Ein Neues Verfahren zur Messung der Bakteriziden Fähigkeit des Vollblutes

Das oben erwahnte Verfahren hat vor den anderen Methoden besonders die Vorzuge, 1) da&#946; man dadurch zu einem sicheren Resultat gelangen und gleichzeitig auch jedes Datum mit exakten Ziffern zum Ausdruck bringen kann, 2) da&#946; bei diesem Verfahren keineswegs erforderlich ist, eine bestimmte Anzahl von Keimen einschlie&#946;ende Bakterienaufschwemmung herzusteHen und auch Kontrollversuch anzustellen, 3) da&#946; es von den Fehlern des Mischverhaltnisses zwischen der Bakterienlosung und dem Blut nicht so erheblich beeinflu&#946;t wird, und 4) da&#946; man durch dieses Verfahren gleichzeitig mehrere bakterientotende Faktoren untersuchen kann. Ferner hat dieses Verfahren auch den Vorzug, da&#946; es praktisch sehr einfach auszufuhren ist und nur 6 Stunden nach der Blutentnahme bereits das Ergebnis liefert. Es gestattet ferner, die bakterizide Kraft des Blutes gleichzeitig bei 6 - 8 Menschen zu untersuchen, was mich zur Uberzeugung fuhrt, da&#946; es in der Klinik hochgeschatzt werden wird. Auch das Verfahren und die ebenfalls vom mir aufgestellte Formel zur zusammenfassenden Beurteilung kann man nach meinem Erachten durch entsprechende Veranderungen einiger Faktoren ohne jede Schwierigkeiten auch fur andere Bakterienarten anwenden. Man wird wohl gegen eine einzige Lucke dieses Verfahrens, da&#946; die mikroskopische Untersuchung und die Berechnung allzu verwickelt zu sein scheint, Einwand erheben, eine Lucke, zu deren Schlu&#946; jedoch nur eine kurzfristige Ubung erfordert wird, durch welche die mikroskopische Untersuchung innerhalb 30 Minuten, die Berechnung nur in 5 Minuten vollendet werden kann. (Zur Berechnung bedarf es einer Gauss'schen Logarithmentafel.) Obgleich das geschilderte Verfahren noch viele, genauere Prufungen erheischende Punkte in sich einschlie&#946;t, mu&#946; es hier, wenn auch in Grundzugen, jetzt schon angefuhrt werden,. da ich der festen Uberzeugung bin, da&#946; es im Vergleich zu den bisherigen Methoden ein dem wirklichen Wert der Bakterizidie des Vollblutes im lebenden Organismus viel naheres Resultat liefert.</p

Bioassay-guided identification of the antiproliferative compounds of cissus trifoliata and the transcriptomic effect of resveratrol in prostate cancer pc3 cells

The bioassay-guided fractionation of a CHCl3-MeOH extract from the stems of Cissus trifo-liata identified an active fraction against PC3 prostate cancer cells. The treatment for 24 h showed an 80% reduction in cell viability (p ≤ 0.05) by a WST-1 assay at a concentration of 100 µg/mL. The HPLC-QTOF-MS analysis of the fraction showed the presence of coumaric and isoferulic acids, apigenin, kaempferol, chrysoeriol, naringenin, ursolic and betulinic acids, hexadecadienoic and octadecadienoic fatty acids, and the stilbene resveratrol. The exposure of PC3 cells to resveratrol (IC25 = 23 µg/mL) for 24 h induced significant changes in 847 genes (Z-score ≥ ±2). The functional classification tool of the DAVID v6.8 platform indicates that the underlying molecular mechanisms against the proliferation of PC3 cells were associated (p ≤ 0.05) with the process of differentiation and metabolism. These findings provide experimental evidence suggesting the potential of C. trifoliata as a promising natural source of anticancer compounds

Metagenomic Mining for Esterases in the Microbial Community of Los Rueldos Acid Mine Drainage Formation

Acid mine drainage (AMD) systems are extremely acidic and are metal-rich formations inhabited by relatively low-complexity communities of acidophiles whose enzymes remain mostly uncharacterized. Indeed, enzymes from only a few AMD sites have been studied. The low number of available cultured representatives and genome sequences of acidophiles inhabiting AMDs makes it difficult to assess the potential of these environments for enzyme bioprospecting. In this study, using naïve and in silico metagenomic approaches, we retrieved 16 esterases from the α/β-hydrolase fold superfamily with the closest match from uncultured acidophilic Acidobacteria, Actinobacteria (Acidithrix, Acidimicrobium, and Ferrimicrobium), Acidiphilium, and other Proteobacteria inhabiting the Los Rueldos site, which is a unique AMD formation in northwestern Spain with a pH of ∼2. Within this set, only two polypeptides showed high homology (99.4%), while for the rest, the pairwise identities ranged between 4 and 44.9%, suggesting that the diversity of active polypeptides was dominated not by a particular type of protein or highly similar clusters of proteins, but by diverse non-redundant sequences. The enzymes exhibited amino acid sequence identities ranging from 39 to 99% relative to homologous proteins in public databases, including those from other AMDs, thus indicating the potential novelty of proteins associated with a specialized acidophilic community. Ten of the 16 hydrolases were successfully expressed in Escherichia coli. The pH for optimal activity ranged from 7.0 to 9.0, with the enzymes retaining 33–68% of their activities at pH 5.5, which was consistent with the relative frequencies of acid residues (from 54 to 67%). The enzymes were the most active at 30–65°C, retaining 20–61% of their activity under the thermal conditions characterizing Los Rueldos (13.8 ± 0.6°C). The analysis of the substrate specificity revealed the capacity of six hydrolases to efficiently degrade (up to 1,652 ± 75 U/g at pH 8.0 and 30°C) acrylic- and terephthalic-like [including bis(2-hydroxyethyl)-terephthalate, BHET] esters, and these enzymes could potentially be of use for developing plastic degradation strategies yet to be explored. Our assessment uncovers the novelty and potential biotechnological interest of enzymes present in the microbial populations that inhibit the Los Rueldos AMD system

Extraction, characterization and incorporation of Hypericum scruglii extract in ad hoc formulated phospholipid vesicles designed for the treatment of skin diseases connected with oxidative stress

An extract of Hypericum scruglii, an endangered endemic plant of Sardinia (Italy), was prepared and characterized. It was loaded in special phospholipid vesicles, glycerosomes, which were modified by adding maltodextrin (glucidex) and a polymer (gelatin or hyaluronan). The corresponding liposomes were also prepared and used as reference. The vesicles disclosed suitable physicochemical features for skin delivery. Indeed, their mean diameter ranged from 120 to 160 nm, they were homogeneously dispersed (polydispersity index 0.30), and their zeta potential was highly negative (-45 mV). The vesicle dispersions maintained unchanged characteristics during 60 days of storage, were highly biocompatible, and were able to protect keratinocytes against damages due to oxidative stress induced by treating them with hydrogen peroxide. Vesicles were also capable of promoting cell proliferation and migration in vitro by means of a scratch wound assay. The results confirmed the fruitful delivery of the extract of H. scruglii in glycerosomes modified with glucidex and gelatin and their promising ability for skin protection and treatment

QED Logarithms in the Electroweak Corrections to the Muon Anomalous Magnetic Moment

We employ an effective Lagrangian approach to derive the leading-logarithm two-loop electroweak contributions to the muon anomalous magnetic moment, a_mu. We show that these corrections can be obtained using known results on the anomalous dimensions of composite operators. We confirm the result of Czarnecki et al. for the bosonic part and present the complete sin^2 \theta_W dependence of the fermionic contribution. The approach is then used to compute the leading-logarithm three-loop electroweak contribution to a_mu. Finally we derive, in a fairly model-independent way, the QED improvement of new-physics contributions to a_mu and to the electric dipole moment (EDM) of the electron. We find that the QED corrections reduce the effect of new physics at the electroweak scale by 6% (for a_mu) and by 11% (for the electron EDM).Comment: 13 page

The effects of spatial resolution on Integral Field Spectrograph surveys at different redshifts. The CALIFA perspective

Over the past decade, 3D optical spectroscopy has become the preferred tool for understanding the properties of galaxies and is now increasingly used to carry out galaxy surveys. Low redshift surveys include SAURON, DiskMass, ATLAS3D, PINGS and VENGA. At redshifts above 0.7, surveys such as MASSIV, SINS, GLACE, and IMAGES have targeted the most luminous galaxies to study mainly their kinematic properties. The on-going CALIFA survey ($z\sim0.02$) is the first of a series of upcoming Integral Field Spectroscopy (IFS) surveys with large samples representative of the entire population of galaxies. Others include SAMI and MaNGA at lower redshift and the upcoming KMOS surveys at higher redshift. Given the importance of spatial scales in IFS surveys, the study of the effects of spatial resolution on the recovered parameters becomes important. We explore the capability of the CALIFA survey and a hypothetical higher redshift survey to reproduce the properties of a sample of objects observed with better spatial resolution at lower redshift. Using a sample of PINGS galaxies, we simulate observations at different redshifts. We then study the behaviour of different parameters as the spatial resolution degrades with increasing redshift.Comment: 20 pages, 16 figures. Accepted for publication in A&

Ionized gas kinematics of galaxies in the CALIFA survey I: Velocity fields, kinematic parameters of the dominant component, and presence of kinematically distinct gaseous systems

This work provides an overall characterization of the kinematic behavior of the ionized gas of the galaxies included in the Calar Alto Legacy Integral field Area (CALIFA), offering kinematic clues to potential users of this survey for including kinematical criteria for specific studies. From the first 200 galaxies observed by CALIFA, we present the 2D kinematic view of the 177 galaxies satisfying a gas detection threshold. After removing the stellar contribution, we used the cross-correlation technique to obtain the radial velocity of the dominant gaseous component. The main kinematic parameters were directly derived from the radial velocities with no assumptions on the internal motions. Evidence of the presence of several gaseous components with different kinematics were detected by using [OIII] profiles. Most objects in the sample show regular velocity fields, although the ionized-gas kinematics are rarely consistent with simple coplanar circular motions. 35% of the objects present evidence of a displacement between the photometric and kinematic centers larger than the original spaxel radii. Only 17% of the objects in the sample exhibit kinematic lopsidedness when comparing receding and approaching sides of the velocity fields, but most of them are interacting galaxies exhibiting nuclear activity. Early-type galaxies in the sample present clear photometric-kinematic misaligments. There is evidence of asymmetries in the emission line profiles suggesting the presence of kinematically distinct gaseous components at different distances from the nucleus. This work constitutes the first determination of the ionized gas kinematics of the galaxies observed in the CALIFA survey. The derived velocity fields, the reported kinematic peculiarities and the identification of the presence of several gaseous components might be used as additional criteria for selecting galaxies for specific studies.Comment: 38 pages, 16 figures, 4 tables. Paper accepted for publication in A&

The Mass-Metallicity relation explored with CALIFA: I. Is there a dependence on the star formation rate?

We present the results on the study of the global and local M-Z relation based on the first data available from the CALIFA survey (150 galaxies). This survey provides integral field spectroscopy of the complete optical extent of each galaxy (up to 2-3 effective radii), with enough resolution to separate individual HII regions and/or aggregations. Nearly $\sim$3000 individual HII regions have been detected. The spectra cover the wavelength range between [OII]3727 and [SII]6731, with a sufficient signal-to-noise to derive the oxygen abundance and star-formation rate associated with each region. In addition, we have computed the integrated and spatially resolved stellar masses (and surface densities), based on SDSS photometric data. We explore the relations between the stellar mass, oxygen abundance and star-formation rate using this dataset. We derive a tight relation between the integrated stellar mass and the gas-phase abundance, with a dispersion smaller than the one already reported in the literature ($\sigma_{\Delta{\rm log(O/H)}}=$0.07 dex). Indeed, this dispersion is only slightly larger than the typical error derived for our oxygen abundances. However, we do not find any secondary relation with the star-formation rate, other than the one induced due to the primary relation of this quantity with the stellar mass. We confirm the result using the $\sim$3000 individual HII regions, for the corresponding local relations. Our results agree with the scenario in which gas recycling in galaxies, both locally and globally, is much faster than other typical timescales, like that of gas accretion by inflow and/or metal loss due to outflows. In essence, late-type/disk dominated galaxies seem to be in a quasi-steady situation, with a behavior similar to the one expected from an instantaneous recycling/closed-box model.Comment: 19 Pages, 8 figures, Accepted for Publishing in Astronomy and Astrophysics (A&A