The present case-control study explored the interaction between marine-derived n-3 long chain polyunsaturated fatty acids (n-3 LC PUFAs) and uric acid (UA) on glucose metabolism and risk of type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Two hundred and eleven healthy subjects in control group and 268 T2DM subjects in case group were included. Plasma phospholipid (PL) fatty acids and biochemical parameters we...

The in vivo roles of the immunosurveillance mechanism of the host against leukemia induced by Friend leukemia virus (FLV) were examined. The significance of T-cells in host defense against FLV-induced leukemia was indicated by the fact that thymus-deprived C57BL/6N-nu/nu mice were sensitive to FLV, although normal C57BL/6N mice were, as already reported by many authors, resistant to FLV. In rel...

BACKGROUND & AIMS Cardiac myosin light chain kinase (cMLCK) plays an obligatory role in maintaining the phosphorylation levels of regulatory myosin light chain (MLC2), which is thought to be crucial for regulation of cardiac function. To test this hypothesis, the role played by ventricular MLC2 (MLC2v) phosphorylation was investigated in the phenylephrine-induced increase in twitch tension usin...

Many non-Abelian finite subgroups of SU(3) have been used to explain the flavor structure of the Standard Model. In order to systematize and classify successful models, a detailed knowledge of their mathematical structure is necessary. In this paper we shall therefore look closely at the series of finite non-Abelian groups known as ∆(6n), its smallest members being S3 (n = 1) and S4 (n = 2). Fo...

Developing reliable mouse models for social behaviour is challenging. Different tests have been proposed, but most of them consist of rather artificial confrontations of unfamiliar mice in novel arenas or are relying on social stress induced by aggressive conspecifics. Natural social interaction in home cage in laboratory has not been investigated well. IntelliCage is a fully automated home-cag...

Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) represents a complex clinical scenario of altered energy metabolism and increased fracture incidence. The C57BL/6 mouse model of diet-induced obesity has been used to study the mechanisms by which altered glucose homeostasis affects bone mass and quality, but genetic variations in substrains of C57BL/6 may have confounded data interpretation. This study investiga...

C57BL/6N inbred mice are used as the genetic background for producing knockout mice in large-scale projects worldwide; however, the genetic divergence among C57BL/6N-derived substrains has not been verified. Here, we identified novel single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) specific to the C57BL/6NJ strain and selected useful SNPs for the genetic monitoring of C57BL/6N-derived substrains. Informa...

This paper considers representations of graphs as rectangle-visibility graphs and as doubly linear graphs. These are, respectively, graphs whose vertices are isothetic rectangles in the plane with adjacency determined by horizontal and vertical visibility, and graphs that can be drawn as the union of two straight-edged planar graphs. We prove that these graphs have, with n vertices, at most 6n−...

Corticotropin-releasing factor (CRF) exerts a key neuroregulatory control on stress responses in various regions of the mammalian brain, including the hippocampus. Using hippocampal slices, extracts, and whole animals, we investigated the effects of human/rat CRF (h/rCRF) on hippocampal neuronal excitability and hippocampus-dependent learning in two mouse inbred strains, BALB/c and C57BL/6N. In...

Caspase-8 (encoded by the CASP-8 gene) is crucial in generating cell death signals and eliminating potentially malignant cells. Genetic variation in CASP8 may affect susceptibility to cancer. The CASP-8 -652 6N ins/del (rs3834129) polymorphism has been previously reported to influence the progression to several cancers. However, the overall reported studies have shown inconsistent conclusions. ...