Application of Proteomics in Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma Biomarker Investigations: A Review

Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), a highly aggressive malignancy with a poor prognosis is usually detected at the advanced stage of the disease. The only US Food and Drug Administration-approved biomarker that is available for PDAC, CA 19-9, is most useful in monitoring treatment response among PDAC patients rather than for early detection. Moreover, when CA 19-9 is solely used for diagnostic purposes, it has only a recorded sensitivity of 79% and specificity of 82% in symptomatic individuals. Therefore, there is an urgent need to identify reliable biomarkers for diagnosis (specifically for the early diagnosis), ascertain prognosis as well as to monitor treatment response and tumour recurrence of PDAC. In recent years, proteomic technologies are growing exponentially at an accelerated rate for a wide range of applications in cancer research. In this review, we discussed the current status of biomarker research for PDAC using various proteomic technologies. This review will explore the potential perspective for understanding and identifying the unique alterations in protein expressions that could prove beneficial in discovering new robust biomarkers to detect PDAC at an early stage, ascertain prognosis of patients with the disease in addition to monitoring treatment response and tumour recurrence of patients.     

Molecular cloning and characterization of a thermostable α-amylase exhibiting an unusually high activity

An α-amylase gene was cloned from the thermophilic bacterium Bacillus subtilis isolated from Indonesian oil palm shell waste. The gene expressed an extracellular enzyme. Optimal hydrolysis conditions for the enzyme were 70°C and pH 6.0. The specific activity of the enzyme was 16.0 kU per mg of protein, which was higher than for other thermostable amylases. Hydrolytic products of the enzyme using starch and glycogen were mainly maltohexaose and maltopentaose. The enzyme had a K _m value of 0.099 mg/mL for amylopectin, more than 10 times lower than for amylose. The catalytic efficiency of the enzyme using amylopectin was 39,200 mL/mg·s and was 3,270 mL/mg·s using amylose. The enzyme liquefied corn starch at pH 5.0, which was successfully converted to glucose using commercial glucoamylase and pullulanase without pH adjustment. The enzyme has advantages for industrial applications.     

Neuropsychological evidence for visual- and motor-based affordance: Effects of reference frame and object–hand congruence.

Two experiments are reported that use patients with visual extinction to examine how visual attention is influenced by action information in images. In Experiment 1 patients saw images of objects that were either correctly or incorrectly colocated for action, with the objects held by hands that were congruent or incongruent with those used premorbidly by the patients. The images were also shown from a 1st- and 3rd-person perspective. There was an overall reduction in extinction for objects colocated for action. In addition, there was an extra benefit when the objects were held in hands congruent with those used by the patients and when the objects were seen from a 1st-person perspective. This last result fits with an effect of motor simulation, over and above a purely visual effect based on positioning objects correctly for action. Experiment 2 showed that effects of hand congruence could emerge with images depicted from a 3rd-person perspective when patients saw themselves holding the objects. The data indicate 2 effects of action information on extinction: (a) an effect of colocating objects for action, which does not depend on a self-reference frame (a visual effect), and (b) an effect sensitive to object–hand congruence, which does depend on a self-reference frame (a motor-based effect). The self-reference frame is induced when stimuli are viewed from a 1st-person perspective and when an image of the self is seen from a 3rd-person perspective. Both visual and motor-based effects of action information facilitate the spread of attention across objects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Foodborne illness outbreaks from microbial contaminants in spices, 1973–2010

This review identified fourteen reported illness outbreaks attributed to consumption of pathogen-contaminated spice during the period 1973–2010. Countries reporting outbreaks included Canada, Denmark, England and Wales, France, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Serbia, and the United States. Together, these outbreaks resulted in 1946 reported human illnesses, 128 hospitalizations and two deaths. Infants/children were the primary population segments impacted by 36% (5/14) of spice-attributed outbreaks. Four outbreaks were associated with multiple organisms. Salmonella enterica subspecies enterica was identified as the causative agent in 71% (10/14) of outbreaks, accounting for 87% of reported illnesses. Bacillus spp. was identified as the causative agent in 29% (4/10) of outbreaks, accounting for 13% of illnesses. 71% (10/14) of outbreaks were associated with spices classified as fruits or seeds of the source plant. Consumption of ready-to-eat foods prepared with spices applied after the final food manufacturing pathogen reduction step accounted for 70% of illnesses. Pathogen growth in spiced food is suspected to have played a role in some outbreaks, but it was not likely a contributing factor in three of the larger Salmonella outbreaks, which involved low-moisture foods. Root causes of spice contamination included contributions from both early and late stages of the farm-to-table continuum.     

Effects of genotype and sowing date on phytostanol–phytosterol content and agronomic traits in wheat under organic agriculture

Cereals are an important source of sterols and stanols in the human diet. The present study underlines the effect of genotype and weather conditions in bread wheat, on total sterol and stanol content (TSS), agronomic traits, proteins and ash content under organic conditions. Variations in TSS as well as other characters between two sowing dates were observed. A broad genotypic variability was also reported since extreme genotypes differed by more than 30 mg 100 g⁻¹ DW for TSS, with total stanol content varying twofold. Moreover, two groups of genotypes that differed in agronomic production, ash and protein content were depicted, based on their response to an increase in temperature. This result suggests that the genotypic factor prevails over the sowing date factor for determining sterol and stanol traits in wheat cultivated under organic conditions. Nevertheless, a strong interaction exists between the two factors, which can be used to drive bioaccumulation of these molecules.     

Challenges to engaging Black male victims of community violence in healthcare research: Lessons learned from two studies.

A dearth of literature exists on barriers to conducting research with Black male victims of community violence, despite the need for evidence-based postinjury interventions. This study used qualitative data from a cross-sectional interview study (n = 16) and a pilot intervention study (n = 11) conducted in Boston, MA to identify challenges and facilitators to conducting research with Black male victims of community violence, particularly with regard to recruitment and maintenance of a study sample. Qualitative methods, including Grounded Theory and ethnography, were used to analyze the data. Challenges included a fear of police involvement, an impression of “snitching” when disclosing personal information, mistrust of research motives, suspicion of the informed consent process, the emotional impact of the trauma itself, and logistical issues. Facilitators to research included monetary incentives and motivation to help oneself and others. Participant recommendations on recruitment methods relating to approach and timing are provided. Findings from this study may assist in the planning of research studies for Black male victims of community violence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Two potential energetic compounds: Ammonium superoxide and ammonium ozonide

Abstract

Two proposed ionic compounds, NH₄O₂ and NH₄O₃, are discussed in terms of several properties related to energetic performance. These include oxygen content, moles of gas produced and heat released upon decomposition, and specific impulse. The heat release was calculated in each instance using the predicted lattice energy, which was obtained from the computed electrostatic potential on the surface of the negative ion. NH₄O₂ is found to be superior to HMX in each property considered, while NH₄O₃ is better than HMX in some and comparable in the others.     

Trinocular Stereo: A Real-Time Algorithm and its Evaluation

In telepresence applications each user is immersed in a rendered 3D-world composed from representations transmitted from remote sites. The challenge is to compute dense range data at high frame rates, since participants cannot easily communicate if the processing cycle or network latencies are long. Moreover, errors in new stereoscopic views of the remote 3D-world should be hardly perceptible. To achieve the required speed and accuracy, we use trinocular stereo, a matching algorithm based on the sum of modified normalized cross-correlations, and subpixel disparity interpolation. To increase speed we use Intel IPL functions in the pre-processing steps of background subtraction and image rectification as well as a four-processor parallelization. To evaluate our system we have developed a test-bed which provides a set of registered dense ground-truth laser data and image data from multiple views.     

Textual case-based reasoning for spam filtering: a comparison of feature-based and feature-free approaches

Spam filtering is a text classification task to which Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) has been successfully applied. We describe the ECUE system, which classifies emails using a feature-based form of textual CBR. Then, we describe an alternative way to compute the distances between cases in a feature-free fashion, using a distance measure based on text compression. This distance measure has the advantages of having no set-up costs and being resilient to concept drift. We report an empirical comparison, which shows the feature-free approach to be more accurate than the feature-based system. These results are fairly robust over different compression algorithms in that we find that the accuracy when using a Lempel-Ziv compressor (GZip) is approximately the same as when using a statistical compressor (PPM). We note, however, that the feature-free systems take much longer to classify emails than the feature-based system. Improvements in the classification time of both kinds of systems can be obtained by applying case base editing algorithms, which aim to remove noisy and redundant cases from a case base while maintaining, or even improving, generalisation accuracy. We report empirical results using the Competence-Based Editing (CBE) technique. We show that CBE removes more cases when we use the distance measure based on text compression (without significant changes in generalisation accuracy) than it does when we use the feature-based approach.     

Prolonged rewarding stimulation of the rat medial forebrain bundle: Neurochemical and behavioral consequences.

Extracellular dopamine levels were measured in the rat nucleus accumbens by means of in vivo microdialysis. Delivery of rewarding medial forebrain bundle stimulation at a low rate (5 trains/min) produced a sustained elevation of dopamine levels, regardless of whether train onset was predictable. When the rate of train delivery was increased to 40 trains/min, dopamine levels rose rapidly during the first 40 min but then declined toward the baseline range. The rewarding impact of the stimulation was reduced following prior delivery of stimulation at the high, but not the low, rate. These results support the idea that dopamine tone plays an enabling role in brain stimulation reward and is elevated similarly by predictable and unpredictable stimulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)