47 research outputs found
Pluripotent Stem Cells in Toxicity Testing: An Omics Approach
Traditional approaches to toxicological testing are expensive and time consuming usually involving exposure of chemicals to large numbers of animals during the crucial period of organ development. In order to provide cost-efficient and high-throughput methods, various in vitro test systems have been proposed to access toxicity for environmental toxicants and many drugs. Although effective, these platforms are based on in vitro cell cultures and ex vivo models using embryo cultures and often do not accurately interpret results for human safety because of interspecies difference and/or the inability to reproduce human physiology. To address this problem, a humanized system, pluripotent stem cells were introduced to study toxicity of drugs
Image Inpainting For Gap Filling and Text Abstraction by Using Optical Character Recognition
Inpainting is a technique referred as a restoration of image or regeneration of image .In this paper we are combining two concepts namely Image inpainting and OCR i.e. Optical character recognition. The main problem is to identify the missing region or the region we want to Inpaint, to remove the text from the same and store that text using OCR. This paper gives the overall explanation about the algorithm which is Exemplar based inpainting and recreation of a new system. The main task is to identify the text written on the image, next to that is to remove that text and store that text. After that to fill the generated gaps using image inpainting. Anyhow, the main aim of any inpainting technique is restore or reconstruct the damaged area of an image
Perspective Chapter: Dental Home – A Neglected Primary Oral Health Care Concept
Tooth decay, if left untreated even in the earliest stages of life, can have serious implications for a child’s long-term health and well-being. Early preventive care is a sound health and economic investment. Dental assessments and evaluations for children during their first year of life have been recommended by the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD) and the American Association of Pediatrics (ADA). Establishment of dental home and use of anticipatory guidance is one of the concepts in comprehensive oral health care. AAPD and ADA support the concept of a “dental home,” which is the ongoing relationship between the dentist and the patient. Establishing a dental home means that a child’s oral health care is managed in a comprehensive, continuously accessible, coordinated, and family-centered way by a licensed dentist. The dental professional’s ability to provide optimal oral health care, beginning from when the child is 1-year-old, dental visit leading to preventive care and treatment as part of an overall oral health care foundation for life, is enhanced by dental home. The establishment of the dental home also assures appropriate referral to dental specialists when availability of direct care is not possible within the dental home
Human embryonic stem cell-derived test systems for developmental neurotoxicity: a transcriptomics approach
Developmental neurotoxicity (DNT) and many forms of reproductive toxicity (RT) often manifest themselves in functional deficits that are not necessarily based on cell death, but rather on minor changes relating to cell differentiation or communication. The fields of DNT/RT would greatly benefit from in vitro tests that allow the identification of toxicant-induced changes of the cellular proteostasis, or of its underlying transcriptome network. Therefore, the 'human embryonic stem cell (hESC)- derived novel alternative test systems (ESNATS)' European commission research project established RT tests based on defined differentiation protocols of hESC and their progeny. Valproic acid (VPA) and methylmercury (MeHg) were used as positive control compounds to address the following fundamental questions: (1) Does transcriptome analysis allow discrimination of the two compounds? (2) How does analysis of enriched transcription factor binding sites (TFBS) and of individual probe sets (PS) distinguish between test systems? (3) Can batch effects be controlled? (4) How many DNA microarrays are needed? (5) Is the highest non-cytotoxic concentration optimal and relevant for the study of transcriptome changes? VPA triggered vast transcriptional changes, whereas MeHg altered fewer transcripts. To attenuate batch effects, analysis has been focused on the 500 PS with highest variability. The test systems differed significantly in their responses (\20 % overlap). Moreover, within one test system, little overlap between the PS changed by the two compounds has been observed. However, using TFBS enrichment, a relatively large 'common response' to VPA and MeHg could be distinguished from 'compound-specific' responses. In conclusion, the ESNATS assay battery allows classification of human DNT/RT toxicants on the basis of their transcriptome profiles.EU/FP7/ESNATSDFGDoerenkamp-Zbinden Foundatio
Human embryonic stem cell-derived test systems for developmental neurotoxicity: a transcriptomics approach
Efficient pothole detection using smartphone sensors
Road safety remains a casualty in India, with potholes wrecking asphalt pavements by the dozens. A study in 2017 recorded that potholes caused the budget for road safety to increase by a whopping 100.4 per cent, and even doubled the death toll from that of the year prior. To address this situation, an effective solution is required that ensures the drivers’ safety and can prove beneficial for long term measures. This can be established by employing an apt pothole detection system which is simple yet functional. In this paper, the method for such a system is described which uses accelerometer and gyroscope, both built in the modern day smartphones, to sense potholes. Pothole induced vibrations can be measured on the axis reading, making them distinguishable. Our proposed Neural Network model is trained and evaluated on the data acquired from the sensors and classifies the potholes from the non-potholes. The neural network gives a classification accuracy of 94.78 per cent. It also presents a solid precision-recall trade-off with 0.71 precision and 0.81 recall, considerably high for a problem with class imbalance. The results indicate that the method is suitable for creating an accurate and sensitive supervised model for pothole detection
Human chorionic gonadotropin: An update on its receptor binding regions
448-455Human chorionic gonadotropin
(hCG),
an important member of the glycoprotein
hormone family,
plays a crucial role in the establishment and maintenance of pregnancy. Glycoprotein hormones are all heterodimers
composed of a common α subunit and a hormone-specific β-subunit noncovalently linked. These hormones exert their action by binding to specific receptors on the target
cells. As both the subunits are involved in receptor binding, the binding sites on the hormones have to be topographical extending across both subunits. This article attempts to
critically review the work on the receptor binding regions of hCG in the α- and β-subunits.
A variety of approaches like chemical modification, site-directed mutagenesis, hormone chimeras and synthetic peptides have been used to map the receptor binding regions of hCG. There is agreement on the involvement of a number of regions in the α- and β- subunits in
receptor binding but, there are also some contrasting
observations. The
regions 30-45 and 81-92 in the α-subunit appear to be involved in receptor binding whereas 8-22, 85-95, 93-100
and 100-110
are
the
consensus
receptor
binding regions in the β-subunit. Using disulphide
peptides of the β-subunit as probes, recently the regions around Cys(9-57) and Cys(23-72) disulphide bonds have been identified to be important for receptor binding. After sifting through the available data two potential receptor
binding sites in the β-subunit have been proposed
Disulphide bond reduction and S-carboxamidomethylation of PSP94 affects its conformation but not the ability to bind immunoglobulin
Prostate secretory protein of 94 amino acids (PSP94) is a small non-glycosylated, cysteine rich protein with a molecular mass of 10 kDa. It has also been referred to as β-microseminoprotein (β-MSP) and proteins homologous to it have been reported in a number of species. Comparison of the amino acid sequence of these proteins suggests that, it is a rapidly evolving protein. However, all the ten cysteine residues are well conserved in these homologues, indicating their possible role in maintaining the structure and function of these proteins. In the present study, PSP94 was purified from human seminal plasma and characterized further and it showed the presence of five disulfide bonds. Reduction of disulphide bonds of PSP94 led to significant changes in the secondary and tertiary structure of PSP94. CD of disulphide bond reduced PSP94 indicates an overall decrease in the beta sheet content from 79.8% to 46.4%. Tertiary structural changes as monitored by fluorescence quenching reveal that reduction of disulphide bonds of PSP94 followed by the modification of the free thiol groups leads to complete exposure of Trp32 and Trp92 and that one or more side chain carboxyl groups move closer to their indole side chains. Antibodies against native and modified PSP94 demonstrated that the changes following reduction of disulphide linkages are within the immunodominant region of the protein. Changes induced in the functional properties of PSP94, if any, by modification were investigated with respect to IgG binding as PSP94 has been reported to be similar to immunoglobulin binding factor purified from seminal plasma. A novel finding from this study is that both native PSP94 as well as modified protein have the ability to bind human IgG, suggesting the involvement of sequential epitopes of PSP94 in IgG binding
Comparative Evaluation of the Antimicrobial Efficacy and Abrasivity of a Herbal Dentifrice Formulated with Myristica fragrans and a Commercially Available Herbal Dentifrice: An In-vitro Study
Introduction: Effective plaque control is important for proper oral
health maintenance, and the toothbrush-dentifrice combination
is essential for achieving this. Recently, herbal toothpastes have
gained more popularity amongst people.
Aim: To formulate a novel herbal toothpaste containing Myristica
fragrans (nutmeg) and compare its antimicrobial efficacy and
abrasivity with a commercially available herbal toothpaste.
Materials and Methods: This in-vitro study was conducted on
24 non-carious permanent extracted teeth with intact coronal
structure. These were equally divided into experimental and
control groups (n=12). The nutmeg toothpaste was formulated
using nutmeg powder, tulsi leaf powder, and clove powder as
the main herbal ingredients. Dabur red was selected as the
commercial herbal toothpaste. The zone of inhibition of both
toothpastes was evaluated against Streptococcus mutans and
Lactobacillus species using the agar well diffusion method.
Enamel specimens measuring 5×5×5 mm were mounted on
acrylic blocks and brushed for 28 days. Profilometric analysis was
conducted on the 1st, 7th, and 28th day. Statistical analysis was
performed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences(SPSS)
version 23.0 software, and independent t-tests and Analysis of
Variance (ANOVA) tests were used.
Results: 24 teeth were used. A total of 6 samples of toothpaste
were considered for antimicrobial testing. The zone of inhibition
for the nutmeg toothpaste and Dabur red was 28 mm and
32.17±0.42 mm, respectively, against both organisms. The
increase in surface roughness of enamel was not statistically
significant between the two groups (p>0.05).
Conclusion: Both toothpastes exhibited antimicrobial activity
against the test microorganisms and significantly increased
the surface roughness of enamel from baseline to the 28th day.
The nutmeg toothpaste caused less enamel abrasion, but the
difference was not significant