Preliminary investigations of Agrobacterium-mediated transformation in indica rice MR219 embryogenic callus using gusA gene

Preliminary steps in the genetic transformation of indica rice MR219 was investigated in the plant- Agrobacterium tumefaciens interaction. Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain LBA 4404 carrying a binary vector pCAMBIA 1305.2 harboring the modified GUS gene driven by the CaMV 35S promoter was used. Various transformation parameters influences were optimized using embryogenic calli via β- glucuronidase (GUS) as a reporter marker. Various transformation parameters were optimized including bacterial concentration, age of embryogenic callus, pre-culture period, wounding technique, cocultivation period, immersion time and dry time before co-cultivation, acetosyringone (AS) concentration, pH of co-cultivation media and temperature of the co-cultivation period. The expression of the transient gusA gene in the plant genome was preliminary confirmed by histochemical GUS assay activity (as blue spots). The results from transient gusA gene expression of calli suggested that the Agrobacterium-mediated transfer system of T-DNA in indica rice MR219 was highly efficient. Therefore, the investigation of factors that influence T-DNA delivery is an important first step in the utilization of Agrobacterium in the transformation of indica rice MR219 calli.Key words: Indica rice MR219, Agrobacterium tumefaciens, GUS expression

Prevention of Radiocontrast-Induced Nephropathy after Coronary Angiography: N-Acetylcysteine plus Saline Hydration versus Saline Hydration

Purpose: To compare the incidence of radiocontrast-induced nephropathy (RCIN) in patients undergoing coronary angiography pretreated with N-acetylcysteine NAC plus saline hydration or saline hydration alone and to determine the association between various risk factors and RCIN.Methods: Patients were retrospectively evaluated over a one-year period. RCIN was defined as an acute rise in serum creatinine of at least 0.5 mg/dl or more than 25 % from baseline value. SPSS software, version 13 was used for data analysis.Results: Overall, 299 patients were studied. Thirteen patients (4.3%) developed RCIN. RCIN was 3.3 % in patients treated with hydration, and 8.3 % in patients treated with NAC plus hydration (p = 0.09). Inpatients with RCIN, the changes in creatinine and % change in creatinine after 24 h were significantly lower in the NAC plus hydration group (p = 0.039 and p = 0.042, respectively). RCIN was significantly associated with male gender (p = 0.017), history of renal failure (p = 0.006), ischemic heart disease (p =0.003), and diuretic treatment (p = 0.013).Conclusion: NAC plus saline hydration may not be more effective than saline hydration alone in decreasing RCIN after coronary angiography. Additional efforts to find an ideal preventive treatment are needed

WHAT DRIVES THE TOURISM INDUSTRY IN SAMARINDA? AN EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE

Currently, tourism activities depend not only on what is visible but on a synergistic effort to attract visitors. If they don’t make repairs immediately, their interest will slowly dwindle. This situation has become a high enigma and attracted us to identify the relationship between visitors’ bonding, city branding, technology adaptation, innovation and creativity, and market segmentation. It described the explanation with the support of 1,278 informants, where we interviewed them while visiting six popular destinations in Samarinda. Using a convenience sampling procedure, we processed the survey data through multiple regression and IBM-SPSS software, which analyzed two structures (direct path and mediation path). The terms that are significant or not significant are p <0.05 for direct effects, and special moderating effects are p <0.01. Exploration showed official outputs, including a positive-significant relationship from visitors bonding to technology adaptation, innovation and creativity to city branding and market segmentation, innovation and creativity to city branding through market segmentation. Unexpectedly, city branding has a positive but not significant effect on visitors’ bonding, technology adaptation and innovation and creativity. The results are negative but significant, and technology adaptation has a negative-not significant effect on market segmentation. The novelty of this paper has implications for strength, opinion, and decomposition that need a discussion on the future agenda

Diverse Profiles of Anxiety Related Disorders in Fragile X, Cornelia de Lange and Rubinstein–Taybi Syndromes

Anxiety disorders are heightened in specific genetic syndromes in comparison to intellectual disability of heterogeneous aetiology. In this study, we described and contrasted anxiety symptomatology in fragile X (FXS), Cornelia de Lange (CdLS) and Rubinstein–Taybi syndromes (RTS), and compared the symptomatology to normative data for typically-developing children and children diagnosed with an anxiety disorder. Scores did not differ between children diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and (a) participants with FXS on social phobia, panic/agoraphobia, physical injury fears, and obsessive–compulsive subscales (b) participants with CdLS on separation anxiety, generalized anxiety, panic/agoraphobia, physical injury fears and obsessive–compulsive subscales, and (c) participants with RTS on panic/agoraphobia and obsessive–compulsive subscales. The results highlight divergent profiles of anxiety symptomatology between these groups

The First Outbreak of Autochthonous Zika Virus in Sabah, Malaysia Borneo.

Background: Zika virus (ZIKV) infection is a public health concern. The first ZIKV outside Africa was detected in mosquito in Malaysia. More than six decades ago, serological surveys indicated the presence of human infection with ZIKV in the Malaysian Borneo state of Sabah. It has also been demonstrated that orangutans in Sabah have antibodies against ZIKV. Several years ago, a case of human ZIKV infection was reported in a traveler who visited Sabah. Therefore, it is thought that ZIKV is endogenous to Sabah and is widely distributed. During the recent global epidemic of ZIKV, the first autochthonous case and two subsequent autochthonous cases were detected in Sabah. Because ZIKV infection is mainly asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic, the extent of ZIKV infection in the population of Sabah is not known. Furthermore, the presence of ZIKV in vector mosquitoes and animals has not been investigated. Therefore, the present study was performed to analyze the outbreak cases of ZIKV infection and to determine their relationship with the burden of ZIKV infection in the local population, mosquitoes, and wild nonhuman primates in Sabah. Methods: Serum and urine samples were collected from two local patients with ZIKV infection, their household members, and those who resided within 400m of the patients’ residences. Serum samples were also collected from four wild Maca fascicularis. Mosquito samples, mostly female Aedes albopictus, were collected from 30 sites in Kota Kinabalu. The presence of ZIKV was assessed by RT-qPCR and RT-PCR. Phylogenetic analysis was performed using the neighbor-joining method. Results: Two cases of ZIKV infection were identified by reverse-transcription quantitative PCR (RT-qPCR) in residents of Kota Kinabalu, and the Taiwanese health authorities reported one case in an individual who visited Kota Kinabalu during the study period. All household members of both local patients and people living within a 400 m radius of the patients were negative for ZIKV. Furthermore, mosquitoes collected from the surroundings of the residences and places visited by the patients and four serum samples from M. fascicularis were also negative for ZIKV. A phylogenetic tree constructed using the nucleotide sequences of the envelope genes of ZIKV showed that the strains from Sabah formed a cluster with strains from Thailand and Cambodia, and belong to the Asian lineage. Conclusions: Our study revealed that ZIKVs in Sabah is of Asian lineage and are not related to the recent outbreak strains in the Americas and Singapore. ZIKV infection in Sabah is sporadic, possibly because of limited transmission of the virus. Further studies are needed to characterize the evolutionary history of ZIKV in Sabah to understand the epidemiology of this infection in Borneo

Pan-cancer analysis of whole genomes

Cancer is driven by genetic change, and the advent of massively parallel sequencing has enabled systematic documentation of this variation at the whole-genome scale(1-3). Here we report the integrative analysis of 2,658 whole-cancer genomes and their matching normal tissues across 38 tumour types from the Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium of the International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) and The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA). We describe the generation of the PCAWG resource, facilitated by international data sharing using compute clouds. On average, cancer genomes contained 4-5 driver mutations when combining coding and non-coding genomic elements; however, in around 5% of cases no drivers were identified, suggesting that cancer driver discovery is not yet complete. Chromothripsis, in which many clustered structural variants arise in a single catastrophic event, is frequently an early event in tumour evolution; in acral melanoma, for example, these events precede most somatic point mutations and affect several cancer-associated genes simultaneously. Cancers with abnormal telomere maintenance often originate from tissues with low replicative activity and show several mechanisms of preventing telomere attrition to critical levels. Common and rare germline variants affect patterns of somatic mutation, including point mutations, structural variants and somatic retrotransposition. A collection of papers from the PCAWG Consortium describes non-coding mutations that drive cancer beyond those in the TERT promoter(4); identifies new signatures of mutational processes that cause base substitutions, small insertions and deletions and structural variation(5,6); analyses timings and patterns of tumour evolution(7); describes the diverse transcriptional consequences of somatic mutation on splicing, expression levels, fusion genes and promoter activity(8,9); and evaluates a range of more-specialized features of cancer genomes(8,10-18).Peer reviewe

Plio-Pleistocene phylogeography of the Southeast Asian Blue Panchax killifish, Aplocheilus panchax

The complex climatic and geological history of Southeast Asia has shaped this region’s high biodiversity. In particular, sea level fluctuations associated with repeated glacial cycles during the Pleistocene both facilitated, and limited, connectivity between populations. In this study, we used data from two mitochondrial and three anonymous nuclear markers to determine whether a fresh/brackish water killifish, Aplocheilus panchax, Hamilton, 1822, could be used to further understand how climatic oscillations and associated sea level fluctuations have shaped the distribution of biota within this region, and whether such patterns show evidence of isolation within palaeodrainage basins. Our analyses revealed three major mitochondrial clades within A. panchax. The basal divergence of A. panchax mitochondrial lineages was approximately 3.5 Ma, whilst the subsequent divergence timings of these clades occurred early Pleistocene (~2.6 Ma), proceeding through the Pleistocene. Continuous phylogeographic analysis showed a clear west-east dispersal followed by rapid radiation across Southeast Asia. Individuals from Krabi, just north of the Isthmus of Kra, were more closely related to the Indian lineages, providing further evidence for a freshwater faunal disjunction at the Isthmus of Kra biogeographic barrier. Our results suggest that Sulawesi, across the Wallace Line, was colonised relatively recently (~30 ka). Nuclear DNA is less geographically structured, although Mantel tests indicated that nuclear genetic distances were correlated with geographic proximity. Overall, these results imply that recent gene flow, as opposed to historical isolation, has been the key factor determining patterns of nuclear genetic variation in A. panchax, however, some evidence of historical isolation is retained within the mitochondrial genome. Our study further validates the existence of a major biogeographic boundary at the Kra Isthmus, and also demonstrates the use of widely distributed fresh/brackishwater species in phylogeographic studies, and their ability to disperse across major marine barriers in relatively recent time periods

Pengaruh kualitas kerja dan pengawasan terhadap produktivitas kerja karyawan bank kaltimtara syariah cabang samarinda

The purpose of this research is to know the influence of the quality of work and supervision conducted by the Samarinda Branch of Bank Kaltimtara Syariah on employee work productivity. This study involved 43 respondents whose results were tested using multiple regression analysis and t test.The results showed that the quality of work has a value of t greater than table t with a significance level of 0.008 while supervision shows a value of t smaller than table t with a significance level of 0.223. From the results of the analysis it can be concluded that the quality of work has a significant effect on the work productivity of sharia Kaltimtara bank employees, so the first hypothesis is accepted.While supervision does not affect the work productivity of sharia bank Kaltimtara employees, so the second hypothesis is rejected

Strangulated diaphragmatic hernia in an elderly man

A congenital diaphragmatic hernia is very uncommon among adults. A diaphragmatic hernia is primarily acute in onset and it is usually identified after trauma. It occurs mostly on the left side. We would like to report a 68-year-old male who presented with a 4-day history of acute intestinal obstruction with a background history of change in bowel habit for a month secondary to a right diaphragmatic hernia. He did not have any history of trauma. Clinical examination revealed a distended abdomen with high pitched bowel sound and no palpable mass. The right lung was inaudible on auscultation. Computed tomography scan was consistent with a right diaphragmatic hernia and acute intestinal obstruction. We highlight the late onset of a congenital diaphragmatic hernia and emphasize the vital need for perioperative management to ensure a promising surgical outcome