Association between intelligence and COMT genotypes in Chinese healthy children

Catechol-O-methyl transferase (COMT) influences dopamine concentration in the pre-frontal cortex (PFC). The G/A transition in the exon 4 of the COMT gene, which results in a valine (Val) to methionine (Met) amino acid substitution (Val158Met), can bring on different enzymatic activities. Much research has found that the Met/Met genotype associated with low enzymatic activity and may enhance cognitive function. We applied one-way ANOVA to detect the effect of the COMT genotypes to intelligence in 108 Chinese children with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) methods. We found COMT Val158Met polymorphism had a significant main effect on intelligence (F (2, 102) = 3.47, p=0.035) and it could predict 4.7% of intelligence. Our results also suggest that Met/Met genotype has a positive effect on intelligence. However, we found no significant interaction between gender and COMT genotype to intelligence

Association between creativity and COMT genotype

Catechol-O-methyl transferase (COMT) influences dopamine concentration in the pre-frontal cortex (PFC). The G/A transition in the exon 4 of the COMT gene, which results in a valine (Val) to methionine (Met) amino acid substitution (Val158Met), can bring on different enzymatic activities. Much research has found that the Met/Met genotype associated with low enzymatic activity and may enhance cognitive function. Our research aimed to test the association between COMT genotype and creativity. We applied one-way ANOVA to detect the effect of the COMT genotypes to creative ability and creative potentials in 108 Chinese children with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) methods. COMT genotypes were not related to creative ability and creative potential except imagination. Val/Val carriers are more likely to imagine than Met/Met carriers (F (2, 105) =4.082, p=.02). We also found that COMT Val158Met polymorphism had a significant main effect on intelligence (F (2, 102) = 3.47, p=0.035) and it could predict 4.7% of intelligence. Our results suggest that Met/Met genotype has a positive effect on intelligence but not on creative ability. However, we found no significant interaction between gender and COMT genotype to intelligence

The status of tuberculosis infection control measures in health care facilities rendering joint TB/ HIV services in “German Leprosy and Tuberculosis Relief Association” supported states in Nigeria

Objective: To assess the status of tuberculosis (TB) infection control practice in health care facilities implementing joint TB/HIV activities.Materials and Methods: A descriptive survey triangulating self-administered questionnaire (facility survey to Infection Control Officer, individual health worker to general health workers), review of facility case notes and participant observation techniques was carried out. Twelve health facilities from southern Nigeria were assessed.Results: (1) Administrative and work practice control measure: Only 1 (8.3%) facility had a documented TB Infection control policy; 2 (16.7%) facilities had Infection Control Committee; 5 (41.7%) facilities had Infection Control Officer; 2 (16.7%) asked questions at the health records about cough; 1 (8.3%) facility had health workers intermittently checking for patients with cough in the waiting hall; and 2 (16.7%) facilities had Infection Control Officers who have attended some training on infection control. No facility had Information, Education and Communication (IEC) materials reminding patients and health workers of the possibility of TB transmission in the health care setting. While 86.4% of TB patients were screened for HIV, only 54.7% of HIV patients were tested for TB. (2) Environmental control measures: All the waiting halls were well ventilated. Though 66.7% of the consulting rooms were well ventilated, 25% of them were over crowded; 58.3% of the facilities managed sputum smear positive TB patients in the same ward with HIV-positive and other vulnerable patients; no facility had air cleaners.Conclusion: Implementation of the different aspects of the administrative control and work practice component of TB infection control measure range from 8.3% to 41.7% of the facilities. Urgent measures should be taken to reverse this trend in the face of TB burden due to HIV

Ranking of diagnostic features of childhood pulmonary tuberculosis by medical doctors in southeastern Nigeria

Objective: To rank diagnostic features of childhood pulmonary tuberculosis; and to determine the effect of working in tuberculosis Directly Observed Treatment Short Course (DOTS) facilities on the ranking of these features by medical doctors. Methods: A cross sectional descriptive study, using structured questionnaires to collect data from medical doctors whose daily routine included attending to sick children in 34 selected children outpatient clinics and TB DOTS centers in southeastern Nigeria. Results: Approximately, one quarter (25.3% or 56 of 221) of respondents worked in Directly Observed Treatment Short course (DOTS) clinics, while three quarters (74.7% or 165 of 221) worked in nonDOTSclinics. Majority of the respondents (69.7%) ranked chronic persistent cough (1), 42.5 % ranked weight loss and failure to thrive (2), another 27.7% ranked weight loss and failure to thrive (3), while 17.6% and 21.7% ranked History of contact with adult index case and radiographic abnormalities, (4) and (5), respectively. The study found that the percentage of doctors working in DOTS clinics who ranked weight loss and failure to thrive (2) was statistically and significantly higher than those of non-DOTS respondents. Conclusions: The most important symptoms/signs on which medical doctors based their diagnosis of childhood pulmonary tuberculosis include cough, weight loss and failure to thrive, history of contact with adult with smear positive pulmonary tuberculosis, and radiographic abnormalities consistent with active tuberculosis. There was statistically significant difference between the ranking of weight loss and failure to thrive by doctors working in DOTS clinics and their counterparts in non DOTS clinics. This study showed a decline in the percentage of ranking in both DOTS and Non DOTS respondents as they moved from the first to the fifth.KEY WORDS: Childhood pulmonary tuberculosis, Doctors, Ranking, Diagnostic features, Directly observed treatment short course (DOTS)

Inert gas clearance from tissue by co-currently and counter-currently arranged microvessels

To elucidate the clearance of dissolved inert gas from tissues, we have developed numerical models of gas transport in a cylindrical block of tissue supplied by one or two capillaries. With two capillaries, attention is given to the effects of co-current and counter-current flow on tissue gas clearance. Clearance by counter-current flow is compared with clearance by a single capillary or by two co-currently arranged capillaries. Effects of the blood velocity, solubility, and diffusivity of the gas in the tissue are investigated using parameters with physiological values. It is found that under the conditions investigated, almost identical clearances are achieved by a single capillary as by a co-current pair when the total flow per tissue volume in each unit is the same (i.e., flow velocity in the single capillary is twice that in each co-current vessel). For both co-current and counter-current arrangements, approximate linear relations exist between the tissue gas clearance rate and tissue blood perfusion rate. However, the counter-current arrangement of capillaries results in less-efficient clearance of the inert gas from tissues. Furthermore, this difference in efficiency increases at higher blood flow rates. At a given blood flow, the simple conduction-capacitance model, which has been used to estimate tissue blood perfusion rate from inert gas clearance, underestimates gas clearance rates predicted by the numerical models for single vessel or for two vessels with co-current flow. This difference is accounted for in discussion, which also considers the choice of parameters and possible effects of microvascular architecture on the interpretation of tissue inert gas clearance

LDM: Lineage-Aware Data Management in Multi-tier Storage Systems

We design and develop LDM, a novel data management solution to cater the needs of applications exhibiting the lineage property, i.e. in which the current writes are future reads. In such a class of applications, slow writes significantly hurt the over-all performance of jobs, i.e. current writes determine the fate of next reads. We believe that in a large scale shared production cluster, the issues associated due to data management can be mitigated at a way higher layer in the hierarchy of the I/O path, even before requests to data access are made. Contrary to the current solutions to data management which are mostly reactive and/or based on heuristics, LDM is both deterministic and pro-active. We develop block-graphs, which enable LDM to capture the complete time-based data-task dependency associations, therefore use it to perform life-cycle management through tiering of data blocks. LDM amalgamates the information from the entire data center ecosystem, right from the application code, to file system mappings, the compute and storage devices topology, etc. to make oracle-like deterministic data management decisions. With trace-driven experiments, LDM is able to achieve 29–52% reduction in over-all data center workload execution time. Moreover, by deploying LDM with extensive pre-processing creates efficient data consumption pipelines, which also reduces write and read delays significantly

Roles of cysteines Cys115 and Cys201 in the assembly and thermostability of grouper betanodavirus particles

The virus-like particle (VLP) assembled from capsid subunits of the dragon grouper nervous necrosis virus (DGNNV) is very similar to its native T = 3 virion. In order to investigate the effects of four cysteine residues in the capsid polypeptide on the assembly/dissociation pathways of DGNNV virions, we recombinantly cloned mutant VLPs by mutating each cysteine to destroy the specific disulfide linkage as compared with thiol reduction to destroy all S–S bonds. The mutant VLPs of C187A and C331A mutations were similar to wild-type VLPs (WT-VLPs); hence, the effects of Cys187 and Cys331 on the particle formation and thermostability were presumably negligible. Electron microscopy showed that either C115A or C201A mutation disrupted de novo VLP formation significantly. As shown in micrographs and thermal decay curves, β-mercaptoethanol-treated WT-VLPs remained intact, merely resulting in lower tolerance to thermal disruption than native WT-VLPs. This thiol reduction broke disulfide linkages inside the pre-fabricated VLPs, but it did not disrupt the appearance of icosahedrons. Small dissociated capsomers from EGTA-treated VLPs were able to reassemble back to icosahedrons in the presence of calcium ions, but additional treatment with β-mercaptoethanol during EGTA dissociation resulted in inability of the capsomers to reassemble into the icosahedral form. These results indicated that Cys115 and Cys201 were essential for capsid formation of DGNNV icosahedron structure in de novo assembly and reassembly pathways, as well as for the thermal stability of pre-fabricated particles

Ubiquitin transfer by a RING E3 ligase occurs from a closed E2~ubiquitin conformation

Funding: Investigator Award from the Wellcome Trust (098391/Z/12/Z) and (217196/Z/19/Z) and a Programme grant from Cancer Research UK (C434/A21747) to R.T.H.; J.C.P. thanks the University of St Andrews for financial support.Based on extensive structural analysis it was proposed that RING E3 ligases prime the E2~ubiquitin conjugate (E2~Ub) for catalysis by locking it into a closed conformation, where ubiquitin is folded back onto the E2 exposing the restrained thioester bond to attack by substrate nucleophile. However the proposal that the RING dependent closed conformation of E2~Ub represents the active form that mediates ubiquitin transfer has yet to be experimentally tested. To test this hypothesis we use single molecule Förster Resonance Energy Transfer (smFRET) to measure the conformation of a FRET labelled E2~Ub conjugate, which distinguishes between closed and alternative conformations. We describe a real-time FRET assay with a thioester linked E2~Ub conjugate to monitor single ubiquitination events and demonstrate that ubiquitin is transferred to substrate from the closed conformation. These findings are likely to be relevant to all RING E3 catalysed reactions ligating ubiquitin and other ubiquitin-like proteins (Ubls) to substrates.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

Optical detection of single non-absorbing molecules using the surface plasmon of a gold nanorod

Current optical detection schemes for single molecules require light absorption, either to produce fluorescence or direct absorption signals. This severely limits the range of molecules that can be detected, because most molecules are purely refractive. Metal nanoparticles or dielectric resonators detect non-absorbing molecules by a resonance shift in response to a local perturbation of the refractive index, but neither has reached single-protein sensitivity. The most sensitive plasmon sensors to date detect single molecules only when the plasmon shift is amplified by a highly polarizable label or by a localized precipitation reaction on the particle's surface. Without amplification, the sensitivity only allows for the statistical detection of single molecules. Here we demonstrate plasmonic detection of single molecules in realtime, without the need for labeling or amplification. We monitor the plasmon resonance of a single gold nanorod with a sensitive photothermal assay and achieve a ~ 700-fold increase in sensitivity compared to state-of-the-art plasmon sensors. We find that the sensitivity of the sensor is intrinsically limited due to spectral diffusion of the SPR. We believe this is the first optical technique that detects single molecules purely by their refractive index, without any need for photon absorption by the molecule. The small size, bio-compatibility and straightforward surface chemistry of gold nanorods may open the way to the selective and local detection of purely refractive proteins in live cells

Inherited biotic protection in a Neotropical pioneer plant

Chelonanthus alatus is a bat-pollinated, pioneer Gentianaceae that clusters in patches where still-standing, dried-out stems are interspersed among live individuals. Flowers bear circum-floral nectaries (CFNs) that are attractive to ants, and seed dispersal is both barochorous and anemochorous. Although, in this study, live individuals never sheltered ant colonies, dried-out hollow stems - that can remain standing for 2 years - did. Workers from species nesting in dried-out stems as well as from ground-nesting species exploited the CFNs of live C. alatus individuals in the same patches during the daytime, but were absent at night (when bat pollination occurs) on 60.5% of the plants. By visiting the CFNs, the ants indirectly protect the flowers - but not the plant foliage - from herbivorous insects. We show that this protection is provided mostly by species nesting in dried-out stems, predominantly Pseudomyrmex gracilis. That dried-out stems remain standing for years and are regularly replaced results in an opportunistic, but stable association where colonies are sheltered by one generation of dead C. alatus while the live individuals nearby, belonging to the next generation, provide them with nectar; in turn, the ants protect their flowers from herbivores. We suggest that the investment in wood by C. alatus individuals permitting stillstanding, dried-out stems to shelter ant colonies constitutes an extended phenotype because foraging workers protect the flowers of live individuals in the same patch. Also, through this process these dried-out stems indirectly favor the reproduction (and so the fitness) of the next generation including both their own offspring and that of their siblings, alladding up to a potential case of inclusive fitness in plants