Kynurenine aminotransferase 3/glutamine transaminase L/cysteine conjugate beta-lyase 2 is a major glutamine transaminase in the mouse kidney

AbstractBackgroundKynurenine aminotransferase 3 (KAT3) catalyzes the transamination of Kynurenine to kynurenic acid, and is identical to cysteine conjugate beta-lyase 2 (CCBL2) and glutamine transaminase L (GTL). GTL was previously purified from the rat liver and considered as a liver type glutamine transaminase. However, because of the substrate overlap and high sequence similarity of KAT3 and KAT1, it was difficult to assay the specific activity of each KAT and to study the enzyme localization in animals.MethodsKAT3 transcript and protein levels as well as enzyme activity in the liver and kidney were analyzed by regular reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR), real time RT-PCR, biochemical activity assays combined with a specific inhibition assay, and western blotting using a purified and a highly specific antibody, respectively.ResultsThis study concerns the comparative biochemical characterization and localization of KAT 3 in the mouse. The results showed that KAT3 was present in both liver and kidney of the mouse, but was much more abundant in the kidney than in the liver. The mouse KAT3 is more efficient in transamination of glutamine with indo-3-pyruvate or oxaloacetate as amino group acceptor than the mouse KAT1.ConclusionsMouse KAT3 is a major glutamine transaminase in the kidney although it was named a liver type transaminase.General significanceOur data highlights KAT3 as a key enzyme for studying the nephrotoxic mechanism of some xenobiotics and the formation of chemopreventive compounds in the mouse kidney. This suggests tissue localizations of KAT3/GTL/CCBL2 in other animals may be carefully checked

Hepatitis D double reflex testing of all hepatitis B carriers in low-HBV- and high-HBV/HDV-prevalence countries

Hepatitis D virus (HDV) infection occurs as a coinfection with hepatitis B and increases the risk of hepatocellular carcinoma, decompensated cirrhosis, and mortality compared to hepatitis B virus (HBV) monoinfection. Reliable estimates of the prevalence of HDV infection and disease burden are essential to formulate strategies to find coinfected individuals more effectively and efficiently. The global prevalence of HBV infections was estimated to be 262,240,000 in 2021. Only 1,994,000 of the HBV infections were newly diagnosed in 2021, with more than half of the new diagnoses made in China. Our initial estimates indicated a much lower prevalence of HDV antibody (anti-HDV) and HDV RNA positivity than previously reported in published studies. Accurate estimates of HDV prevalence are needed. The most effective method to generate estimates of the prevalence of anti-HDV and HDV RNA positivity and to find undiagnosed individuals at the national level is to implement double reflex testing. This requires anti-HDV testing of all hepatitis B surface antigen-positive individuals and HDV RNA testing of all anti-HDV-positive individuals. This strategy is manageable for healthcare systems since the number of newly diagnosed HBV cases is low. At the global level, a comprehensive HDV screening strategy would require only 1,994,000 HDV antibody tests and less than 89,000 HDV PCR tests. Double reflex testing is the preferred strategy in countries with a low prevalence of HBV and those with a high prevalence of both HBV and HDV. For example, in the European Union and North America only 35,000 and 22,000 cases, respectively, will require anti-HDV testing annually

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

Are Consumers Ready for Mobile Payment? An Examination of Consumer Acceptance of Mobile Payment Technology in Restaurant Industry

As an emerging payment method, mobile payment technology is perceived to be a secure and effective substitute of traditional debit/credit card payment. Although several reports and scholars claimed that mobile payment technology would become a major future payment method, consumers rather caught on this trend slowly, and little is known about key determinants of consumers ’ acceptance of mobile payment. To close that gap, the current study extended the classic Technology Acceptance Model by adding four additional predictors that are relevant to hospitality industry. The study results suggested that compatibility with lifestyle was the strongest predictor of consumers ’ intention to adopt mobile payment technology in restaurants, followed by perceived usefulness, subjective norm, security, and previous experience with mobile payment. Important theoretical and practical implications were provided based on our findings

Investigation of Relationship Between Sugar Yield and Particle Size in Biofuel Manufacturing

Biofuel manufacturing consists of two major processes, i.e., feedstock preprocessing and bioconversion. The preprocessing includes size reduction and pelleting. The bioconversion includes pretreatment, hydrolysis, and fermentation. Various studies have been implemented for these two processes. Most existing literature focuses on a specific process, while very few of them consider the possible interactions between the two processes. In this paper, we investigated the relationship between the particle size in feedstock preprocessing and the sugar yield (proportional to biofuel yield) in bioconversion. The method of design of experiments was used to design experiments and analyze the experimental results of sugar yield with different particle sizes for three different types of biomass. Critical parameters that significantly influence the sugar yield were identified. The optimal configurations of the particle size were recommended

Optimal Sizing and Planning of Onsite Generation System for Manufacturing in Critical Peaking Pricing Demand Response Program

Onsite electricity generation system in manufacturing has been traditionally considered an effective backup energy source to support the manufacturing operations when external power is not available due to natural disasters and/or power blackouts. Recently, with the increasing concerns of climate change and environmental protection, the contribution of using onsite generation system (OGS) to the manufacturing end use customers when they enroll in specific electricity demand response programs has also been gradually recognized. In this paper, we investigate the cost-effective OGS sizing problem for manufacturing practitioners when participating in Critical Peaking Pricing (CPP) demand response program. A Mixed Integer Non-Linear Programming (MINLP) formulation is proposed to identify the optimal size and utilization strategy of the OGS, as well as the corresponding production plan of the manufacturing system to minimize the overall energy related cost. Linearization strategy and metaheuristic algorithm are discussed for solving the proposed formulation with a reasonable computational cost and a good solution quality. A case study based on a real auto component manufacturing system and an existing CPP program is implemented to examine the effects of the proposed model. The results show that when utilizing the OGS appropriately sized, the total electricity related cost of the manufacturing system can be significantly reduced when participating in the CPP program

On-treatment predictors of sustained biochemical and virological response in patients with HBeAg-negative chronic hepatitis B (CHB) treated with peginterferon alpha-2a (40 kDa) (Pegasys (R))

Bu çalışma, 13-17 Nisan 2005 tarihleri arasında Paris'te düzenlenen Avrupa Karaciğer Çalışmaları 40. Toplantısında bildiri olarak sunulmuştur