Comparative analysis of the growth and biological activity of a respiratory and atheroma isolate of reveals strain-dependent differences in inflammatory activity and innate immune evasion

En el año 2010, como contraparte de los festejos del centenario de la Revolución mexicana, el poeta Jorge Esquinca invitó a treinta y cuatro poetas a participar en una antología titulada País de sombra y fuego. La relevancia de este ejercicio poético proviene de la pregunta que lo estructura: ¿Existe todavía en el vocablo Patria un núcleo generador de significado?A través del análisis de estos poemas y de los tópicos que prevalecen en ellos, es posible conocer el doloroso México que perciben los poetas mexicanos y la forma en que la poesía mexicana contemporánea del siglo XXI lo nombra.In 2010, as a counterpart to the festivities related to the 100th anniversary of the Mexican Revolution, the poet Jorge Esquinica invited thirty-four poets to participate in an anthology titled País de sombra y fuego. The relevance of this poetic exercise stems from the very question which gives it structure. Is the word Motherland still relevant in today's world?Through an analysis of these poems and the themes that prevail in them, it is possible to discover how these anthologized Mexican poets view their country nowadays and how they address its main issues.A l’any 2010, com a contrapart dels festejos del centenari de la Revolució mexicana, el poeta Jorge Esquinca va convidar trenta-quatre poetes a participar en una antologia titulada País de sombra y fuego. La rellevància d’aquest exercici poètic prové de la pregunta que l’estructura: existeix encara en el terme Pàtria un nucli generador de significat? A través de l’anàlisi d’aquests poemes i dels tòpics que prevalen en ells, és possible conèixer el dolorós Mèxic que perceben els poetes mexicans i la forma en què la poesia mexicana contamporània del segle XXI ho nombra

Effects of particle size on physicochemical and functional properties of superfine black kidney bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) powder

Black kidney bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) powder (BKBP) with particle sizes of 250–180, 180–125, 125–75, 75–38, and <38 μm was prepared by using coarse and eccentric vibratory milling, respectively. Physicochemical properties, cholesterol adsorption, and antioxidant activities of powders were investigated. Size and scanning electron microscopy analyses showed that particle size of BKBP could be effectively decreased after the superfine grinding treatment, and the specific surface area was increased. Flow properties, hydration properties, thermal stability, and cholesterol adsorption efficiency significantly improved with the reducing of particle size. The superfine powder with sizes of 75–38 or <38 μm exhibited higher antioxidant activity via 2,2-diphenyl-1-picryhydrazyl, hydroxyl radical-scavenging, and ferrous ion-chelating assays. The results indicated that the BKBP with a size of <38 μm could serve as a better potential biological resource for food additives, and could be applied for the development of low-cholesterol products

Specific Inflammatory Stimuli Lead to Distinct Platelet Responses in Mice and Humans

INTRODUCTION: Diverse and multi-factorial processes contribute to the progression of cardiovascular disease. These processes affect cells involved in the development of this disease in varying ways, ultimately leading to atherothrombosis. The goal of our study was to compare the differential effects of specific stimuli - two bacterial infections and a Western diet - on platelet responses in ApoE-/- mice, specifically examining inflammatory function and gene expression. Results from murine studies were verified using platelets from participants of the Framingham Heart Study (FHS; n = 1819 participants). METHODS: Blood and spleen samples were collected at weeks 1 and 9 from ApoE-/- mice infected with Porphyromonas gingivalis or Chlamydia pneumoniae and from mice fed a Western diet for 9 weeks. Transcripts based on data from a Western diet in ApoE-/- mice were measured in platelet samples from FHS using high throughput qRT-PCR. RESULTS:At week 1, both bacterial infections increased circulating platelet-neutrophil aggregates. At week 9, these cells individually localized to the spleen, while Western diet resulted in increased platelet-neutrophil aggregates in the spleen only. Microarray analysis of platelet RNA from infected or Western diet-fed mice at week 1 and 9 showed differential profiles. Genes, such as Serpina1a, Ttr, Fgg, Rpl21, and Alb, were uniquely affected by infection and diet. Results were reinforced in platelets obtained from participants of the FHS. CONCLUSION: Using both human studies and animal models, results demonstrate that variable sources of inflammatory stimuli have the ability to influence the platelet phenotype in distinct ways, indicative of the diverse function of platelets in thrombosis, hemostasis, and immunity

Distinct gene signatures in aortic tissue from ApoE-/- mice exposed to pathogens or Western diet

BACKGROUND: Atherosclerosis is a progressive disease characterized by inflammation and accumulation of lipids in vascular tissue. Porphyromonas gingivalis (Pg) and Chlamydia pneumoniae (Cp) are associated with inflammatory atherosclerosis in humans. Similar to endogenous mediators arising from excessive dietary lipids, these Gram-negative pathogens are pro-atherogenic in animal models, although the specific inflammatory/atherogenic pathways induced by these stimuli are not well defined. In this study, we identified gene expression profiles that characterize P. gingivalis, C. pneumoniae, and Western diet (WD) at acute and chronic time points in aortas of Apolipoprotein E (ApoE-/-) mice. RESULTS: At the chronic time point, we observed that P. gingivalis was associated with a high number of unique differentially expressed genes compared to C. pneumoniae or WD. For the top 500 differentially expressed genes unique to each group, we observed a high percentage (76%) that exhibited decreased expression in P. gingivalis-treated mice in contrast to a high percentage (96%) that exhibited increased expression in WD mice. C. pneumoniae treatment resulted in approximately equal numbers of genes that exhibited increased and decreased expression. Gene Set Enrichment Analysis (GSEA) revealed distinct stimuli-associated phenotypes, including decreased expression of mitochondrion, glucose metabolism, and PPAR pathways in response to P. gingivalis but increased expression of mitochondrion, lipid metabolism, carbohydrate and amino acid metabolism, and PPAR pathways in response to C. pneumoniae; WD was associated with increased expression of immune and inflammatory pathways. DAVID analysis of gene clusters identified by two-way ANOVA at acute and chronic time points revealed a set of core genes that exhibited altered expression during the natural progression of atherosclerosis in ApoE-/- mice; these changes were enhanced in P. gingivalis-treated mice but attenuated in C. pneumoniae-treated mice. Notable differences in the expression of genes associated with unstable plaques were also observed among the three pro-atherogenic stimuli. CONCLUSIONS: Despite the common outcome of P. gingivalis, C. pneumoniae, and WD on the induction of vascular inflammation and atherosclerosis, distinct gene signatures and pathways unique to each pro-atherogenic stimulus were identified. Our results suggest that pathogen exposure results in dysregulated cellular responses that may impact plaque progression and regression pathways

Enhanced Virulence of Chlamydia muridarum Respiratory Infections in the Absence of TLR2 Activation

Chlamydia trachomatis is a common sexually transmitted pathogen and is associated with infant pneumonia. Data from the female mouse model of genital tract chlamydia infection suggests a requirement for TLR2-dependent signaling in the induction of inflammation and oviduct pathology. We hypothesized that the role of TLR2 in moderating mucosal inflammation is site specific. In order to investigate this, we infected mice via the intranasal route with C. muridarum and observed that in the absence of TLR2 activation, mice had more severe disease, higher lung cytokine levels, and an exaggerated influx of neutrophils and T-cells into the lungs. This could not be explained by impaired bacterial clearance as TLR2-deficient mice cleared the infection similar to controls. These data suggest that TLR2 has an anti-inflammatory function in the lung during Chlamydia infection, and that the role of TLR2 in mucosal inflammation varies at different mucosal surfaces

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

USP48 Inhibition as a Potential Therapeutic Target for Patients with T-acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia

https://openworks.mdanderson.org/sumexp21/1108/thumbnail.jp

Antioxidative Peptides from Proteolytic Hydrolysates of False Abalone (Volutharpa ampullacea perryi): Characterization, Identification, and Molecular Docking

Antioxidative peptides were produced from false abalone (Volutharpa ampullacea perryi) using enzymatic hydrolysis. Trypsin produced the most bioactive hydrolysates with the highest scavenging ABTS+&bull; free radicals compared to pepsin, alcalase, neutrase, and flavourzyme. The response surface methodology studies on trypsin hydrolysis indicated that the hydrolysis temperature, time, and pH were interacted with each other (p &lt; 0.05), and the optimal conditions were hydrolysis at 51.8 &deg;C for 4.1 h, pH 7.7 and the maximum predicted hydrolysis degree was 13.18% and ABTS+&bull; scavenging activity of 79.42%. The optimized hydrolysate was subjected to ultrafiltration fractionation, and the fraction with MW &lt; 3 kDa showed the highest ABTS+&bull; scavenging activity. There were 193 peptide sequences identified from this peptide fraction and 133 of them were successfully docked onto human myeloperoxidase (MPO), an enzyme involved in forming reactive oxidants in vivo. The highest scored peptide, no. 39, consists of DTETGVPT. Its structure and molecular interactions with MPO active site were compared with previously characterized peptide hLF1-11. The interactions between peptide no. 39 and MPO include electrostatic charge, hydrogen bonds, and covalent bonds. The antioxidative peptide produced in this research may exert antioxidant activity in vivo due to its potential inhibition effect on MPO