A critical barrier to entry into structure-based virtual screening is the lack of a suitable, easy to access database of purchasable compounds. We have therefore prepared a library of 727,842 molecules, each with 3D structure, using catalogs of compounds from vendors (the size of this library continues to grow). The molecules have been assigned biologically relevant protonation states and are a...

Cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) enzyme binds to arachidonic acid and releases metabolites that are used to induce pain and inflammation. COX-2 selective inhibitors such as celecoxib, rofecoxib and valdecoxib are currently used to reduce inflammatory response. However, they lack anti-thrombotic activity and hence lead to cardiovascular and renal liabilities apart from gastrointestinal irritation. There...

Correctness verification of query results is a significant challenge in database outsourcing. Most of the proposed approaches impose high overhead, which makes them impractical in real scenarios. Probabilistic approaches are proposed in order to reduce the computation overhead pertaining to the verification process. In this paper, we use the notion of trust as the basis of our probabilistic app...

This study investigated the effects of dietary Ca2+ on branchial Ca2+ and Zn2+ uptake, new and total zinc accumulation in target tissues (gill, liver and kidney), calcium and zinc homeostasis, and acute tolerance to waterborne zinc in fish chronically exposed to waterborne zinc. Juvenile rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) were maintained on a calcium-enriched diet [41.2 mg vs. 21.2 mg (control...

Zinc deficiency is not only the cause of low productivity of crops, but it also results in low zinc content in seeds, which leads to poor dietary zinc intake. To study the effect of zinc foliar application on improving plant yield and seed zinc content for human consumption, chickpea plants were raised in refined sand culture with deficient (0.2 μM) and sufficient (1μM) supply of zinc under gla...

Zinc is a vital micronutrient used for over 300 enzymatic reactions and multiple biochemical and structural processes in the body. To date, sensitive and specific biological markers of zinc status are still needed. The aim of this study was to evaluate Gallus gallus as an in vivo model in the context of assessing the sensitivity of a previously unexplored potential zinc biomarker, the erythrocy...

The paramount importance of zinc for a wide range of biological functions is based on its occurrence in thousands of known zinc proteins. To regulate the availability of zinc dynamically, eukaryotes have compartmentalized zinc and the metallothionein/thionein pair, which controls the pico- to nanomolar concentrations of metabolically active cellular zinc. Interactions of zinc with sulfur ligand...

The database model presented in this paper is suitable for application in which queries may require non-crisp references to certain attributes. The data item (attribute) values may be crisp or fuzzy. For instance, such adjectives as 'high' or 'normal' may be attribute values for the attribute blood pressure. A disease or a condition can be described by a number of symptoms which may be crisp al...

This paper proposes to apply a clustering based classification technique for the task of discovering Knowledge from health care databases. The healthcare environment is generally perceived as being ‘rich in information’ yet having ‘knowledge poor’. There is a wealth of data available within the healthcare systems. However, there is a lack of effective analysis tools to discover hidden relations...

Assessment of zinc status remains a challenge largely because serum/plasma zinc may not accurately reflect an individual's zinc status. The comet assay, a sensitive method capable of detecting intracellular DNA strand breaks, may serve as a functional biomarker of zinc status. We hypothesized that effects of zinc supplementation on intracellular DNA damage could be assessed from samples collect...