Harnwegsinfektionen bei Männern

Akute Zystitis und Pyelonephritis sind bei jüngeren Männern deutlich seltener als bei Frauen und die Datenlage ist bescheiden. Ab und zu kommt es zu akuter Prostatitis. Ältere Männer haben ähnlich oft Harnwegsinfekte wie ältere Frauen, am ehesten im Zusammenhang mit der benignen Prostatahyperplasie. Urologische Abklärungen sind meist unergiebig. Das komplexe Thema der chronischen Prostatitis kann Kopfzerbrechen bereiten; meist gelingt kein Keimnachweis, was die Diagnose des chronischen Beckenschmerzsyndroms suggeriert

Computational analysis of noncoding RNAs

Noncoding RNAs have emerged as important key players in the cell. Understanding their surprisingly diverse range of functions is challenging for experimental and computational biology. Here, we review computational methods to analyze noncoding RNAs. The topics covered include basic and advanced techniques to predict RNA structures, annotation of noncoding RNAs in genomic data, mining RNA-seq data for novel transcripts and prediction of transcript structures, computational aspects of microRNAs, and database resources.Austrian Science Fund (Schrodinger Fellowship J2966-B12)German Research Foundation (grant WI 3628/1-1 to SW)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (NIH award 1RC1CA147187

E Pluribus Unum: Functional Aggregation of Cell-Free Proteins Enables Fungal Ice Nucleation

Biological ice nucleation plays a key role in the survival of cold-adapted organisms. Several species of bacteria, fungi, and insects produce ice nucleators (INs) that enable ice formation at temperatures above -10 oC. Bacteria and fungi produce particularly potent INs that can promote water crystallization above -5 oC. Bacterial INs consist of extended protein units that aggregate to achieve superior functionality. Despite decades of research, the nature and identity of fungal INs remain elusive. Here we combine ice nucleation measurements, physicochemical characterization, numerical modeling and nucleation theory to shed light on the size and nature of the INs from the fungus Fusarium acuminatum. We find ice-binding and ice-shaping activity of Fusarium IN, suggesting a potential connection between ice growth promotion and inhibition. We demonstrate that fungal INs are composed of small 5.3 kDa protein subunits which assemble into ice nucleating complexes that can contain more than 100 subunits. Fusarium INs retain high ice-nucleation activity even when only the ~12 kDa fraction of size-excluded proteins are initially present, suggesting robust pathways for their functional aggregation in cell-free aqueous environments. We conclude that the use of small proteins to build large assemblies is a common strategy among organisms to create potent biological INs