Reversibility of state transitions is intensively studied topic in many scientific disciplines over many years. In cell biology, it plays an important role in epigenetic variation of phenotypes, known as phenotypic plasticity. More interestingly, the cell state reversibility is probably crucial in the adaptation of population phenotypic heterogeneity to environmental fluctuations by evolving be...

BACKGROUND Patients with chronic bronchitis show a large intersubject variation in sputum rheology, tracheobronchial clearance, and reversibility of airflow obstruction to beta 2 agonists. The bronchial mediators which are known to cause bronchoconstriction, mucosal oedema, mucus hypersecretion, and cough can also affect mucociliary transport. The aim of this study was to ascertain whether chan...

The central theme in this thesis is reversibility. Two main attempts has been made to approach reversibility in cellular systems from both chemical and physical points of view. Reversibility of immunolabeling of proteins on the cell surface has been adressed by development of new fluorescent substances optimized for CALI (Chromophore-Assisted Laser Inactivation of protein). Aluminum phthalocyan...

Knowledge of short- and longer-term repeatability of lung function in health and disease is essential to determine bronchodilator reversibility thresholds and to recognise if changes in lung function represent disease progression, therapeutic intervention or normal variability. Multiple-breath washout indices (lung clearance index, conductive ventilation inhomogeneity (Scond)) and specific airw...

Natural populations must constantly adapt to ever-changing environmental conditions. A particularly interesting question is whether such adaptations can be reversed by returning the population to an ancestral environment. Such evolutionary reversals have been observed in both natural and laboratory populations. However, the factors that determine the reversibility of evolution are still under d...

Parallel Kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) is a potent tool to simulate stochastic particle systems efficiently. However, despite literature on quantifying domain decomposition errors of the particle system for this class of algorithms in the short and in the long time regime, no study yet explores and quantifies the loss of time-reversibility in Parallel KMC. Inspired by concepts from non-equilibrium ...

STUDY OBJECTIVES Some patients with COPD present with significant reversibility of airflow limitation after receiving bronchodilation therapy. Leukotriene B(4) (LTB(4)) has been implicated in the pathophysiology of both COPD and asthma. We tested the hypothesis that COPD patients with airflow reversibility and asthmatic patients who smoke might have similar levels of LTB(4) in exhaled breath co...