Project description:Energy densification and enrichment of monounsaturated fatty acids increases oat’s nutritional value among small grain cereals. However, optimization of oat oil traits is challenging through conventional breeding. Using the biolistic method for oat’s oil improvement, here we showed that metabolic engineering is a feasible strategy in improving the oil traits of oat. In this study, two constructs containing three genes involved in lipid biosynthesis pathway (AtWRI1, AtDGAT, and SiOLEOSIN) were transformed into oat cultivar ‘Park’ to enhance the oil composition and content in oat grain and leaves. We performed RNA-sequencing in mature seeds and boot leaves of trasngenic lines. Transgene expression contributed to a global transcriptional reprogramming in oat seeds and leaves. Endogenous DGAT, WRI1, and OLEOSIN genes were up regulated while the genes involved in fatty acid biosynthesis expressed in opposite way between oat seeds and leaves. Transcriptomic studies revealed differential gene expression mainly enriched in lipid metabolism.
Project description:BackgroundPortable-devices applications (Android applications) are becoming complex software systems that must be developed quickly and continuously evolved to fit new user requirements and execution contexts. Applications must be produced rapidly and advance persistently in order to fit new client requirements and execution settings. However, catering to these imperatives may bring about poor outline decisions on design choices, known as anti-patterns, which may possibly corrupt programming quality and execution. Thus, the automatic detection of anti-patterns is a vital process that facilitates both maintenance and evolution tasks. Additionally, it guides developers to refactor their applications and consequently enhance their quality.MethodsWe proposed a general method to detect mobile applications' anti-patterns that can detect both semantic and structural design anti-patterns. The proposed method is via reverse-engineering and ontology by using a UML modeling environment, an OWL ontology-based platform and ontology-driven conceptual modeling. We present and test a new method that generates the OWL ontology of mobile applications and analyzes the relationships among object-oriented anti-patterns and offer methods to resolve the anti-patterns by detecting and treating 15 different design's semantic and structural anti-patterns that occurred in analyzing of 29 mobile applications. We choose 29 mobile applications randomly. Selecting a browser is not a criterion in this method because the proposed method is applied on a design level. We demonstrate a semantic integration method to reduce the incidence of anti-patterns using the ontology merging on mobile applications.ResultsThe proposed method detected 15 semantic and structural design anti-patterns which have appeared 1,262 times in a random sample of 29 mobile applications. The proposed method introduced a new classification of the anti-patterns divided into four groups. "The anti-patterns in the class group" is the most group that has the maximum occurrences of anti-patterns and "The anti-patterns in the operation group" is the smallest one that has the minimum occurrences of the anti-patterns which are detected by the proposed method. The results also showed the correlation between the selected tools which we used as Modelio, the Protégé platform, and the OLED editor of the OntoUML. The results showed that there was a high positive relation between Modelio and Protégé which implies that the combination between both increases the accuracy level of the detection of anti-patterns. In the evaluation and analyzing the suitable integration method, we applied the different methods on homogeneous mobile applications and found that using ontology increased the detection percentage approximately by 11.3% in addition to guaranteed consistency.
Project description:Gelatin based adhesives have been used in the last decades in different biomedical applications due to the excellent biocompatibility, easy processability, transparency, non-toxicity, and reasonable mechanical properties to mimic the extracellular matrix (ECM). Gelatin adhesives can be easily tuned to gain different viscoelastic and mechanical properties that facilitate its ocular application. We herein grafted glycidyl methacrylate on the gelatin backbone with a simple chemical modification of the precursor, utilizing epoxide ring-opening reactions and visible light-crosslinking. This chemical modification allows the obtaining of an elastic protein-based hydrogel (GELGYM) with excellent biomimetic properties, approaching those of the native tissue. GELGYM can be modulated to be stretched up to 4 times its initial length and withstand high tensile stresses up to 1.95 MPa with compressive strains as high as 80% compared to Gelatin-methacryloyl (GeIMA), the most studied derivative of gelatin used as a bioadhesive. GELGYM is also highly biocompatible and supports cellular adhesion, proliferation, and migration in both 2 and 3-dimensional cell-cultures. These characteristics along with its super adhesion to biological tissues such as cornea, aorta, heart, muscle, kidney, liver, and spleen suggest widespread applications of this hydrogel in many biomedical areas such as transplantation, tissue adhesive, wound dressing, bioprinting, and drug and cell delivery.
Project description:Treatment strategies of critical nerve injuries involving nerve gaps more than 3 cm are still not optimal. The need for an alternative to the standard autologous nerve grafts has led to the exploration of adipose derived stem cells (ASC) seeded in bioartificial nerve conduits for enhancement of peripheral nerve regeneration. ASC can be differentiated into Schwann cell like cells, which is believed to improve their neurotrophic potency. Nevertheless, the differentiation process requires several weeks and there is no evidence that the cells maintain their differentiated phenotype in vivo. Thus, the present study evaluated the synergistic effect of undifferentiated ASC with exogenously added growth factors in vitro with the aim to improve the neurotrophic potency of undifferentiated ASC through short ex-vivo stimulation with growth factors. The study furthermore provides a comparative in vitro assay of the six well-known neurotrophic factors NGF, GDNF, BDNF, CNTF, NT3 and NT4. ASC were cultured and thus stimulated in the presence of the respective exogenous growth factor for three days and resulting conditioned medium was evaluated in an in vitro axonal outgrowth assay. In addition, also unstimulated ASC’s conditioned medium was tested in combination with the respective exogenous growth factor for the same assay, which was perfomed on dorsal root ganglion (DRG) explants from 10 days old embryonic chicken. DRG explants from most promising conditions were further analyzed for upregulated STAT-3 and GAP-43 by qRT-PCR. Furthermore, also proteomics and phosphoproteomics were performed for ASC and DRG explants using mass spectrometry. The quantity of selected proteins contained in the ASC’s conditioned medium was investigated by ELISA. Combination of ASC’s conditioned medium with growth factors generally resulted in significantly enhanced axonal outgrowth when compared with their control of DRG explants cultured with the respective growth factor only. Specifically, conditioned medium derived from NT3-stimulated as well as ASC’s conditioned medium supplemented with NT3 or BDNF elicited significant axonal outgrowth from DRG explants in contrast to all other experimental conditions. Significant upregulation of STAT-3 and GAP-43 was evidenced for DRG explants grown in NT3-stimulated ASC’s conditioned medium and to a certain extent also for DRG cultured in ASC’s conditioned medium supplemented with NT3.
Project description:Many research questions in sensory neuroscience involve determining whether the neural representation of a stimulus property is invariant or specific to a particular stimulus context (e.g., Is object representation invariant to translation? Is the representation of a face feature specific to the context of other face features?). Between these two extremes, representations may also be context-tolerant or context-sensitive. Most neuroimaging studies have used operational tests in which a target property is inferred from a significant test against the null hypothesis of the opposite property. For example, the popular cross-classification test concludes that representations are invariant or tolerant when the null hypothesis of specificity is rejected. A recently developed neurocomputational theory suggests two insights regarding such tests. First, tests against the null of context-specificity, and for the alternative of context-invariance, are prone to false positives due to the way in which the underlying neural representations are transformed into indirect measurements in neuroimaging studies. Second, jointly performing tests against the nulls of invariance and specificity allows one to reach more precise and valid conclusions about the underlying representations, particularly when the null of invariance is tested using the fine-grained information from classifier decision variables rather than only accuracies (i.e., using the decoding separability test). Here, we provide empirical and computational evidence supporting both of these theoretical insights. In our empirical study, we use encoding of orientation and spatial position in primary visual cortex as a case study, as previous research has established that these properties are encoded in a context-sensitive way. Using fMRI decoding, we show that the cross-classification test produces false-positive conclusions of invariance, but that more valid conclusions can be reached by jointly performing tests against the null of invariance. The results of two simulations further support both of these conclusions. We conclude that more valid inferences about invariance or specificity of neural representations can be reached by jointly testing against both hypotheses, and using neurocomputational theory to guide the interpretation of results.
Project description:Chloroplasts play a crucial role in sustaining life on earth. The availability of over 800 sequenced chloroplast genomes from a variety of land plants has enhanced our understanding of chloroplast biology, intracellular gene transfer, conservation, diversity, and the genetic basis by which chloroplast transgenes can be engineered to enhance plant agronomic traits or to produce high-value agricultural or biomedical products. In this review, we discuss the impact of chloroplast genome sequences on understanding the origins of economically important cultivated species and changes that have taken place during domestication. We also discuss the potential biotechnological applications of chloroplast genomes.
Project description:Adipose-derived mesenchymal stem cells (hADMSC) retaining proliferation and multi-differentiation potential may support the central nervous system (CNS) regeneration. Multipotency of MSC may result in both desirable and undesirable cells, post-transplantation. A better strategy to attain desired cells may be in vitro commitment of hADMSCs to uni-/bi- potent neural progenitor cells (NPCs), prior to transplantation. Derivation of stable NPCs may require a suitable niche eliciting proliferation and differentiation signals. The present study designed a biomimetic niche comprising insoluble fibrin supported adhesion matrix and exogenously added growth factors (GFs) for deriving different neural cells and established the role of Notch and Wnt signals for proliferation and differentiation of hADMSCs, respectively. The stable transformation of hADMSCs into neurospheres (NS) comprising Nestin+ve NPCs was achieved consistently. Slight modifications of niche enable differentiation of NS to NPCs; NPCs to neurons; NPCs to oligodendrocyte progenitor cells (OPCs); and OPCs to oligodendrocytes (OLG). Fibrin plays a crucial role in the conversion of hADMSC to NS and NPCs to OPCs; but, not essential for OPC to OLG maturation. Co-survival and cell-cell interaction of NPC derived neurons and OPCs promoting OLG maturation is illustrated. The designed biomimetic niche shows the potential for directing autologous ADMSCs to neural cells for applications in regenerative medicine.
Project description:Bone tissue engineering has been becoming a promising strategy for surgical bone repair, but the risk of infection during trauma repair remains a problematic health concern worldwide, especially for fracture and infection-caused bone defects. Conventional antibiotics fail to effectively prevent or treat bone infections during bone defect repair because of drug-resistance and recurrence, so novel antibacterial agents with limited resistance are highly needed for bone tissue engineering. Antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) characterized by cationic, hydrophobic and amphipathic properties show great promise to be used as next-generation antibiotics which rarely induce resistance and show potent antibacterial efficacy. In this review, four common structures of AMPs (helix-based, sheet-based, coil-based and composite) and related modifications are presented to identify AMPs and design novel analogs. Then, potential effects of AMPs for bone infection during bone repair are explored, including bactericidal activity, anti-biofilm, immunomodulation and regenerative properties. Moreover, we present distinctive applications of AMPs for topical bone repair, which can be either used by delivery system (surface immobilization, nanoparticles and hydrogels) or used in gene therapy. Finally, future prospects and ongoing challenges are discussed.
Project description:Chitinases catalyze the degradation of chitin, a ubiquitous polymer generated from the cell walls of fungi, shells of crustaceans, and cuticles of insects. They are gaining increasing attention in medicine, agriculture, food and drug industries, and environmental management. Their roles in the degradation of chitin for the production of industrially useful products and in the control of fungal pathogens and insect pests render them attractive for such purposes. However, chitinases have diverse sources, characteristics, and mechanisms of action that seem to restrain optimization procedures and render standardization techniques for enhanced practical applications complex. Hence, results of laboratory trials are not usually consistent with real-life applications. With the growing field of protein engineering, these complexities can be overcome by modifying or redesigning chitinases to enhance specific features required for specific applications. In this review, the variations in features and mechanisms of chitinases that limit their exploitation in biotechnological applications are compiled. Recent attempts to engineer chitinases for improved efficiency are also highlighted.