Electrochemical immunosensor modified with carbon nanofibers coupled to a paper platform for the determination of gliadins in food samples

The gluten-free diet is a unique, effective treatment for different conditions related to gluten consumption. Therefore, it is crucial the availability of new methodologies for the sensitive and specific determination of gluten content in food samples. Herein, a screen printed electrode modified with carbon nanofibers coupled to a paper immunoaffinity platform was reported for the determination of gliadin in foods samples. The paper microzone covalently functionalized with specific anti-gliadin antibodies was placed on the modified electrode surface for the electrochemical determination of gliadin. The surface of the electrode modified with carbon nanofibers was characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and cyclic voltammetry (CV), which showed the improved sensitivity of the modified surface. The developed device was evaluated using different flour samples obtaining a favorable response. The calculated limit of detection for the device in analyzed samples was 0.005 mg kg -1 and for the enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay was 1.5 mg kg -1 . The coefficient of variation (CV) for the determination of 20 μg kg -1 of gliadin was 4.11%. The disposable electrochemical sensor developed, represents an easy-to-use and low-cost strategy for the determination of gliadin in food samples.Fil: Marin Barroso, Evelyn del Valle. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Luis. Instituto de Química de San Luis. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Instituto de Química de San Luis; ArgentinaFil: Messina, Germán Alejandro. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Luis. Instituto de Química de San Luis. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Instituto de Química de San Luis; Argentina; ArgentinaFil: Bertolino, Franco Adrián. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Luis. Instituto de Química de San Luis. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Instituto de Química de San Luis; Argentina; ArgentinaFil: Raba, Julio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Luis. Instituto de Química de San Luis. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Instituto de Química de San Luis; Argentina; ArgentinaFil: Pereira, Sirley Vanesa. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Luis. Instituto de Química de San Luis. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Instituto de Química de San Luis; Argentina; Argentin

Paper based analytical device modified with nanoporous material for the fluorescent sensing of gliadin content in different food samples

A novel fluorescent paper based immunosensor for the quantification of gliadin content in different food samples was constructed. The device consists of a paper platform modified with amino functionalized mesoporous material. The nanoporous structure and the aminofunctionality increased the anti-gliadin antibodies immobilization capacity of the sensing surface, conferring high sensitivity to the system. The detection limit reached by the described system allowed us to address the control of gluten free foods, which is extremely important to maintain the food safe consumption by patients with celiac disease, wheat allergy measured by immunoglobulin E, non-celiac gluten intolerance and Dermatitis herpetiformis or Duhring disease. The gliadin determination was performed by applying a noncompetitive immunoassay format, where gliadin present in food samples was recognized by anti-gliadin antibodies immobilized on the mesoporous material and quantified by the addition of anti-gliadin antibody labelled with peroxidase, its substrate: hydrogen peroxide and a mediator: 10-acetyl-3,7-dihydrofenoxacin. This mediator by the action of the enzyme generates resorufin, which was excited by a light emitting diode at 550 nm and emitted a signal at 580 nm. The calibration curve obtained for gliadin exhibited a linear range between 0 and 160 μg Kg−1 and a method detection limit of 0.025 mg Kg−1. The obtained values for relative recovery varied between 98.65% and 102.33% for samples enriched with gliadin. Also, the results suggested that the developed fluorescent paper based immunosensor showed good reproducibility and stability, indicating its applicability for high-sensitive gluten free food control analysis.Fil: Marin Barroso, Evelyn del Valle. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Luis. Instituto de Química de San Luis. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Instituto de Química de San Luis; Argentina; ArgentinaFil: Moreira, Cristian Matias. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Luis. Instituto de Química de San Luis. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Instituto de Química de San Luis; Argentina; ArgentinaFil: Messina, Germán Alejandro. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Luis. Instituto de Química de San Luis. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Instituto de Química de San Luis; Argentina; ArgentinaFil: Bertolino, Franco Adrián. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Luis. Instituto de Química de San Luis. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Instituto de Química de San Luis; Argentina; ArgentinaFil: Alderete, Mara. Universidad Nacional de San Martin. Instituto de Nanosistemas; ArgentinaFil: Soler Illia, Galo Juan de Avila Arturo. Universidad Nacional de San Martin. Instituto de Nanosistemas; ArgentinaFil: Raba, Julio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Luis. Instituto de Química de San Luis. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Instituto de Química de San Luis; Argentina; ArgentinaFil: Pereira, Sirley Vanesa. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - San Luis. Instituto de Química de San Luis. Universidad Nacional de San Luis. Facultad de Química, Bioquímica y Farmacia. Instituto de Química de San Luis; Argentina; Argentin

The molecular basis of genistein-induced mitotic arrest and exit of self-renewal in embryonal carcinoma and primary cancer cell lines

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Genistein is an isoflavonoid present in soybeans that exhibits anti-carcinogenic properties. The issue of genistein as a potential anti-cancer drug has been addressed in some papers, but comprehensive genomic analysis to elucidate the molecular mechanisms underlying the effect elicited by genistein on cancer cells have not been performed on primary cancer cells, but rather on transformed cell lines. In the present study, we treated primary glioblastoma, rhabdomyosarcoma, hepatocellular carcinoma and human embryonic carcinoma cells (NCCIT) with μ-molar concentrations of genistein and assessed mitotic index, cell morphology, global gene expression, and specific cell-cycle regulating genes. We compared the expression profiles of NCCIT cells with that of the cancer cell lines in order to identify common genistein-dependent transcriptional changes and accompanying signaling cascades.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>We treated primary cancer cells and NCCIT cells with 50 μM genistein for 48 h. Thereafter, we compared the mitotic index of treated versus untreated cells and investigated the protein expression of key regulatory self renewal factors as OCT4, SOX2 and NANOG. We then used gene expression arrays (Illumina) for genome-wide expression analysis and validated the results for genes of interest by means of Real-Time PCR. Functional annotations were then performed using the DAVID and KEGG online tools.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We found that cancer cells treated with genistein undergo cell-cycle arrest at different checkpoints. This arrest was associated with a decrease in the mRNA levels of core regulatory genes, <it>PBK</it>, <it>BUB1</it>, and <it>CDC20 </it>as determined by microarray-analysis and verified by Real-Time PCR. In contrast, human NCCIT cells showed over-expression of <it>GADD45 A </it>and <it>G </it>(growth arrest- and DNA-damage-inducible proteins 45A and G), as well as down-regulation of OCT4, and NANOG protein. Furthermore, genistein induced the expression of apoptotic and anti-migratory proteins p53 and p38 in all cell lines. Genistein also up-regulated steady-state levels of both <it>CYCLIN A </it>and <it>B</it>.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>The results of the present study, together with the results of earlier studies show that genistein targets genes involved in the progression of the M-phase of the cell cycle. In this respect it is of particular interest that this conclusion cannot be drawn from comparison of the individual genes found differentially regulated in the datasets, but by the rather global view of the pathways influenced by genistein treatment.</p

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

Large expert-curated database for benchmarking document similarity detection in biomedical literature search

Document recommendation systems for locating relevant literature have mostly relied on methods developed a decade ago. This is largely due to the lack of a large offline gold-standard benchmark of relevant documents that cover a variety of research fields such that newly developed literature search techniques can be compared, improved and translated into practice. To overcome this bottleneck, we have established the RElevant LIterature SearcH consortium consisting of more than 1500 scientists from 84 countries, who have collectively annotated the relevance of over 180 000 PubMed-listed articles with regard to their respective seed (input) article/s. The majority of annotations were contributed by highly experienced, original authors of the seed articles. The collected data cover 76% of all unique PubMed Medical Subject Headings descriptors. No systematic biases were observed across different experience levels, research fields or time spent on annotations. More importantly, annotations of the same document pairs contributed by different scientists were highly concordant. We further show that the three representative baseline methods used to generate recommended articles for evaluation (Okapi Best Matching 25, Term Frequency-Inverse Document Frequency and PubMed Related Articles) had similar overall performances. Additionally, we found that these methods each tend to produce distinct collections of recommended articles, suggesting that a hybrid method may be required to completely capture all relevant articles. The established database server located at https://relishdb.ict.griffith.edu.au is freely available for the downloading of annotation data and the blind testing of new methods. We expect that this benchmark will be useful for stimulating the development of new powerful techniques for title and title/abstract-based search engines for relevant articles in biomedical research.Peer reviewe

Multifarious Transnational Engagements of Contemporary Diaspora Members: From Revolving-door Universalists to Multi-nationals and Site-Hopping Vagabonds

Drawing on recent studies of diaspora and its members’ transnational engagements, which treat the former as fuzzy-boundary, context-dependent groupings, and the latter as multi-faceted (rather than two-pronged) relationships, in this paper I explore the notion of diasporans’ polymorphous and multi-directional transnational commitments; identify different types of such involvements; and propose a preliminary list of macro- and micro-level circumstances contributing to multifarious transnationalism. In conclusion, I consider the implications of the notion of diaspora members’ multifarious transnational engagements for the study of (im)migrant transnationalism in general and suggest some interesting questions for future research on this phenomenon generated by this discussion