Active cellular transport is a fundamental mechanism for protein and vesicle delivery, cell cycle, and molecular degradation. Viruses can hijack the transport system and use it to reach the nucleus. Most transport processes consist of intermittent dynamics, where the motion of a particle, such as a virus, alternates between pure Brownian and directed movement along microtubules. In this Rapid C...

Autoantibodies against components of neutrophil cytoplasm develop during adult vasculitic diseases such as Wegener's granulomatosis and microscopic polyarteritis, and they are predominantly of the IgG class. Similar but distinct antibodies have been described in children with Kawasaki disease and both IgM and IgG class antibodies are represented. This adds another clinically distinct childhood ...

Overlapping of cervical cells and poor contrast of cell cytoplasm are the major issues in accurate detection and segmentation of cervical cells. An unsupervised cell segmentation approach is presented here. Cell clump segmentation was carried out using the extended depth of field (EDF) image created from the images of different focal planes. A modified Otsu method with prior class weights is pr...

Studies of the intracellular localization of mRNA have clearly demonstrated that certain subsets of mRNA are concentrated in discrete locations within the cytoplasm. Localization is one aspect of the post-transcriptional control of gene expression, and is intertwined with the translation and turnover of mRNA to achieve the goal of local protein production. Different mechanisms have been identif...

Accumulating in vivo and in vitro evidence supports the hypothesis that antineutrophil cytoplasm autoantibodies (ANCA) with specificity for proteinase 3 (PR3) and myeloperoxidase (MPO) are involved in the pathophysiology of small-vessel vasculitis. The best-described effector function of these autoantibodies is stimulation of neutrophils to produce reactive oxygen species and to release proteol...

OBJECTIVE To determine positivity and clinical correlation of anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibodies (ANCA), taking into account the interference of antinuclear antibodies (ANA). MATERIAL AND METHODS A prospective study was conducted in the Laboratory of Immunology of the National Cuban Center of Medical Genetic during one year. Two hounded sixty-seven patients with indication for ANCA determ...

We introduce a new method for mesoscopic modeling of protein diffusion in an entire cell. This method is based on the construction of a three-dimensional digital model cell from confocal microscopy data. The model cell is segmented into the cytoplasm, nucleus, plasma membrane, and nuclear envelope, in which environment protein motion is modeled by fully numerical mesoscopic methods. Finer cellu...

In the amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and frontotemporal lobar degeneration (FTLD) neurodegeneration field, two nuclear factors (first TDP-43, then FUS) have recently made researchers realize that alterations at the level of hnRNP proteins and RNA metabolism may have a decisive function in disease origin and progression. However, the exact mechanisms through which this occurs are still lar...