Functional studies of resident microglia require molecular tools for their genetic manipulation. Here we show that microRNA-9-regulated lentiviral vectors can be used for the targeted genetic modification of resident microglia in the rodent brain. Using transgenic reporter mice, we demonstrate that murine microglia lack microRNA-9 activity, whereas most other cells in the brain express microRNA...

Genetic therapy holds great promise for the treatment of inherited or acquired genetic diseases; however, its breakthrough is hampered by the lack of suitable gene delivery systems. Dumbbell-shaped DNA minimal vectors represent an attractive, safe alternative to the commonly used viral vectors which are fraught with risk, but dumbbell generation appears to be costly and time-consuming. We devel...

In the early days of molecular farming, Agrobacterium-mediated stable genetic transformation and the use of plant virus-based vectors were considered separate and competing technologies with complementary strengths and weaknesses. The demonstration that 'agroinfection' was the most efficient way of delivering virus-based vectors to their target plants blurred the distinction between the two tec...

Adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors were shown capable of high efficiency transduction of both dividing and nondividing cells and tissues. AAV-mediated transduction leads to stable, long-term transgene expression in the absence of apparent immune response. These properties and the broad host range of AAV vectors indicate that they constitute a powerful tool for gene therapy purposes. An additi...

Exogenous DNA sequences were introduced into the Drosophila germ line. A rosy transposon (ry1), constructed by inserting a chromosomal DNA fragment containing the wild-type rosy gene into a P transposable element, transformed germ line cells in 20 to 50 percent of the injected rosy mutant embryos. Transformants contained one or two copies of chromosomally integrated, intact ry1 that were stably...

Identification of the major loci responsible for insecticide resistance in malaria vectors would aid the development and implementation of effective resistance management strategies, which are urgently needed to tackle the growing threat posed by resistance to the limited insecticides available for malaria control. Genome-wide association studies in the major malaria vector, Anopheles gambiae, ...

In this paper, we present a gene selection method based on genetic algorithm (GA) and support vector machines (SVM) for cancer classification. First, the Wilcoxon rank sum test is used to filter noisy and redundant genes in high dimensional microarray data. Then, the different highly informative genes subsets are selected by GA/SVM using different training sets. The final subset, consisting of ...

the use of animal models in modeling of human genetic disease has many advantages. in some cases, however, this method may not be applicable due to some limitations, such as differences in tissue composition, anatomy and physiology of humans and animals. isogenic human disease models are a population of cells that are selected or engineered to model a specific genetic disease, in vitro. they ar...

While studies of secondary structure interactions have focused on local interacting features, there is a need for a more global characterization of packing-induced aligned packing of secondary structures. This study presents an analysis of the distribution of globally sampled secondary structures within selected subunits of a selected set of multimeric proteins. Comparisons are made between the...

The need for uncovering molecular mechanisms in endothelial cell biology has tremendously increased in the last decades as it became more and more clear that the endothelium is an important target in nearly all diseases and treatments (drug delivery) and plays a central role in regeneration processes. One of the critical methods generally applied in cell biology research to uncover structural a...