action to reduce exposure.Cells have to erect and sustain an organized and dynamically adaptable structure for an efficient mode of operation that allows drastic morphological changes during cell growth and cell division. These manifold tasks are complied by the so-called cytoskeleton and its associated proteins. In bacteria, FtsZ and MreB, the bacterial homologs to tubulin and actin, respectively, as well as coiled-coil-rich proteins of intermediate filament (IF)-like function to fulfil these tasks. Despite generally being characterized as Gram-negative, cyanobacteria have a remarkably thick peptidoglycan layer and possess Gram-positive-specific cell division proteins such as SepF and DivIVA-like proteins, besides Gram-negative and cyanobacterial-specific cell division proteins like MinE, SepI, ZipN (Ftn2) and ZipS (Ftn6). The diversity of cellular morphologies and cell growth strategies in cyanobacteria could therefore be the result of additional unidentified structural determinants such as cytoskeletal proteins. In this article, we review the current advances in the understanding of the cyanobacterial cell shape, cell division and cell growth.Human transthyretin (hTTR), a serum protein with a main role in transporting thyroid hormones and retinol through binding to the retinol-binding protein, is an amyloidogenic protein involved in familial amyloidotic polyneuropathy (FAP), familial amyloidotic cardiomyopathy, and central nervous system selective amyloidosis. Selleck LY3214996 hTTR also has a neuroprotective role in Alzheimer disease, being the major Aβ binding protein in human cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) that prevents amyloid-β (Aβ) aggregation with consequent abrogation of toxicity. Here we report an optimized preparative expression and purification protocol of hTTR (wt and amyloidogenic mutants) for in vitro screening assays of TTR ligands acting as amyloidogenesis inhibitors or acting as molecular chaperones to enhance the TTRAβ interaction. Preparative yields were up to 660 mg of homogenous protein per L of culture in fed-batch bioreactor. The recombinant wt protein is mainly unmodified at Cys10, the single cysteine in the protein sequence, whereas the highly amyloidogenic Y78F variant renders mainly the S-glutathionated form, which has essentially the same amyloidogenic behavior than the reduced protein with free Cys10. The TTR production protocol has shown inter-batch reproducibility of expression and protein quality for in vitro screening assays.

Theories can provide a foundation to explain behavior, investigate relationships, and to predict the effect of interventions. The aim of the study was to clarify the use of theories in studies testing interventions to promote self-care.

A scoping review. PubMed, EMBASE, PsychINFO, and CINAHL were searched from January 2008 through January 2019. Nine common chronic conditions were included. We included studies testing a self-care intervention if they used a randomized controlled trial design. The study was registered in PROSPERO (#123719).

The search retrieved 9309 potential studies, of which 233 were included in the review. In total, 76 (33%) of the 233 studies used a theory and 24 different theories were used. Bandura’s social cognitive theory was the most frequently used (48 studies), but 22 other theories were used in a minority of studies. Most studies used theories minimally to justify or provide a rationale for the study, to develop the intervention, to select outcomes, and/or to explain the results. Only eight studies fully used a theory in the rationale, intervention development, choice of outcomes, and discussion.

The use of theories to guide self-care research is limited, which may pose a barrier in accumulating knowledge underlying self-care interventions.

The use of theories to guide self-care research is limited, which may pose a barrier in accumulating knowledge underlying self-care interventions.In order to effectively improve the quality of side information in distributed video coding, we propose a side information generation scheme based on a coefficient matrix improvement model. The discrete cosine transform coefficient bands of the Wyner-Ziv frame at the encoder side are divided into entropy coding coefficient bands and distributed video coding coefficient bands, and then the coefficients of entropy coding coefficient bands are sampled, which are divided into sampled coefficients and unsampled coefficients. For sampled coefficients, an adaptive arithmetic encoder is used for lossless compression. For unsampled coefficients and the coefficients of distributed video coding coefficient bands, the low density parity check accumulate encoder is used to calculate the parity bits, which are stored in the buffer and transmitted in small amount upon decoder request. At the decoder side, the optical flow method is used to generate the initial side information, and the initial side information is improved according to the sampled coefficients by using the coefficient matrix improvement model. The experimental results demonstrate that the proposed side information generation scheme based on the coefficient matrix improvement model can effectively improve the quality of side information, and the quality of the generated side information is improved by about 0.2-0.4 dB, thereby improving the overall performance of the distributed video coding system.Candidiasis caused by species of the Candida haemulonii complex (Candida haemulonii and Candida duobushaemulonii) and closely related species, Candida auris and Candida pseudohaemulonii are increasing. These species often show reduced susceptibility to antifungal drugs, such as azoles and amphotericin B or, less frequently, echinocandins. However, conventional phenotypic identification methods are unable to accurately differentiate these species and, therefore, their prevalence may have been underestimated. In this study, 150 isolates that were probably misidentified were reanalyzed using two novel PCR approaches. We found that one isolate previously identified in 1996 as Candida intermedia was C. duobushaemulonii, being one of the oldest isolates of this species described to date. We also found that this isolate had reduced susceptibility to fluconazole, itraconazole, and amphotericin B.