Roseofilum reptotaenium is a gliding, filamentous, phycoerythrin-rich cyanobacterium that has been found only in the horizontally migrating, pathogenic microbial mat, black band disease (BBD) on Caribbean corals. R. reptotaenium dominates the BBD mat in terms of biomass and motility, and the filaments form the mat fabric. This cyanobacterium produces the cyanotoxin microcystin, predominately MC...

Cholangiocarcinoma (CCA) is a cancer of biliary epithelial cell origin, which is prevalent in northeastern Thailand. The majority of patients with CCA are diagnosed at the advanced-stage of the disease. Although the early detection and diagnosis of CCA is critical to improve the prognosis of patients, there are presently no specific tumor markers for CCA. A previous study demonstrated that the ...

BACKGROUND Increased monocyte activation and intestinal damage have been shown to be predictive for the increased morbidity and mortality observed in treated people living with human immunodeficiency virus (PLHIV). METHODS A cross-sectional analysis of cellular and soluble markers of monocyte activation, coagulation, intestinal damage, and inflammation in plasma and cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) ...

Black band disease (BBD) is an infectious bacterial disease caused by the migration of a black mat of microorganisms across the surface of coral colonies, consuming healthy coral tissue and leaving dead skeleton behind. Although a complex community of bacteria composes the infectious bacterial mat, the most abundant organism present in the mat is a large filamentous, non-heterocyst cyanobacteri...

metabolite essential for the transport of long-chain fatty acids from the cytosol into the mitochondrial matrix and is an important player in energy production via b-oxidation. Therefore, carnitine depletion causes a failure of ATP production and an accumulation of triglycerides in tissues such as the liver, skeletal muscle and heart. Animal tissues contain relatively large amounts of carnitine...

Benign breast disease (BBD) is a risk factor for breast cancer and may have a heritable component. Deficient DNA repair has been implicated in breast cancer etiology and may exert its effect before BBD, a known precursor. The association between allelic variants in DNA repair genes and BBD was examined in a cohort of women in Washington County, Maryland. BBD was defined by two criteria: (a) a p...

Viral replication efficiency is in large part governed by the ability of viruses to counteract pro-apoptotic signals induced by infection of host cells. For HHV-8, viral interferon regulatory factor-1 (vIRF-1) contributes to this process in part via inhibitory interactions with BH3-only protein (BOP) Bim, recently identified as an interaction partner of vIRF-1. Here we recognize that the Bim-bi...

Distinct partitioning has been observed in the composition and diversity of bacterial communities inhabiting the surface and overlying seawater of three coral species infected with black band disease (BBD) on the southern Caribbean island of Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles. PCR amplification and sequencing of bacterial 16S rRNA genes (rDNA) with universally conserved primers have identified over ...

Acrylamide (AA)-induced toxicity has been associated with accumulation of excessive reactive oxygen species. The present study was therefore undertaken to investigate the protective effect of blackberry digests produced after (BBD) in vitro gastrointestinal (GI) digestion against AA-induced oxidative damage. The results indicated that the BBD (0.5 mg/mL) pretreatment significantly suppressed AA...