1,721,032 research outputs found
Non-coding RNA in Neurodegeneration
No full textAging-associated chronic diseases, such as neurodegenerative
disorders, have a dramatic impact on
healthcare systems. Despite progresses in understanding
their etiology, unsolved questions still exist. These complex
disorders share a common inflammatory status and
are influenced by common post-transcriptional mechanisms
of gene regulation. MicroRNAs, key players in
modulating gene expression, and other non-coding RNAs
have specific spatial-temporal expression in the brain,
and a critical role in neurogenesis and neurodegenerative
diseases. Here, we review the emerging impact of noncoding
RNAs in their pathogenesis, also performing a
computational analysis on microRNAs and target genes.
Our findings strengthen the notion of an inflammatoryrelated
component in neurodegenerative disorders, confirming
the contribution of microRNA-dependent gene
expression regulation in the etiology of such diseases
A new PPAR gamma truncated isoform induced by a regulatory feedback: Is alternative splicing crucial in adipocyte differentiation and defective neoadipogenesis?
No full textGoing Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Blood growth hormone-binding protein levels in premenopausal and postmenopausal women: roles of body weight and estrogen levels
No full textABSTRACT
A substantial proportion of GH circulates bound to high affinity
GH-binding protein (GHBP), which corresponds to the extracellular
domain of the GH receptor. Current evidence indicates that nutritional
status has an important role in regulating plasma GHBP levels
in humans. In the present study the relationship among plasma
GHBP levels, body composition [by bioelectrical impedance analysis
(BIA) and dual energy x-ray absorptiometry (DEXA)] and serum estradiol
(E2) was evaluated in premenopausal (n 5 92) and postmenopausal
(n 5 118) healthy women with different body weight [three
groups according to body mass index (BMI): normal, 18.5–24.99; overweight,
25–29.99; obese, 30–39.99 kg/m2]. Plasma GHBP levels were
measured by high pressure liquid chromatography gel filtration. GH
and insulin-like growth factor I levels were determined by immunoradiometric
assay and RIA, respectively.
GHBP levels were significantly higher in premenopausal women
with BMI above 25 kg/m2 (overweight, 3.789 6 0.306 nmol/L; obese,
4.37260.431 nmol/L) than those observed in postmenopausal women
(overweight, 1.425 6 0.09 nmol/L; obese, 1.506 6 0.177 nmol/L). No
significant differences were found between normal weight premenopausal
(1.741 6 0.104 nmol/L) and postmenopausal (1.524 6 0.202
nmol/L) women. In premenopausal women GHBP levels correlated
positively with BMI (r 5 0.675; P , 0.001), fat mass (FM; r 5 0.782;
P , 0.001; by BIA; r 5 0.776; P , 0.001; by DEXA), truncal fat (TF;
r 5 0.682; P , 0.001), waist to hip circumference ratio (WHR; r 5
0.551; P , 0.001), and E2 (r 5 0.298; P , 0.05), whereas no significant
correlation was found in postmenopausal women between GHBP levels
and BMI, FM, TF, WHR, or E2. In normal weight pre- and postmenopausal
women GHBP levels did not change between the ages of
20 and 69 yr. No statistically significant correlation was found between
GHBP and age for all groups studied. Moreover, in two distinct
subgroups of pre- and postmenopausal women, aged 40–49 yr, the
direct relationship between GHBP levels and all indexes of adiposity
were only observed in premenopausal women [BMI: r 5 0.836; P ,
0.001; FM: r 5 0.745 (BIA) and r 5 0.832 (DEXA); P , 0.001; TF: r 5
0.782; P , 0.001; WHR: r 5 0.551; P , 0.05], but not in postmenopausal
women.
In conclusion, the present data indicate a strong direct correlation
between GHBP and body fat in premenopausal, but not in postmenopausal
women, whereas they failed to detect a relationship between
GHBP and age. Therefore, these results suggest that endogenous
estrogen status may be an important determinant of the changes in
GHBP levels in women with different body weights
AnaLysis of Expression on human chromosome 21, ALE-HSA21: a pilot integrated web resource
No full textTranscriptome studies have shown the pervasive nature of transcription, demonstrating almost all the genes undergo alternative splicing. Accurately annotating all transcripts of a gene is crucial. It is needed to understand the impact of mutations on phenotypes, to shed light on genetic and epigenetic regulation of mRNAs and more generally to widen our knowledge about cell functionality and tissue diversity. RNA-sequencing (RNA-Seq), and the other applications of the next-generation sequencing, provides precious data to improve annotations' accuracy, simultaneously creating issues related to the variety, complexity and the size of produced data. In this 'scenario', the lack of user-friendly resources, easily accessible to researchers with low skills in bioinformatics, makes difficult to retrieve complete information about one or few genes without browsing a jungle of databases. Concordantly, the increasing amount of data from 'omics' technologies imposes to develop integrated databases merging different data formats coming from distinct but complementary sources. In light of these considerations, and given the wide interest in studying Down syndrome-a genetic condition due to the trisomy of human chromosome 21 (HSA21)-we developed an integrated relational database and a web interface, named ALE-HSA21 (AnaLysis of Expression on HSA21), accessible at http://bioinfo.na.iac.cnr.it/ALE-HSA21. This comprehensive and user-friendly web resource integrates-for all coding and noncoding transcripts of chromosome 21-existing gene annotations and transcripts identified de novo through RNA-Seq analysis with predictive computational analysis of regulatory sequences. Given the role of noncoding RNAs and untranslated regions of coding genes in key regulatory mechanisms, ALE-HSA21 is also an interesting web-based platform to investigate such processes. The 'transcript-centric' and easily-accessible nature of ALE-HSA21 makes this resource a valuable tool to rapidly retrieve data at the isoform level, rather than at gene level, useful to investigate any disease, molecular pathway or cell process involving chromosome 21 genes
Variations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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