The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of sperm DNA damage and protamine deficiency on fertilization and embryo development post-intracytoplasmic sperm injection (ICSI), and also to assess the effect of protamine deficiency on DNA damage. Semen samples were collected from 28 patients participating in the ICSI programme. Following sperm preparation and ICSI, the remaining processed sem...

Organisms in polluted areas can be exposed to complex mixtures of chemicals; however, exposure to genotoxic contaminants can be particularly devastating. DNA damage can lead to necrosis, apoptosis, or heritable mutations, and therefore has the potential to impact populations as well as individuals. Single cell gel electrophoresis (the comet assay) is a simple and sensitive technique used to exa...

The systematic study of genotoxicity in plants induced by contaminants and other stress agents has been hindered to date by the lack of reliable and robust biomarkers. The comet assay is a versatile and sensitive method for the evaluation of DNA damages and DNA repair capacity at single-cell level. Due to its simplicity and sensitivity, and the small number of cells required to obtain robust re...

Apoptosis is a form of programmed cell death that has only recently been implicated in the pathogenesis of cardiac diseases, including ischemia and reperfusion damage and in response to cytokines and other apoptotic triggers. Methods to study apoptosis range from measures of early changes in morphology to late events such as DNA laddering. In studying apoptosis in the heart, the application of ...

This study was undertaken to evaluate the compatibility of Giemsa staining protocol with the comet assay. We showed, for the first time, that DNA comets can be visualized and analyzed using Giemsa staining. We generated DNA damage dose response curves for human peripheral blood lymphocytes exposed to X-ray radiation using the comet assay with either SybrGreen I or Giemsa stain. The dose respons...

This article shows ways in which Excel can be used to explore the Goldbach Conjecture. We first show an elementary approach in which the Goldbach Comet is constructed by means of a table of values. Second, we give two simple VBA programs that generate substantially more data for the Goldbach Comet. We then show how the Comet can be seen as the agglomeration of individ...

OBJECTIVE A previous study by our research group evaluated the levels of DNA damage using the comet assay in hemodialysis patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus. The same blood samples were also evaluated using the cytochalasin B micronucleus assay. A comparison of the results of the two assays is presented here. METHODS Whole blood samples were collected from 22 type 2 diabetes mellitus pati...

The alkylating mutagens N-methyl-N-nitrosourea (MNU) and methyl methanesulfonate (MMS) were studied for their potential to induce DNA strand breaks and abasic (AP) sites in meristematic nuclei of Vicia faba root tips by the comet assay. The alkaline unwinding/neutral electrophoresis (A/N) and alkaline unwinding/alkaline electrophoresis (A/A) protocols were used for detection of DNA damage. With...

In this paper we introduce a runtime system to allow unmodified multi-threaded applications to use multiple machines. The system allows threads to migrate freely between machines depending on the workload. Our prototype, COMET (Code Offload by Migrating Execution Transparently), is a realization of this design built on top of the Dalvik Virtual Machine. COMET leverages the underlying memory mod...

Reactive species such as free radicals are constantly generated in vivo and DNA is the most important target of oxidative stress. Oxidative DNA damage is used as a predictive biomarker to monitor the risk of development of many diseases. The comet assay is widely used for measuring oxidative DNA damage at a single cell level. The analysis of comet assay output images, however, poses considerabl...