An Investigation of Autoxidation and DNA Thermal Cleavage by Polymethine Cyanine Dyes and Analogs in Aqueous Solutions

Studies on a series of polymethine cyanine dyes and analogs (1-24) show that certain near-infrared cyanines are capable of damaging DNA in the absence of light and external reducing agents. Experimental results imply that in this DNA thermal cleavage, the cyanine reduces Cu(II) to Cu(I) which reacts with O2 to generate the reactive oxygen species (ROS) O2∙- and ∙OH. The formation of these ROS is also thought to be responsible for the irreversible bleaching of the dyes in aqueous solutions. A correlation between structural features and DNA thermal cleavage activity as well as dye bleaching is suggested. Long polymethine chains appear to confer instability to cyanines in aqueous solutions and further contribute to undesired thermal DNA cleavage. These drawbacks can be overcome by introducing an electron-withdrawing group to the polymethine bridge of the cyanine dye

Is Smoking Protective Against The Development Of Endoleak?

Background: Endoleak has been reported as a major complication among patients who have undergone endovascular repair of their abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA). Several studies made efforts towards identifying the risk factors for the development of endoleak through various studies and data analyses. Among all the findings, one result--smoking significantly lowers a patient\u27s risk for an endoleak--has been confirmed multiple times. But such a result appears to be contradictory to what researchers have anticipated; yet the contradictory has not been closely studied. Methods: Data on endoleaks from the Department of Veterans\u27 Affairs Open Versus Endovascular Repair (OVER) randomized controlled trial was used, and 419 male subjects with smoking histories were included in the analysis. A series of logistic regression models and propensity score models was constructed with the baseline and follow-up variables. Multiple imputation techniques were utilized to minimize the impact of missing data and to improve analytical robustness. In addition, a simulation study was also undertaken to better evaluate the models above. Results: About half (5/12) of the logistic regression models supported the significant effect on endoleak of smoking in the model, and a smaller proportion (3/18) of propensity score models indicated that smoking was a significant factor for endoleak. Missing values had an important impact on the results. Although smoking\u27s effects were not significant for little more than half of the models, odds ratio of developing endoleak for current smokers were always less than 1 compared with non-current smokers, which may be clinically meaningful. Results from simulation studies suggest that clinical trials with larger sample size might be necessary to reach a definitive conclusion on this topic

Origin of triploid plants from anther culture of Vitis vinifera var. Grenache

Microspore development in anther cultures of Vitis vinifera var. Grenache (2x) was observed with the PICCH staining method. There were five developing types: Hollow grain type, Standing type, Storage type, Free nuclei type and Coenospore type. Only microspores of the Coenospore type became multicellular. Most microspore types retrogressed during culture except the Hollow grain type. Plants developing from different anthers were mainly triploid (86.5% of triploid cells). They seem to originate from karyomixis in microspores during anther culture

Progress toward generating a ferret model of cystic fibrosis by somatic cell nuclear transfer

Mammalian cloning by nuclear transfer from somatic cells has created new opportunities to generate animal models of genetic diseases in species other than mice. Although genetic mouse models play a critical role in basic and applied research for numerous diseases, often mouse models do not adequately reproduce the human disease phenotype. Cystic fibrosis (CF) is one such disease. Targeted ablation of the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene in mice does not adequately replicate spontaneous bacterial infections observed in the human CF lung. Hence, several laboratories are pursuing alternative animal models of CF in larger species such as the pig, sheep, rabbits, and ferrets. Our laboratory has focused on developing the ferret as a CF animal model. Over the past few years, we have investigated several experimental parameters required for gene targeting and nuclear transfer (NT) cloning in the ferret using somatic cells. In this review, we will discuss our progress and the hurdles to NT cloning and gene-targeting that accompany efforts to generate animal models of genetic diseases in species such as the ferret

ISCOs in AdS/CFT

We study stable circular orbits in spherically symmetric AdS black holes in various dimensions and their limiting innermost stable circular orbits (ISCOs). We provide analytic expressions for their size, angular velocity and angular momentum in a large black hole mass regime. The dual interpretation is in terms of meta-stable states not thermalising in typical thermal scales and whose existence is due to non-perturbative effects on the spatial curvature. Our calculations reproduce the binding energy known in the literature, but also include a binding energy in the radial fluctuations corresponding to near circular trajectories. We also describe how particles are placed on these orbits from integrated operators on the boundary: they tunnel inside in a way that can be computed from both complex geodesics in the black hole background and from the WKB approximation of the wave equation. We explain how these two computations are related.Comment: 15 pages, 1 figure. v2: Added references, improved discussion on relations of this work to the Bootstra

Aspects of Holography in Conical AdS3AdS_3

We study the Feynman propagator of free scalar fields in $AdS_3$ with a conical defect. The propagator is built by solving the bulk equation of motion, summing over the modes of the field, and taking the boundary limit. We then perform several consistency checks. In the dual CFT, the operator responsible for the defect creates a highly excited state. We consider the exchange of the Virasoro identity block in the heavy-light limit to obtain an expression for the propagator sensitive to the mass of the defect. In $AdS_3/\mathbb{Z}_n$, we treat the propagator by the method of images and in the geodesic approximation. More generally, we argue that long-range correlations of the scalar are suppressed as the defect becomes more massive: we find a continuous phase transition in the correlator at the BTZ threshold and examine its critical behavior. Finally, we apply our results to holographic entanglement entropy using an analogy between our scalars and replica twist fields.Comment: 37 pages, 8 figures, JHEP sryle. v2: Section 4 was heavily rewritten: an error was corrected that arose from using an approximation that did not apply. With the correct approximation, some of the crossing relations are now verified to all orders and do not present a puzzle any longer. The conclusions are updated based on the new calculations. Figures and references adde