History of clinical transplantation

How transplantation came to be a clinical discipline can be pieced together by perusing two volumes of reminiscences collected by Paul I. Terasaki in 1991-1992 from many of the persons who were directly involved. One volume was devoted to the discovery of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), with particular reference to the human leukocyte antigens (HLAs) that are widely used today for tissue matching.1 The other focused on milestones in the development of clinical transplantation.2 All the contributions described in both volumes can be traced back in one way or other to the demonstration in the mid-1940s by Peter Brian Medawar that the rejection of allografts is an immunological phenomenon.3,4 © 2008 Springer New York

Genetic Sharing with Cardiovascular Disease Risk Factors and Diabetes Reveals Novel Bone Mineral Density Loci.

Bone Mineral Density (BMD) is a highly heritable trait, but genome-wide association studies have identified few genetic risk factors. Epidemiological studies suggest associations between BMD and several traits and diseases, but the nature of the suggestive comorbidity is still unknown. We used a novel genetic pleiotropy-informed conditional False Discovery Rate (FDR) method to identify single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) associated with BMD by leveraging cardiovascular disease (CVD) associated disorders and metabolic traits. By conditioning on SNPs associated with the CVD-related phenotypes, type 1 diabetes, type 2 diabetes, systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, high density lipoprotein, low density lipoprotein, triglycerides and waist hip ratio, we identified 65 novel independent BMD loci (26 with femoral neck BMD and 47 with lumbar spine BMD) at conditional FDR < 0.01. Many of the loci were confirmed in genetic expression studies. Genes validated at the mRNA levels were characteristic for the osteoblast/osteocyte lineage, Wnt signaling pathway and bone metabolism. The results provide new insight into genetic mechanisms of variability in BMD, and a better understanding of the genetic underpinnings of clinical comorbidity

Synthesis and applications of manganese oxide - biochar composites: A systematic review across catalysis, capacitor and sorption applications

Manganese oxide biochar composites (MnOx-BCs) are at the frontier of materials development for current environmental and engineering challenges in contaminant sorption and degradation, capacitive deionisation, as well as supercapacitor research. However, the parameter space for optimisation of such composites is vast, spanning from the choice of feedstocks and synthesis procedure to post-processing. This study uses a systematic literature review methodology to provide a comprehensive view into the synthesis methods and applications of MnOx-BCs. The focus is on the manganese phase oxidation states, which are often decisive for a material's properties but not directly comparable with the (well-explored) synthesis of pure MnOx due to the chemical variability of biochars. The relationships between synthesis method, manganese phase, crystallinity and morphology, as well as biochar type are characterised. We argue that careful selection of the desired manganese phase and oxidation state are as important as careful consideration of the bulk chemistry and microstructure of the biochar phase. Much evidence already exists for fine-tuning these combinations, but there is still a clear research gap in systematically studying the biochar impact on the final MnOx phase