Lithocholic acid (LCA) deposited in human livers always induces drastic pains which need analgesic drug, like morphine to release. Our research showed that LCA can effectively inhibit uridine 5'-diphospho-glucuronosyltransferase 2B7 (UGT2B7) in morphine tolerance-like human normal liver cells, HL-7702, then increase μ-opioid receptor (MOR) and calcium-calmodulin dependent protein kinase IIα (Ca...

Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA) is the most severe form of retinal dystrophy with an onset in the first year of life. The most frequent genetic cause of LCA, accounting for up to 15% of all LCA cases in Europe and North-America, is a mutation (c.2991+1655AG) in intron 26 of CEP290. This mutation generates a cryptic splice donor site resulting in the insertion of an aberrant exon (exon X) conta...

OBJECTIVE To investigate whether mutations in NPHP5 can cause Leber congenital amaurosis (LCA) without early-onset renal disease. METHODS DNA samples from 276 individuals with nonsyndromic LCA were screened for variations in the NPHP5 gene. Each had been previously screened for mutations in 8 known LCA genes without identifying a disease-causing genotype. RESULTS Nine of the 276 LCA proband...

In this paper we present a novel approach to quantifying genetic architecture that combines recombinant inbred lines (RIL) with line cross analysis (LCA). LCA is a method of quantifying directional genetic effects (i.e. summed effects of all loci) that differentiate two parental lines. Directional genetic effects are thought to be critical components of genetic architecture for the long term re...

Our studies revealed that lithocholic acid (LCA), a bile acid, is a potent anti-aging natural compound that in yeast cultured under longevity-extending caloric restriction (CR) conditions acts in synergy with CR to enable a significant further increase in chronological lifespan. Here, we investigate a mechanism underlying this robust longevity-extending effect of LCA under CR. We found that exo...

To clarify the natural history and management of patients with aberrant origin of a coronary artery from the aorta, we reviewed 18 patients whose right (RCA) or left (LCA) coronary artery arose aberrantly and passed between the aorta and right ventricular infundibulum. Nine patients had aberrant LCA. Three young males died suddenly after exertion, each with proximal focal LCA stenosis. None of ...

Adequate waste management is vital for the success of social life, because waste accumulation increases sanitary risks in dense societies. We explored why different leaf-cutting ants (LCA) species locate their waste in internal nest chambers or external piles, including ecological context and accounting for phylogenetic relations. We propose that waste location depends on whether the environmen...

Independent component analysis (ICA) is popular in many applications, including cognitive neuroscience and signal processing. Due to computational constraints, principal component analysis is used for dimension reduction prior to ICA (PCA+ICA), which could remove important information. The problem is that interesting independent components (ICs) could be mixed in several principal components th...

Purpose: Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is a well-established analytical method to quantify environmental impacts, which has been mainly applied to products. However, recent literature would suggest that it has also the potential as an analysis and design tool for processes, and stresses that one of the biggest challenges of this decade in the field of process systems engineering (PSE)...

BACKGROUND Substantial uncertainty surrounds the specificity of the Direct Agglutination Test (DAT) for visceral leishmaniasis (VL) in clinical suspects, since no good gold standard exists for unequivocally identifying diseased subjects. We explored the Latent Class Analysis (LCA) modelling technique to circumvent this problem. PATIENTS AND METHODS Data on 149 clinical suspects recruited in 1...