To investigate changes in systemic and regional hemodynamics during the development of human hypertension, we simultaneously measured cardiac index (CI) by the indocyanine green (ICG) dye dilution method, hepatosplanchnic blood flow (HBF) by the ICG clearance method using a two-compartment model, and renal blood flow (RBF) by the p-aminohippurate clearance method in patients with borderline and...

Sickle-cell anaemia (SCA) is an inherited blood disorder exhibiting heterogeneous cell morphology and abnormal rheology, especially under hypoxic conditions. By using a multiscale red blood cell (RBC) model with parameters derived from patient-specific data, we present a mesoscopic computational study of the haemodynamic and rheological characteristics of blood from SCA patients with hydroxyure...

Spatiotemporal modulation of Ras signaling from different intracellular compartments requires mechanisms allowing Ras and its signals to navigate across cells. Here, we describe one mechanism by which clusters of palmitoylated H-Ras and N-Ras isoforms but not nonpalmitoylated K-Ras diffuse through the cytoplasm, independently of ATP, on fast, randomly moving, small cytosolic nanoparticles ("ras...

Estimates of mutation rates for the noncoding hypervariable Region I (HVR-I) of mitochondrial DNA vary widely, depending on whether they are inferred from phylogenies (assuming that molecular evolution is clock-like) or directly from pedigrees. All pedigree-based studies so far were conducted on populations of European origin. In this article, we analyzed 19 deep-rooting pedigrees in a populati...

In a doping control case, a urine sample was tested positive for nandrolon. We were asked by the athlete to perform DNA investigations on the questioned urine sample and compare these to a fresh blood sample taken from the athlete in order to detect or rule out manipulation and/or switching of the samples. The urine sample had been collected nine months prior to the investigation and had been s...

Human astrovirus nonstructural C-terminal nsP1a protein (nsP1a/4) colocalizes with the endoplasmic reticulum and viral RNA. It has been suggested that nsP1a/4 protein is involved in the RNA replication process in endoplasmic reticulum-derived intracellular membranes. A hypervariable region (HVR) is contained in the nsP1a/4 protein, and different replicative patterns can be distinguished dependi...

Antigenic variation in microbial surface proteins represents an apparent paradox, because the variable region must retain an important function, while exhibiting extensive immunological variability. We studied this problem for a group of streptococcal M proteins in which the approximately 50-residue hypervariable regions (HVRs) show essentially no residue identity but nevertheless bind the same...

OBJECTIVE The relationship between variants of the leptin gene (LEP) and obesity and metabolic biomarkers was investigated in Brazilian individuals. SUBJECTS AND METHODS One-hundred-ten obese (BMI > 30 kg/m(2)) and 100 non-obese individuals (145 women and 65 men, aged 49 +/- 14 years) were randomly selected. Plasma leptin, glycemia, serum lipid measurements and LEP -2548G>A and 3'HVR polymorp...

Transient global brain ischemia induced by cardiac arrest and resuscitation (CAR) results in reperfusion injury associated with oxidative stress. Oxidative stress is known to produce delayed selective neuronal cell loss and impairment of brainstem function, leading to post-resuscitation mortality. Levels of 4-hydroxy-2-nonenal (HNE) modified protein adducts, a marker of oxidative stress, was fo...