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Topic Review
Classes of Transposable Elements
Transposable elements (TEs) are mobile genetic elements that constitute a sizeable portion of many eukaryotic genomes. Through their mobility, they represent a major source of genetic variation, and their activation can cause genetic instability and has been linked to aging, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases.
  • 2.8K
  • 23 Sep 2022
Topic Review
Wearable Stretch Sensors
Wearable sensors are beneficial for continuous health monitoring, movement analysis, rehabilitation, evaluation of human performance. Wearable stretch sensors are increasingly being used for human movement monitoring. The content presented provides a review of wearable stretch sensors as well the design, development and validation of a wearable soft-robotic-stretch sensors. 
  • 2.8K
  • 25 Feb 2021
Topic Review
Phosphoribosyl Pyrophosphate Synthetase
Phosphoribosyl pyrophosphate synthetase (PRS EC 2.7.6.1) is a rate-limiting enzyme that irreversibly catalyzes the formation of phosphoribosyl pyrophosphate (PRPP) from ribose-5-phosphate and adenosine triphosphate (ATP). This key metabolite is required for the synthesis of purine and pyrimidine nucleotides, the two aromatic amino acids histidine and tryptophan, the cofactors nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide (NAD+) and nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate (NADP+), all of which are essential for various life processes. Despite its ubiquity and essential nature across the plant and animal kingdoms, PRPP synthetase displays species-specific characteristics regarding the number of gene copies and architecture permitting interaction with other areas of cellular metabolism. The impact of mutated PRS genes in the model eukaryote Saccharomyces cerevisiae on cell signalling and metabolism may be relevant to the human neuropathies associated with PRPS mutations. Human PRPS1 and PRPS2 gene products are implicated in drug resistance associated with recurrent acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and progression of colorectal cancer and hepatocellular carcinoma.
  • 2.8K
  • 02 Aug 2022
Topic Review
Epithelial–Mesenchymal Transition
Epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a process that is crucial for embryogenesis, wound healing but also malignant progression. EMT leads to the changes in cell–cell and cell–ECM interactions, that allow the migration of epithelial cells and confer them to the mesenchymal phenotype
  • 2.8K
  • 06 Jan 2021
Topic Review
Agri-Food Waste
Agri-Food Waste (AFW) originates throughout the whole food supply chain, from production to post-harvesting, industrial processing, distribution, domestic processing, and consumption, with wastage volumes differing among phases and food commodities. Conventional management of food waste encompasses production of renewable energy, animal feeds, and compost. Alternative pathways include the valorization of food waste as a source of bioactive compounds, such as phenolic compounds, to be used as functional food ingredients or nutraceuticals. Drying and size reduction techniques, extraction methods, and fermentation are the main strategies to turn AFW into functional ingredients.
  • 2.8K
  • 18 Dec 2020
Topic Review
Anti-Fungal Efficacy of Flavonoids
The prevalence of fungal infections is growing at an alarming pace and the pathogenesis is still not clearly understood. Recurrence of these fungal diseases is often due to their evolutionary avoidance of antifungal resistance. The development of suitable novel antimicrobial agents for fungal diseases continues to be a major problem in the current clinical field. Hence, it is urgently necessary to develop surrogate agents that are more effective than conventional available drugs. Among the remarkable innovations from earlier investigations on natural-drugs, flavonoids are a group of plant-derived substances capable of promoting many valuable effects on humans. The identification of flavonoids with possible antifungal effects at small concentrations or in synergistic combinations could help to overcome this problem. A combination of flavonoids with available drugs is an excellent approach to reduce the side effects and toxicity.
  • 2.8K
  • 10 Jun 2021
Topic Review
L-Carnitine in Mitochondria
Mitochondria control cellular fate by various mechanisms and are key drivers of cellular metabolism. Although the main function of mitochondria is energy production, they are also involved in cellular detoxification, cellular stabilization, as well as control of ketogenesis and glucogenesis. Conditions like neurodegenerative disease, insulin resistance, endocrine imbalances, liver and kidney disease are intimately linked to metabolic disorders or inflexibility and to mitochondrial dysfunction. Mitochondrial dysfunction due to a relative lack of micronutrients and substrates is implicated in the development of many chronic diseases. l-carnitine is a vital molecule that is found in all living cells. It is a quaternary amine (3-hydroxy-4-N-trimethylaminobutyrate) whose main function in mammalian cells is the transfer of long chain fatty acids across the inner mitochondrial membrane for β- oxidation and generation of ATP energy. 
  • 2.8K
  • 11 Mar 2022
Topic Review
ECM decellularization methods
The extracellular matrix (ECM) is a complex network with multiple functions, including specific functions during tissue regeneration. Precisely, the properties of the ECM have been thoroughly used in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine research, aiming to restore the function of damaged or dysfunctional tissues. Tissue decellularization is gaining momentum as a technique to obtain potentially implantable decellularized extracellular matrix (dECM) with well-preserved key components. Interestingly, the tissue-specific dECM is becoming a feasible option to carry out regenerative medicine research, with multiple advantages compared to other approaches. We recently published an overview of the most common methods used to obtain the dECM from specific tissues[1]. Here we provide a summary from that report as a helpful guide for future research development.
  • 2.8K
  • 25 Aug 2020
Topic Review
Monkeypox Virus
Monkeypox virus (MPXV) is a double-stranded DNA virus belonging to the Orthopox genus in the family Poxviridae. It has a zoonotic origin and MPXV infected wild rodents and primates have been found in central Africa. In humans, symptoms of MPXV infection include fever, head and muscle ache, lymphadenopathy and a characteristic rash that develops into papules, vesicles and pustules which eventually scab over and heal. Monkeypox is less often fatal (case fatality rates range from less than 1% to 3.6% depending on geographic localisation, viral clade and age group) than smallpox (up to 30%) caused by a related Variola virus. MPXV used to be endemic in sub-Saharan Africa, infecting wild animals and occasionally causing zoonotic outbreaks. Exotic animal trade and international travel combined with the increasing susceptibility of the human population due to lack of vaccination facilitated the spread of MPXV to new areas. Since April 2022, over 15.000 of MPX cases have been detected in >60 non-endemic countries around the world, predominantly among men who have sex with men, making it the largest described MPXV outbreak known to date.
  • 2.8K
  • 21 Jul 2022
Topic Review
Alternatives to Evolution by Natural Selection
Alternatives to evolution by natural selection, also described as non-Darwinian mechanisms of evolution, have been proposed by scholars investigating biology since classical times to explain signs of evolution and the relatedness of different groups of living things. The alternatives in question do not deny that evolutionary changes over time are the origin of the diversity of life, nor deny that the organisms alive today share a common ancestor from the distant past (or ancestors, in some proposals); rather, they propose alternative mechanisms of evolutionary change over time, arguing against mutations acted on by natural selection as the most important driver of evolutionary change. (In most cases, they do not deny that mutations or natural selection occur, or that they play a role in evolutionary change, but instead deny that they are fully sufficient primary causes for the evidence of evolutionary change that is observed in the natural world.) This distinguishes them from certain other kinds of arguments that deny that large scale evolution of any sort has taken place, as in some forms of creationism, which do not propose alternative mechanisms of evolutionary change but instead deny that evolutionary change has taken place at all. Not all forms of creationism deny that evolutionary change takes places; notably, proponents of theistic evolution, such as the biologist Asa Gray, assert that evolutionary change does occur and is responsible for the history of life on Earth, with the proviso that this process has been influenced by a god or gods in some meaningful sense. Where the fact of evolutionary change was accepted but the mechanism proposed by Charles Darwin, natural selection, was denied, explanations of evolution such as Lamarckism, catastrophism, orthogenesis, vitalism, structuralism and mutationism (called saltationism before 1900) were entertained. Different factors motivated people to propose non-Darwinian mechanisms of evolution. Natural selection, with its emphasis on death and competition, did not appeal to some naturalists because they felt it immoral, leaving little room for teleology or the concept of progress in the development of life. Some who came to accept evolution, but disliked natural selection, raised religious objections. Others felt that evolution was an inherently progressive process that natural selection alone was insufficient to explain. Still others felt that nature, including the development of life, followed orderly patterns that natural selection could not explain. By the start of the 20th century, evolution was generally accepted by biologists but natural selection was in eclipse. Many alternative theories were proposed, but biologists were quick to discount theories such as orthogenesis, vitalism and Lamarckism which offered no mechanism for evolution. Mutationism did propose a mechanism, but it was not generally accepted. The modern synthesis a generation later claimed to sweep away all the alternatives to Darwinian evolution, though some have been revived as molecular mechanisms for them have been discovered.
  • 2.8K
  • 09 Oct 2022
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