Muscle stiffness is a major clinical feature in Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD). DMD is the most common lethal inherited muscle-wasting disease in boys, and it is caused by the lack of the dystrophin protein. We recently showed that the extensor digitorum longus (EDL) muscle of mdx mice (a DMD mouse model) exhibits disease-associated muscle stiffness. Truncated micro- and mini-dystrophins are...

Protein C is activated by thrombin with a value of k(cat)/K(m) = 0.11mM(-1)s(-1) that increases 1700-fold in the presence of the cofactor thrombomodulin. The molecular origin of this effect triggering an important feedback loop in the coagulation cascade remains elusive. Acidic residues in the activation domain of protein C are thought to electrostatically clash with the active site of thrombin...

This paper considers a quasi-maximum likelihood estimation for the spatial dynamic panel data with both time and individual …xed e¤ects when both the number of individuals n and the number of time periods T can be large. Instead of using di¤erent estimation methods depending on whether the data generating process has time dummy e¤ects or not and whether it is stable, spatial cointegrated, or ex...

AIM The present study aims to evaluate zootechnic parameters and blood sugar in rabbits submitted to diets containing different levels of pepper (Capsicum frutescens). MATERIALS AND METHODS To this end, 30 rabbits weighing on average 1252±35 g at the beginning of the experiment were subjected to five rations with three repetitions for 56 days: The food R0 (or control) which is floury provende...

OBJECTIVES The present research aimed to evaluate the prognostic value of a novel risk classification of microvascular invasion (MVI) in hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) after resection. METHODS A total of 295 consecutive HCC patients underwent hepatectomy were included in our study. We evaluated the degree of MVI according to the following three features: the number of invaded microvessels (≤5...

Psychrophilic methanogenic Archaea contribute significantly to global methane emissions, but archaeal cold adaptation mechanisms remain poorly understood. Hinted by that mRNA architecture determined secondary structure respond to cold more promptly than proteins, differential RNA-seq was used in this work to examine the genome-wide transcription start sites (TSSs) of the psychrophilic methanoge...

Background. Health risks such as tobacco use, excessive alcohol consumption and unhealthy body weight contribute to the development of chronic health problems. Objective. To estimate the associations of tobacco use, excessive alcohol consumption and obesity with healthcare expenditure and chronic diseases among South Africans on a comprehensive medical scheme. Methods. We performed a cross-sect...

Long-term head-down-tilt bed rest (HDT) causes cardiovascular deconditioning, attributed to reflex dysfunctions, plasma volume reduction, or cardiac impairments. Our objective with the present study was to evaluate the functional importance and relative contribution of these during rest and exercise in supine and upright postures. We studied six subjects before (baseline), during [days 60 (D60)...

Selenocysteine (Sec) is translationally incorporated into proteins in response to the UGA codon. The tRNA specific to Sec (tRNA(Sec)) is first ligated with serine by seryl-tRNA synthetase (SerRS). In the present study, we determined the 3.1 Å crystal structure of the tRNA(Sec) from the bacterium Aquifex aeolicus, in complex with the heterologous SerRS from the archaeon Methanopyrus kandleri. Th...

The idea that individual axonally transported proteins can exist in several kinetically distinct pools within the cell body was studied using the presumptive neurosecretory low molecular weight (LMW) proteins of Aplysia neurons L11 and R15. Pulse-chase experiments revealed that the loss of labeled LMW proteins from the soma by axonal transport does not follow single exponential kinetics as it s...