Antimicrobial agents have eradicated many infectious diseases and significantly improved our living environment. However, abuse of antimicrobial agents has accelerated the emergence of multidrug-resistant microorganisms, and there is an urgent need for novel antibiotics. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have attracted attention as a novel class of antimicrobial agents because AMPs efficiently kill...

BACKGROUND Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) protect the host intestinal mucosa against microorganisms. Abnormal expression of defensins was shown in inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), but it is not clear whether this is a primary defect. We investigated the impact of anti-inflammatory therapy with infliximab on the mucosal gene expression of AMPs in IBD. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS Mucosal gen...

Amphibians exhibit various, characteristic adaptations related to their "incomplete" shift from the aquatic to the terrestrial habitat. In particular, the integument was subject to a number of specialized modifications during the evolution of these animals. In this review, we place special emphasis on endogenous host-defence skin peptides from the cuteanous granular glands anuran amphibians (fr...

Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are important components of the innate immune system that have been found to be effective against disease causing pathogens. Identification of AMPs through wet-lab experiment is expensive. Therefore, development of efficient computational tool is essential to identify the best candidate AMP prior to the in vitro experimentation. In this study, we made an attempt to...

This paper presents a novel model-based reinforcement learning framework called the Adaptive Modelling and Planning System (AMPS). The challenge of a model-based reinforcement learning agent is using experience in the world to generate a model. In problems with large state and action spaces, the agent must generalise from limited experience by grouping together similar states and actions, effec...

Extensive use of classical antibiotics has led to the growing emergence of many resistant strains of pathogenic bacteria. Evidence has suggested that cationic antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) are of greatest potential to represent a new class of antibiotics. The largest group of AMPs comprises peptides that fold into an amphipathic alpha-helical conformation when interacting with the target microo...

INTRODUCTION Limitations in performing activities of daily living (ADL) are important indicators of health and overall wellness, yet relatively few studies specifically identify the ADL abilities of people living with HIV/AIDS (PHAs). Given the wide range of abilities and ages of PHAs, there is an urgent need to utilize an assessment of ADL ability that can validly evaluate those who are very a...

PALETTE OF EXTRAORDINARY COLORS Virtually all multicellular organisms must ward off pathogenic microbes in order to survive and thrive on this planet. To accomplish this, most metazoans rely on geneencoded antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) as an essential part of their innate immune system. The role played by AMPs – and by the other umoral and cellular components of innate immunity – is particularl...

Cascode CMOS op-amps use a large number of external bias voltages. This results in numerous drawbacks, namely, an area and power overhead, susceptiblity of the bias lines to noise and cross-talk and high sensitivity of the bias point to process variations. In this paper we present a self-biasing technique for folded cascode CMOS op-amps that uses no additional devices and no baas voltages other...

The emergence of drug-resistant pathogenic microbial strains has created an urgent need for new anti-infective molecule development. In order to avoid the spread of bacterial resistance, there is pressing demand to design a novel class of antibiotics having different mechanism of action in comparison to existing drugs. Natural antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) represent a novel class of molecules w...