Short-Term, Combined Fasting and Exercise Improves Body Composition in Healthy Males

Fasting enhances the beneficial metabolic outcomes of exercise; however, it is unknown whether body composition is favorably modified on the short term. A baseline-follow-up study was carried out to assess the effect of an established protocol involving short-term combined exercise with fasting on body composition. One hundred seven recreationally exercising males underwent a 10-day intervention across 15 fitness centers in the Netherlands involving a 3-day gradual decrease of food intake, a 3-day period with extremely low caloric intake, and a gradual 4-day increase to initial caloric intake, with daily 30-min submaximal cycling. Using dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry analysis, all subjects substantially lost total body mass (-3.9 ± 1.9 kg; p < .001) and fat mass (-3.3 ± 1.3 kg; p < .001). Average lean mass was lost (-0.6 ± 1.5 kg; p < .001), but lean mass as a percentage of total body mass was not reduced. The authors observed a loss of -3.9 ± 1.9% android fat over total fat mass (p < .001), a loss of -2.2 ± 1.9% gynoid over total fat mass (p < .001), and reduced android/gynoid ratios (-0.05 ± 0.1; p < .001). Analyzing 15 preselected single-nucleotide polymorphisms in 13 metabolism-related genes revealed trending associations for thyroid state-related single-nucleotide polymorphisms rs225014 (deiodinase 2) and rs35767 (insulin-like growth factor1), and rs1053049 (PPARD). In conclusion, a short period of combined fasting and exercise leads to a substantial loss of body and fat mass without a loss of lean mass as a percentage of total mass

Molecular Profiling Reveals Biologically Discrete Subsets and Pathways of Progression in Diffuse Glioma

Therapy development for adult diffuse glioma is hindered by incomplete knowledge of somatic glioma driving alterations and suboptimal disease classification. We defined the complete set of genes associated with 1,122 diffuse grade II-III-IV gliomas from The Cancer Genome Atlas and used molecular profiles to improve disease classification, identify molecular correlations, and provide insights into the progression from low- to high-grade disease. Whole-genome sequencing data analysis determined that ATRX but not TERT promoter mutations are associated with increased telomere length. Recent advances in glioma classification based on IDH mutation and 1p/19q co-deletion status were recapitulated through analysis of DNA methylation profiles, which identified clinically relevant molecular subsets. A subtype of IDH mutant glioma was associated with DNA demethylation and poor outcome; a group of IDH-wild-type diffuse glioma showed molecular similarity to pilocytic astrocytoma and relatively favorable survival. Understanding of cohesive disease groups may aid improved clinical outcomes

TCGAbiolinks: an R/Bioconductor package for integrative analysis of TCGA data.

The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) research network has made public a large collection of clinical and molecular phenotypes of more than 10 000 tumor patients across 33 different tumor types. Using this cohort, TCGA has published over 20 marker papers detailing the genomic and epigenomic alterations associated with these tumor types. Although many important discoveries have been made by TCGA's research network, opportunities still exist to implement novel methods, thereby elucidating new biological pathways and diagnostic markers. However, mining the TCGA data presents several bioinformatics challenges, such as data retrieval and integration with clinical data and other molecular data types (e.g. RNA and DNA methylation). We developed an R/Bioconductor package called TCGAbiolinks to address these challenges and offer bioinformatics solutions by using a guided workflow to allow users to query, download and perform integrative analyses of TCGA data. We combined methods from computer science and statistics into the pipeline and incorporated methodologies developed in previous TCGA marker studies and in our own group. Using four different TCGA tumor types (Kidney, Brain, Breast and Colon) as examples, we provide case studies to illustrate examples of reproducibility, integrative analysis and utilization of different Bioconductor packages to advance and accelerate novel discoveries.SCOPUS: ar.jinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishe

Smartphone application for ancient mortars identification developed by a multi-analytical approach

The present work shows the results of the chemical, mineralogical and colorimetric characterisation of the ancient mortars from Silla Islamic Tower (Valencia, Spain) and Fuengirola Castle (Malaga, Spain). The samples were characterised from the mineralogical point of view by X-ray diffractometry and mid-infrared attenuated total reflection spectroscopy, while portable energy dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy and inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry were employed to obtain the concentrations of major and trace elements, including rare earth elements. Data analysis through multivariate statistics was used to evaluate features to discriminate among the mortars from the different construction phases and to classify undated samples. Finally, colour features of powdered and intact samples were characterised by smartphone photo processing and with a Vis-spectrophotometer as reference technique to evaluate the effectiveness of smartphones for archaeometric studies of historic mortars. The analytical results permitted the classification of most undated samples from Silla and evidenced the presence of peculiar chemical characteristics in some samples from Fuengirola. Imaging data for powdered samples showed a good potential as a reliable, cheap and non-destructive fast method to characterise mortars and carry out the study of construction phases in historical complexes

Molecular Profiling Reveals Biologically Discrete Subsets and Pathways of Progression in Diffuse Glioma

Therapy development for adult diffuse glioma is hindered by incomplete knowledge of somatic glioma driving alterations and suboptimal disease classification. We defined the complete set of genes associated with 1,122 diffuse grade II-III-IV gliomas from The Cancer Genome Atlas and used molecular profiles to improve disease classification, identify molecular correlations, and provide insights into the progression from low- to high-grade disease. Whole-genome sequencing data analysis determined that ATRX but not TERT promoter mutations are associated with increased telomere length. Recent advances in glioma classification based on IDH mutation and 1p/19q co-deletion status were recapitulated through analysis of DNA methylation profiles, which identified clinically relevant molecular subsets. A subtype of IDH mutant glioma was associated with DNA demethylation and poor outcome; a group of IDH-wild-type diffuse glioma showed molecular similarity to pilocytic astrocytoma and relatively favorable survival. Understanding of cohesive disease groups may aid improved clinical outcomes