Visceral leishmaniasis (VL), one of the most important neglected tropical diseases, is caused by Leishmania donovani eukaryotic protozoan parasite of the genus Leishmania, the disease is prevalent mainly in the Indian sub-continent, East Africa and Brazil. VL can be diagnosed by PCR amplifying ITS1 and/or kDNA genes. The current study involved the optimization of Loop-mediated isothermal amplif...

Leishmania donovani is the known causative agent of both cutaneous (CL) and visceral leishmaniasis in Sri Lanka. CL is considered to be under-reported partly due to relatively poor sensitivity and specificity of microscopic diagnosis. We compared robustness of three previously described polymerase chain reaction (PCR) based methods to detect Leishmania DNA in 38 punch biopsy samples from patien...

The clinical course of Chagas' disease varies widely among different patients and geographic regions. For reasons that are not completely understood but involve host and parasite factors, some patients never develop the disease while others present cardiac and/or gastrointestinal symptoms. Many studies have been conducted in order to correlate the genetic variability of the parasites with the c...

Kinetoplast DNA (kDNA) is the mitochondrial DNA of trypanosomatids. Its major components are several thousand topologically interlocked DNA minicircles. Their replication origins are recognized by universal minicircle sequence-binding protein (UMSBP), a CCHC-type zinc finger protein, which has been implicated with minicircle replication initiation and kDNA segregation. Interactions of UMSBP wit...

We have assessed the published predictions of the pathway of folding of the B domain of protein A, the pathway most studied by computer simulation. We analyzed the transition state for folding of the three-helix bundle protein, by using experimental Phi values on some 70 suitable mutants. Surprisingly, the third helix, which has the most stable alpha-helical structure as a peptide fragment, is ...

  Long-term complications of retained war fragments in the body are not completely known. Also, bullet migration and slow resorption of metals and distortion in some imaging modalities are frequent and well recognized complications but, now we are concerned about neoplastic changes near the retained war fragments. We reviewed the literature on complication of retained war fragments and report o...

objective: endometriosis is a common disease in which the endometrial stroma and glands grow abnormally outside the uterine cavity. the establishment of animal models can be effective for determining the etiology of endometriosis. in this study we compare two endometriosis models using endometrial fragments and isolated cultured endometrial cells. methods: we obtained endometrial tissues that ...

Visceral leishmaniasis (VL) is an emerging zoonosis disease in countries of the Mediterranean basin caused by Leishmania infantum. Although domestic dogs are the main vertebrate hosts, many wild carnivores have been considered playing a role in the spreading of VL. Sporadic numbers of dog and human VL have been reported in Golestan Province in North Iran. The present study was performed to dete...

Graham Higman has defined coset diagrams for PSL(2,ℤ). These diagrams are composed of fragments, and the fragments are further composed of two or more circuits. Q. Mushtaq has proved in 1983 that existence of a certain fragment γ of a coset diagram in a coset diagram is a polynomial f in ℤ[z]. Higman has conjectured that, the polynomials related to the fragments are monic and for a fixed degree...

NMR studies of protein denatured states provide insights into potential initiation sites for folding that may be too transient to be observed kinetically. We have characterized the structure and dynamics of the acid-denatured state of protein G by using a F30H mutant of G(B1) which is on the margin of stability. At 5 degrees C, F30H-G(B1) is greater than 95% folded at pH 7.0 and is greater than...