Plastids (photosynthetic organelles of plants and algae) are known to have spread between eukaryotic lineages by secondary endosymbiosis, that is, by the uptake of a eukaryotic alga by another eukaryote. But the number of times this has taken place is controversial. This is particularly so in the case of eukaryotes with plastids derived from red algae, which are numerous and diverse. Despite th...

As genome-scale metabolic reconstructions emerge, tools to manage their size and complexity will be increasingly important. Flux balance analysis (FBA) is a constraint-based approach widely used to study the metabolic capabilities of cellular or subcellular systems. FBA problems are highly underdetermined and many different phenotypes can satisfy any set of constraints through which the metabol...

We have recently designed and synthesized a novel iminoquinone anticancer agent, 7-(4-fluorobenzylamino)-1,3,4,8-tetrahydropyrrolo[4,3,2-de]quinolin-8(1H)-one (FBA-TPQ) and initiated its preclinical development. Herein we investigated its efficacy, safety, and pharmacokinetics in in vitro and in vivo models of human pancreatic cancer. Our results demonstrated that FBA-TPQ inhibited pancreatic c...

Transposon mutagenesis, in combination with parallel sequencing, is becoming a powerful tool for en-masse mutant analysis. A probability generating function was used to explain observed miniHimar transposon insertion patterns, and gene essentiality calls were made by transposon insertion frequency analysis (TIFA). TIFA incorporated the observed genome and sequence motif bias of the miniHimar tr...

BACKGROUND The main objective of flux balance analysis (FBA) is to obtain quantitative predictions of metabolic fluxes of an organism, and it is necessary to use an appropriate objective function to guarantee a good estimation of those fluxes. METHODOLOGY In this study, the predictive performance of FBA was evaluated, using objective functions arising from the linear combination of different ...

Systems level modelling and simulations of biological processes are proving to be invaluable in obtaining a quantitative and dynamic perspective of various aspects of cellular function. In particular, constraint-based analyses of metabolic networks have gained considerable popularity for simulating cellular metabolism, of which flux balance analysis (FBA), is most widely used. Unlike mechanisti...

Optical burst switching (OBS) is a promising switching technology for next-generation Internet backbone networks. The main objectives of the dissertation was to provide fairness from various aspects, including rate and distance fairness, to OBS networks without degrading the loss probability or throughput. This dissertation proposes a rate fairness preemption (RFP) scheme to achieve max-min fai...

Our research on pathogenesis of disseminated candidiasis led to the discovery that antibodies specific for Candida albicans cell surface β-1, 2-mannotriose [β-(Man)(3)] protect mice. A 14 mer peptide Fba, which derived from the N-terminal portion of the C. albicans cytosolic/cell surface protein fructose-bisphosphate aldolase, was used as the glycan carrier and resulted in a novel synthetic gly...

Undiagnosed and retained foreign bodies may result in serious complications such as pneumonia, atelectasis, or bronchiectasis. We reviewed a total of 174 children with foreign body aspiration (FBA). Clinical, radiological, and bronchoscopic findings of these patients were evaluated according to the nature of foreign body and elapsed time from aspiration to diagnosis. Significant differences wer...

BACKGROUND The aim of this study was to compare the properties and feasibility of the glucose analog, 2-(18)F-fluoro-2-deoxy-D-glucose ((18)F-FDG), three short (18)F-labeled carboxylic acids, (18)F-fluoroacetate ((18)F-FAC), 2-(18)F-fluoropropionic acid ((18)F-FPA) and 4-((18)F)fluorobenzoic acid ((18)F-FBA), for differentiating tumors from inflammation. METHODS Biodistributions of (18)F-FAC,...