In infected humans, hepatitis C virus (HCV) exists as a quasispecies typically characterized by multiple nucleotide substitutions within the second envelope gene hypervariable region 1 (HVR1). In the current study, we used heteroduplex gel shift analysis (GSA) of HVR1 sequences amplified directly from patients' sera to define two patterns of HCV quasispecies: (i) simple quasispecies, which gave...

The ability of dopamine1 (D1) receptors to inhibit luminal Na -H exchanger (NHE) activity in renal proximal tubules and induce a natriuresis is impaired in spontaneously hypertensive rats (SHR). However, it is not clear whether the defect is at the level of the D1 receptor, Gsa, or effector proteins. The coupling of the D1 receptor to Gsa and NHE3 was studied in renal brush border membranes (BB...

The idea of exploiting Global Sensitivity Analysis (GSA) to make Evolutionary Algorithms more effective seems very attractive: intuitively, a probabilistic analysis can prove useful to a stochastic optimisation technique. GSA, that gathers information about the behaviour of functions receiving some inputs and delivering one or several outputs, is based on computationally-intensive stochastic sa...

delta-Aminolevulinic acid (ALA), the universal biosynthetic precursor of tetrapyrrole pigments, is synthesized from glutamate in plants, algae, and many bacteria via a three-step process that begins with activation by ligation of glutamate to tRNA(Glu), followed by reduction to glutamate-1-semialdehyde (GSA) and conversion of GSA to ALA. The GSA aminotransferase step requires no substrate other...

UNLABELLED The aim of the present study was to investigate asialoglycoprotein receptor (ASGP-R) status in tumor-bearing livers and early after their sectorial resection employing 99mTc-DTPA-galactosyl human serum albumin (99mTc-GSA) dynamic SPECT. METHODS Ten normal liver controls and 44 liver tumor patients who underwent sectorial hepatectomy were included in the study. 99mTc-GSA dynamic SPE...

The new AASHTO Mechanistic-Empirical Pavement Design Guide (MEPDG) performance predictions for the anticipated climatic and traffic conditions depend on the values of the numerous input parameters that characterize the pavement materials, layers, design features, and condition. This paper proposes comprehensive local sensitivity analyses (LSA) and global sensitivity analyses (GSA) methodologies...

UNLABELLED Small-animal models are crucial to gain insights in the complex recovery mechanisms of liver function during liver regeneration. (99m)Tc-Mebrofenin hepatobiliary scintigraphy (HBS) has been introduced for noninvasive assessment of liver function in the clinical setting as well as in experimental research. However, HBS is restricted to planar modalities in small animals because hepati...

Student school engagement, or the person-environment fit between a student and the student’s school, is a construct that has received increasing attention in the school psychology literature in recent years. However, little research has examined this construct among lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning (LGBTQ) students or analyzed whether factors such as access to safe adu...

The concept of intelligently controlling the search process of gravitational search algorithm (GSA) is introduced to develop a novel data mining technique. The proposed method is called fuzzy GSA miner (FGSA-miner). At first a fuzzy controller is designed for adaptively controlling the gravitational coefficient and the number of effective objects, as two important parameters which play major ro...