An Echinococcus multilocularis coproantigen is a surface glycoprotein with unique O-gycosylation

A major surface constituent of Echinococcus multilocularis adult worms, referred to as EmA9 antigen, was immunoaffinity purified and identified as a high molecular weight glycoconjugate. Labelling studies using the monoclonal antibody MAbEmA9 indicated that this antigen undergoes a regulated expression during the development from the larval to the adult parasite. Chemical modification of carbohydrate by periodate oxidation resulted in a reduced reactivity with antigen specific antibodies. Non-reductive beta-elimination of the purified molecule indicated the presence of O-linked glycans attached to threonine residues. Carbohydrate compositional analyses indicated the presence of N- and O-glycans with the ratio of carbohydrate to protein being 1.5:1 (w/w). N- and O-linked glycans were released by hydrazinolysis and analysed as 2-aminobenzamide derivatised glycans by mass spectrometry together with HPLC and enzymatic sequencing. Novel linear O-linked saccharides with multiple beta-HexNAc extensions of reducing end Gal were identified. N-linked glycans were also detected with oligomannose and mono-, bi-, tri- and tetra-antennary type structures, most of which were found to be core-fucosylated. Taken together, the results indicate that the EmA9 antigen is a glycoprotein located at the outer surface of the adult E. multilocularis. The observation that the EmA9 antigen expression is developmentally regulated suggests an involvement of this glycoprotein in the establishment of the parasite in its canine hos

An Evaluation of Surface Urban Heat Islands in Two Contrasting Cities

This thesis presents a comparative study on surface urban heat islands effects in Baghdad and Perth. The first part evaluates expansion of built-up areas and quantifies its effects on land surface temperature patterns. The second part examines the extent to which the urban thermal environment is influenced by spatial patterns of land use and land cover (LULC) categories. The final part investigates the thermophysical behaviour of various urban LULC categories using albedo and LST parameters

Editorial: Minimally invasive surgery as a mean of improving fertility: What do we know so far?

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Immunohistochemical Expression of Fibroblast Growth Factor Receptor 3 and Cyclooxygenase-2 in Urinary Bladder Carcinomas with Correlation of Schistosomiasis in Egyptian Patients

BACKGROUND: In Egypt, schistosomal infestation is a leading cause of bladder cancer. A mutation in the fibroblast growth factor receptor 3 (FGFR-3) gene is the most common and most specific genetic abnormality in bladder cancer. Similarly, cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) is an inducible, pro-inflammatory enzyme with previous studies showing higher expression in schistosomal-associated bladder cancer. AIM OF THE STUDY: The aim of the study was to evaluate the immunohistochemical expression of FGFR3 and COX2 in bladder carcinoma and correlates their expression to the associated schistosomal infestation to implicate possible therapeutic treatments. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This retrospective study included a total of 90 cases of archived, formalin fixed, paraffin-embedded tissue blocks that included variable subtypes and grades of urothelial carcinomas. Immunohistochemistry for expression of FGFR-3 and COX2 was performed using a standard avidin-biotin-peroxidase system. RESULTS: About 73.3% of the total cases (66 cases) showed variable positive reactivity for FGFR3, of which 33.3% (22 cases) were associated with bilharzia infection. A statistically significant correlation was detected between FGFR-3 and tumor size, grade, histologic subtype, LN status, lymphovascular invasion, and stage. About 83.3% of the total cases (75 cases) showed variable positive immunoreactivity for COX-2, of which 37.3% (28 cases) were bilharzial-associated. A positive correlation was established between COX-2 and grade, concomitant in situ changes and cases associated with bilharzia infection. CONCLUSION: FGFR-3 can be used as a prognostic marker for low-grade urothelial tumors. Results also portray that COX-2 has an inflammatory inciting role in bladder carcinoma development, especially in patients with a history of schistosomiasis (bilharziasis). Both COX-2 and FGFR-3 should be explored further for its use alone or in combination with conventional treatment, to reduce the recurrence rate and progression of superficial (low grade) tumors

Distribution of Endophytic Fungi in Leaves of Azadirachta indica A. JUSS. (Neem) of Panchmarhi Biosphere Reserve

Total 85 endophytic fungi of 10 genera were isolated from 200 segments of fresh Azadirachta indica leaves collected from Panchmarhi biosphere reserve. The endophytic fungi recovered belong to hyphomycetes (68.2%), coelomycetes (19.99%), ascomycetes and sterile mycelium (5.88%) each. The most dominant endophytes observed were Trichoderma (21.17%), Pestalotiopsis spp. (16.47%) and Penicillium (15.29%)

Optimizing community detection in social networks using antlion and K-median

Antlion Optimization (ALO) is one of the latest population based optimization methods that proved its good performance in a variety of applications. The ALO algorithm copies the hunting mechanism of antlions to ants in nature. Community detection in social networks is conclusive to understanding the concepts of the networks. Identifying network communities can be viewed as a problem of clustering a set of nodes into communities. k-median clustering is one of the popular techniques that has been applied in clustering. The problem of clustering network can be formalized as an optimization problem where a qualitatively objective function that captures the intuition of a cluster as a set of nodes with better in ternal connectivity than external connectivity is selected to be optimized. In this paper, a mixture antlion optimization and k-median for solving the community detection problem is proposed and named as K-median Modularity ALO. Experimental results which are applied on real life networks show the ability of the mixture antlion optimization and k-median to detect successfully an optimized community structure based on putting the modularity as an objective function

Near-Infrared Imaging for Better Identifying the Cleavage Plane Between the Uterine Fibroid and its Pseudocapsule

No abstract availabl