding of revelation from that of Kierkegaard. At the back of their understanding of revelation there was a different thought-structure

The relation of Christianity to the ethical sphere in the thought of Søren Kierkegaard

This is a study about the relationship between the ethical sphere and Christianity in Kierkegaard's thought. Against the tendency among Kierkegaard scholars to emphasize the continuity between the ethical sphere and Christianity, I tried to show through this study that in Kierkegaard's writings there was a very strong emphasis on the discontinuity between these two spheres. I started by asking whether there is a difference and discontinuity between "rationalistic ethics" (the ethics of the person who is in the ethical sphere) and Christian ethics. {Chapter One} Firstly, in the examination of Abraham's act of faith in Fear and Trembling, I showed that even in this book there was a hint of a new ethics which follows from faith. To answer the question as to whether there is a clear description of this new ethics, I turned to Works of Love. In the examination of this book, I identified the ethics of Christian love, and asserted that the ethics of Christian love was different and discontinuous from merely human love. In the next section, I examined Christian ethics as the ethics of Christian discipleship. Through an examination of some parts of Philosophical Fragments and Training in Christianity I argued that Christian ethics, as understood by Kierkegaard, is different from merely ethical discipleship and semi-Pelagianism. Throughout this chapter's discussion I argued that Christian ethics was not only different from the ethics of the ethical person, but also antithetical to it. For ethics based on merely human love was criticized severely in Works of Love, and the merely ethical discipleship and semi-Pelagian discipleship were regarded as misunderstandings of Christian ethics. I turned, in the second chapter, to the consideration of the problem of becoming oneself. In this chapter, I firstly examined the second volume of Either/Or and argued that the ethical self was an autonomous self which tried to be itself by itself. In contrast, the Christian self is totally dependent on God in its becoming itself. I drew this conclusion from an examination of The Sickness unto Death. In this examination, I argued that even though there were some ambiguities in this book, despair as sin was clearly understood only by the Christian who believed in the forgiveness of sin by God and had faith. Only the existing individual who is in faith is regarded as overcoming the despair and having become a "self" (or "spirit"). I pointed out that in their understandings of the eternal, of the power of self, these two understandings of the self were different from one another. In the last section of this second chapter, I raised the question of the understanding of the self of the person in religiousness A. By an examination of the Socratic understanding of the phrase "one can be oneself in relation to God" and an analysis of Socratic inwardness, I argued that those in religiousness A had a different God, or different conception of God from the Christian God. I also argued that this difference between their respective conceptions of God was the fundamental reason for the difference between the Christian understanding of becoming a self and that of the person in religiousness A. In the third chapter, I examined the problem of epistemology. Firstly, I drew out, from Kierkegaard's various pseudonymous writings, the presuppositions and epistemological standpoint of the natural man. Then, I compared this with the Christian epistemological standpoint which was drawn from Kierkegaard's later writings. I argued that in his later writings there were very clear indications that the Christian has an epistemological standpoint which is substantially different from that of the natural man. I turned then to an examination of Kierkegaard’s journal entries, and showed that even though he himself could not always think in the way which he asserted that the Christian should think, Kierkegaard did not compromise and say that it was proper and inevitable for us to mix the Christian standpoint and the natural man’s standpoint. Rather, he strongly resisted the idea that such a mixture was Christian. Next I returned to one of Kierkegaard’s early pseudonymous writings, philosophical Fragments, to show that Kierkegaard’s ultimate intention in writing this book can be interpreted in a manner consistent with his later writings. I argued that even though, because of the ambiguity in this book, there are other ways of interpreting it, it is also possible that the Socratic standpoint and the Christian standpoint are too exclusive views of reality as a whole, and that even in this book Kierkegaard tried to show the difference and discontinuity of the Socratic (humanist) standpoint and the Christian standpoint. According to this interpretation of Kierkegaard’s intention, he who has the Christian point of view should see and consider everything from the Christian standpoint; for him, there is no autonomous realm to be thought of from the Socratic (humanistic) standpoint. Based upon this examination, I concluded that for Kierkegaard Christian ethics follows on from Christian theology (his Christian theistic faith), and the understanding of becoming oneself also follows on from Christian’s stance of faith (so that the Christian self is regarded as the “theological self”), and his epistemological standpoint is also Christian. In this sense, there is a wide gap between the Christian sphere and the ethical sphere, or to put this another way, their direction is different : one is theistic and one humanistic. For Kierkegaard, to be a Christian thus involves a change in one’s ethics, in one’s understanding of becoming oneself, and in one’s epistemological standpoint. Then, I drew out some implications for Kierkegaard’s theory of the existence-spheres as a whole and suggested some implications for Christian theology today

Clinical and Pathological Characteristics of Four Korean Patients with Limb-Girdle Muscular Dystrophy type 2B

Limb-girdle muscular dystrophy type 2B (LGMD2B), a subtype of autosomal recessive limb-girdle muscular dystrophy (ARLGMD), is characterized by a relatively late onset and slow progressive course. LGMD2B is known to be caused by the loss of the dysferlin protein at sarcolemma in muscle fibers. In this study, the clinical and pathological characteristics of Korean LGMD2B patients were investigated. Seventeen patients with ARLGMD underwent muscle biopsy and the histochemical examination was performed. For the immunocytochemistry, a set of antibodies against dystrophin, α, β, γ, δ-sarcoglycans, dysferlin, caveolin-3, and β-dystroglycan was used. Four patients (24%) showed selective loss of immunoreactivity against dysferlin at the sarcolemma on the muscle specimens. Therefore, they were classified into the LGMD2B category. The age at the onset of disease ranged from 9 yr to 33 yr, and none of the patients was wheelchair bound at the neurological examination. The serum creatine kinase (CK) was high in all the patients (4010-5310 IU/L). The pathologic examination showed mild to moderate dystrophic features. These are the first Korean LGMD2B cases with a dysferlin deficiency confirmed by immunocytochemistry. The clinical, pathological, and immunocytochemical findings of the patients with LGMD2B in this study were in accordance with those of other previous reports

Technological Progress in Generation of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells for Clinical Applications

Reprogramming of somatic cells into induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) is achieved by viral-mediated transduction of defined transcription factors. Generation of iPSCs is of great medical interest as they have the potential to be a source of patient-specific cells. For the eventual goal of clinical application, it is necessary to overcome the limitations of low reprogramming efficiency and chromosomal abnormalities due to viral DNA integration. In this paper, we summarize the current state of reprogramming technology for generation of iPSCs and also discuss potential approaches to the development of safe iPSCs for personalized cell-based replacement therapy

Pepper EST database: comprehensive in silico tool for analyzing the chili pepper (Capsicum annuum) transcriptome

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>There is no dedicated database available for Expressed Sequence Tags (EST) of the chili pepper (<it>Capsicum annuum</it>), although the interest in a chili pepper EST database is increasing internationally due to the nutritional, economic, and pharmaceutical value of the plant. Recent advances in high-throughput sequencing of the ESTs of chili pepper cv. Bukang have produced hundreds of thousands of complementary DNA (cDNA) sequences. Therefore, a chili pepper EST database was designed and constructed to enable comprehensive analysis of chili pepper gene expression in response to biotic and abiotic stresses.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We built the Pepper EST database to mine the complexity of chili pepper ESTs. The database was built on 122,582 sequenced ESTs and 116,412 refined ESTs from 21 pepper EST libraries. The ESTs were clustered and assembled into virtual consensus cDNAs and the cDNAs were assigned to metabolic pathway, Gene Ontology (GO), and MIPS Functional Catalogue (FunCat). The Pepper EST database is designed to provide a workbench for (i) identifying unigenes in pepper plants, (ii) analyzing expression patterns in different developmental tissues and under conditions of stress, and (iii) comparing the ESTs with those of other members of the <it>Solanaceae </it>family. The Pepper EST database is freely available at <url>http://genepool.kribb.re.kr/pepper/</url>.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The Pepper EST database is expected to provide a high-quality resource, which will contribute to gaining a systemic understanding of plant diseases and facilitate genetics-based population studies. The database is also expected to contribute to analysis of gene synteny as part of the chili pepper sequencing project by mapping ESTs to the genome.</p

Effects of Thermal and Humidity Aging on the Interfacial Adhesion of Polyketone Fiber Reinforced Natural Rubber Composites

Polyketone fiber is considered as a reinforcement of the mechanical rubber goods (MRG) such as tires, automobile hoses, and belts because of its high strength and modulus. In order to apply it to those purposes, the high adhesion of fiber/rubber interface and good sustainability to aging conditions are very important. In this study, polyketone fiber reinforced natural rubber composites were prepared and they were subjected to thermal and humidity aging, to assess the changes of the interfacial adhesion and material properties. Also, the effect of adhesive primer treatment, based on the resorcinol formaldehyde resin and latex (RFL), of polyketone fiber for high interfacial adhesion was evaluated. Morphological and property changes of the rubber composites were analyzed by using various instrumental analyses. As a result, the rubber composite was aged largely by thermal aging at high temperature rather than humidity aging condition. Interfacial adhesion of the polyketone/NR composites was improved by the primer treatment and its effect was maintained in aging conditions