Acute schistosomiasis diagnosis: a new tool for the diagnosis of schistosomiasis in a group of travelers recently infected in a new focus of Schistosoma mansoni

IntroductionThe diagnosis of schistosomiasis mansoni on early stages of infection is important to prevent late morbidity. A simple, cheap, sensitive and specific assay for routine diagnosis of schistosome infection based on the detection of specific IgG for schistosomula tegument antigens (ELISA-SmTeg) was developed by our group.MethodsWe describe here an acute outbreak involving a travel group of 80 individuals from a non-endemic area of the State of Minas Gerais, Brazil. These individuals were in contact with a freshwater pool where Biomphalaria glabrata was found. Results obtained from our new methodology were compared to IgG antibody titers against soluble worm antigenic preparation (SWAP) by ELISA and, also to parasitological examination, nuclear magnetic resonance and clinical findings.ResultsELISA-SmTeg was capable of detecting 64 positive cases among the 80 individuals participating at the survey with a positivity ratio of 80% and a higher sensitivity than ELISA-SWAP that was only sensitive for 56% of positive cases. Besides, a significant correlation was found for the severity of the infection and the specific IgG titers against SmTeg.ConclusionsOur data showed that ELISA-SmTeg might serve as the initial diagnostic tool for acute stages of the infection in community-based helminth control programs or for the surveillance of individuals from non-endemic areas.

Using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health as a tool for analysis of the effect of physical therapy on spasticity in HAM/TSP patients

INTRODUCTION: This study aimed to evaluate spasticity in human T-lymphotropic virus type 1-associated myelopathy/tropical spastic paraparesis (HAM/TSP) patients before and after physical therapy using the International Classification of Functioning, Disability and Health (ICF). METHODS: Nine subjects underwent physical therapy. Spasticity was evaluated using the Modified Ashworth Scale. The obtained scores were converted into ICF body functions scores. RESULTS: The majority of subjects had a high degree of spasticity in the quadriceps muscles. According to the ICF codes, the spasticity decreased after 20 sessions of physical therapy. CONCLUSIONS: The ICF was effective in evaluating spasticity in HAM/TSP patients.

Towards modification of Medicago truncatula epigenome: genome editing with engineered nucleases

Periodic drought is the primary limitation of plant growth and crop yield. The rise of water demand caused by the increase in world population and climate change, leads to one of the biggest challenges of modern agriculture: to increase food and feed production. De novo DNA methylation is a process regulated by small interfering RNA (siRNAs), which play a role in plant response and adaptation to abiotic stress. In the particular case of water deficit, growing evidences suggest a link between the siRNA pathways and drought response in the model legume Medicago truncatula. As a first step to understand the role of DNA methylation under water stress, we have set up several bioinformatics and molecular methodologies allowing the design of Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats (CRISPR)/Cas9 systems and the assembly of TALENs (transcription activator-like effector nucleases), to target both dicer-like 3 (MtDCL3) and RNA-Dependent RNA polymerase (MtRDR2), enzymes of the RNA-directed DNA methylation pathway. TALENs efficiency was evaluated prior to plant transformation by a yeast-based assay using two different strategies to test TALENs activity: Polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (PAGE) and Single strand conformation polymorphisms (SSCP). In this assay, yeast cells triple transformation emerged as good and rapid alternative to laborious yeast mating strategies. PAGE analysis might be a valuable tool to test TALENs efficacy in vivo if we could increase TALENs activity. SSCP-based approach proved to be ineffective due to the generation of several false positives. TALENs and CRISPR/Cas9 system constructed and designed in this work will in the future certainly enable the successful disruption of DCL3 and RDR2 genes and shed the light on the relationship between plant stress resistance and epigenetic regulation mediated by siRNAs in M.truncatula.

The BACTEC MGIT(tm) 320 system as a laboratory tool to diagnose tuberculosis in a Brazilian hospital with a high prevalence of HIV infection

Abstract: INTRODUCTION: The World Health Organization endorses the BACTEC Mycobacterial Growth Indicator Tube (MGIT)(tm) system as a rapid, sensitive, and specific method to diagnostic of tuberculosis. Here, we compared the performance of this system against Ogawa-Kudoh cultures and microscopy. METHODS: A total of 927 samples were obtained between December 2011 and December 2013 from 652 cases of suspected tuberculosis at the School Hospital of the Federal University of Rio Grande in Brazil. RESULTS: The MGIT system confirmed tuberculosis in more cases in less time. CONCLUSIONS: The MGIT system is an effective tool for early diagnosis of tuberculosis, especially in patients with HIV/AIDS.

Phage display as a tool for generation of bio-therapeutic agents for breast cancer

Notch is a conserved signalling pathway, which plays a crucial role in a multiple cellular processes such as stem cell self-renewal, cell division, proliferation and apoptosis. In mammalian, four Notch receptors and five ligands are described, where interaction is achieved through their extracellular domains, leading to a transcription activation of different target genes. Increased expression of Notch ligands has been detected in several types of cancer, including breast cancer suggesting that these proteins represent possible therapeutic targets. The goal of this work was to generate quality protein targets and, by phage display technology, select function-blocking antibodies specific for Notch ligands. Phage display is a powerful technique that allows the generation of highly specific antibodies to be used for therapeutics, and it has also proved to be a reliable approach in identifying and validating new cancer-related targets. Also, we aimed at solving the tri-dimensional structure of the Notch ligands alone and in complex with selected antibodies. In this work, the initial phase focused on the optimization of the expression and purification of a human Delta-like 1 ligand mutant construct (hDLL1-DE3), by refolding from E. coli inclusion bodies. To confirm the biological activity of the produced recombinant protein cellular functional studies were performed, revealing that treatment with hDLL1-DE3 protein led to a modulation of Notch target genes. In a second stage of this study, Antibody fragments (Fabs) specific for hDLL1-DE3 were generated by phage display, using the produced protein as target, in which one good Fab candidate was selected to determine the best expression conditions. In parallel, multiple crystallization conditions were tested with hDLL1-DE3, but so far none led to positive results.

Possible uses of augmented reality as a tool for guidance of users of packages

Acioly, A. S. G., Soares, M. M., & Arezes, P. M. (2015). Possible uses of augmented reality as a tool for guidance of users of packages. Paper presented at the Occupational Safety and Hygiene III - Selected Extended and Revised Contributions from the International Symposium on Safety and Hygiene.

Quantitative image analysis as a tool for Yarrowia lipolytica dimorphic growth evaluation in different culture media

Yarrowia lipolytica, a yeast strain with a huge biotechnological potential, capable to produce metabolites such as γ-decalactone, citric acid, intracellular lipids and enzymes, possesses the ability to change its morphology in response to environmental conditions. In the present study, a quantitative image analysis (QIA) procedure was developed for the identification and quantification of Y. lipolytica W29 and MTLY40-2P strains dimorphic growth, cultivated in batch cultures on hydrophilic (glucose and N-acetylglucosamine (GlcNAc) and hydrophobic (olive oil and castor oil) media. The morphological characterization of yeast cells by QIA techniques revealed that hydrophobic carbon sources, namely castor oil, should be preferred for both strains growth in the yeast single cell morphotype. On the other hand, hydrophilic sugars, namely glucose and GlcNAc caused a dimorphic transition growth towards the hyphae morphotype. Experiments for γ-decalactone production with MTLY40-2P strain in two distinct morphotypes (yeast single cells and hyphae cells) were also performed. The obtained results showed the adequacy of the proposed morphology monitoring tool in relation to each morphotype on the aroma production ability. The present work allowed establishing that QIA techniques can be a valuable tool for the identification of the best culture conditions for industrial processes implementation.

Extracting kinetic information from literature with KineticRE

To better understand the dynamic behavior of metabolic networks in a wide variety of conditions, the field of Systems Biology has increased its interest in the use of kinetic models. The different databases, available these days, do not contain enough data regarding this topic. Given that a significant part of the relevant information for the development of such models is still wide spread in the literature, it becomes essential to develop specific and powerful text mining tools to collect these data. In this context, this work has as main objective the development of a text mining tool to extract, from scientific literature, kinetic parameters, their respective values and their relations with enzymes and metabolites. The approach proposed integrates the development of a novel plug-in over the text mining framework @Note2. In the end, the pipeline developed was validated with a case study on Kluyveromyces lactis, spanning the analysis and results of 20 full text documents.

Reconstructing transcriptional regulatory networks using data integration and text mining

Transcriptional Regulatory Networks (TRNs) are powerful tool for representing several interactions that occur within a cell. Recent studies have provided information to help researchers in the tasks of building and understanding these networks. One of the major sources of information to build TRNs is biomedical literature. However, due to the rapidly increasing number of scientific papers, it is quite difficult to analyse the large amount of papers that have been published about this subject. This fact has heightened the importance of Biomedical Text Mining approaches in this task. Also, owing to the lack of adequate standards, as the number of databases increases, several inconsistencies concerning gene and protein names and identifiers are common. In this work, we developed an integrated approach for the reconstruction of TRNs that retrieve the relevant information from important biological databases and insert it into a unique repository, named KREN. Also, we applied text mining techniques over this integrated repository to build TRNs. However, was necessary to create a dictionary of names and synonyms associated with these entities and also develop an approach that retrieves all the abstracts from the related scientific papers stored on PubMed, in order to create a corpora of data about genes. Furthermore, these tasks were integrated into @Note, a software system that allows to use some methods from the Biomedical Text Mining field, including an algorithms for Named Entity Recognition (NER), extraction of all relevant terms from publication abstracts, extraction relationships between biological entities (genes, proteins and transcription factors). And finally, extended this tool to allow the reconstruction Transcriptional Regulatory Networks through using scientific literature.

3D representation of the urban evolution of Braga using the cityengine tool

The morphological evolution of the city of Braga has been the subject of several studies focusing on different urban areas in different periods. Using the accumulated knowledge provided by the available archaeological, historical and iconographic data of Braga, from the Roman times to the nineteenth century, we intend to present a working methodology for 3D representation of urban areas and its evolution, using the CityEngine ESRI tool. Different types of graphic and cartographic data will be integrated in an archaeological information system for the characterization of urban buildings. Linking this information system to the rules of characterization of urban spaces through the CityEngine tool, we can create the 3D urban spaces and their changes. The building characterization rules include several parameters of architectural elements that can be dynamically changed according the latest information. This methodology will be applied to the best known areas within of the city allowing the creation of different and dynamic layouts. Considerations about the concepts, challenges and constraints of using the CityEngine tool for recording and representing urban evolution knowledge will be discussed.

Molecular regulation of flowering induction in Quercus suber

Dissertação de mestrado em Plant Molecular Biology, Biotechnology and Bioentrepeneurship

An interactive web-based tool for breast reduction surgery simulation

In this work, we present a 3D web-based interactive tool for numerical modeling and simulation approach to breast reduction surgery simulation, to assist surgeons in planning all aspects related to breast reduction surgery before the actual procedure takes place, thereby avoiding unnecessary risks. In particular, it allows the modeling of the initial breast geometry, the definition of all aspects related to the surgery and the visualization of the post-surgery breast shape in a realistic environment.

Hind limb ischemia in type 1 diabetic mice as useful tool to evaluate the neovascularization of tissue engineering constructs

Hind-limb ischemia has been used in type 1 diabetic mice to evaluate treatments for peripheral arterial disease or mechanisms of vascular impairment in diabetes [1]. Vascular deficiency is not only a pathophysiological condition, but also an obvious circumstance in tissue regeneration and in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine (TERM) strategies. We performed a pilot experiment of hind-limb ischemia in streptozotocin(STZ)-induced type 1 diabetic mice to hypothesise whether diabetes influences neovascularization induced by biomaterials. The dependent variables included blood flow and markers of arteriogenesis and angiogenesis. Type 1 diabetes was induced in 8-week-old C57BL/6 mice by an i.p. injection of STZ (50 mg/kg daily for 5 days). Hind-limb ischemia was created under deep anaesthesia and the left femoral artery and vein were isolated, ligated, and excised. The contralateral hind limb served as an internal control within each mouse. Non-diabetic ischaemic mice were used as experiment controls. At the hind-limb ischemia surgical procedure, different types of biomaterials were placed in the blood vessels gap. Blood flow was estimated by Laser Doppler perfusion imager, right after surgery and then weekly. After 28 days of implantation, surrounding muscle was excised and evaluated by histological analysis for arteriogenesis and angiogenesis. The results showed that implanted biomaterials were promote faster restoration of blood flow in the ischemic limbs and improved neovascularization in the diabetic mice. Therefore, we herein demonstrate that the combined model of hind-limb ischemia in type 1 diabetes mice is suitable to evaluate the neovascularization potential of biomaterials and eventually tissue engineering constructs.  

Superhydrophobic surfaces as a tool for the fabrication of hierarchical spherical polymeric carriers

Hierarchical polymeric carriers with high encapsulation efficiencies are fabricated via a biocompatible strategy developed using superhydrophobic (SH) surfaces. The carries are obtained by the incorporation of cell/BSA-loaded dextran-methacrylate (DEXT-MA) microparticles into alginate (ALG) macroscopic beads. Engineered devices like these are expected to boost the development of innovative and customizable systems for biomedical and biotechnological purposes.

In vitro phosphorylation as tool for modification of silk and keratin fibrous materials

An overview is given of the recent work on in vitro enzymatic phosphorylation of silk fibroin and human hair keratin. Opposing to many chemical "conventional" approaches, enzymatic phosphorylation is in fact a mild reaction and the treatment falls within "green chemistry" approach. Silk and keratin are not phosphorylated in vivo, but in vitro. This enzyme-driven modification is a major technological breakthrough. Harsh chemical chemicals are avoided, and mild conditions make enzymatic phosphorylation a real "green chemistry" approach. The current communication presents a novel approach stating that enzyme phosphorylation may be used as a tool to modify the surface charge of biocompatible materials such as keratin and silk.