Human papillomavirus (HPV) is considered the aetiological agent for cervical cancer. Several reports have addressed a relationship with HPV and breast cancer, as different HPVs have been identified. The purpose of this study was to detect HPV DNA in 67 breast cancer patients and 40 non-malignant disease breast tissues by means of Polymerase Chain Reaction with consensus primers. The frequency of HPV in the cases group were 4.4% (3/67) and no positive samples among the reference group were identified. From the 3 positive samples, HPV types 16, 18 and 33 were identified by restriction patterns and direct sequencing. The high diversity among detection in the related studies shows that population genomic heterogeneity plays an important role in the disease. The low frequency detected in the present study suggests that HPV does not play an important role in breast cancer.

Genomic signal processing (GSP) refers to the use of digital signal processing (DSP) tools for analyzing genomic data such as DNA sequences. A possible application of GSP that has not been fully explored is the computation of the distance between a pair of sequences. In this work we present GAFD, a novel GSP alignment-free distance computation method. We introduce a DNA sequence-to-signal mapping function based on the employment of doublet values, which increases the number of possible amplitude values for the generated signal. Additionally, we explore the use of three DSP distance metrics as descriptors for categorizing DNA signal fragments. Our results indicate the feasibility of employing GAFD for computing sequence distances and the use of descriptors for characterizing DNA fragments.

The renin-angiotensin system (RAS) is a hormonal signaling mechanism widely known as a blood pressure regulation system. The classic pathway begins with the release of renin (REN), an aspartyl-protease that cleaves angiotensinogen (AGT) to produce angiotensin I (AngI), which is later hydrolyzed by the angiotensin I-converting enzyme (ACE) to produce angiotensin II (AngII); this octapeptide exerts its functions through its specific receptors, angiotensin II receptor type 1 and type 2 (AGTR1 and AGTR2 respectively). 1 Most of the physiological effects such as blood vessel constriction have been attributed to the AGTR1 signaling pathway. In recent years, however, research papers have described mitogenic and angiogenic activities as well, activities that are also mediated through AGTR1. 2,3 Since angiogenesis and proliferative processes are related to the development, progression and metastasis of cancer, it is reasonable to believe that RAS may have a role in cancer. 4 When ACE insertion-deletion (indel) polymorphism was examined as a cancer risk marker, it was associated with gastric, endometrial, prostate and breast cancer. [5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13] However, three different AGTR polymorphisms presented contradictory results when studied for breast cancer. [13][14][15] For every biological system each component contributes to the overall effect; therefore, to explain any phenomenon, a more integrated approach is needed. To date, no study has included more than two RAS genes. With this in mind, in the present work we explored the association between breast cancer and some of the major polymorphisms of the four Abstract Recent information has revealed new roles in the angiogenic processes linked to the rennin-angiotensin system. To date few studies have been done on the association between RAS genes and cancer and the majority focus mainly on angiotensin I-converting enzyme (ACE). For breast cancer there are three reports that include the angiotensin II receptor, subtype 1 (AGTR1), only one for angiotensinogen (AGT) and none for renin gene (REN). In the present study we investigate whether REN (BglI), AGT (M235T), ACE (A245T, Indel), and AGTR1 (A1166C) are associated with breast cancer. Polymorphisms were analysed by PCR and RFPLs or sequence specific assay in three groups: breast cancer, benign breast disease (BBD) and general population. REN polymorphism shows that homozygous for A allele have an increased risk for BBD. Differences in M235T genotype frequencies were significant with less heterozygous in breast cancer. With different risk values ACE indel was associated with BBD and breast cancer. Association of AGTR1 was observed only in the breast cancer group, where C allele carriers present a reduced risk. Results of this work supports previous observations on the possible involvement of this system in breast cancer but it also suggests a role in benign disease.

Genomic signal processing (GSP) is based on the use of digital signal processing methods for the analysis of genomic data. Convolutional neural networks (CNN) are the state-of-the-art machine learning classifiers that have been widely applied to solve complex problems successfully. In this paper, we present a deep learning architecture and a method for the classification of three different functional genome types: coding regions (CDS), long noncoding regions (LNC), and pseudogenes (PSD) in genomic data, based on the use of GSP methods to convert the nucleotide sequence into a graphical representation of the information contained in it. The obtained accuracy scores of 83% and 84% when classifying between CDS vs. LNC and CDS vs. PSD, respectively, indicate the feasibility of employing this methodology for the classification of these types of sequences. The model was not able to differentiate from PSD and LNC. Our results indicate the feasibility of employing CNN with GSP for the classification of these types of DNA data.

Preparation of silver nanoparticles was carried out by semicontinuous reduction of Ag + ions at low temperatures. Silver nitrate was used as the Ag 0 precursor, the carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) as stabilizer and primary reducing agent, and sodium borohydride as reducing agent. Weight ratios of 1 : 1 and 1 : 2 of AgNO 3 : CMC were used for carrying out the reactions. Silver nanoparticles were characterized by UV-VIS spectroscopy, transmission electronic microscopy (TEM), and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The formation of silver nanoparticles was confirmed by XRD spectroscopy and by the presence of an absorption peak around 400 nm in the UV-visible spectrum. Unimodal size distributions of spheroidal nanoparticles were observed by TEM. Greater productivities than those reported by other authors were obtained with the advantage of using a lower temperature and minor reaction times. By using a higher CMC/AgNO 3 weight ratio or a higher concentration of AgNO 3 , AgNPs with larger average size were produced. Antibacterial activity of AgNPs against S. aureus and E. coli was determined by the agar disk diffusion method. The higher the AgNPs concentration, the larger the inhibition zone. The minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) of AgNPs against S. aureus and E. coli was 5 g/disk.

Human breast cancer cells with high metastatic potential show reduced expression of the metastasis-suppressor gene NME1. There are two polymorphic sites for the restriction enzymes BglII and EcoRI, both detectable by Southern blot analysis. Although the BglII site has been analyzed for loss of heterozygosity, the biallelic EcoRI site polymorphism has not been studied in association with breast cancer, complications or metastasis. We analyzed EcoRI site allele frequencies in Mexican patients with breast cancer, using polymerase chain reaction -restriction fragment length polymorphisms. The polymorphic allelic frequencies in the cases and reference groups were 0.4215 and 0.3375, respectively; this difference was not statistically significant (chi2=0.8687, p=0.3512). Thus, EcoR1 polymorphic site was not associated with breast cancer in this series, but could be analyzed in association with metastases and might be informative in the evaluation of loss of heterozygosity in women with breast cancer.

Research in the last decade has shown growing evidence of the gut microbiota influence on brain physiology. While many mechanisms of this influence have been proposed in animal models, most studies in humans are the result of a pathology–dysbiosis association and very few have related the presence of certain taxa with brain substructures or molecular pathways. In this paper, we associated the functional ontologies in the differential expression of brain substructures from the Allen Brain Atlas database, with those of the metaproteome from the Human Microbiome Project. Our results showed several coherent clustered ontologies where many taxa could influence brain expression and physiology. A detailed analysis of psychobiotics showed specific slim ontologies functionally associated with substructures in the basal ganglia and cerebellar cortex. Some of the most relevant slim ontology groups are related to Ion transport, Membrane potential, Synapse, DNA and RNA metabolism, and Antigen processing, while the most relevant neuropathology found was Parkinson disease. In some of these cases, new hypothetical gut microbiota-brain interaction pathways are proposed.

In this work, we report the synthesis and characterization of poly(butyl monoitaconate-co-acrylamide) hydrogels to be used as drug release agents. Four isomers of butanol were used to synthesize the hydrogels. The influence of butyl monoitaconate isomery on swelling behavior, Young's and compression moduli, cross-linking density and molar mass between crosslinks are reported. It was found that by increasing butyl ramification, equilibrium degree of swelling, and the time for reaching swelling equilibrium decreases.Cross-linking density, Young's and compression moduli increases as butyl ramification increases. The release of theophylline and aminophylline drugs used in therapy for respiratory diseases were studied and it was found that theophylline was released faster than aminophylline