bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Perceived Social Support in Individuals With Diabetic Foot Ulcers
Authors: Laopoulou Fotini , Kelesi Martha , Fasoi Georgia , Vasilopoulos Georgios , Polikandrioti Maria 
Published: January 2020

PURPOSE:
Explore levels of perceived social support and the associated factors among patients with diabetic foot ulcers (DFUs).

DESIGN:
Cross-sectional survey.

SUBJECTS AND SETTING:
Outpatients (n = 140) with DFUs attending a diabetic clinic affiliated with a public hospital in Athens, Greece, for wound care and follow-up visits after healing.

METHODS:
Data collection included demographic, clinical, self-report, and perceived social support, measured with the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support (MSPSS), during one-on-one interviews at the post-healing follow-up visit.

RESULTS:
For perceived social support, 50% of patients (average age 70 years) scored above 24, 24, and 18 (median) on the MSPSS in the categories of receiving support from significant other, family, and friends, respectively, suggesting high levels of perceived social support. Other statistically significant associations were observed for perceived social support from significant other, family, and friends and marital status (P = .001, P = .001, and P = .004, respectively), patients level of information about their health (P =.002, P =.001, and P =.001, respectively), family level of information (P = .001, P = .001, and P = .004, respectively), and how closely they followed period foot checks (P = .001, P = .002, and P = .011, respectively) and diet (P = .001, P = .001, and P = .001, respectively).

CONCLUSIONS:
Data from our study show that higher levels of perceived social support from significant others, family, and friends were linked to patients and others, being better informed about health status, and other self-care behaviors. Findings underscore the need for health care providers to recognize that social support is an important component of overall DFU management and may guide future interventions to determine which are most effective in enhancing socially supportive behaviors.
Palaeophysiology of pH regulation in tetrapods
Authors: Janis Christine M. , Napoli James G. , Warren Daniel E. 
Published: January 2020

The involvement of mineralized tissues in acid–base homeostasis was likely important in the evolution of terrestrial vertebrates. Extant reptiles encounter hypercapnia when submerged in water, but early tetrapods may have experienced hypercapnia on land due to their inefficient mode of lung ventilation (likely buccal pumping, as in extant amphibians). Extant amphibians rely on cutaneous carbon dioxide elimination on land, but early tetrapods were considerably larger forms, with an unfavourable surface area to volume ratio for such activity, and evidence of a thick integument. Consequently, they would have been at risk of acidosis on land, while many of them retained internal gills and would not have had a problem eliminating carbon dioxide in water. In extant tetrapods, dermal bone can function to buffer the blood during acidosis by releasing calcium and magnesium carbonates. This review explores the possible mechanisms of acid–base regulation in tetrapod evolution, focusing on heavily armoured, basal tetrapods of the Permo-Carboniferous, especially the physiological challenges associated with the transition to air-breathing, body size and the adoption of active lifestyles. We also consider the possible functions of dermal armour in later tetrapods, such as Triassic archosaurs, inferring palaeophysiology from both fossil record evidence and phylogenetic patterns, and propose a new hypothesis relating the archosaurian origins of the four-chambered heart and high systemic blood pressures to the perfusion of the osteoderms.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Vertebrate palaeophysiology’.
Thermophysiologies of Jurassic marine crocodylomorphs inferred from the oxygen isotope composition of their tooth apatite
Authors: Séon Nicolas , Amiot Romain , Martin Jeremy E. , Young Mark T. , Middleton Heather , Fourel François , Picot Laurent , Valentin Xavier , Lécuyer Christophe 
Published: January 2020

Teleosauridae and Metriorhynchidae were thalattosuchian crocodylomorph clades that secondarily adapted to marine life and coexisted during the Middle to Late Jurassic. While teleosaurid diversity collapsed at the end of the Jurassic, most likely as a result of a global cooling of the oceans and associated marine regressions, metriorhynchid diversity was largely unaffected, although the fossil record of Thalattosuchia is poor in the Cretaceous. In order to investigate the possible differences in thermophysiologies between these two thalattosuchian lineages, we analysed stable oxygen isotope compositions (expressed as δ18O values) of tooth apatite from metriorhynchid and teleosaurid specimens. We then compared them with the δ18O values of coexisting endo-homeothermic ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, as well as ecto-poikilothermic chondrichthyans and osteichthyans. The distribution of δ18O values suggests that both teleosaurids and metriorhynchids had body temperatures intermediate between those of typical ecto-poikilothermic vertebrates and warm-blooded ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs, metriorhynchids being slightly warmer than teleosaurids. We propose that metriorhynchids were able to raise their body temperature above that of the ambient environment by metabolic heat production, as endotherms do, but could not maintain a constant body temperature compared with fully homeothermic ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs. Teleosaurids, on the other hand, may have raised their body temperature by mouth-gape basking, as modern crocodylians do, and benefited from the thermal inertia of their large body mass to maintain their body temperature above the ambient one. Endothermy in metriorhynchids might have been a by-product of their ecological adaptations to active pelagic hunting, and it probably allowed them to survive the global cooling of the Late Jurassic, thus explaining the selective extinction affecting Thalattosuchia at the Jurassic–Cretaceous boundary.This article is part of the theme issue ‘Vertebrate palaeophysiology'.
Optimizing Clinical Outcome and Toxicity in Lung Cancer Using a Genomic Marker of Radiosensitivity
Authors: Scott Jacob G. , Sedor Geoff , Kattan Michael W. , Peacock Jeffrey , Grass G. Daniel , Mellon Eric A. , Thapa Ram , Schell Michael , Waller Anthony , Poppen Sean , Andl George , Eschrich Steven A. , Dilling Thomas J. , Dalton William S. , Harrison Louis B. , Fox Tim , Torres-Roca Javier F. 
Published: January 2020

ABSTRACTCancer sequencing efforts have demonstrated that cancer is the most complex and heterogeneous disease that affects humans. However, radiation therapy, one of the most common cancer treatments, is prescribed based on an empiric one-size-fits all approach. We propose that the field of radiation oncology is operating under an outdated null hypothesis: that all patients are biologically similar and should uniformly respond to the same dose of radiation. We have previously developed the Genomic Adjusted Radiation Dose (GARD), a method which accounts for biological heterogeneity and can be utilized to predict optimal RT dose for an individual patient. In this article, we utilize GARD to characterize the biological imprecision of one-size-fits-all RT dosing schemes which result in both over- and under-dosing for the majority of patients treated with RT. To elucidate this inefficiency, and therefore the opportunity for improvement using a personalized dosing scheme, we develop a patient-specific competing hazards-style mathematical model combining the canonical equations for tumor control (TCP) and normal tissue complication probabilities (NTCP). This model simultaneously optimizes tumor control and toxicity by personalizing RT dose using patient-specific genomics. Using data from two prospectively collected cohorts of patients with non-small-cell lung cancer, we validate the competing hazards model by demonstrating that it predicts the results of RTOG 0617. We show how 0617 failure can be explained by the biological imprecision of empiric uniform dose escalation which results in 80% of patients being over-exposed to normal tissue toxicity without potential tumor control benefit. In conclusion, our data reveals a tapestry of radiosensitivity heterogeneity, provides a biological framework that explains the failure of empiric RT dose escalation, and quantifies the opportunity to improve clinical outcomes in lung cancer by incorporating genomics into RT.
Using text mining to track outbreak trends in global surveillance of emerging diseases: ProMED-mail
Authors: You Jingxian , Expert Paul , Costelloe Céire 
Published: January 2020

ABSTRACTObjectivesProMED-mail (Program for Monitoring Emerging Disease, also abbreviated ProMED) is an international disease outbreak monitoring and early warning system. Every year, users contribute thousands of reports that include reference to infectious diseases and toxins, and these reports are then distributed to all subscribers of ProMED. However, the corpus of reports has not been well studied so far. Thus, we propose to apply text mining methods to derive information pertinent to the characterisation of the stage of an epidemic outbreak from the reports.MethodsA retrospective study was conducted in ProMED reports in three steps: reports filtering, keywords extraction from reports and finally word co-occurrence network analysis. The keyword extraction was performed with the TextRank algorithm, keywords co-occurrence networks were then produced using the top keywords from each document and multiple network centrality measures were computed to analyse the co-occurrence networks. We used two major outbreaks in recent years, Ebola 2014 and Zika 2015, as cases to illustrate and validate the process.ResultsWe found that the information structures extracted at different stages of outbreaks from ProMED are consistent with response strategies as well as situation reports of the World Health Organisation.ConclusionThis study shows that ProMED provides large valuable information to characterise the evolution of epidemic outbreaks. Our research presents a pipeline that can extract and organise this information in a meaningful way. It also highlights the potential for ProMED mail to be utilised in monitoring, evaluating and improving responses to outbreaks.
Phase Transition of RNA-protein Complexes into Ordered Hollow Condensates
Authors: Alshareedah Ibraheem , Moosa Mahdi Muhammad , Raju Muralikrishna , Potoyan Davit , Banerjee Priya R. 
Published: January 2020

AbstractLiquid-liquid phase separation of multivalent intrinsically disordered protein-RNA complexes is ubiquitous in both natural and biomimetic systems. So far, isotropic liquid droplets are the most commonly observed topology of RNA-protein condensates in experiments and simulations. Here, by systematically studying the phase behavior of RNA-protein complexes across varied mixture compositions, we report a hollow vesicle-like condensate phase of nucleoprotein assemblies that is distinct from RNA-protein droplets. We show that these vesicular condensates are stable at specific mixture compositions and concentration regimes within the phase diagram and are formed through the phase separation of anisotropic protein-RNA complexes. Similar to membranes composed of amphiphilic lipids, these nucleoprotein-RNA vesicular membranes exhibit local ordering, size-dependent permeability, and selective encapsulation capacity without sacrificing their dynamic formation and dissolution in response to physicochemical stimuli. Our findings suggest that protein-RNA complexes can robustly create lipid-free vesicle-like enclosures by phase separation.Significance statementVesicular assemblies play crucial roles in subcellular organization as well as in biotechnological applications. Classically, the ability to form such assemblies were primarily assigned to lipids and lipid-like amphiphilic molecules. Here, we show that disordered RNA-protein complexes can form vesicle-like ordered assemblies at disproportionate mixture compositions. We also show that the ability to form vesicular assemblies is generic to multi-component systems where phase separation is driven by heterotypic interactions. We speculate that such vesicular assemblies play crucial roles in the formation of dynamic multi-layered subcellular membrane-less organelles and can be utilized to fabricate novel stimuli-responsive microscale systems.
Division of labor between YAP and TAZ in non-small cell lung cancer
Authors: Shreberk-Shaked Michal , Dassa Bareket , Sinha Sanju , Agostino Silvia Di , Azuri Ido , Aylon Yael , Blandino Giovanni , Ruppin Eytan , Oren Moshe 
Published: January 2020

AbstractLung cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. The paralogous transcriptional cofactors Yes-associated protein (YAP) and transcriptional co-activator with PDZ-binding motif (TAZ, also called WWTR1), the main downstream effectors of the Hippo signal transduction pathway, are emerging as pivotal determinants of malignancy in lung cancer. Traditionally, studies have tended to consider YAP and TAZ as functionally redundant transcriptional cofactors, with similar biological impact. However, there is growing evidence that each of them also possesses distinct attributes. Here, we sought to systematically characterize the division of labor between YAP and TAZ in non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC), the most common histological subtype of lung cancer. Employing representative NSCLC cell lines, as well as patient-derived data, we show that the two paralogs orchestrate non-overlapping transcription programs in this cancer type: whereas YAP preferentially regulates gene sets associated with cell division and cell cycle progression, TAZ preferentially regulates genes associated with extracellular matrix organization. Concordantly, depletion of YAP, but not TAZ, leads to growth arrest, while YAP overexpression promotes cell proliferation. Likewise, depletion of TAZ, but not YAP, compromises cell migration, whereas TAZ overexpression enhances migration. Importantly, the differential effects of YAP vs TAZ on key cellular processes are also associated with differential response to anti-cancer therapies. Uncovering the different activities and downstream effects of YAP and TAZ may thus facilitate better stratification of lung cancer patients for anti-cancer therapies.
Beyond the forest-grassland dichotomy: the gradient-like organization of habitats in forest-steppes
Authors: Erdős László , Török Péter , Szitár Katalin , Bátori Zoltán , Tölgyesi Csaba , Kiss Péter János , Bede-Fazekas Ákos , Kröel-Dulay György 
Published: January 2020

AbstractFeaturing a transitional zone between closed forests and treeless steppes, forest-steppes cover vast areas and have outstanding conservation importance. The components of this mosaic ecosystem can conveniently be classified into two basic types, forests and grasslands. However, this dichotomic classification may not fit reality as habitat organization can be much more complex. In this study, our aim was to find out if the main habitat types can be grouped into two distinct habitat categories (which would support the dichotomic description), or a different paradigm better fits this complex ecosystem. We selected six main habitats of sandy forest-steppes, and, using 176 relevés, we compared their vegetation based on species composition (NMDS ordination, number of common species of the studied habitats), relative ecological indicator values (mean indicators for temperature, soil moisture, and light availability), and functional species groups (life-form categories, geoelement types, and phytosociological preference groups). According to the species composition, we found a well-defined gradient, with the following habitat order: large forest patches – medium forest patches – small forest patches – north-facing edges – south-facing edges – grasslands. A considerable number of species were shared among all habitats, while the number of species restricted to certain habitat types was also numerous, especially for north-facing edges. The total (i.e., pooled) number of species peaked near the middle of the gradient, in north-facing edges. The relative ecological indicator values and functional species groups showed mostly gradual changes from the large forest patches to the grasslands. Our results indicate that the widely used dichotomic categorization of forest-steppe habitats into forest and grassland patches is too simplistic, potentially resulting in a considerable loss of information. We suggest that forest-steppe vegetation better fits the gradient-based paradigm of landscape structure, which is able to reflect continuous variations.
New intranuclear symbiotic bacteria from macronucleus ofParamecium putrinum—CandidatusGortzia yakutica
Authors: Beliavskaia Alexandra , Logacheva Maria , Garushyants Sofya , Gong Jun , Zou Songbao , Gelfand Mikhail , Rautian Maria 
Published: January 2020

AbstractHolospora-like bacteria are obligate intracellularAlphaproteobacteria, inhabiting nuclei ofParameciumciliates and other protists.Alphaproteobacteriahave drawn significant attention, as both closest existing relatives of bacteria that gave rise to mitochondria, as well as a class of intracellular bacteria with numerous important pathogens.HLB clade includes two genera –Holospora(Hafkine 1980) andcandidatusGortzia (Boscaro 2013). These bacteria have a peculiar life cycle with two morphological forms, a strict specificity to the host species and the type of nucleus they inhabit.Here we describe a new species of HLB –candidatusGortzia yakutica sp. nov., a symbiont from macronucleus ofParamecium putrinum, the first known HLB for thisParameciumspecies. The new symbiont shows morphological similarities with other HLB. The phylogenetic analysis of SSU rDNA gene places it intocandidatusGortzia clade.
Surface topography is a context-dependent activator of TGF-β signaling in mesenchymal stem cells
Authors: Vermeulen Steven , Roumans Nadia , Honig Floris , Carlier Aurélie , Hebels Dennie G.A.J. , Dede Eren Aysegul , ten Dijke Peter , Vasilevich Aliaksei , de Boer Jan 
Published: January 2020

AbstractWe previously found that surface topographies induce the expression of theScxagene, encoding Scleraxis in tenocytes. BecauseScxais a TGF-β responsive gene, we investigated the link between mechanotransduction and TGF-β signaling. We discovered that mesenchymal stem cells exposed to both micro-topographies and TGF-β2 display synergistic induction of SMAD phosphorylation and transcription of the TGF-β target genesSCXA,a-SMA, andSOX9. Pharmacological perturbations revealed that Rho/ROCK/SRF signaling is required for this synergistic response. We further found an activation of the early response genesSRFandEGR1during the early adaptation phase on micro-topographies, which coincided with higher expression of the TGF-β type-II receptor gene. Of interest, PKC activators Prostratin and Ingenol-3, known for inducing actin reorganization and activation of serum response elements, were able to mimic the topography-induced TGF-β response. These findings provide novel insights into the convergence of mechanobiology and TGF-β signaling, which can lead to improved culture protocols and therapeutic applications.
Impact of a resistance gene against a fungal pathogen on the plant host residue microbiome: the case of theLeptosphaeria maculans-Brassica napuspathosystem
Authors: Kerdraon Lydie , Barret Matthieu , Balesdent Marie-Hélène , Suffert Frédéric , Laval Valérie 
Published: January 2020

AbstractOilseed rape residues are a crucial determinant of stem canker epidemiology, as they support the sexual reproduction of the fungal pathogenLeptosphaeria maculans. The aim of this study was to characterise the impact of a resistance gene againstL. maculansinfection on residue microbial communities and to identify micro-organisms interacting with this pathogen during residue degradation. We used near-isogenic lines to obtain healthy and infected host plants. The microbiome associated with the two types of plant residues was characterised by metabarcoding. A combination of linear discriminant analysis and ecological network analysis was used to compare the microbial communities and to identify micro-organisms interacting withL. maculans. Fungal community structure differed between the two lines at harvest, but not subsequently, suggesting that the presence/absence of the resistance gene influences the microbiome at the base of the stem whilst the plant is alive, but that this does not necessarily lead to differential colonisation of the residues by fungi. Direct interactions with other members of the community involved many fungal and bacterial ASVs (amplicon sequence variants).L. maculansappeared to play a minor role in networks, whereas one ASV affiliated toPlenodomus biglobosus(synonymLeptosphaeria biglobosa) from theLeptosphaeriaspecies complex may be considered a keystone taxon in the networks at harvest. This approach could be used to identify and promote micro-organisms with beneficial effects against residue-borne pathogens, and more broadly, to decipher the complex interactions between multi-species pathosystems and other microbial components in crop residues.
Identification of a Δ11 desaturase from the arbuscular mycorrhizal fungusRhizophagus irregularis
Authors: Cheeld Henry , Bhutada Govindprasad , Beaudoin Frederic , Eastmond Peter J 
Published: January 2020

AbstractArbuscular mycorrhizal fungi are oleaginous organisms and the most abundant fatty acyl moiety usually found in their lipids is palmitvaccenic acid (16:1Δ11cis). However, it is not known how this uncommon fatty acid species is made. Here we have cloned two homologs of Lepidopteran fatty acyl-CoenzymeA Δ11 desaturases fromRhizophagus irregularis. BothDES1andDES2are expressed in intraradicle mycelium and can complement the unsaturated fatty acid-requiring auxotrophic growth phenotype of theSaccharomyces cerevisiae ole1Δmutant. DES1 expression leads almost exclusively to oleic acid (18:1Δ9cis) production, whereas DES2 expression results in the production of 16:1Δ11cisand vaccenic acid (18:1Δ11cis).DES2therefore encodes a Δ11 desaturase that is likely to be responsible for the synthesis of 16:1Δ11cisinR. irregularis.