Botulism is one of the most important foodborne diseases and is caused by Clostridium botulinum toxin. The main manifestations are flaccid muscle paralysis and cranial nerve palsies. Botulism is an essential health problem because of its high mortality. The diagnosis of botulism, especially in sporadic cases, is a medical challenge and a high clinical suspicion is necessary for early recognitio...

Paspalum dilatatum spikelets with ergot symptoms were collected from Rice Research Institute of Iran in Rasht, Guilan province during the fall of 2018. Ergot symptoms usually are caused by different Claviceps species on grasses. Sclerotia of ergot were globular in shape, black in color and irregularly roughened on the surface that resembles a brain. Different fungi were isolat...

Compositional replication strand bias, commonly referred to as GC skew, is present in many genomes of prokaryotes, eukaryotes, and viruses. Although cytosine deamination in ssDNA (resulting in C-->T changes on the leading strand) is often invoked as its major cause, the precise contributions of this and other substitution types are currently unknown. It is also unclear if the underlying mutatio...

Background: Psychotic disorder due to industrial drug, such as methamphetamine addiction, is one of the important causes for referral to psychiatric hospital. Psychotic symptoms in these patients are varied. A group of researchers believe that methamphetamine-induced psychosis is completely similar to schizophrenia. Others believe that at least some cases of permanent psychotic clinical manifes...

The downstream prion-like protein (doppel, or Dpl) is a paralog of the cellular prion protein, PrP(C). The two proteins have approximately 25% sequence identity, but seem to have distinct physiologic roles. Unlike PrP(C), Dpl does not support prion replication; instead, overexpression of Dpl in the brain seems to cause a completely different neurodegenerative disease. We report the solution str...

Parkinson's disease is a degenerative disorder of the central nervous system. It results from the death of dopamine-containing cells in the substantia nigra, a region of the midbrain; the cause of cell-death is unknown. Procyclidine is used to treat parkinsonism (slowed movements, stiffness of the body, uncontrollable body movements, weakness, tiredness, soft voice, and other symptoms caused by...