There is a need for mammalian cell cryopreservation methods that either avoid or improve upon outcomes employing dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) as a cryoprotectant. DMSO was the second effective cryoprotectant to be discovered (Lovelock, 1959). Cell cryopreservation usually involves slow rate freezing with DMSO in culture medium and storage below -135°C for later use. Typically as long as there are ...

Recently, data hiding, or information hiding, plays an important role in data assurance. Generally speaking, data hiding techniques can be classified into steganography and digital watermarking (Cox et al., 2008; Shih, 2008). The marked images generated by the steganographic methods (Gu & Gao, 2009; Liu & Shih, 2008; Qu et al., 2010; Wang et al., 2010; Zhou et al., 2010; Fan et al., 2011) were ...

Clozapine is the antipsychotic of choice in the management of treatment resistant schizophrenia. Neutropenia is a rare but serious adverse effect of clozapine. The risk for neutropenia with clozapine is highest in the first 18 weeks of treatment and decreases with time though a few cases were reported after several years of continued therapy. Different protocols that guide the monitoring for ne...

Neural prostheses, which are also termed brain–machine and brain–computer interfaces, offer the potential to substantially increase the quality of life for people suffering from motor disorders, including paralysis and amputation. Such devices translate electrical neural activity from the brain into control signals for guiding paralyzed upper limbs, prosthetic arms, and computer cursors. Severa...

Elastic network models (ENMs) have over the last decade enjoyed considerable success in the study of macromolecular dynamics. These models have been used to predict the global dynamics of a variety of proteins and protein complexes, ranging in size from single enzymes to macromolecular machines (Keskin et al. 2002), ribosomes (Tama et al. 2003, Wang et al. 2004) and viral capsids (Tama & Brooks...

MHC-I type chain-related protein A (MICA) is a newly discovered transmembrane glycoprotein encoded by MHC genes. MICA mainly functions as natural killer (NK) cells, cytotoxic T lymphocytes (CTLs), and other immune effector cell activation receptor NKG2D ligands. These ligands can bind NKG2D-specific proteins, transmit activation signals, induce immune effector cells to clear rapidly the tumor c...

This article is part of a Minifocus on the ESCRT machinery. For further reading, please see related articles: ‘No strings attached: the ESCRT machinery in viral budding and cytokinesis’ by Bethan McDonald and Juan Martin-Serrano (J. Cell Sci. 122, 2167-2177) and ‘How do ESCRT proteins control autophagy?’ by Tor Erik Rusten and Harald Stenmark (J. Cell Sci. 122, 2179-2183). The endosomal sorting...

In a recent issue of the journal, the research article “Association of polymorphism in cytochrome P450 2C9 with susceptibility to head and neck cancer and treatment outcome”, by Yadav et al. (2014) reported that cytochrome P450 2C9 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), CYP2C9*2 (rs1799853) and CYP2C9*3 (rs1057910), showed a risk association with head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC). ...

The etiology of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) is multifactorial. Genetic factors, diet, occupational exposure, and life style have been implicated in the development of these cancers (Gillison, 2007). Although tobacco and alcohol consumption are traditionally considered the main risk factors in the majority of all HNSCC, infection with human papillomavirus (HPV) is thought to pl...

Gastric cancer is the fourth most common cancer and the second leading cause of global cancer mortality (Jemal et al., 2011). Despite great progress in surgical technique, diagnostic method and new chemotherapy regimens, no effective targeting therapy is available for gastric cancer (Shi et al., 2010). Thus, understanding the molecular mechanism underlying gastric cancer is still needed. MicroR...