Tag: evolution

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Evolution of exhaled nitric oxide levels throughout development and aging of healthy humans.

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Evolution of exhaled nitric oxide levels throughout development and aging of healthy humans.

J Breath Res. 2015;9(3):036005

Authors: Jacinto T, Malinovschi A, Janson C, Fonseca J, Alving K

Abstract
It is not fully understood how the fraction of exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) varies with age and gender in healthy individuals. We aim to describe the evolution of FeNO with age, giving special regard to the effect of gender, and to relate this evolution to natural changes in the respiratory tract.We studied 3081 subjects from NHANES 2007-08 and 2009-10, aged 6-80?years, with no self-reported diagnosis of asthma, chronic bronchitis or emphysema, and with normal values of blood eosinophils and C-reactive protein. The relationship of the mean values of FeNO to age, in all participants and divided by gender, was computed, and compared with changes in anatomic dead space volume and forced vital capacity. A change-point analysis technique and subsequent piecewise regression was used to detect breakpoints in the evolution of FeNO with age.Three distinct phases in the evolution of FeNO throughout the age range 6-80?years can be seen. FeNO values increase linearly between 6-14?years of age in girls and between 6-16?years of age in boys, in parallel with somatic growth. After that, FeNO levels plateau in both genders until age 45?years in females and age 59?years in males, when they start to increase linearly again. This increase continues until age 80.Our data clearly show a triphasic evolution of FeNO throughout the human age range in healthy individuals. This should be accounted for in development of reference equations for normal FeNO values.

PMID: 25993061 [PubMed – in process]

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The evolution of mobile apps for asthma: an updated systematic assessment of … – BMC Blogs Network

The evolution of mobile apps for asthma: an updated systematic assessment of …
BMC Blogs Network
Background Interest in mobile apps that support long-term conditions such as asthma is matched by recognition of the importance of the quality and safety of apps intended for patient use. We assessed how changes over a 2-year period affected the …

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mtDNA sequence, phylogeny and evolution of laboratory mice.

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mtDNA sequence, phylogeny and evolution of laboratory mice.

Mitochondrion. 2014 Jul 16;

Authors: Zheng J, Chen Y, Deng F, Huang R, Petersen F, Ibrahim S, Yu X

Abstract
Laboratory mice are important tools for biomedical research. Aiming to investigate the phylogeny and evolution of laboratory mice, we investigated the mtDNA sequences of classical inbred strains, classical outbred stocks and wild-derived inbred strains. Our results showed that the most classical outbred stocks and classical inbred strains are descended from a single mtDNA ancestor. The phylogenic analysis supports the topology of M. m. castaneus / M. m. domesticus as sister subspecies, and the divergence time between the two sister subspecies and M. m. musculus was 493,000 (435,000-557,000) years ago. Furthermore, the mtDNA polymorphisms accumulated in the last 100years in the laboratory mice are under a relaxed purifying selection.

PMID: 25038446 [PubMed – as supplied by publisher]

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Molecular evolution of Peptide ligands with custom-tailored characteristics for targeting of glycostructures.

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Molecular evolution of Peptide ligands with custom-tailored characteristics for targeting of glycostructures.

PLoS Comput Biol. 2012 Dec;8(12):e1002800

Authors: Röckendorf N, Borschbach M, Frey A

Abstract
As an advanced approach to identify suitable targeting molecules required for various diagnostic and therapeutic interventions, we developed a procedure to devise peptides with customizable features by an iterative computer-assisted optimization strategy. An evolutionary algorithm was utilized to breed peptides in silico and the “fitness” of peptides was determined in an appropriate laboratory in vitro assay. The influence of different evolutional parameters and mechanisms such as mutation rate, crossover probability, gaussian variation and fitness value scaling on the course of this artificial evolutional process was investigated. As a proof of concept peptidic ligands for a model target molecule, the cell surface glycolipid ganglioside G(M1), were identified. Consensus sequences describing local fitness optima were reached from diverse sets of L- and proteolytically stable D lead peptides. Ten rounds of evolutional optimization encompassing a total of just 4400 peptides lead to an increase in affinity of the peptides towards fluorescently labeled ganglioside G(M1) by a factor of 100 for L- and 400 for D-peptides.

PMID: 23271960 [PubMed – in process]

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