Many syndromes traditionally viewed as individual diseases are heterogeneous in molecular pathogenesis and treatment responsiveness. This often leads to the conduct of large clinical trials to identify small average treatment benefits for heterogeneous groups of patients. Drugs that demonstrate effectiveness in such trials may subsequently be used broadly, resulting in ineffective treatment of ...

Numerous cultivars of Japanese flowering cherry (Prunus subgenus Cerasus) are recognized, but in many cases they are difficult to distinguish morphologically. Therefore, we evaluated the clonal status of 215 designated cultivars using 17 SSR markers. More than half the cultivars were morphologically distinct and had unique genotypes. However, 22 cultivars were found to consist of multiple clone...

BACKGROUND Genome-wide association studies have successfully identified several loci underlying complex diseases in humans. The development of high density SNP maps in domestic animal species should allow the detection of QTLs for economically important traits through association studies with much higher accuracy than traditional linkage analysis. Here we report the association analysis of the ...

Identifying diet-disease relationships in nutritional cohort studies is plagued by the measurement error in self-reported intakes. The authors propose using biomarkers known to be correlated with dietary intake, so as to strengthen analyses of diet-disease hypotheses. The authors consider combining self-reported intakes and biomarker levels using principal components, Howe's method, or a joint ...

Background Salix koreensisis native to Korea, Japan and China, is a deciduous broadleaved tall tree growing throughout Korea. This species is dioecius and planted along the streets and for landscaping. Along the rivers the species grows well reaching up to 20 meters in height. Trees bloom in April and fruits ripe in May. This study was carried out to investigate the genetic diversity of S. kore...

The use of biomarkers in combination with stable isotope analysis is a new approach in microbial ecology and a number of papers on a variety of subjects have appeared. We will first discuss the techniques for analysing stable isotopes in biomarkers, primarily gas chromatography-combustion-isotope ratio mass spectrometry, and then describe a number of applications in microbial ecology based on 1...

The evolution of late season reproductive arrest (diapause) among female Culex pipiens mosquitoes allows them to overwinter in temperate climates, while females of the sibling species Culex quinquefasciatus do not exhibit the diapause phenotype. We present results for quantitative trait loci (QTL) analyses of two independent segregating populations derived from crosses between C. pipiens and C....

Lead (Pb) has been shown to perturb Ca-mediated cellular processes. However, to date, a direct effect of Pb on intracellular free Ca2+ concentration ([Ca2+]i) has not been demonstrated. 19F NMR in combination with 1,2-bis(2-amino-5-fluorophenoxy)ethane-N,N,N',N'-tetraacetic acid (5F-BAPTA) was used to simultaneously measure [Ca2+]i and intracellular free Pb2+ concentration ([Pb2+]i) in the rat ...

Although evidence suggests that asthma onset occurs early in childhood, many standard asthma outcome measures are either impractical or unreliable in preschool-aged children. In this population, for instance, patient history and symptom reports rely on the observations of caregivers, who tend to underreport their child's asthma symptoms. Furthermore, the use of conventional measures of pulmonar...

BACKGROUND Linkage and association analysis based on haplotype transmission disequilibrium can be more informative than single marker analysis. Several works have been proposed in recent years to extend the transmission disequilibrium test (TDT) to haplotypes. Among them, a powerful approach called the evolutionary tree TDT (ET-TDT) incorporates information about the evolutionary relationship a...