BACKGROUND Protein contact dermatitis (PCD) is a rare and underdiagnosed condition that many dermatologists fail to recognize. Nevertheless, increasing awareness of the condition and the substances responsible has led to a rise in the number of published cases in recent years. OBJECTIVE To determine the clinical characteristics and allergens implicated in PCD in our setting. MATERIAL AND ME...

BACKGROUND Germline formation is a highly regulated process in all organisms. In Drosophila embryos germ cells are specified by the pole plasm, a specialized cytoplasmic region containing polar granules. Components of these granules are also present in the perinuclear ring surrounding nurse cells, the nuage. Two such molecules are the Vasa and Tudor proteins. How Tudor localizes and is maintain...

Egyptian dieticians typically rely on foreign databases to find out oxalate content of food due to unavailability of local databases. The soil, fertilizers, climate and cultivars are often very different. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to establish a local database of oxalate content in Egyptian grown fruits and vegetables and selected daily common herbs. The current study analysed the...

For the first time, the predatory arthropods of aubergine fields in South Sumatra, Indonesia, were studied by pitfall trapping and by square flooding in two four-week periods; first, early after transplanting, and second, during harvest. Plant cover and insecticide use were very low in the first (I) and high in the second period (II). In 20 pitfall traps were caught (I) 3,794, and (II) 2,875 sp...

During mitosis, faithful inheritance of genetic material is achieved by chromosome segregation, as mediated by the condensin I and II complexes. Failed chromosome segregation can result in neoplasm formation, infertility, and birth defects. Recently, the germ-line-specific DEAD-box RNA helicase Vasa was demonstrated to promote mitotic chromosome segregation in Drosophila by facilitating robust ...

BACKGROUND The grasshopper Shirakiacris shirakii is an important agricultural pest and feeds mainly on gramineous plants, thereby causing economic damage to a wide range of crops. However, genomic information on this species is extremely limited thus far, and transcriptome data relevant to insecticide resistance and pest control are also not available. METHODS The transcriptome of S. shirakii...

Solanum torvum Sw. cv. Torubamubiga (TB) is a low cadmium (Cd)-accumulating plant. To elucidate the molecular mechanisms of the Cd acclimation process in TB roots, transcriptional regulation was analysed in response to mild Cd treatment: 0.1 muM CdCl(2) in hydroponic solution. A unigene set consisting of 6296 unigene sequences was constructed from 18 816 TB cDNAs. The distribution of functional...

The medicinal properties ascribed to many plants by the common people for the cure of certain diseases have received the attention of chemists, and where the therapeutic value has been experimentally controlled they are now being utilized in scientific medicine. In an earlier paper I have dealt with the artichoke (Cynara scolymus), which is an important food vegetable often served because of it...

Nicotine, named after the French diplomat Jean Nicot who brought the tobacco plant (Nicotiana tabacum) to France, isolated in 1828 as the major pharmacologically active compound in this plant (Posselt & Reimann, 1828), structurally identified between 1890 and 1893 (Pinner, 1893; Pinner & Wolffenstein, 1891), and first synthesized chemically in 1903 (Pictet, 1903), acts on various subtypes of ni...