almonds are self incompatible, the incompatibility being controlled by a multi allelic (s-alleles) single gene. the incompatibility alleles were studied in 96 samples of wild almonds and related prunus species from 10 taxonomic groups. polymerase chain reactions were carried out with six primer sets including: three degenerate primer pairs (paconsi-f(fam)/em-pc1consrd, paconsi-f(fam)/em-pc3cons...

it is widely believed that pain has a profound effect on health related quality of life. this study was conducted to assess quality of life in patients suffering from different density of chronic low back pain. the sample consisted of 101 patients with chronic low back pain attending to the rheumatology research center of tehran university of medical sciences between july and september 2003. al...

The Friend virus susceptibility gene 2 (Fv2) controls the polyclonal expansion of infected cells that occurs early during Friend erythroleukemia virus infection. Fv2 has recently been shown to encode a truncated form of the Stk receptor tyrosine kinase (Sf-Stk). This observation, coupled with earlier work, suggested that Sf-Stk drives the expansion of infected cells by forming a complex with th...

Steroidogenic factor-1 (SF-1), a nuclear receptor transcription factor, has a pivotal role in adrenal and gonadal development in humans and mice. It was previously shown that Sf-1 dosage critically regulates adrenal size and function in mice, while in humans mutation of a single SF-1 allele leads to adrenal and/or gonadal dysgenesis. Recent studies have elucidated the role of an increased SF-1 ...

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES Hemochromatosis is a genetic disorder characterized by progressive iron overload which leads to early abnormalities of iron parameters (increased transferrin saturation =TS and serum ferritin=SF) and late clinical complications. The disease is prevalently due to C282Y and H63D mutations in the HFE gene, but additional molecular defects are present in a minority of pati...

Background: Over the past decade, genome wide association studies (GWAS) have identified JAZF1 locus as a risk for several autoimmune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis (RA) 1 . However, exact causal variants in and their underlying regulatory events contributing to RA are still not known. Here, we focus on effect of these gene expression synovial fibroblasts (SF). Objectives: To characte...

BACKGROUND Polymorphisms of vitamin D receptor (VDR) contribute to the pathogenesis of multiple autoimmune conditions. METHODS We investigated the incidence of VDR polymorphisms (rs1544410-BsmI; rs7975232-ApaI; rs731236-TaqI) in a group of patients with primary sclerosing cholangitis (PSC, n = 275) and in healthy controls (n = 376). Additionally, correlations of the VDR polymorphisms with cli...