A case report of surgical debulking for a huge mass of elephantiasis neuromatosa

Achievement of a safe outcome for an extensive mass with hypervascularity in the extremities requires a surgical team skilled in musculoskeletal oncology. We report debulking surgery for a huge mass of elephantiasis neuromatosa in the right leg of a 56-year old man using the novel Ligasure® vessel sealing system

Cognitive Profile of Idiopathic Normal Pressure Hydrocephalus

Background/Aims: Frontal lobe dysfunction is believed to be a primary cognitive symptom in idiopathic normal pressure hydrocephalus (iNPH); however, the neuropsychology of this disorder remains to be fully investigated. The objective of this study was to delineate a comprehensive profile of cognitive dysfunction in iNPH and evaluate the effects of cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) shunt surgery on cognitive dysfunction. Methods: A total of 32 iNPH patients underwent neuropsychological testing of memory, attention, language, executive function, and visuoperceptual and visuospatial abilities. Of these 32 patients, 26 were reevaluated approximately 1 year following CSF shunt surgery. The same battery of tests was performed on 32 patients with Alzheimer’s disease (AD) and 30 healthy elderly controls. Results: The iNPH patients displayed baseline deficits in attention, executive function, memory, and visuoperceptual and visuospatial functions. Impairments of attention, executive function, and visuoperceptual and visuospatial abilities in iNPH patients were more severe than in those with AD, whereas the degree of memory impairment was comparable to that in AD patients. A significant improvement in executive function was observed following shunt surgery. Conclusion: Patients with iNPH are impaired in various aspects of cognition involving both ‘frontal’ executive functions and ‘posterior cortical’ functions. Shunt treatment can ameliorate executive dysfunction

Split luciferase complementation assay to detect regulated protein-protein interactions in rice protoplasts in a large-scale format

© 2014 Fujikawa et al. Background: The rice interactome, in which a network of protein-protein interactions has been elucidated in rice, is a useful resource to identify functional modules of rice signal transduction pathways. Protein-protein interactions occur in cells in two ways, constitutive and regulative. While a yeast-based high-throughput method has been widely used to identify the constitutive interactions, a method to detect the regulated interactions is rarely developed for a large-scale analysis. Results: A split luciferase complementation assay was applied to detect the regulated interactions in rice. A transformation method of rice protoplasts in a 96-well plate was first established for a large-scale analysis. In addition, an antibody that specifically recognizes a carboxyl-terminal fragment of Renilla luciferase was newly developed. A pair of antibodies that recognize amino- and carboxyl- terminal fragments of Renilla luciferase, respectively, was then used to monitor quality and quantity of interacting recombinant-proteins accumulated in the cells. For a proof-of-concept, the method was applied to detect the gibberellin-dependent interaction between GIBBERELLIN INSENSITIVE DWARF1 and SLENDER RICE 1. Conclusions: A method to detect regulated protein-protein interactions was developed towards establishment of the rice interactome

An Arabidopsis SBP-domain fragment with a disrupted C-terminal zinc-binding site retains its tertiary structure

AbstractSQUAMOSA promoter-binding proteins (SBPs) form a major family of plant-specific transcription factors, mainly related to flower development. SBPs share a highly conserved DNA-binding domain of ∼80 amino acids (SBP domain), which contains two non-interleaved zinc-binding sites formed by eight conserved Cys or His residues. In the present study, an Arabidopsis SPL12 SBP-domain fragment that lacks a Cys residue involved in the C-terminal zinc-binding pocket was found to retain a folded structure, even though only a single Zn2+ ion binds to the fragment. Solution structure of this fragment determined by NMR is very similar to the previously determined structures of the full SBP domains of Arabidopsis SPL4 and SPL7. Considering the previous observations that chelating all the Zn2+ ions of SBPs resulted in the complete unfolding of the structure and that a mutation of the Cys residue equivalent to that described above impaired the DNA-binding activity, we propose that the Zn2+ ion at the N-terminal site is necessary to maintain the overall tertiary structure, while the Zn2+ ion at the C-terminal site is necessary for the DNA binding, mainly by guiding the basic C-terminal loop to correctly fit into the DNA groove

Double Smiley Face Rod Method

We report a case of double-level lumbar spondylolysis at L4 and L5 that was successfully treated with the double “smiley face” rod method. A healthy 29-year-old man who presented with a 6-year history of chronic low back pain was referred to us for surgical treatment. Plain radiographs and computed tomography of the lumbar spine revealed bilateral pars defects at L4 and L5 without slip or scoliosis. The patient underwent direct repair of the pars defects using the double smiley face rod method at L4 and L5. There were no intraoperative or postoperative complications, and the patient had improved clinically by 1 year after surgery. The low back pain was completely disappeared and visual analog scale was 0. He restarted tennis again as the recreational level. While several techniques for direct repair of lumbar spondylolysis have been described, this is the first report of the double smiley face rod method being used to repair the consecutive double-level lumbar spondylolysis

TACT: Transcriptome Auto-annotation Conducting Tool of H-InvDB

Transcriptome Auto-annotation Conducting Tool (TACT) is a newly developed web-based automated tool for conducting functional annotation of transcripts by the integration of sequence similarity searches and functional motif predictions. We developed the TACT system by integrating two kinds of similarity searches, FASTY and BLASTX, against protein sequence databases, UniProtKB (Swiss-Prot/TrEMBL) and RefSeq, and a unified motif prediction program, InterProScan, into the ORF-prediction pipeline originally designed for the ‘H-Invitational’ human transcriptome annotation project. This system successively applies these constituent programs to an mRNA sequence in order to predict the most plausible ORF and the function of the protein encoded. In this study, we applied the TACT system to 19 574 non-redundant human transcripts registered in H-InvDB and evaluated its predictive power by the degree of agreement with human-curated functional annotation in H-InvDB. As a result, the TACT system could assign functional description to 12 559 transcripts (64.2%), the remainder being hypothetical proteins. Furthermore, the overall agreement of functional annotation with H-InvDB, including those transcripts annotated as hypothetical proteins, was 83.9% (16 432/19 574). These results show that the TACT system is useful for functional annotation and that the prediction of ORFs and protein functions is highly accurate and close to the results of human curation. TACT is freely available at

NIASGBdb: NIAS Genebank databases for genetic resources and plant disease information

The National Institute of Agrobiological Sciences (NIAS) is implementing the NIAS Genebank Project for conservation and promotion of agrobiological genetic resources to contribute to the development and utilization of agriculture and agricultural products. The project’s databases (NIASGBdb; http://www.gene.affrc.go.jp/databases_en.php) consist of a genetic resource database and a plant diseases database, linked by a web retrieval database. The genetic resources database has plant and microorganism search systems to provide information on research materials, including passport and evaluation data for genetic resources with the desired properties. To facilitate genetic diversity research, several NIAS Core Collections have been developed. The NIAS Rice (Oryza sativa) Core Collection of Japanese Landraces contains information on simple sequence repeat (SSR) polymorphisms. SSR marker information for azuki bean (Vigna angularis) and black gram (V. mungo) and DNA sequence data from some selected Japanese strains of the genus Fusarium are also available. A database of plant diseases in Japan has been developed based on the listing of common names of plant diseases compiled by the Phytopathological Society of Japan. Relevant plant and microorganism genetic resources are associated with the plant disease names by the web retrieval database and can be obtained from the NIAS Genebank for research or educational purposes