Primary ciliary dyskinesia: Kartagener syndrome in a family with a novel DNAH5 gene mutation and variable phenotypes

AbstractBackgroundPrimary ciliary dyskinesia is a genetically heterogeneous autosomal recessive disorder with variable clinical manifestations, including chronic rhinosinusitis, otitis media, bronchitis, pneumonia, bronchiectasis, situs inversus totalis, reduced fertility in female patients and male infertility. The condition occurs as a result of abnormal ciliary structure and function. It is presented in early life with an estimated incidence of approximately 1/16,000–20,000. About 50% of the affected patients have situs inversus totalis leading to Kartagener syndrome (MIM: 244400). So far more than 19 causative genes have been associated with primary ciliary dyskinesia.Case reportHere we are presenting Kartagener syndrome in a consanguineous Kuwaiti family with a novel pathogenic DNAH5 gene mutation; namely c.9864dupA; [p.Pro3289ThrfsStop52], which is predicted to result in protein truncation. In this family several homozygous individuals showed variable disease manifestations.ConclusionMolecular test helped in confirmation of the clinical diagnosis and in providing better management of the affected family members, which in turn could significantly improve overall quality of their life. Consequently, preimplantation genetic diagnosis, which is the most acceptable procedure in the Islamic countries, was offered to the heterozygous-carrier couple in order to prevent recurrence of the disease in their future generations

Marked overlap of four genetic syndromes with dyskeratosis congenita confounds clinical diagnosis

Financial support provided by The Medical Research Council-MR/K000292/1, Children with Cancer- 2013/144 and Blood Wise-14032 (AJW, LC, SC, AE, TV, HT and ID). KMG is supported by the National Institute for Health Research through the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre

The spectrum of BRCA1 and BRCA2 pathogenic sequence variants in Middle Eastern, North African, and South European countries.

BRCA1 BRCA2 mutational spectrum in the Middle East, North Africa, and Southern Europe is not well characterized. The unique history and cultural practices characterizing these regions, often involving consanguinity and inbreeding, plausibly led to the accumulation of population-specific founder pathogenic sequence variants (PSVs). To determine recurring BRCA PSVs in these locales, a search in PUBMED, EMBASE, BIC, and CIMBA was carried out combined with outreach to researchers from the relevant countries for unpublished data. We identified 232 PSVs in BRCA1 and 239 in BRCA2 in 25 of 33 countries surveyed. Common PSVs that were detected in four or more countries were c.5266dup (p.Gln1756Profs), c.181T>G (p.Cys61Gly), c.68_69del (p.Glu23Valfs), c.5030_5033del (p.Thr1677Ilefs), c.4327C>T (p.Arg1443Ter), c.5251C>T (p.Arg1751Ter), c.1016dup (p.Val340Glyfs), c.3700_3704del (p.Val1234Glnfs), c.4065_4068del (p.Asn1355Lysfs), c.1504_1508del (p.Leu502Alafs), c.843_846del (p.Ser282Tyrfs), c.798_799del (p.Ser267Lysfs), and c.3607C>T (p.Arg1203Ter) in BRCA1 and c.2808_2811del (p.Ala938Profs), c.5722_5723del (p.Leu1908Argfs), c.9097dup (p.Thr3033Asnfs), c.1310_1313del (p. p.Lys437Ilefs), and c.5946del (p.Ser1982Argfs) for BRCA2. Notably, some mutations (e.g., p.Asn257Lysfs (c.771_775del)) were observed in unrelated populations. Thus, seemingly genotyping recurring BRCA PSVs in specific populations may provide first pass BRCA genotyping platform.[CIMBA: The CIMBA data management and data analysis were supported by Cancer Research – UK grants C12292/A20861, C12292/A11174. iCOGS: the European Community's Seventh Framework Programme under grant agreement n° 223175 (HEALTH-F2-2009-223175) (COGS), Cancer Research UK (C1287/A10118, C1287/A 10710, C12292/A11174, C1281/A12014, C5047/A8384, C5047/A15007, C5047/A10692, C8197/A16565), the National Institutes of Health (CA128978) and Post-Cancer GWAS initiative (1U19 CA148537, 1U19 CA148065 and 1U19 CA148112 - the GAME-ON initiative), the Department of Defence (W81XWH-10-1-0341), the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) for the CIHR Team in Familial Risks of Breast Cancer (CRN-87521), and the Ministry of Economic Development, Innovation and Export Trade (PSR-SIIRI-701), Komen Foundation for the Cure, the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, and the Ovarian Cancer Research Fund. The work of Barbara Pasini has been supported by the program "Dipartimenti di Eccellenza 2018 – 2022". Project n°D15D18000410001. This work was partially funded by the Associazione Italiana Ricerca Cancro (AIRC)"; IG2015 no.16732) to P. Peterlongo. Funds from Italian citizens who allocated the 5x1000 share of their tax payment in support of the Fondazione IRCCS Istituto Nazionale Tumori, according to Italian laws (INT-Institutional strategic projects ‘5x1000’) to S. Manoukian. DEMOKRITOS: European Union (European Social Fund – ESF) and Greek national funds through the Operational Program "Education and Lifelong Learning" of the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF) - Research Funding Program of the General Secretariat for Research & Technology: SYN11_10_19 NBCA. kConFab: The National Breast Cancer Foundation, and previously by the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), the Queensland Cancer Fund, the Cancer Councils of New South Wales, Victoria, Tasmania and South Australia, and the Cancer Foundation of Western Australia. MAYO: NIH grants CA116167, CA192393 and CA176785, an NCI Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) in Breast Cancer (CA116201) and a grant from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation. UCHICAGO: NCI Specialized Program of Research Excellence (SPORE) in Breast Cancer (CA125183), R01 CA142996, 1U01CA161032 and by the Ralph and Marion Falk Medical Research Trust, the Entertainment Industry Fund National Women's Cancer Research Alliance and the Breast Cancer research Foundation. OIO is an ACS Clinical Research Professor. UCLA: Jonsson Comprehensive Cancer Center Foundation; Breast Cancer Research Foundation

How long will it take? Conceptualizing the temporal dynamics of energy transitions

Transitioning away from our current global energy system is of paramount importance. The speed at which a transition can take place—its timing, or temporal dynamics—is a critical element of consideration. This study therefore investigates the issue of time in global and national energy transitions by asking: What does the mainstream academic literature suggest about the time scale of energy transitions? Additionally, what does some of the more recent empirical data related to transitions say, or challenge, about conventional views? In answering these questions, the article presents a “mainstream” view of energy transitions as long, protracted affairs, often taking decades to centuries to occur. However, the article then offers some empirical evidence that the predominant view of timing may not always be supported by the evidence. With this in mind, the final part of the article argues for more transparent conceptions and definitions of energy transitions, and it asks for analysis that recognizes the causal complexity underlying them

Applicability of non-invasively collected matrices for human biomonitoring

With its inclusion under Action 3 in the Environment and Health Action Plan 2004–2010 of the European Commission, human biomonitoring is currently receiving an increasing amount of attention from the scientific community as a tool to better quantify human exposure to, and health effects of, environmental stressors. Despite the policy support, however, there are still several issues that restrict the routine application of human biomonitoring data in environmental health impact assessment. One of the main issues is the obvious need to routinely collect human samples for large-scale surveys. Particularly the collection of invasive samples from susceptible populations may suffer from ethical and practical limitations. Children, pregnant women, elderly, or chronically-ill people are among those that would benefit the most from non-invasive, repeated or routine sampling. Therefore, the use of non-invasively collected matrices for human biomonitoring should be promoted as an ethically appropriate, cost-efficient and toxicologically relevant alternative for many biomarkers that are currently determined in invasively collected matrices. This review illustrates that several non-invasively collected matrices are widely used that can be an valuable addition to, or alternative for, invasively collected matrices such as peripheral blood sampling. Moreover, a well-informed choice of matrix can provide an added value for human biomonitoring, as different non-invasively collected matrices can offer opportunities to study additional aspects of exposure to and effects from environmental contaminants, such as repeated sampling, historical overview of exposure, mother-child transfer of substances, or monitoring of substances with short biological half-lives

Energy Optimization for Two-Dimensional NoCs Using Genetic Algorithms

The steadfast development of the computers world kept marching along with Moore’s predictions in the last two decades. Concurring to Moore’s prediction, more transistors result in gaining greater speed. This great speed comes with the trade-off of producing high heat. This prediction has eventually reached to a wall that cannot be crossed unless new technologies are discovered because the heat issues became uncontrollable. One of the greatest discoveries to get over this wall is the NoC infrastructure, which was presented by Benini in 2002. This technology defines a practical solution to improve the energy efficiency and performance.The inspiration for this work came from Ogras’s paper: "It's A Small World After All", where performance is enhanced for the application-specific NoC-based SoC by adding extra long-range links to two-dimensional mesh topologies. The main focus in this work is to improve the energy efficiency for a general purpose NoC-based SoC by finding the best possible extra links to add to a two-dimensional mesh topology via genetic algorithms. In the genetic algorithm, extra links are added randomly to form the different solutions for this NP-Hard problem. Comparing the energy consumption results of the new NoC design to the regular mesh topology, an improvement of 19% in energy per throughput is obtained. Ultimately, it was found that the more and the longer the links, the higher energy efficiency is achieved

Energy Optimization for Two-Dimensional NoCs Using Genetic Algorithms

The steadfast development of the computers world kept marching along with Moore’s predictions in the last two decades. Concurring to Moore’s prediction, more transistors result in gaining greater speed. This great speed comes with the trade-off of producing high heat. This prediction has eventually reached to a wall that cannot be crossed unless new technologies are discovered because the heat issues became uncontrollable. One of the greatest discoveries to get over this wall is the NoC infrastructure, which was presented by Benini in 2002. This technology defines a practical solution to improve the energy efficiency and performance.The inspiration for this work came from Ogras’s paper: "It's A Small World After All", where performance is enhanced for the application-specific NoC-based SoC by adding extra long-range links to two-dimensional mesh topologies. The main focus in this work is to improve the energy efficiency for a general purpose NoC-based SoC by finding the best possible extra links to add to a two-dimensional mesh topology via genetic algorithms. In the genetic algorithm, extra links are added randomly to form the different solutions for this NP-Hard problem. Comparing the energy consumption results of the new NoC design to the regular mesh topology, an improvement of 19% in energy per throughput is obtained. Ultimately, it was found that the more and the longer the links, the higher energy efficiency is achieved

Synthesis of a Luminescent Arsolo[2,3-d:5,4-d']bis(thiazole) Building Block and Comparison to Its Phosphole Analogue

The synthesis of 4-phenyl-4H-arsolo[2,3-d:5,4-d′]bis(thiazole) is reported, and its properties are compared to those of the previously prepared phosphole analogue. By comparison of their single-crystal structures, the harmonic oscillator model of heterocyclic electron delocalization (HOMHED) was used to directly compare the aromatic character of the two systems. The findings demonstrate that, although both compounds can be considered aromatic, the phosphole-containing compound had a greater degree of aromatic character than its arsole analogue. The arsole derivative exhibited excellent stability in ambient air with no formation of the arsole oxide observed upon storage. The absorption and photoluminescence spectra of the arsole derivate were subtly altered in comparison to the phosphole derivative, suggesting that changing pnictogenic atoms in such fused-ring systems to heavier analogues could be a viable way of tuning both the ambient stability and optoelectronic properties of such materials

The Role of Porous Media in Modeling Fluid Flow Within Hollow Fiber Membranes of the Total Artificial Lung

<p>A numerical study was conducted to analyze fluid flow within hollow fiber membranes of the artificial lungs. The hollow fiber bundle was approximated using a porous media model. In addition, the transport equations were solved using the finite-element formulation based on the Galerkin method of weighted residuals. Comparisons with previously published work on the basis of special cases were performed and found to be in excellent agreement. A Newtonian viscous fluid model for the blood was used. Different flow models for porous media, such as the Brinkman-extended Darcy model, Darcy's law model, and the generalized flow model, were considered. Results were obtained in terms of streamlines, velocity vectors, and pressure distribution for various Reynolds numbers and Darcy numbers. The results from this investigation showed that the pressure drop across the artificial lung device increased with an increase in the Reynolds number. In addition, the pressure drop was found to increase significantly for small Darcy numbers.</p