Many mushrooms have been used as foods and medicines for a long time. Mushrooms contain polyphenols, polysaccharides, vitamins and minerals. Studies show that mushrooms possess various bioactivities, such as antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, anticancer, immunomodulatory, antimicrobial, hepatoprotective, and antidiabetic properties, therefore, mushrooms have attracted increasing attention in recen...

Somatosensation plays pivotal roles in the everyday motor control of humans. During active movement, there exists a prominent high-gamma (HG >50 Hz) power increase in the primary somatosensory cortex (S1), and this provides an important feature in relation to the decoding of movement in a brain-machine interface (BMI). However, one concern of BMI researchers is the inflation of the decoding per...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS In chronic liver disease, bone disease frequently develops. The contributions of the different features of liver disease such as parenchymal inflammation, portal hypertension, and portasystemic shunting on bone metabolism have not been systematically studied. The aim of this study was to identify the features of liver disease contributing to bone disease using rat models. ...

Several transporters suspected to be involved in tellurite uptake in Escherichia coli were analyzed. Results showed that the PitA phosphate transporter was related to tellurite uptake. Escherichia coli ΔpitA was approximately four-fold more tolerant to tellurite, and cell viability remained almost unchanged during prolonged exposure to the toxicant as compared with wild type or ΔpitB cells. Not...

GMP affects vascular tone by multiple mechanisms, including inhibition of the Rho/Rho kinase-mediated Ca(2+) sensitization, a process identified as Ca(2+) desensitization. Ca(2+) desensitization is mediated probably by both cGMP- and cAMP-dependent protein kinases (cGKI and PKA). We investigate to which extent Ca(2+) desensitization is initiated by cGKI and PKA. cGMP/cAMP-induced relaxation was...

BACKGROUND Cleavage stage embryos as well as postimplantation embryos have been studied extensively over the years. However, our knowledge with respect to the chromosomal constitution of human embryos at the blastocyst stage is still rudimentary. METHODS In the present paper, a large series of human blastocysts was examined by means of fluorescent in situ hybridization (FISH). RESULTS It wa...

PURPOSE Corticosteroids have recorded beneficial clinical effects and are widely used in medicine. In ophthalmology, besides their treatment benefits, side effects, including ocular toxicity have been observed especially when intraocular delivery is used. The mechanism of these toxic events remains, however, poorly understood. In our present study, we investigated the mechanisms and potential p...

BACKGROUND Nosocomial norovirus (NoV) infection is common and may increase the burden of disease in healthcare settings, particularly in vulnerable hospitalized patients. Implementing effective infection control during and after admission may limit further spread, but evidence-based measures are lacking. METHODS In this study, we performed a systematic evaluation of sources and modes of trans...

This team takes the position that what is commonly referred to as non-familial Alzheimer's disease (AD) is predominantly due to genetic factors. Population-based studies suggest that genetic factors cause the majority of cases that begin after age 60. There are several lines of evidence supporting this position: Data from the Nun Study suggest that the risk for AD is largely established by earl...

According to the hypothesis of the modular structure of DNA, genomes consist of modules of various nature which may differ in statistical characteristics. Statistical analysis helps in revealing the differences in statistical characteristics and predicting the modular structure. In this connection the question about the contribution of each word of length l (l-tuple) to the inhomogeneity of gen...