PURPOSE Increased levels of serum human kallikrein-2 (hK2) and an hK2 gene (KLK2) variant are positively associated for prostate cancer, but the relationships between them remain unclear. We examined five variants of the KLK2 gene to further define its relevance to prostate cancer susceptibility and hK2 levels. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN We genotyped 645 men with biopsy-proven prostate cancer (cases...

Agro-ecosystem models have been widely used to quantify soil organic carbon (SOC) dynamics based on digital soil maps. However, most of the studies use soil data of single or limited choices of map scales, thus the influence of map scales on SOC dynamics has rarely been quantified. In this study, six digital paddy soils databases of the Tai-Lake region in China at scales of 1:50,000 (P005), 1:2...

DNA methylation is essential for adipose deposition in mammals. We screened SNPs of the bovine DNA methyltransferase 3b (DNMT3b) gene in Snow Dragon beef, a commercial beef cattle population in China. Nine SNPs were found in the population and three of six novel SNPs were chosen for genotyping and analyzing a possible association with 16 meat quality traits. The frequencies of the alleles...

BACKGROUND The etiology of Autoimmune chronic uveitis (ACU) is still unknown; NOD2/CARD15 gene mutations are responsible for the Blau Syndrome and can induce uveitis in animal models. PRESENTATION OF THE HYPOTHESIS Aim of our study was to assess if NOD2/CARD15 variants have a role in the etiology or in the clinical course of patients with ACU, either idiopathic or associated with other inflam...

Previous studies have demonstrated that depletion of Gas7 impedes neurite outgrowth in primary cultures of Purkinje neurons, and that Gas7 promotes neurite outgrowth in PC12 cells. To investigate the physiological function of Gas7, we generated by homologous recombination a Gas7-mutant mouse which produced a Gas7 variant protein with an in-frame deletion of amino acid residues 103–120. Only low...

Toll-like receptor 4 (TLR4), a recently identified vertebrate receptor, serves a pivotal role in immune responses. The aim of the present study was to investigate the association between the human TLR4 gene and recurrent spontaneous miscarriage (RSM). A total of 306 RSM patents and 306 age-matched controls were genotyped for four single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) of the human TLR4 gene (rs...

Genetic mechanisms have been implicated as a cause of some cases of male infertility. Recently, 10 novel genes involved in human spermatogenesis were identified by microarray analysis of human testicular tissue. One of these is spermatogenesis-associated 17 (SPATA17). To investigate whether defects in the SPATA17 gene are associated with azoospermia due to meiotic arrest, a mutational analysis ...

Spermatogenesis is an androgen-dependent process and polymorphisms in genes encoding androgen-metabolizing enzymes may be associated with impaired male fertility. The enzyme steroid 5α-reductase converts testosterone into dihydrotestosterone. We analyzed genotype frequencies of 5 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs 1-5) (rs632148, rs523349, rs2300701, rs2268797, and rs12470143) in the steroid...