Oropharyngeal Cancer Patients Sarah Clark Biochemistry, Biology, Chemistry Background: Circulating tumor DNA (ctDNA) can be distinguished from other cell-free DNA in the body due to its unique mutations. Next generation sequencing and digital PCR have allowed detection of ctDNA to become a more commonly used tool, and because it can be detected directly out of blood, is called the liquid biopsy...

BACKGROUND The respiratory epithelium is a major portal of entry for pathogens and employs innate defense mechanisms to prevent colonization and infection. Induced expression of human beta-defensin 2 (HBD2) represents a direct response by the epithelium to potential infection. Here we provide evidence for the critical role of Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4) in lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced HBD2 ...

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the expression and correlations of liver X receptor alpha (LXRa) and its target gene sterol regulatory element-binding protein-1c (SREBP-1c) in placentas of preeclampsia (PE) and their significance in PE. METHODS Pregnancies were divided into two groups, 60 cases (29 cases of mild and 31 cases of severe) of PE group and 56 cases of normal group. The level of mRNA and pro...

BACKGROUND Inflammatory myofibroblastic tumors (IMTs) are rare sarcomas that can occur at any age. Surgical resection is the primary treatment for patients with localized disease; however, these tumors frequently recur. Less commonly, patients with IMTs develop or present with metastatic disease. There is no standard of care for these patients and traditional cytotoxic therapy is largely ineffe...

Bombyx mori cytoplasmic polyhedrosis virus is one of the major viral pathogens for the silkworm. The immune response of silkworm to the virus infection is obscure. A phosphotriesterase-related protein gene of silkworm, Bombyx mori (BmPTERP) was found in our previous microarry analysis of the midgut infected with the virus. In the present study, we cloned and analyzed the full-length cDNA of BmP...

BACKGROUND Sodium channels predominantly expressed in brain are expressed in myocardial tissue and play an important role in cardiac physiology. Alterations of sodium channels are known to result in neurological disease in infancy and childhood. It will be of interest to study the expression of brain-type sodium channels in the developing myocardium. METHODS The expression of neuronal sodium ...

BACKGROUND Screening of gamete donors can reduce but cannot eliminate the risks for medical problems in donor-conceived offspring. We present a case of gonosomal mosaicism discovered in an anonymous sperm donor after receiving two reports of neurofibromatosis type 1 (NF1) in donor-conceived offspring, to illustrate that long-term, systematic investigation of health issues in donors and offsprin...

A reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction restriction fragment length polymorphism (RT-PCR/RFLP) technique was used for the identification and characterization of Pakistani field isolates of infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV). A total of 8 bursa samples were collected from two outbreaks during September and October 2003 from Tehsil Sumandri, Dist. Faisalabad with 40-50% mortality in...

The diagnostic ability of antigen-capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays (AC-ELISA) and immunohistochemistry using two enzymes labels, alkaline phosphatase (AP) and peroxidase (P), to detect bovine viral diarrhea (BVD) persistent infection (PI) was assessed using serum and ear notch biopsy pairs (n= 469) collected from 12 Holstein dairy herds located in Charlottetown, Canada. The sampled an...

Short-chain enoyl-CoA hydratase (SCEH) is a mitochondrial enzyme involved in the oxidation of fatty acids and the catabolic pathway of valine and, to a lesser extent, isoleucine. Deficiency of this enzyme was recently shown to cause an early childhood Leigh syndrome phenotype. The few reported patients were compound heterozygotes for two missense or missense with truncating variants in ECHS1 th...