This study examined the density of dopamine transporter (DAT) and D2 receptors in the brains of chronic high-fat diet-induced obese (cDIO), obese-resistant (cDR) and low-fat-fed (LF) control mice. Significantly decreased DAT densities were observed in cDR mice compared to cDIO and LF mice, primarily in the nucleus accumbens, striatal and hypothalamic regions. D2 receptor density was significant...

MicroRNA-206, which suppresses the expression of brain-derived neurotrophic factor, is known to be elevated in the brains of Alzheimer's disease (AD) patients. We performed intranasal biopsy of the olfactory epithelia of early dementia patients (n = 24) and cognitively healthy controls (n = 9). Patients with significant depression (n = 8) were analyzed separately, as their cognitive impairments...

INTRODUCTION Duration of treatment for brucellar spondylitis in endemic regions is controversial. This study describes the outcome of treatment in 50 cases of brucellar spondylitis in Iran. METHODOLOGY From April 2001 to September 2010, we treated 20, 13, 11 and 6 cases with doxycycline plus rifampin (DR), streptomycin plus doxycycline plus rifampin (SDR), cotrimoxazole plus doxycycline plus ...

Gap junctions (GJs) represent connexin-rich membrane domains that connect interiors of adjoining cells in mammalian tissues. How fast GJs can respond to bacterial pathogens has not been known previously. Using Bessel beam plane illumination and confocal spinning disk microscopy, we found fast (~500 ms) formation of connexin-depleted regions (CDRs) inside GJ plaques between cells exposed to AB5 ...

DNA methylation in gene promoters leads to gene silencing and is the therapeutic target of methylation inhibitors such as 5-Aza-2'-deoxycytidine (5-Aza-CdR). By analyzing the time series RNA-seq data (days 5, 9, 13, 17) obtained from human bladder cells exposed to 5-Aza-CdR with 0.1 uM concentration, we showed that 5-Aza-CdR can affect isoform switching and differential exon usage (i.e., exon-s...

The present work describes the construction and validation of a human scFv library with a novel design approach to synthetic complementarity determining region (CDR) diversification. The advantage of synthetic antibody libraries includes the possibility of exerting fine control over factors like framework sequences, amino acid and codon usage, and CDR diversity. However, random combinatorial sy...

The probability density function (PDF) approach has been shown to be a useful tool in turbulence research. The systematic approach for determining PDFs is by means of solving the transport equations for PDFs. In the PDF equations for turbulent scalar fields, conditional dissipation rate (CDR) appears as the only unclosed term (Pope (1985)). Recently developed large-eddy simulation schemes for t...

background: mortality refers to the death that occurs within a population. it is linked to many factors such as age, sex, race, occupation and social class. the incidence and prevalence of mortality could affect the population's stan­dard of living and health care. the aim of this study was to explore the pattern of mortality trends in iran, south-south west asia and the world in 1970-2010. met...

HIV-1 resists neutralization by most antibodies. Two somatically related human antibodies, PG9 and PG16, however, each neutralize 70 to 80% of circulating HIV-1 isolates. Here we present the structure of the antigen-binding fragment of PG16 in monoclinic and orthorhombic lattices at 2.4 and 4.0 A, respectively, and use a combination of structural analysis, paratope dissection, and neutralizatio...