The patient with left ventricular systolic dysfunction now and in the future.

This review provides a concise overview of the current understanding of chronic heart failure, focusing on the landmark clinical trials that form the basis of clinical management of patients with left ventricular systolic dysfunction.

Use of Platelet Preparations in Facial Rejuvenation and Wound Healing Remains Unproven.

UNLABELLED: There is growing interest in the use of platelet derivatives in facial aesthetic surgery and wound healing. Sclafani et al. have concluded from their review of the literature that the vast majority of studies show a significant and measurable effect on facial aesthetic outcomes with the use of these platelet preparations. We suggest that an alternative review of the same literature may well have produced a different set of conclusions. LEVEL OF EVIDENCE V: This journal requires that authors assign a level of evidence to each article. For a full description of these Evidence-Based Medicine ratings, please refer to the Table of Contents or the online Instructions to Authors www.springer.com/00266.

Isoflavone composition and antioxidant capacity of modified-lipoxygenase soybeans grown in Maryland.

Maryland-grown soybean lines modified for low lipoxygenase-1 (LOX-1) content and a traditional nonmodified cultivar were analyzed for fatty acid composition, total phenolic content (TPC), isoflavone composition, relative DPPH• scavenging capacity (RDSC), and hydroxyl radical scavenging capacity (HOSC). Soybean lines included black, brown, and yellow soybeans. TPC of all soybean lines ranged from 2.84 to 4.74 mg gallic acid equiv (GAE)/g flour. Total isoflavones were between 2.78 and 8.66 µmol/g flour. RDSC of all lines was between 0.48 and 14.62 µmol Trolox equiv (TE)/g flour, and HOSC ranged from 53.57 to 135.52 µmol TE/g flour. Some modified-LOX genotypes demonstrated antioxidant capacity and/or isoflavone content similar to or higher than those of the nonmodified cultivar (P < 0.05). Black soybeans demonstrated higher TPC and RDSC than most yellow soybean lines, although they did not have higher isoflavone content. The results demonstrate that modification of the LOX trait did not necessarily alter the antioxidant capacity or chemical composition of the experimental soybean lines when compared with a nonmodified cultivar. These soybean lines may be studied further for nutraceutical properties and use in functional foods.

High-throughput assay for detection of soybean lipoxygenase-1.

A high-throughput assay was developed to detect soybean lipoxygenase 1 (LOX-1) using a multilabel plate reader. The assay was also adapted to a single cell fluorometer. Fluorescein is degraded by linoleic hydroperoxide produced from soybean lipoxygenase and linoleic acid. The decrease in fluorescence is measured over time, and the area-under-the-curve (AUC) is used to quantify the LOX-1 content of soybean extract. A dose-dependent response is seen with varied dilutions of pure LOX enzyme or soybean extracts. Percent recovery was between 97% and 108%, and relative standard deviation was 4.3%. Advantages of the assay include the reduced preparation time of samples and reduced use of reagents in the high-throughput assay. Multiple samples can be measured in a single run with a multilabel plate reader.

Antioxidant properties, phytochemical composition, and antiproliferative activity of Maryland-grown soybeans with colored seed coats.

This study characterized and compared 18 colored seed coat soybeans for the isoflavone, total phenolic, and cyanidin-3-glucoside (Cy-3-glc) contents of their flour extracts and the fatty acid composition and carotenoid and alpha-tocopherol contents of their oils. Antioxidant assays also assessed activity of the flour extracts against peroxyl, hydroxyl, and ABTS(+) radicals. Black seed coat soybeans had the highest TPC, ORAC, HOSC, and ABTS(+) radical scavenging values, in addition to the highest isoflavone content, and were the only color to contain Cy-3-glc. Five soybeans (two black and one each brown, yellow, and green) were selected to test their effects on HT-29 human colorectal cancer cell growth. The effects of the hydrolyzed and unhydrolyzed extracts were compared to an aglycone isoflavone standard mixture of the same total molar concentration as the highest soybean concentration of 15 mg of seed flour equiv/mL of treatment media. All high doses of hydrolyzed soybean treatments except the green genotype significantly reduced cell number compared to control at 3 h of treatment time, whereas the high dose of isoflavone standard treatment took 72 h to show a significant reduction (P < 0.05).

Effect of genotype, environment, and their interaction on chemical composition and antioxidant properties of low-linolenic soybeans grown in Maryland.

Eight soybean genotypes grown in three environments in Maryland were analyzed for total phenolic content (TPC), antioxidant capacity, isoflavone composition, lutein, tocopherols, fatty acid composition, and oil content. Fatty acid composition, isoflavones, lutein, tocopherols, and specific antioxidant assays had significant variation by genotype (G) (P < 0.05). Environment (E) had a significant effect on fatty acids, lutein, individual tocopherols, oxygen radical absorbance capacity (ORAC), and the isoflavone glycitein (P < 0.05). In addition, the interaction between genotype and environment (G x E) showed a significant effect on antioxidant capacity, isoflavones, lutein, tocopherols, and fatty acids (P < 0.05). Factorial designed analysis of variance of all data indicated that G had a larger effect than E on the majority of fatty acids, total isoflavones, lutein, and total tocopherols. E had a larger effect than G on stearic acid (18:0), glycitein, delta-tocopherol, and ORAC. The results of this study show that the genotype, growing environment, and their interactions in Maryland-grown soybeans may alter the levels of specific health-enhancing properties.

Gene expression profiling of Japanese psoriatic skin reveals an increased activity in molecular stress and immune response signals.

Gene expression profiling was performed on biopsies of affected and unaffected psoriatic skin and normal skin from seven Japanese patients to obtain insights into the pathways that control this disease. HUG95A Affymetrix DNA chips that contained oligonucleotide arrays of approximately 12,000 well-characterized human genes were used in the study. The statistical analysis of the Affymetrix data, based on the ranking of the Student t-test statistic, revealed a complex regulation of molecular stress and immune gene responses. The majority of the 266 induced genes in affected and unaffected psoriatic skin were involved with interferon mediation, immunity, cell adhesion, cytoskeleton restructuring, protein trafficking and degradation, RNA regulation and degradation, signalling transduction, apoptosis and atypical epidermal cellular proliferation and differentiation. The disturbances in the normal protein degradation equilibrium of skin were reflected by the significant increase in the gene expression of various protease inhibitors and proteinases, including the induced components of the ATP/ubiquitin-dependent non-lysosomal proteolytic pathway that is involved with peptide processing and presentation to T cells. Some of the up-regulated genes, such as TGM1, IVL, FABP5, CSTA and SPRR, are well-known psoriatic markers involved in atypical epidermal cellular organization and differentiation. In the comparison between the affected and unaffected psoriatic skin, the transcription factor JUNB was found at the top of the statistical rankings for the up-regulated genes in affected skin, suggesting that it has an important but as yet undefined role in psoriasis. Our gene expression data and analysis suggest that psoriasis is a chronic interferon- and T-cell-mediated immune disease of the skin where the imbalance in epidermal cellular structure, growth and differentiation arises from the molecular antiviral stress signals initiating inappropriate immune responses.

FBSA: feature-based sequence alignment technique for very large sequences.

The ability to align pairs of very large molecular sequences is essential for a range of comparative genomic studies. However, given the complexity of genomic sequences, it has been difficult to devise a systematic method that can align - even within the same species - pairs of large sequences. Most existing approaches typically attempt to align nucleotide sequences while ignoring valuable features contained within them, eg they filter out low-complexity regions and retroelements before aligning the sequences. However, features are then added post-alignment for visualisation and analysis purposes. We argue that repetitive elements and other features (such as genes, exons and regulatory elements) should be part of the alignment process. A hierarchical approach that aligns the biologically relevant features before aligning the detailed nucleotide sequences has a number of interesting characteristics: (1) features define 'alignment anchor points' that can guide meaningful nucleotide alignment; (2) features can be weighted; (3) a hierarchical approach would identify only meaningful regions to be aligned; (4) nucleotide sequences can be described as sequences of features and non-features, providing a natural mechanism to divide the sequences for processing; and (5) computational speed is significantly faster than other approaches. In this paper, we describe and discuss a feature-based approach to aligning large genome sequences. We refer to this as 'feature-based sequence alignment'.

Microarray analysis using bioinformatics analysis audit trails (BAATs).

Bioinformatics analysis plays an integrative role in genomics and functional genomics. The ability to conduct quality managed, hypothesis-driven bioinformatics analysis with the plethora of data available is mandatory. Biological interpretation of this data is dependent on versions of databases, programs and the parameters used. Thus, tracking and auditing the analyses process is important. This paper outlines what we term Bioinformatics Analysis Audit Trails (BAATs) and describes YABI, a bioinformatics environment that implements BAATs. YABI can incorporate most bioinformatics tools within the same environment, making it a valuable resource.