Danshensu for Myocardial Ischemic Injury: Preclinical Evidence and Novel Methodology of Quality Assessment Tool

Background: Danshensu (DSS) possesses unique bioactivity on the cardiovascular system. However, there is a lack of systematical summary of DSS for acute myocardial ischemia injury and no quality assessment tool for the systematical review of cell experiments. Here, we aimed to assess the preclinical evidences and possible mechanisms of DSS for myocardial ischemia injury, and to develop a quality assessment tool for the systematical review of cell experiments.Methods: Thirty-two studies with 473 animals and 134 cells were identified by searching seven databases. All data analysis was performed using RevMan 5.3. CAMARADES 10-item checklist was used to assess the methodological quality of animal experiments. A new 10-item checklist was first developed to assess the methodological quality of cell studies.Results: The score of study quality ranged from 3 to 7 points in animal studies, while the cell studies scored 3–6 points. Meta-analysis showed that DSS had significant effects on reducing myocardial infarct (MI) size in vivo, and increasing cell viability and reducing apoptosis rate in vitro compared with controls (P < 0.01). The possible mechanisms of DSS for MI are improving circulation, antioxidant, anti-apoptosis, anti-inflammatory, promoting angiogenesis, anti-excessive autophagy, anti-calcium overload, and improving energy metabolism.Conclusions: DSS could exert cardioprotective effect on myocardial ischemia injury, and thus is a probable candidate for further clinical trials andtreatment of AMI. In addition, the newly devloped 10-item checklist for assessing methodological quality of cell study that recommened to use the sysmatic review of cell studies

Physics perspectives of heavy-ion collisions at very high energy

Heavy-ion collisions at very high colliding energies are expected to produce a quark-gluon plasma (QGP) at the highest temperature obtainable in a laboratory setting. Experimental studies of these reactions can provide an unprecedented range of information on properties of the QGP at high temperatures. We report theoretical investigations of the physics perspectives of heavy-ion collisions at a future high-energy collider. These include initial parton production, collective expansion of the dense medium, jet quenching, heavy-quark transport, dissociation and regeneration of quarkonia, photon and dilepton production. We illustrate the potential of future experimental studies of the initial particle production and formation of QGP at the highest temperature to provide constraints on properties of strongly interaction matter.Comment: 35 pages in Latex, 29 figure

The Genomes of Oryza sativa: A History of Duplications

We report improved whole-genome shotgun sequences for the genomes of indica and japonica rice, both with multimegabase contiguity, or almost 1,000-fold improvement over the drafts of 2002. Tested against a nonredundant collection of 19,079 full-length cDNAs, 97.7% of the genes are aligned, without fragmentation, to the mapped super-scaffolds of one or the other genome. We introduce a gene identification procedure for plants that does not rely on similarity to known genes to remove erroneous predictions resulting from transposable elements. Using the available EST data to adjust for residual errors in the predictions, the estimated gene count is at least 38,000–40,000. Only 2%–3% of the genes are unique to any one subspecies, comparable to the amount of sequence that might still be missing. Despite this lack of variation in gene content, there is enormous variation in the intergenic regions. At least a quarter of the two sequences could not be aligned, and where they could be aligned, single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) rates varied from as little as 3.0 SNP/kb in the coding regions to 27.6 SNP/kb in the transposable elements. A more inclusive new approach for analyzing duplication history is introduced here. It reveals an ancient whole-genome duplication, a recent segmental duplication on Chromosomes 11 and 12, and massive ongoing individual gene duplications. We find 18 distinct pairs of duplicated segments that cover 65.7% of the genome; 17 of these pairs date back to a common time before the divergence of the grasses. More important, ongoing individual gene duplications provide a never-ending source of raw material for gene genesis and are major contributors to the differences between members of the grass family

Global patient outcomes after elective surgery: prospective cohort study in 27 low-, middle- and high-income countries.

BACKGROUND: As global initiatives increase patient access to surgical treatments, there remains a need to understand the adverse effects of surgery and define appropriate levels of perioperative care. METHODS: We designed a prospective international 7-day cohort study of outcomes following elective adult inpatient surgery in 27 countries. The primary outcome was in-hospital complications. Secondary outcomes were death following a complication (failure to rescue) and death in hospital. Process measures were admission to critical care immediately after surgery or to treat a complication and duration of hospital stay. A single definition of critical care was used for all countries. RESULTS: A total of 474 hospitals in 19 high-, 7 middle- and 1 low-income country were included in the primary analysis. Data included 44 814 patients with a median hospital stay of 4 (range 2-7) days. A total of 7508 patients (16.8%) developed one or more postoperative complication and 207 died (0.5%). The overall mortality among patients who developed complications was 2.8%. Mortality following complications ranged from 2.4% for pulmonary embolism to 43.9% for cardiac arrest. A total of 4360 (9.7%) patients were admitted to a critical care unit as routine immediately after surgery, of whom 2198 (50.4%) developed a complication, with 105 (2.4%) deaths. A total of 1233 patients (16.4%) were admitted to a critical care unit to treat complications, with 119 (9.7%) deaths. Despite lower baseline risk, outcomes were similar in low- and middle-income compared with high-income countries. CONCLUSIONS: Poor patient outcomes are common after inpatient surgery. Global initiatives to increase access to surgical treatments should also address the need for safe perioperative care. STUDY REGISTRATION: ISRCTN5181700

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (4th edition)1.

In 2008, we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, this topic has received increasing attention, and many scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Thus, it is important to formulate on a regular basis updated guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Despite numerous reviews, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to evaluate autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. Here, we present a set of guidelines for investigators to select and interpret methods to examine autophagy and related processes, and for reviewers to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of reports that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a dogmatic set of rules, because the appropriateness of any assay largely depends on the question being asked and the system being used. Moreover, no individual assay is perfect for every situation, calling for the use of multiple techniques to properly monitor autophagy in each experimental setting. Finally, several core components of the autophagy machinery have been implicated in distinct autophagic processes (canonical and noncanonical autophagy), implying that genetic approaches to block autophagy should rely on targeting two or more autophagy-related genes that ideally participate in distinct steps of the pathway. Along similar lines, because multiple proteins involved in autophagy also regulate other cellular pathways including apoptosis, not all of them can be used as a specific marker for bona fide autophagic responses. Here, we critically discuss current methods of assessing autophagy and the information they can, or cannot, provide. Our ultimate goal is to encourage intellectual and technical innovation in the field

Measurement of electroweak parameters from hadronic and leptonic decays of the Z 0

We have studied the reactions e + e − →hadrons, e + e − , μ + μ − and τ + τ − , in the energy range 88.2 GeV. A total luminosity of 5.5 pb −1 , corresponding to approximately 115000 hadronic and 10000 leptonic Z 0 decays, has been recorded with the L3 detector. From a simultaneous fit to all of our measured cross section data, we obtain assuming lepton universality:Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/47890/1/10052_2005_Article_BF01475788.pd