Whitleybengtsson7436

OBJECTIVE To evaluate the clinical feasibility of NIPD for β-thalassaemia using circulating single molecule amplification and resequencing technology (cSMART). DESIGN Through carrier screening, 102 pregnant Chinese couples carrying pathogenic HBB gene variants were recruited to the study. Pregnancies were managed using traditional invasive prenatal diagnosis (IPD). Retrospectively, we evaluated the archived pregnancy plasma DNA by NIPD to evaluate the performance of our cSMART assay for fetal genotyping. SETTING Chinese prenatal diagnostic centers specialising in thalassemia testing POPULATION Chinese carrier couples at high genetic risk for β-thalassaemia METHODS Fetal cell sampling was performed by amniocentesis and HBB genotypes determined by reverse dot blot. NIPD was performed by a newly designed HBB cSMART assay and fetal genotypes called by measuring the allelic ratios in the maternal cell free DNA. MAIN OUTCOME MEASURES Concordance of HBB fetal genotyping between IPD and NIPD and the sensitivity and specificity of NIPD. RESULTS IPD identified 29 affected homozygotes or compound heterozygotes, 54 heterozygotes and 19 normal homozygotes. Compared to IPD results, 99 of 102 fetuses (97%) were correctly genotyped by our NIPD assay. Two of three discordant samples were false positives and the other sample involved an incorrect call of a heterozygote carrier as a homozygote normal. Overall, the sensitivity and specificity of our NIPD assay was 100% (95% CI 88.06%-100.00%) and 97.26% (95% CI 90.45% to 99.67%), respectively. CONCLUSIONS This study demonstrates that our cSMART based NIPD assay for β-thalassaemia has potential clinical utility as an alternative to IPD for pregnant HBB carrier couples. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.Protein encapsulation is a growing area of interest, particularly in the fields of food science and medicine. The sequestration of protein cargoes is achieved using a variety of methods, each with benefits and drawbacks. One of the most significant challenges associated with protein encapsulation is achieving high loading while maintaining protein viability. This difficulty is exacerbated because many encapsulant systems require the use of organic solvents. By contrast, nature has optimized strategies to compartmentalize and protect proteins inside the cell-a purely aqueous environment. Although the mechanisms whereby aspects of the cytosol is able to stabilize proteins are unknown, the crowded nature of many newly discovered, liquid phase separated "membraneless organelles" that achieve protein compartmentalization suggests that the material environment surrounding the protein may be critical in determining stability. Here, encapsulation strategies based on liquid-liquid phase separation, and complex coacervation in particular, which has many of the key features of the cytoplasm as a material, are reviewed. The literature on protein encapsulation via coacervation is also reviewed and the parameters relevant to creating protein-containing coacervate formulations are discussed. Additionally, potential opportunities associated with the creation of tailored materials to better facilitate protein encapsulation and stabilization are highlighted. © 2020 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.PURPOSE The personalized setting of plan parameters in the Auto-Planning module of the Pinnacle treatment planning system (TPS) using the PlanIQ feasibility tool was evaluated for lung cancer conventional fractionated radiotherapy (CFRT). MATERIALS AND METHOD We reviewed the records of ten patients with lung cancer who were treated with volumetric modulated arc therapy (VMAT). Three plans were designed for each patient the clinically accepted manual plan (MP) and two automatic plans including one generated using the generic plan parameters in technique script (AP1) and the other generated using personalized plan parameters derived based on feasibility dose volume histogram (FDVH) in PlanIQ (AP2). The plans were assessed according to the dosimetric parameters, monitor units, and planning time. A plan quality metric (PQM) was defined according to the clinical requirements for plan assessment. RESULTS AP2 achieved better lung sparing than AP1 and MP. The PQM value of AP2 (52.5 ± 14.3) was higher than those of AP1 (49.2 ± 16.2) and MP (44.8 ± 16.9) with P  less then  0.05. The monitor units of AP2 (585.9 ± 142.9 MU) was higher than that of AP1 (511.1 ± 136.5 MU) and lower than that of MP (632.8 ± 143.8 MU) with p  less then  0.05. The planning time of AP2 (33.2 ± 4.8 min) was slightly higher than that of AP1 (28.2 ± 4.0 min) and substantially lower than that of MP (72.9 ± 28.5 min) with P  less then  0.05. CONCLUSIONS The Auto-Planning module of the Pinnacle system using personalized plan parameters suggested by the PlanIQ Feasibility tool provides superior quality for lung cancer plans, especially in terms of lung sparing. The time consumption of Auto-Planning was slightly higher with the personalized parameters compared to that with the generic parameters, but significantly lower than that for the manual plan. © 2020 The Authors. Journal of Applied Clinical Medical Physics published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. NCT-503 research buy on behalf of American Association of Physicists in Medicine.Environmental monitoring of bacteria using phage-based biosensors has been widely developed for many different species. However, there are only a few available methods to detect specific bacteriophages in raw environmental samples. In this work, we developed a simple and efficient assay to rapidly monitor the phage content of a given sample. The assay is based on the bistable expression of the Salmonella enterica opvAB operon. Under regular growth conditions, opvAB is only expressed by a small fraction of the bacterial subpopulation. In the OpvABON subpopulation, synthesis of the OpvA and OpvB products shortens the O-antigen and confers resistance to phages that use LPS as a receptor. As a consequence, the OpvABON subpopulation is selected in the presence of such phages. Using an opvABgfp fusion, we could monitor LPS-binding phages in various media, including raw water samples. To enlarge our phage-biosensor panoply, we also developed biosensors able to detect LPS- as well as protein-binding coliphages. Moreover, the combination of these tools allowed to identify the bacterial receptor triggering phage infection.