background: many efforts have been undertaken until now to find an alternative approach to packed red cell tranfusion in major β-thalassemia. augmentation of fetal hemoglobin by hydroxyurea has proved to be less effective in this condition as compared to sickle cell anemia, probably due to molecular heterogeneity of the former disease. hydroxyurea efficacy and its relation to xmn1 polymorphism ...

background: mutations in β -globin gene may result in β-thalassemia major, which is one of the most common genetic dis­or­ders in iran and some other countries. knowing the beta-globin mutation spectrum improves the efficiency of prenatal diagno­sis in the affected fetuses (major β-thalassemia) of heterozygote couples. methods: couples with high hemoglobin a 2 and low mean corpuscular volume we...

BACKGROUND β-Antagonists have recently been proposed for the treatment of chronic asthma; however, concerns regarding risk of acute bronchoconstriction in clinical trials remain. OBJECTIVE To determine the frequency of oral β-blocker prescribing in patients with asthma and associations with severe asthma exacerbations requiring oral steroids in patients with active asthma defined by prior ast...

Benign airway stenosis is a clinical challenge because of recurrent granulation tissues. Our previous study proved that a Chinese drug, β-elemene, could effectively inhibit the growth of fibroblasts cultured from hyperplastic human airway granulation tissues, which could slow down the progression of this disease. The purpose of this study is to find out the mechanism. We cultured fibroblasts fr...

β-Lactam antibiotics have long been a treatment of choice for bacterial infections since they bind irreversibly to Penicillin-Binding Proteins (PBPs), enzymes that are vital for cell wall biosynthesis. Many pathogens express drug-insensitive PBPs rendering β-lactams ineffective, revealing a need for new types of PBP inhibitors active against resistant strains. We have identified alkyl boronic a...

BACKGROUND Halorubrum lacusprofundi is a cold-adapted halophilic archaeon isolated from Deep Lake, a perennially cold and hypersaline lake in Antarctica. Its genome sequencing project was recently completed, providing access to many genes predicted to encode polyextremophilic enzymes active in both extremely high salinity and cold temperatures. RESULTS Analysis of the genome sequence of H. la...

BACKGROUND In recent years, it has been gradually realized that bacterial inclusion bodies (IBs) could be biologically active. In particular, several proteins including green fluorescent protein, β-galactosidase, β-lactamase, alkaline phosphatase, D-amino acid oxidase, polyphosphate kinase 3, maltodextrin phosphorylase, and sialic acid aldolase have been successfully produced as active IBs when...

Recently the demand for functional food components such as prebiotics, probiotics, and phenolic compounds are increased. Nowadays, β-glucan, dietary fiber, biologically active natural polysaccharide, exhibit properties like a prebiotic effect immune system support. Furthermore, clinical studies have shown that daily intake of 250-500 mg β-glucan has several benefits on system, showing low glyce...

The physical manifestation of learning and memory formation in the brain can be expressed by strengthening or weakening of synaptic connections through morphological changes. Local actin remodeling underlies some forms of plasticity and may be facilitated by local β-actin synthesis, but dynamic information is lacking. In this work, we use single-molecule in situ hybridization to demonstrate tha...

Daylight-driven photocatalysts have attracted much attention in the context of "green" technology. Although various active materials have been reported and their applications are rapidly increasing, many are discovered after enormous experimental efforts. Herein the discovery of a novel oxide photocatalyst, β-SnMoO4, is demonstrated via a rational search of 3483 known and hypothetical compounds...