Ikbkap/Elp1 Deficiency Causes Male Infertility by Disrupting Meiotic Progression

Mouse Ikbkap gene encodes IKAP—one of the core subunits of Elongator—and is thought to be involved in transcription. However, the biological function of IKAP, particularly within the context of an animal model, remains poorly characterized. We used a loss-of-function approach in mice to demonstrate that Ikbkap is essential for meiosis during spermatogenesis. Absence of Ikbkap results in defects in synapsis and meiotic recombination, both of which result in increased apoptosis and complete arrest of gametogenesis. In Ikbkap-mutant testes, a few meiotic genes are down-regulated, suggesting IKAP's role in transcriptional regulation. In addition, Ikbkap-mutant testes exhibit defects in wobble uridine tRNA modification, supporting a conserved tRNA modification function from yeast to mammals. Thus, our study not only reveals a novel function of IKAP in meiosis, but also suggests that IKAP contributes to this process partly by exerting its effect on transcription and tRNA modification

The mapKurator System: A Complete Pipeline for Extracting and Linking Text from Historical Maps

Documents hold spatial focus and valuable locality characteristics. For example, descriptions of listings in real estate or travel blogs contain information about specific local neighborhoods. This information is valuable to characterize how humans perceive their environment. However, the first step to making use of this information is to identify the spatial focus (e.g., a city) of a document. Traditional approaches for identifying the spatial focus of a document rely on detecting and disambiguating toponyms from the document. This approach requires a vocabulary set of location phrases and ad-hoc rules, which ignore important words related to location. Recent topic modeling approaches using large language models often consider a few topics, each with broad coverage. In contrast, the spatial focus of a document can be a country, a city, or even a neighborhood, which together, is much larger than the number of topics considered in these approaches. Additionally, topic modeling methods are often applied to broad topics of news articles where context is easily distinguishable. To identify the geographic focus of a document effectively, we present a simple but effective Joint Embedding of multi-LocaLitY (JELLY), which jointly learns representations with separate encoders of document and location. JELLY significantly outperforms state-of-the-art methods for identifying spatial focus from documents from a number of sources. We also demonstrate case studies on the arithmetic of the learned representations, including identifying cities with similar locality characteristics and zero-shot learning to identify document spatial focus.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

Coexistent squamous cell carcinoma and adenoid basal carcinoma in the uterine cervix and infection with human papillomavirus (HPV 31)

AbstractObjectiveAdenoid basal carcinoma (ABC) is an uncommon neoplasm of the uterine cervix. ABC can be accompanied by carcinoma in situ or invasive carcinoma. Most cases are discovered accidentally during radical hysterectomy. ABC is associated with a high risk of human papillomavirus infection (HPV), most often HPV 16 infection.Case reportWe present a rare case of an 86-year-old Taiwanese married woman who suffered from bloody vaginal discharge and occasional lower abdominal pain and received cervical biopsy. The pathological report revealed squamous cell carcinoma (SCC) of the uterine cervix. After radical hysterectomy, bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy, and bilateral pelvic and para-aortic lymph node dissection, the final pathological report revealed SCC coexisting with ABC, and both of the components were infected by HPV 31. After receiving radiotherapy, she maintained outpatient department follow-up.ConclusionA literature review revealed that this was a rare case of combined ABC–SCC associated with HPV 31 infection. In this case, the ABC component did not affect the tumor stage because it was confined to the cervix. However, we must avoid overestimating the clinical stage because the ABC component is thought to be a benign lesion

Ocimum gratissimum Aqueous Extract Induces Apoptotic Signalling in Lung Adenocarcinoma Cell A549

Ocimum gratissimum (OG) is widely used as a traditional herb for its antibacterial activity in Taiwan. Recently, antitumor effect of OG on breast cancer cell is also reported; however, the effects of OG on human pulmonary adenocarcinoma cell A549 remain unclear. Therefore, we aimed to investigate whether aqueous OG extract (OGE) affects viability of A549 cells and the signals induced by OGE in A549 cells. Cell viability assays revealed that OGE significantly and dose-dependently decreased the viability of A549 cell but not that of BEAS-2B cell. Morphological examination and DAPI staining indicated that OGE induced cell shrinkage and DNA condensation for A549 cells. Further investigation showed that OGE enhanced activation of caspase-3, caspase-9 and caspase-8 and increased protein level of Apaf-1 and Bak, but diminished the level of Bcl-2. Additionally, OGE inhibited the phosphorylation of extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) yet enhanced the phosphorylation of c-Jun N-terminal kinase (JNK) and p38 MAP kinase (p38). In conclusion, our findings indicate that OGE suppressed the cell viability of A549 cells, which may result from the activation of apoptotic signaling and the inhibition of anti-apoptotic signaling, suggesting that OGE might be beneficial to lung carcinoma treatment

Changing trends in antimicrobial resistance of major bacterial pathogens, 1985–2005: A study from a medical center in northern Taiwan

BackgroundAntimicrobial resistance is a major health problem worldwide. We evaluated the antimicrobial resistance trends of 16 major bacterial pathogens at a tertiary medical center in northern Taiwan.MethodsWe conducted a retrospective review of annual summary documents for antimicrobial susceptibility of clinically isolated gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria from 1985 to 2005. The numbers of isolates and susceptibilities were calculated for three 7-year periods: first period, 1985–1991; second period, 1992–1998; and the third period, 1999–2005.ResultsDuring the 21-year period, 219,715 bacterial pathogens were identified. A significant increase in incidence over time was found for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, methicillin-resistant S epidermidis, penicillin-nonsusceptible Streptococcus pneumoniae, erythromycin-resistant S pneumoniae, vancomycin-resistant enterococci, cefotaxime/ceftriaxone-resistant Escherichia coli and Klebsiella pneumoniae, and imipenem-resistant Acinetobacter baumannii. Additionally, a significant increase in ciprofloxacin resistance rates over time from 1996 to 2005 was noted for E coli, Enterobacter cloacae, and A baumannii (through 1997 to 2005). However, a significant decrease in erythromycin resistance rate with time from 1999 to 2005 was found for Groups A and B streptococci, non-A, B, D streptococci, and S pneumoniae.ConclusionResistance to antimicrobial agents increased rapidly in the past two decades in Taiwan and has become very common in major bacterial pathogens. Continuous enforcement of policies to limit use of antimicrobial agents and active surveillance of antimicrobial resistance through a nationwide system are both warranted

(E)-1-(2,4-Dihy­droxy­phen­yl)-3-(4-hydroxy­phen­yl)prop-2-en-1-one monohydrate

In the title compound, C15H12O4·H2O, the two benzene rings are not coplanar, making a dihedral angle of 7.24 (16)°. An intra­molecular hy­droxy–carbonyl O—H⋯O hydrogen bond occurs. In the crystal, four inter­molecular O—H⋯O hydrogen bonds involving the hy­droxy residues, the carbonyl group and the water mol­ecule lead to the formation of a three-dimensional network. The supra­molecular structure is further stabilized by weak C—H⋯O inter­actions

Molecular typing of Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolated from adult patients with tubercular spondylitis

Background/PurposeTuberculosis (TB) is endemic in Taiwan and usually affects the lung, spinal TB accounting for 1–3% of all TB infections. The manifestations of spinal TB are different from those of pulmonary TB. The purpose of this study was to define the epidemiological molecular types of mycobacterial strains causing spinal TB.MethodsWe retrospectively reviewed the medical charts of adult patients diagnosed with spinal TB from January 1998 to December 2007. Patients with positive culture results and/or pathological findings characteristic of TB were enrolled in this study. Spoligotyping was performed to type the Mycobacterium tuberculosis isolates.ResultsA total of 38 patients with spinal TB were identified. Their mean age was 68 years, and their median duration of symptoms was 60 days (range 3–720 days). The lumbar and thoracic spine accounted for 76% of the sites involved. Thirteen specimens (from seven male and six female patients) were available for typing. Spoligotyping of these 13 specimens revealed three Beijing (23%) and 10 non-Beijing types (77%). The non-Beijing types included two EAI2 Manilla (15%), two H3 (15%), two unclassified (15%), and one each of BOVIS1, U, T2, and orphan type. No significant predominant strain was found in this study, and no drug-resistant Beijing strains were identified.ConclusionTB spondylitis was found to occur in older patients. Spoligotyping results showed that most of the TB spondylitis cases were caused by non-Beijing type Mycobacterium tuberculosis