An Analysis of Black, Latinx, Multicultural and Asian/Pacific Islander Fraternity/Sorority Organizational Values

The purpose of this study was to examine the espoused values of historically Black, Latinx, Multicultural and Asian/Pacific Islander fraternity/sorority organizations. This study reports the types of values discovered, as well as their alignment with universally accepted values that included: self-enhancement, openness to change, self-transcendence and conservation. Further examination included comparisons between the espoused universally accepted values of the above-identified organizations with those of historically White fraternity/sorority organizations

Inhibition of αvβ5 Integrin Attenuates Vascular Permeability and Protects against Renal Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury

Ischemia-reperfusion injury (IRI) is a leading cause of AKI. This common clinical complication lacks effective therapies and can lead to the development of CKD. The αvβ5 integrin may have an important role in acute injury, including septic shock and acute lung injury. To examine its function in AKI, we utilized a specific function-blocking antibody to inhibit αvβ5 in a rat model of renal IRI. Pretreatment with this anti-αvβ5 antibody significantly reduced serum creatinine levels, diminished renal damage detected by histopathologic evaluation, and decreased levels of injury biomarkers. Notably, therapeutic treatment with the αvβ5 antibody 8 hours after IRI also provided protection from injury. Global gene expression profiling of post-ischemic kidneys showed that αvβ5 inhibition affected established injury markers and induced pathway alterations previously shown to be protective. Intravital imaging of post-ischemic kidneys revealed reduced vascular leak with αvβ5 antibody treatment. Immunostaining for αvβ5 in the kidney detected evident expression in perivascular cells, with negligible expression in the endothelium. Studies in a three-dimensional microfluidics system identified a pericyte-dependent role for αvβ5 in modulating vascular leak. Additional studies showed αvβ5 functions in the adhesion and migration of kidney pericytes in vitro Initial studies monitoring renal blood flow after IRI did not find significant effects with αvβ5 inhibition; however, future studies should explore the contribution of vasomotor effects. These studies identify a role for αvβ5 in modulating injury-induced renal vascular leak, possibly through effects on pericyte adhesion and migration, and reveal αvβ5 inhibition as a promising therapeutic strategy for AKI

Genera of phytopathogenic fungi: GOPHY 3

This paper represents the third contribution in the Genera of Phytopathogenic Fungi (GOPHY) series. The series provides morphological descriptions, information about the pathology, distribution, hosts and disease symptoms for the treated genera, as well as primary and secondary DNA barcodes for the currently accepted species included in these. This third paper in the GOPHY series treats 21 genera of phytopathogenic fungi and their relatives including: Allophoma, Alternaria, Brunneosphaerella, Elsinoe, Exserohilum, Neosetophoma, Neostagonospora, Nothophoma, Parastagonospora, Phaeosphaeriopsis, Pleiocarpon, Pyrenophora, Ramichloridium, Seifertia, Seiridium, Septoriella, Setophoma, Stagonosporopsis, Stemphylium, Tubakia and Zasmidium. This study includes three new genera, 42 new species, 23 new combinations, four new names, and three typifications of older names

Drug-cured experimental Trypanosoma cruzi infections confer long-lasting and cross-strain protection.

BACKGROUND: The long term and complex nature of Chagas disease in humans has restricted studies on vaccine feasibility. Animal models also have limitations due to technical difficulties in monitoring the extremely low parasite burden that is characteristic of chronic stage infections. Advances in imaging technology offer alternative approaches that circumvent these problems. Here, we describe the use of highly sensitive whole body in vivo imaging to assess the efficacy of recombinant viral vector vaccines and benznidazole-cured infections to protect mice from challenge with Trypanosoma cruzi. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Mice were infected with T. cruzi strains modified to express a red-shifted luciferase reporter. Using bioluminescence imaging, we assessed the degree of immunity to re-infection conferred after benznidazole-cure. Those infected for 14 days or more, prior to the onset of benznidazole treatment, were highly protected from challenge with both homologous and heterologous strains. There was a >99% reduction in parasite burden, with parasites frequently undetectable after homologous challenge. This level of protection was considerably greater than that achieved with recombinant vaccines. It was also independent of the route of infection or size of the challenge inoculum, and was long-lasting, with no significant diminution in immunity after almost a year. When the primary infection was benznidazole-treated after 4 days (before completion of the first cycle of intracellular infection), the degree of protection was much reduced, an outcome associated with a minimal T. cruzi-specific IFN-?+ T cell response. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our findings suggest that a protective Chagas disease vaccine must have the ability to eliminate parasites before they reach organs/tissues, such as the GI tract, where once established, they become largely refractory to the induced immune response

Aggressive breast cancer in western Kenya has early onset, high proliferation, and immune cell infiltration

Background Breast cancer incidence and mortality vary significantly among different nations and racial groups. African nations have the highest breast cancer mortality rates in the world, even though the incidence rates are below those of many nations. Differences in disease progression suggest that aggressive breast tumors may harbor a unique molecular signature to promote disease progression. However, few studies have investigated the pathology and clinical markers expressed in breast tissue from regional African patient populations. Methods We collected 68 malignant and 89 non-cancerous samples from Kenyan breast tissue. To characterize the tumors from these patients, we constructed tissue microarrays (TMAs) from these tissues. Sections from these TMAs were stained and analyzed using immunohistochemistry to detect clinical breast cancer markers, including estrogen receptor (ER), progesterone receptor (PR), human epidermal growth factor 2 receptor (HER2) status, Ki67, and immune cell markers. Results Thirty-three percent of the tumors were triple negative (ER-, PR-, HER2-), 59 % were ER+, and almost all tumors analyzed were HER2-. Seven percent of the breast cancer patients were male, and 30 % were <40 years old at diagnosis. Cancer tissue had increased immune cell infiltration with recruitment of CD163+ (M2 macrophage), CD25+ (regulatory T lymphocyte), and CD4+ (T helper) cells compared to non-cancer tissue. Conclusions We identified clinical biomarkers that may assist in identifying therapy strategies for breast cancer patients in western Kenya. Estrogen receptor status in particular should lead initial treatment strategies in these breast cancer patients. Increased CD25 expression suggests a need for additional treatment strategies designed to overcome immune suppression by CD25+ cells in order to promote the antitumor activity of CD8+ cytotoxic T cells

Mathematical modelling of polyamine metabolism in bloodstream-form trypanosoma brucei: An application to drug target identification

© 2013 Gu et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are creditedThis article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.We present the first computational kinetic model of polyamine metabolism in bloodstream-form Trypanosoma brucei, the causative agent of human African trypanosomiasis. We systematically extracted the polyamine pathway from the complete metabolic network while still maintaining the predictive capability of the pathway. The kinetic model is constructed on the basis of information gleaned from the experimental biology literature and defined as a set of ordinary differential equations. We applied Michaelis-Menten kinetics featuring regulatory factors to describe enzymatic activities that are well defined. Uncharacterised enzyme kinetics were approximated and justified with available physiological properties of the system. Optimisation-based dynamic simulations were performed to train the model with experimental data and inconsistent predictions prompted an iterative procedure of model refinement. Good agreement between simulation results and measured data reported in various experimental conditions shows that the model has good applicability in spite of there being gaps in the required data. With this kinetic model, the relative importance of the individual pathway enzymes was assessed. We observed that, at low-to-moderate levels of inhibition, enzymes catalysing reactions of de novo AdoMet (MAT) and ornithine production (OrnPt) have more efficient inhibitory effect on total trypanothione content in comparison to other enzymes in the pathway. In our model, prozyme and TSHSyn (the production catalyst of total trypanothione) were also found to exhibit potent control on total trypanothione content but only when they were strongly inhibited. Different chemotherapeutic strategies against T. brucei were investigated using this model and interruption of polyamine synthesis via joint inhibition of MAT or OrnPt together with other polyamine enzymes was identified as an optimal therapeutic strategy.The work was carried out under a PhD programme partly funded by Prof. Ray Welland, School of Computing Science, University of Glasgo

Pruning a Minimum Spanning Tree

This work employs some techniques in order to filter random noise from the information provided by minimum spanning trees obtained from the correlation matrices of international stock market indices prior to and during times of crisis. The first technique establishes a threshold above which connections are considered affected by noise, based on the study of random networks with the same probability density distribution of the original data. The second technique is to judge the strengh of a connection by its survival rate, which is the amount of time a connection between two stock market indices endure. The idea is that true connections will survive for longer periods of time, and that random connections will not. That information is then combined with the information obtained from the first technique in order to create a smaller network, where most of the connections are either strong or enduring in time