The Role of the Vascular System in Degenerative Diseases: Mechanisms and Implications.

Degenerative diseases, encompassing a wide range of conditions affecting various organ systems, pose significant challenges to global healthcare systems. This comprehensive review explores the intricate interplay between the vascular system and degenerative diseases, shedding light on the underlying mechanisms and profound implications for disease progression and management. The pivotal role of the vascular system in maintaining tissue homeostasis is highlighted, as it serves as the conduit for oxygen, nutrients, and immune cells to vital organs and tissues. Due to the vital role of the vascular system in maintaining homeostasis, its dysfunction, characterized by impaired blood flow, endothelial dysfunction, and vascular inflammation, emerges as a common denominator of degenerative diseases across multiple systems. In the nervous system, we explored the influence of vascular factors on neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, emphasizing the critical role of cerebral blood flow regulation and the blood-brain barrier. Within the kidney system, the intricate relationship between vascular health and chronic kidney disease is scrutinized, unraveling the mechanisms by which hypertension and other vascular factors contribute to renal dysfunction. Throughout this review, we emphasize the clinical significance of understanding vascular involvement in degenerative diseases and potential therapeutic interventions targeting vascular health, highlighting emerging treatments and prevention strategies. In conclusion, a profound appreciation of the role of the vascular system in degenerative diseases is essential for advancing our understanding of degenerative disease pathogenesis and developing innovative approaches for prevention and treatment. This review provides a comprehensive foundation for researchers, clinicians, and policymakers seeking to address the intricate relationship between vascular health and degenerative diseases in pursuit of improved patient outcomes and enhanced public health.

A review of the treatment technologies for hexavalent chromium contaminated water.

The toxicity of hexavalent chromium (Cr(VI)) present in the environment has exceeded the current limits or standards and thus may lead to biotic and abiotic catastrophes. Accordingly, several treatments, including chemical, biological, and physical approaches, are being used to reduce Cr(VI) waste in the surrounding environment. This study compares the Cr(VI) treatment approaches from several areas of science and their competence in Cr(VI) removal. As an effective combination of physical and chemical approaches, the coagulation-flocculation technique removes more than 98% of Cr(VI) in less than 30 min. Most membrane filtering approaches can remove up to 90% of Cr(VI). Biological approaches that involve the use of plants, fungi, and bacteria also successfully eliminate Cr(VI) but are difficult to scale up. Each of these approaches has its benefits and drawbacks, and their applicability is determined by the research aims. These approaches are also sustainable and environmentally benign, thus limiting their effects on the ecosystem.

Alzheimer's Amyloid ß Peptide Induces Angiogenesis in an Alzheimer's Disease Model Mouse through Placental Growth Factor and Angiopoietin 2 Expressions.

Increased angiogenesis, especially the pathological type, has been documented in Alzheimer's disease (AD) brains, and it is considered to be activated due to a vascular dysfunction-mediated hypoxic condition. To understand the role of the amyloid ß (Aß) peptide in angiogenesis, we analyzed its effects on the brains of young APP transgenic AD model mice. Immunostaining results revealed that Aß was mainly localized intracellularly, with very few immunopositive vessels, and there was no extracellular deposition at this age. Solanum tuberosum lectin staining demonstrated that compared to their wild-type littermates, the vessel number was only increased in the cortex of J20 mice. CD105 staining also showed an increased number of new vessels in the cortex, some of which were partially positive for collagen4. Real-time PCR results demonstrated that placental growth factor (PlGF) and angiopoietin 2 (AngII) mRNA were increased in both the cortex and hippocampus of J20 mice compared to their wild-type littermates. However, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) mRNA did not change. Immunofluorescence staining confirmed the increased expression of PlGF and AngII in the cortex of the J20 mice. Neuronal cells were positive for PlGF and AngII. Treatment of a neural stem cell line (NMW7) with synthetic Aß1-42 directly increased the expression of PlGF and AngII, at mRNA levels, and AngII at protein levels. Thus, these pilot data indicate that pathological angiogenesis exists in AD brains due to the direct effects of early Aß accumulation, suggesting that the Aß peptide regulates angiogenesis through PlGF and AngII expression.

Attenuation of Immunogenicity in MOG-Induced Oligodendrocytes by the Probiotic Bacterium Lactococcus Sp. PO3.

Background and Objectives: Milk is healthy and includes several vital nutrients and microbiomes. Probiotics in milk and their derivatives modulate the immune system, fight inflammation, and protect against numerous diseases. The present study aimed to isolate novel bacterial species with probiotic potential for neuroinflammation. Materials and Methods: Six milk samples were collected from lactating dairy cows. Bacterial isolates were obtained using standard methods and were evaluated based on probiotic characteristics such as the catalase test, hemolysis, acid/bile tolerance, cell adhesion, and hydrophobicity, as well as in vitro screening. Results: Nine morphologically diverse bacterial isolates were found in six different types of cow's milk. Among the isolates, PO3 displayed probiotic characteristics. PO3 was a Gram-positive rod cell that grew in an acidic (pH-2) salty medium containing bile salt and salinity (8% NaCl). PO3 also exhibited substantial hydrophobicity and cell adhesion. The sequencing comparison of the 16S rRNA genes revealed that PO3 was Lactococcus raffinolactis with a similarity score of 99.3%. Furthermore, PO3 was assessed for its neuroanti-inflammatory activity on human oligodendrocyte (HOG) cell lines using four different neuroimmune markers: signal transducer and activator of transcription (STAT-3), myelin basic protein (MBP), glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP), and GLAC in HOG cell lines induced by MOG. Unlike the rest of the evaluated neuroimmune markers, STAT-3 levels were elevated in the MOG-treated HOG cell lines compared to the untreated ones. The expression level of STAT-3 was attenuated in both PO3-MOG-treated and only PO3-treated cell lines. On the contrary, in PO3-treated cell lines, MBP, GFAP, and GLAC were significantly expressed at higher levels when compared with the MOG-treated cell lines. Conclusions: The findings reported in this article are to be used as a foundation for further in vivo research in order to pave the way for the possible use of probiotics in the treatment of neuroinflammatory diseases, including multiple sclerosis.

Photoprotective effect of 18ß-glycyrrhetinic acid derivatives against ultra violet (UV)-B-Induced skin aging.

Excessive exposure to sun can harm the skin, causing sunburn, photo-aging, and even skin cancer. Different benzylidene derivatives (A02-A18 and A19-A34) of 18ß-Glycyrrhetinic acid (A01) were designed and synthesized in an effort to discover photo-protective compounds against UV-B -induced skin aging. The synthesized derivatives were subjected to cellular viability test using MTT assay in primary Human Dermal Fibroblasts (HDFs). The results indicate A01, A05, A15, A22, A23, A25, A26, A28, A29, A32, A33, and A34 significantly enhanced cell viability of HDFs. Compound A33 at 10 and 25 µM showed a significant photo-protective effect against UV-B (10 mJ/cm2) -induced damage in HDFs. A33 at 25 µM significantly restored the UV-B -induced damage via its potent anti-oxidant, anti-apoptotic effects and ability to prevent collagen degradation. These findings pave the way for further development of A33 as a photo-protective skin agent.

iTRAQ-Based Proteomic Analysis of APP Transgenic Mouse Urine Exosomes.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a common dementia disease in the elderly. To get a better understanding of the pathophysiology, we performed a proteomic analysis of the urine exosomes (U-exo) in AD model mice (J20). The polymer precipitation method was used to isolate U-exo from the urine of 3-month-old J20 and wild-type (WT) mice. Neuron-derived exosome (N-exo) was isolated from U-exo by immunoprecipitation. iTRAQ-based MALDI TOF MS/MS was used for proteomic analysis. The results showed that compared to WT, the levels of 61 and 92 proteins were increased in the J20 U-exo and N-exo, respectively. Gene ontology enrichment analysis demonstrated that the sphingolipid catabolic process, ceramide catabolic process, membrane lipid catabolic process, Aß clearance, and Aß metabolic process were highly enriched in U-exo and N-exo. Among these, Asah1 was shown to be the key protein in lipid metabolism, and clusterin, ApoE, neprilysin, and ACE were related to Aß metabolism and clearance. Furthermore, protein-protein interaction analysis identified four protein complexes where clusterin and ApoE participated as partner proteins. Thus, J20 U-exo and N-exo contain proteins related to lipid- and Aß-metabolism in the early stages of AD, providing a new insight into the underlying pathological mechanism of early AD.

A review of ammonia removal using a biofilm-based reactor and its challenges.

Extensive growth of industries leads to uncontrolled ammonia releases to environment. This can result in significant degradation of the aquatic ecology as well as significant health concerns for humans. Knowing the mechanism of ammonia elimination is the simplest approach to comprehending it. Ammonia has been commonly converted to less hazardous substances either in the form of nitrate or nitrogen gas. Ammonia has been converted into nitrite by ammonia-oxidizing bacteria and further reduced to nitrate by nitrite-oxidizing bacteria in aerobic conditions. Denitrification takes place in an anoxic phase and nitrate is converted into nitrogen gas. It is challenging to remove ammonia by employing technologies that do not incur particularly high costs. Thus, this review paper is focused on biofilm reactors that utilize the nitrification process. Many research publications and patents on biofilm wastewater treatment have been published. However, only a tiny percentage of these projects are for full-scale applications, and the majority of the work was completed within the last few decades. The physicochemical approaches such as ammonia adsorption, coagulation-flocculation, and membrane separation, as well as conventional biological treatments including activated sludge, microalgae, and bacteria biofilm, are briefly addressed in this review paper. The effectiveness of biofilm reactors in removing ammonia was compared, and the microbes that effectively remove ammonia were thoroughly discussed. Overall, biofilm reactors can remove up to 99.7% ammonia from streams with a concentration in range of 16-900 mg/L. As many challenges were identified for ammonia removal using biofilm at a commercial scale, this study offers future perspectives on how to address the most pressing biofilm issues. This review may also improve our understanding of biofilm technologies for the removal of ammonia as well as polishing unit in wastewater treatment plants for the water reuse and recycling, supporting the circular economy concept.

8-Hydroxyquinoline a natural chelating agent from Streptomyces spp. inhibits A549 lung cancer cell lines via BCL2/STAT3 regulating pathways.

Biomolecules from Streptomyces spp. are emerging sources of natural drugs and have been focused on over the decade. The discovery of bioactive chemotherapeutic molecules from soil Streptomyces spp. has opened the medium for the search for natural drugs. In the current study, 8-HOQ was extracted and purified from soil Streptomyces spp. and was evaluated on A549 and BEAS cell lines. The apoptotic and caspase mediated pathways were evaluated using cell proliferation, dual fluorescent staining, migration, invasion and mRNA as well as protein quantification of apoptotic markers. In vitro cytotoxicity test revealed that 8-HOQ possesses potent cytotoxicity activities with IC50 values of 26 µM, 5 µM, 7.2 µM at 24 h, 48 h, and 72 h respectively against A549 lung cancer cell lines. The result also demonstrated that 8-HOQ from Streptomyces spp significantly inhibited the A549 lung cancer cell lines and activated the intrinsic pathways of apoptosis. The caspase-3 and caspase-8 activities were potentially elevated in 8-HOQ treated A549 cell lines and confirmed that 8-HOQ mediated A549 cancer cell death through the intrinsic pathway. The results explored caspase-mediated apoptosis as a mechanism underlying the inhibition of cancer cell viability in a dose-dependent manner. The expression of P53, BCL2 and STAT3 were inhibited in A549 cell lines and confirmed the metastasis inhibitory potential of 8-HOQ by blocking migration and invasion in A549 cell lines. These results indicated that 8-HOQ from Streptomyces spp. potentially inhibited growth and migration of A549 lung cancer cell lines.

Accuracy of Using Generative Adversarial Networks for Glaucoma Detection: Systematic Review and Bibliometric Analysis.

BACKGROUND: Glaucoma leads to irreversible blindness. Globally, it is the second most common retinal disease that leads to blindness, slightly less common than cataracts. Therefore, there is a great need to avoid the silent growth of this disease using recently developed generative adversarial networks (GANs). OBJECTIVE: This paper aims to introduce a GAN technology for the diagnosis of eye disorders, particularly glaucoma. This paper illustrates deep adversarial learning as a potential diagnostic tool and the challenges involved in its implementation. This study describes and analyzes many of the pitfalls and problems that researchers will need to overcome to implement this kind of technology. METHODS: To organize this review comprehensively, articles and reviews were collected using the following keywords: ("Glaucoma," "optic disc," "blood vessels") and ("receptive field," "loss function," "GAN," "Generative Adversarial Network," "Deep learning," "CNN," "convolutional neural network" OR encoder). The records were identified from 5 highly reputed databases: IEEE Xplore, Web of Science, Scopus, ScienceDirect, and PubMed. These libraries broadly cover the technical and medical literature. Publications within the last 5 years, specifically 2015-2020, were included because the target GAN technique was invented only in 2014 and the publishing date of the collected papers was not earlier than 2016. Duplicate records were removed, and irrelevant titles and abstracts were excluded. In addition, we excluded papers that used optical coherence tomography and visual field images, except for those with 2D images. A large-scale systematic analysis was performed, and then a summarized taxonomy was generated. Furthermore, the results of the collected articles were summarized and a visual representation of the results was presented on a T-shaped matrix diagram. This study was conducted between March 2020 and November 2020. RESULTS: We found 59 articles after conducting a comprehensive survey of the literature. Among the 59 articles, 30 present actual attempts to synthesize images and provide accurate segmentation/classification using single/multiple landmarks or share certain experiences. The other 29 articles discuss the recent advances in GANs, do practical experiments, and contain analytical studies of retinal disease. CONCLUSIONS: Recent deep learning techniques, namely GANs, have shown encouraging performance in retinal disease detection. Although this methodology involves an extensive computing budget and optimization process, it saturates the greedy nature of deep learning techniques by synthesizing images and solves major medical issues. This paper contributes to this research field by offering a thorough analysis of existing works, highlighting current limitations, and suggesting alternatives to support other researchers and participants in further improving and strengthening future work. Finally, new directions for this research have been identified.

Aggregation of Cystatin C Changes Its Inhibitory Functions on Protease Activities and Amyloid ß Fibril Formation.

Cystatin C (CST3) is an endogenous cysteine protease inhibitor, which is implicated in cerebral amyloid angiopathy (CAA). In CAA, CST3 is found to be aggregated. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether this aggregation could alter the activity of the protein relevant to the molecular pathology of CAA. A system of CST3 protein aggregation was established, and the aggregated protein was characterized. The results showed that CST3 aggregated both at 80 °C without agitation, and at 37 °C with agitation in a time-dependent manner. However, the levels of aggregation were high and appeared earlier at 80 °C. Dot-blot immunoassay for oligomers revealed that CST3 could make oligomeric aggregates at the 37 °C condition. Electron microscopy showed that CST3 could make short fibrillary aggregates at 37 °C. Cathepsin B activity assay demonstrated that aggregated CST3 inhibited the enzyme activity less efficiently at pH 5.5. At 7.4 pH, it lost the inhibitory properties almost completely. In addition, aggregated CST3 did not inhibit Aß1-40 fibril formation, rather, it slightly increased it. CST3 immunocytochemistry showed that the protein was positive both in monomeric and aggregated CST3-treated neuronal culture. However, His6 immunocytochemistry revealed that the internalization of exogenous recombinant CST3 by an astrocytoma cell culture was higher when the protein was aggregated compared to its monomeric form. Finally, MTT cell viability assay showed that the aggregated form of CST3 was more toxic than the monomeric form. Thus, our results suggest that aggregation may result in a loss-of-function phenotype of CST3, which is toxic and responsible for cellular degeneration.

Aquaculture industry: Supply and demand, best practices, effluent and its current issues and treatment technology.

The aquaculture industry has become increasingly important and is rapidly growing in terms of providing a protein food source for human consumption. With the increase in the global population, demand for aquaculture is high and is estimated to reach 62% of the total global production by 2030. In 2018, it was reported that the demand for aquaculture was 46% of the total production, and with the current positive trends, it may be possible to increase tremendously in the coming years. China is still one of the main players in global aquaculture production. Due to high demand, aquaculture production generates large volumes of effluent, posing a great danger to the environment. Aquaculture effluent comprises solid waste and dissolved constituents, including nutrients and contaminants of emerging concern, thereby bringing detrimental impacts such as eutrophication, chemical toxicity, and food insecurity. Waste can be removed through culture systems, constructed wetlands, biofloc, and other treatment technologies. Some methods have the potential to be applied as zero-waste discharge treatment. Thus, this article analyses the supply and demand for aquaculture products, the best practices adopted in the aquaculture industry, effluent characteristics, current issues, and effluent treatment technology.

Perception of nurses on the practice environment: experience from Malaysia.

INTRODUCTION: Positive professional practice environments are crucial to safeguard a healthy and safe working conditions for health workforce, including nurses; so as to ensure provision of quality healthcare and safety of patient. METHODS: This was a cross-sectional study to assess nurses' perceptions towards nursing practice environment and factors associated with their perceptions. A validated Practice Environment Scale of the Nursing Work Index (PESNWI) questionnaire was administered to nurses working in two Ministry of Health hospitals. The questionnaire comprises of five subscales: Participation, Foundation, Managers Support, Workforce Adequacy and Physician/Nurse Relations. Mean scores of >2.50 were considered as favourable, and ≤2.50 were considered as unfavourable. Simple linear and multiple linear regression analysis were employed to identify factors associated with their perceptions. Analysis was carried out using STATA version 14.0. RESULTS: A total of 366 respondents took part in the study, with a response rate of 98.4%. Majority were working shift (89.6%) and working extended hours (62.3%). In general, the nursing practice environments were rated as favourable. Overall mean score was 2.90±0.03 and four out of five subscales' mean scores were >2.50. Foundation for quality nursing care was perceived as the most favourable subscale, while workforce adequacy was perceived as the least favourable. There were statistically significant association between working extended hours, doing double shift and working during day off with perceived unfavourable workforce adequacy. CONCLUSION: Nursing practice environment was perceived as favourable in the studied hospitals. Policy makers, service providers, and hospital managers could explore further on human resource planning and management of nursing personnel to tackle the issue of nurse staffing in the country.

Bioflocculant production using palm oil mill and sago mill effluent as a fermentation feedstock: Characterization and mechanism of flocculation.

This study was conducted to examine the production of bioflocculants using agricultural wastewater as a fermentation feedstock under different temperatures and incubation times. The mechanism of flocculation was studied to gain a detailed understanding of the flocculation activity. The highest bioflocculant yield (2.03 g/L) at a temperature of 40 °C was produced in a palm oil mill effluent medium (BioF-POME). Bioflocculant produced from a fermented SME medium (BioF-SME) showed the highest activity. The flocculation tests for colour and turbidity removal from lake water indicated that BioF-SME and BioF-POME performed comparably to commercial alum. Analyses of the bioflocculants using liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) found that the bioflocculants contained xylose and glucose. The mechanism study showed that flocculation occurred through charge neutralization and interparticle bridging between the bioflocculant polymer and the particles in the lake water. Thus, agricultural wastewater can be used as a fermentation feedstock for high-quality bioflocculants.

Evaluation of autonomic functions of patients with multiple system atrophy and Parkinson's disease by head-up tilt test.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the autonomic neural function in Parkinson's disease (PD) and multiple system atrophy (MSA) with head-up tilt test and spectral analysis of cardiovascular parameters. This study included 15 patients with MSA, 15 patients with PD, and 29 healthy control (HC) subjects. High frequency power of the RR interval (RR-HF), the ratio of low frequency power of RR interval to RR-HF (RR-LF/HF) and LF power of systolic BP were used to evaluate parasympathetic, cardiac sympathetic and vasomotor sympathetic functions, respectively. Both patients with PD and MSA showed orthostatic hypotension and lower parasympathetic function (RR-HF) at tilt position as compared to HC subjects. Cardiac sympathetic function (RR-LF/HF) was significantly high in patients with PD than MSA at supine position. RR-LF/HF tended to increase in MSA and HC, but decreased in PD by tilting. Consequently, the change of the ratio due to tilting (ΔRR-LF/HF) was significantly lower in patients with PD than in HC subjects. Further analysis showed that compared to mild stage of PD, RR-LF/HF at the supine position was significantly higher in advanced stage. By tilting, it was increased in mild stage and decreased in the advanced stage of PD, causing ΔRR-LF/HF to decrease significantly in the advanced stage. Thus, we demonstrated that spectral analysis of cardiovascular parameters is useful to identify sympathetic and parasympathetic disorders in MSA and PD. High cardiac sympathetic function at the supine position, and its reduction by tilting might be a characteristic feature of PD, especially in the advanced stage.

Advanced Glycation End-Products Induce Apoptosis of Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells: A Mechanism for Vascular Calcification.

Vascular calcification, especially medial artery calcification, is associated with cardiovascular death in patients with diabetes mellitus and chronic kidney disease (CKD). To determine the underlying mechanism of vascular calcification, we have demonstrated in our previous report that advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) stimulated calcium deposition in vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) through excessive oxidative stress and phenotypic transition into osteoblastic cells. Since AGEs can induce apoptosis, in this study we investigated its role on VSMC apoptosis, focusing mainly on the underlying mechanisms. A rat VSMC line (A7r5) was cultured, and treated with glycolaldehyde-derived AGE-bovine serum albumin (AGE3-BSA). Apoptotic cells were identified by Terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) staining. To quantify apoptosis, an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) for histone-complexed DNA fragments was employed. Real-time PCR was performed to determine the mRNA levels. Treatment of A7r5 cells with AGE3-BSA from 100 µg/mL concentration markedly increased apoptosis, which was suppressed by Nox inhibitors. AGE3-BSA significantly increased the mRNA expression of NAD(P)H oxidase components including Nox4 and p22(phox), and these findings were confirmed by protein levels using immunofluorescence. Dihydroethidisum assay showed that compared with cBSA, AGE3-BSA increased reactive oxygen species level in A7r5 cells. Furthermore, AGE3-induced apoptosis was significantly inhibited by siRNA-mediated knockdown of Nox4 or p22(phox). Double knockdown of Nox4 and p22(phox) showed a similar inhibitory effect on apoptosis as single gene silencing. Thus, our results demonstrated that NAD(P)H oxidase-derived oxidative stress are involved in AGEs-induced apoptosis of VSMCs. These findings might be important to understand the pathogenesis of vascular calcification in diabetes and CKD.

Comparison of the efficiencies of attached- versus suspended-growth SBR systems in the treatment of recycled paper mill wastewater.

The complexity of residual toxic organics from biologically treated effluents of pulp and paper mills is a serious concern. To date, it has been difficult to choose the best treatment technique because each of the available options has advantages and drawbacks. In this study, two different treatment techniques using laboratory-scale aerobic sequencing batch reactors (SBRs) were tested with the same real recycled paper mill effluent to evaluate their treatment efficiencies. Two attached-growth SBRs using granular activated carbon (GAC) with and without additional biomass and a suspended-growth SBR were used in the treatment of real recycled paper mill effluent at a chemical oxygen demand (COD) level in the range of 800-1300 mg/L, a fixed hydraulic retention time of 24 h and a COD:N:P ratio of approximately 100:5:1. The efficiency of this biological treatment process was studied over a 300-day period. The six most important wastewater quality parameters, namely, chemical oxygen demand (COD), turbidity, ammonia (expressed as NH3-N), phosphorus (expressed as PO4(3)-P), colour, and suspended solids (SS), were measured to compare the different treatment techniques. It was determined that these processes were able to almost completely and simultaneously eliminate COD (99%) and turbidity (99%); the removals of NH3-N (90-100%), PO4(3)-P (66-78%), colour (63-91%), and SS (97-99%) were also sufficient. The overall performance results confirmed that an attached-growth SBR system using additional biomass on GAC is a promising configuration for wastewater treatment in terms of performance efficiency and process stability under fluctuations of organic load. Hence, this hybrid system is recommended for the treatment of pulp and paper mill effluents.

Cell factories for insulin production.

The rapid increase in the number of diabetic patients globally and exploration of alternate insulin delivery methods such as inhalation or oral route that rely on higher doses, is bound to escalate the demand for recombinant insulin in near future. Current manufacturing technologies would be unable to meet the growing demand of affordable insulin due to limitation in production capacity and high production cost. Manufacturing of therapeutic recombinant proteins require an appropriate host organism with efficient machinery for posttranslational modifications and protein refolding. Recombinant human insulin has been produced predominantly using E. coli and Saccharomyces cerevisiae for therapeutic use in human. We would focus in this review, on various approaches that can be exploited to increase the production of a biologically active insulin and its analogues in E. coli and yeast. Transgenic plants are also very attractive expression system, which can be exploited to produce insulin in large quantities for therapeutic use in human. Plant-based expression system hold tremendous potential for high-capacity production of insulin in very cost-effective manner. Very high level of expression of biologically active proinsulin in seeds or leaves with long-term stability, offers a low-cost technology for both injectable as well as oral delivery of proinsulin.

Effects of uremic toxin p-cresol on proliferation, apoptosis, differentiation, and glucose uptake in 3T3-L1 cells.

Malnutrition is a common feature seen in chronic dialysis patients, and the survival rate of obese patients receiving such treatment is higher than that of lean patients. Irrespective of obesity or diabetes, dialysis patients commonly have insulin resistance, and the leading cause of death is cardiovascular (CV) disease. It has been reported that the concentration of p-cresol, a uremic toxin, is highly associated with CV events. As uremic toxin levels are high in dialysis patients, they may be involved in the pathogenesis of insulin resistance and CV disease in this population. However, little is known so far. Thus, we focused on this uremic toxin to examine its effects on adipocytes and their precursors. 3T3-L1 cells, a mouse preadipocyte cell line, were cultured until 90% confluency. The cells were then differentiated with 500 µM 3-isobutyl-methylxanthine, 250 nM dexamethasone, and 10 µg/mL insulin. Cell proliferation was evaluated by cell counting and bromodeoxyuridine (Brd-U) incorporation assay. Glucose uptake was estimated using radiolabeled 2-deoxyglucose. The range of concentrations of p-cresol used in the experiments was from 2 to 200 µM. The investigation of cell proliferation by cell counting revealed that, compared with control, 3T3-L1 cells treated with 100 and 200 µM p-cresol were significantly decreased in number at day 3 and day 7 of culture. The Brd-U incorporation assay also demonstrated similar inhibitory effects on cell proliferation, suggesting that p-cresol affected the normal cell cycle. Oil Red O staining at day 7 showed that the number of mature adipocytes was decreased by treatment with 200 µM p-cresol. Consistent with that finding, the number of apoptotic cells at day 7 was increased by treatment with 100 and 200 µM p-cresol. Peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor γ (PPARγ) mRNA expression increased time-dependently during the differentiation process of 3T3-L1 cells. p-Cresol dose-dependently decreased differentiation-induced mRNA expression of PPARγ. Uptake of 3H-labeled 2-deoxyglucose was markedly decreased by 200 µM p-cresol in the presence or in the absence of insulin, mainly because of the decreased number of mature adipocytes. High concentrations of p-cresol disturbed the cell cycle, induced apoptosis, inhibited the differentiation of preadipocytes into mature adipocytes, and decreased glucose uptake at baseline and after insulin stimulation. These findings indicate that accumulated p-cresol may induce reduction in adipose tissue, insulin resistance, and malnutrition, eventually leading to poor outcomes in chronic dialysis patients.

A modified active appearance model based on an adaptive artificial bee colony.

Active appearance model (AAM) is one of the most popular model-based approaches that have been extensively used to extract features by highly accurate modeling of human faces under various physical and environmental circumstances. However, in such active appearance model, fitting the model with original image is a challenging task. State of the art shows that optimization method is applicable to resolve this problem. However, another common problem is applying optimization. Hence, in this paper we propose an AAM based face recognition technique, which is capable of resolving the fitting problem of AAM by introducing a new adaptive ABC algorithm. The adaptation increases the efficiency of fitting as against the conventional ABC algorithm. We have used three datasets: CASIA dataset, property 2.5D face dataset, and UBIRIS v1 images dataset in our experiments. The results have revealed that the proposed face recognition technique has performed effectively, in terms of accuracy of face recognition.

Support vector machine based on adaptive acceleration particle swarm optimization.

Existing face recognition methods utilize particle swarm optimizer (PSO) and opposition based particle swarm optimizer (OPSO) to optimize the parameters of SVM. However, the utilization of random values in the velocity calculation decreases the performance of these techniques; that is, during the velocity computation, we normally use random values for the acceleration coefficients and this creates randomness in the solution. To address this problem, an adaptive acceleration particle swarm optimization (AAPSO) technique is proposed. To evaluate our proposed method, we employ both face and iris recognition based on AAPSO with SVM (AAPSO-SVM). In the face and iris recognition systems, performance is evaluated using two human face databases, YALE and CASIA, and the UBiris dataset. In this method, we initially perform feature extraction and then recognition on the extracted features. In the recognition process, the extracted features are used for SVM training and testing. During the training and testing, the SVM parameters are optimized with the AAPSO technique, and in AAPSO, the acceleration coefficients are computed using the particle fitness values. The parameters in SVM, which are optimized by AAPSO, perform efficiently for both face and iris recognition. A comparative analysis between our proposed AAPSO-SVM and the PSO-SVM technique is presented.