The successful expression of foreign genes mainly depends on both a reliable method for transformation and a suitable promoter sequence. We created a series of modular plasmids that facilitate the rapid construction of large tandem vectors for transgene expression under the control of different promoter sequences in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Tandem vectors carrying expression cassettes for Ren...

Prostate cancer antigen 3 (PCA3) is a biomarker for diagnosing prostate cancer (PCa) identified in the Caucasian population. We evaluated the effectiveness of urinary PCA3 in predicting the biopsy result in 500 men undergoing initial prostate biopsy. The predictive power of the PCA3 score was evaluated by the area under receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve (AUC) and by decision curve a...

BACKGROUND Mass screening program for prostatic cancer (PC) using prostate specific antigen (PSA) filter paper method was performed in an urban area of Kyoto in 1995. METHODS In the primary study, males more than the age of 55 years were examined by PSA (Delfia PSA kit) with blood samples on a filter paper. The cut-off values were set at 4 and 10 ng/ ml. Subjects whose PSA level ranged from 4...

It has now believed that chloroplasts arose from cyanobacteria, however, during endosymbiosis, the photosynthetic genes in chloroplasts have been reduced. How these changes occurred during plant evolution was the focus of the present study. Beginning with photosystem I (PSI) genes, a homologous comparison of amino acid sequences of 18 subunits of PSI from 10 species of cyanobacteria, chloroplas...

Numerous pathogenic DNA variants impair the splicing mechanism in human genetic diseases. Minigenes are optimal approaches to test variants under the splicing viewpoint without the need of patient samples. We aimed to design a robust minigene construct of the breast cancer gene BRCA2 in order to investigate the impact of variants on splicing. BRCA2 exons 19-27 (MGBR2_ex19-27) were cloned in the...

Ycf4 is a thylakoid protein essential for the accumulation of photosystem I (PSI) in Chlamydomonas reinhardtii. Here, a tandem affinity purification tagged Ycf4 was used to purify a stable Ycf4-containing complex of >1500 kD. This complex also contained the opsin-related COP2 and the PSI subunits PsaA, PsaB, PsaC, PsaD, PsaE, and PsaF, as identified by mass spectrometry (liquid chromatography-t...

INTRODUCTION Prostate cancer is a common health problem that in the majority of cases starts to develop at the age of 50 years, reaching its peak at 60-70 years of age. A variation in its incidence and prevalence exists between western, Asian and Arabic populations. The aim of our work was to report the pattern of prostate cancer presentation in Alexandria University that as a tertiary referral...

INTRODUCTION The possibilities of PSA (prostate specific antigen) test in screening of prostatic cancer may be evaluated by measuring its sensitivity, specificity and positive predictive value. The majority of reference articles in this field has evaluated the possibility of detection of prostatic cancer by radioimmunoassay (RIA). MATERIAL AND METHODS Prospective study included 2000 male pati...

OBJECTIVE As a definite diagnosis of prostate cancer, puncture biopsy of the prostate is invasive method. The aim of this study was to evaluate the value of OPSAD (the ratio of PSA to the outer gland volume of prostate) as a non-invasive screening and diagnosis method for prostate cancer in a select population. METHODS The diagnosis data of 490 subjects undergoing ultrasound-guided biopsy of ...

Rare sequence variants in "high-risk" disease genes, often referred as unclassified variants (UVs), pose a serious challenge to genetic testing. However, UVs resulting in splicing alterations can be readily assessed by in vitro assays. Unfortunately, analytical and clinical interpretation of these assays is often challenging. Here, we explore this issue by conducting splicing assays in 31 BRCA2...