Making the Grade: An Exploration of Incline Running on a Bodyweight-Supportive Treadmill.

CONTEXT: Bodyweight-supporting treadmills are popular rehabilitation tools for athletes recovering from impact-related injuries because they reduce ground reaction forces during running. However, the overall metabolic demand of a given running speed is also reduced, meaning athletes who return to competition after using such a device in rehabilitation may not be as fit as they had been prior to their injury. OBJECTIVE: To explore the metabolic effects of adding incline during bodyweight-supported treadmill running. DESIGN: Cross-sectional. SETTING: Research laboratory. PARTICIPANTS: Fourteen apparently healthy, recreational runners (6 females and 8 males; 21 [3] y, 1.71 [0.08] m, 63.11 [6.86] kg). INTERVENTIONS: The participants performed steady-state running trials on a bodyweight-supporting treadmill at 8.5 mph. The control condition was no incline and no bodyweight support. All experimental conditions were at 30% bodyweight support. The participants began the sequence of experimental conditions at 0% incline; this increased to 1%, and from there on, 2% incline increases were introduced until a 15% grade was reached. Repeated-measures analysis of variance was used to compare all bodyweight-support conditions against the control condition. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES: Oxygen consumption, heart rate, and rating of perceived exertion. RESULTS: Level running with 30% bodyweight support reduced oxygen consumption by 21.6% (P < .001) and heart rate by 12.0% (P < .001) compared with the control. Each 2% increase in incline with bodyweight support increased oxygen consumption by 6.4% and heart rate by 3.2% on average. A 7% incline elicited similar physiological measures as the unsupported, level condition. However, the perceived intensity of this incline with bodyweight support was greater than the unsupported condition (P < .001). CONCLUSIONS: Athletes can maintain training intensity while running on a bodyweight-supporting treadmill by introducing incline. Rehabilitation programs should rely on quantitative rather than qualitative data to drive exercise prescription in this modality.

Fungal artificial chromosomes for mining of the fungal secondary metabolome.

BACKGROUND: With thousands of fungal genomes being sequenced, each genome containing up to 70 secondary metabolite (SM) clusters 30-80 kb in size, breakthrough techniques are needed to characterize this SM wealth. RESULTS: Here we describe a novel system-level methodology for unbiased cloning of intact large SM clusters from a single fungal genome for one-step transformation and expression in a model host. All 56 intact SM clusters from Aspergillus terreus were individually captured in self-replicating fungal artificial chromosomes (FACs) containing both the E. coli F replicon and an Aspergillus autonomously replicating sequence (AMA1). Candidate FACs were successfully shuttled between E. coli and the heterologous expression host A. nidulans. As proof-of-concept, an A. nidulans FAC strain was characterized in a novel liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) and data analysis pipeline, leading to the discovery of the A. terreus astechrome biosynthetic machinery. CONCLUSION: The method we present can be used to capture the entire set of intact SM gene clusters and/or pathways from fungal species for heterologous expression in A. nidulans and natural product discovery.

Use of quantum dots in the development of assays for cancer biomarkers.

Biomarker assays may be useful for screening and diagnosis of cancer if a set of molecular markers can be quantified and statistically differentiated between cancerous cells and healthy cells. Markers of disease are often present at very low concentrations, so methods capable of low detection limits are required. Quantum dots (QDs) are nanoparticles that are emerging as promising probes for ultrasensitive detection of cancer biomarkers. QDs attached to antibodies, aptamers, oligonucleotides, or peptides can be used to target cancer markers. Their fluorescent properties have enabled QDs to be used as labels for in-vitro assays to quantify biomarkers, and they have been investigated as in-vivo imaging agents. QDs can be used as donors in assays involving fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET), or as acceptors in bioluminescence resonance energy transfer (BRET). The nanoparticles are also capable of electrochemical detection and are potentially useful for "lab-on-a-chip" applications. Recent developments in silicon QDs, non-blinking QDs, and QDs with reduced-size and controlled-valence further make these QDs bioanalytically attractive because of their low toxicity, biocompatibility, high quantum yields, and diverse surface modification flexibility. The potential of multiplexed sensing using QDs with different wavelengths of emission is promising for simultaneous detection of multiple biomarkers of disease.