Epidemiological studies have taken advantage of a number of strategies to monitor human populations for mortality, incidence, and exposure to hazardous environmental agents. These studies have been compromised by the lack of individual exposure assessment data that precisely quantified internal dose. As methods improve in analytical chemistry and molecular biology, direct biological monitoring ...

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third leading cause of global cancer mortality. Recent studies have proposed several gene signatures to predict CRC prognosis, but none of those have proven reliable for predicting prognosis in clinical practice yet due to poor reproducibility and molecular heterogeneity. Here, we have established a prognostic signature of 113 probe sets (CRC-113) that include pot...

The loss of plant genetic resources has made necessary the development of new ex situ conservation methods. Advances in biotechnology provide new methods for plant germplasm conservation and evaluation. Biotechnological tools like in vitro culture, cryopreservation, and molecular markers offer a valuable alternative to plant diversity studies, management of genetic resources and ultimately cons...

Since biomarker imaging is traditionally understood as imaging of molecular probes, we highly recommend to avoid any confusion with the previously defined term "imaging biomarkers" and, therefore, only use "molecular probe imaging (MPI)" in that context. Molecular probes (MPs) comprise all kinds of molecules administered to an organism which inherently carry a signalling moiety. This review hig...

Environmental pollution is a complex issue because of the diversity of anthropogenic agents, both chemical and physical, that have been detected and catalogued. The consequences to biota from exposure to genotoxic agents present an additional problem because of the potential for these agents to produce adverse change at the cellular and organismal levels. Organismal responses at the genetic lev...

Smoking is associated with different serious diseases, including cancer. The fact that only a minority of smokers develops tobacco-associated diseases suggests the contribution of other individual factors, which are still far from understood. New technologies that can be referred to as 'molecular profiling' allow for investigating the deregulation of thousands of genes simultaneously. Numerous ...

Molecular epidemiology in cancer research grew from the field of chemical carcinogenesis and the use biomarkers for environmental exposures, with incorporation of principles from early pharmacogenetics. Over the years, molecular epidemiology has become extremely complex, with studies evaluating associations between cancer risk and prognosis and numerous markers of susceptibility, exposure and e...

The field of molecular ecology has expanded enormously in the past two decades, largely because of the growing ease with which neutral molecular genetic data can be obtained from virtually any taxonomic group. However, there is also a growing awareness that neutral molecular data can provide only partial insight into parameters such as genetic diversity, local adaptation, evolutionary potential...

The purpose of this mini-review is to review the current recommendations in the management of atypia of undetermined significance or follicular lesion of undetermined significance (AUS or FLUS). We will discuss the role of clinical and ultrasound which can be used to decide if a timely or aggressive intervention is necessary or not. Furthermore, we will address the clinical practice guidelines ...

Oxidative/nitrosative stress is responsible for a variety of degenerative processes in some human diseases. Measurement of oxidatively/nitrosatively modified DNA, proteins, lipids, and sugars in biological samples has been expected to detect appropriate biomarkers for diseases in which reactive oxygen/nitrogen species are involved. Recently, the application of these biomarkers to epidemiologica...