BackgroundSaturated brines are extreme environments of low diversity. Salinibacter ruber is the only bacterium that inhabits this environment in significant numbers. In order to establish the extent of genetic diversity in natural populations of this microbe, the genomic sequence of reference strain DSM 13855 was compared to metagenomic fragments recovered from climax saltern crystallizers and obtained with 454 sequencing technology. This kind of analysis reveals the presence of metagenomic islands, i.e. highly variable regions among the different lineages in the population.ResultsThree regions of the sequenced isolate were scarcely represented in the metagenome thus appearing to vary among co-occurring S. ruber cells. These metagenomic islands showed evidence of extensive genomic corruption with atypically low GC content, low coding density, high numbers of pseudogenes and short hypothetical proteins. A detailed analysis of island gene content showed that the genes in metagenomic island 1 code for cell surface polysaccharides. The strain-specific genes of metagenomic island 2 were found to be involved in biosynthesis of cell wall polysaccharide components. Finally, metagenomic island 3 was rich in DNA related enzymes.ConclusionThe genomic organisation of S. ruber variable genomic regions showed a number of convergences with genomic islands of marine microbes studied, being largely involved in variable cell surface traits. This variation at the level of cell envelopes in an environment devoid of grazing pressure probably reflects a global strategy of bacteria to escape phage predation.

Quality of life in patients with cervical cancer FIGO IIb stage after concomitant chemoradiotherapy Background. The literature reports are unclear regarding the quality of life in patients after the concomitant chemoradiotherapy. Our aim was to define and compare the quality of life of patients with cervical cancer FIGO IIb stage before and after the concomitant chemoradiotherapy. Methods. Nineteen patients were irradiated to 45 Gy in 25 fractions over 5 weeks to the pelvis and additional 20-24 Gy in 4-6 fractions were given by intracavitary high dosage rate (HDR) brachytherapy. Patients received 40 mg/m2 of cisplatin once a week, starting from the first day of the intracavitary brachytherapy treatment, which is a total of 4-6 cycles of cisplatin. Patients were surveyed with two questionnaires for the assessment of the quality of life. They were developed by the European Organisation for Research and Treatment of Cancer (EORTC): one was cancer specific (EORTC QLQ-C30) and one was site specific (EORTC QLQ-Cx24). Patients answered the questions for the period immediately before diagnosed cervical cancer (thus being a control group) and for the period starting 12 months after the completion of the concomitant chemoradiotherapy (thus being an experimental group). Results. A statistically significant difference between the median scores of these two groups has been found in the quality of life, role function, emotional function, social function, pain, fatigue and vaginal problems. Conclusions. The quality of life of patients with cervical cancer FIGO IIb stage was better after concomitant chemoradiotherapy than before it.

We have created a structure-selectivity database (AMPad) of frog-derived, helical antimicrobial peptides (AMPs), in which the selectivity was determined as a therapeutic index (TI), and then used the novel concept of sequence moments to study the lengthwise asymmetry of physicochemical peptide properties. We found that the cosine of the angle between two sequence moments obtained with different hydrophobicity scales, defined as the D-descriptor, identifies highly selective peptide antibiotics. We could then use this descriptor to predict TI changes after point mutations in known AMPs, and to aid the prediction of TI for de novo designed AMPs. In combination with an amino acid selectivity index, a motif regularity index and other statistical rules extracted from AMPad, the D-descriptor enabled construction of the AMP-Designer algorithm. A 23 residue, glycine-rich, peptide suggested by the algorithm was synthesized and the activity and selectivity tested. This peptide, adepantin 1, is less than 50% identical to any other AMP, has a potent antibacterial activity against the reference organism, E. coli, and has a significantly greater selectivity (TI > 200) than the best AMP present in the AMPad database (TI = 125).

Number of hemodialysis patients each day is increasing. The quality of their lives is largely determined by the quality of hemodialysis treatment. One of the most important factors is the type of applied blood approach. The type of blood approach in the most case is artery venous fistula, permanent, temporary catheters, grafts. Any complications of blood strand approach inevitably leads to lower quality of hemodialysis treatment which is connected with not adequate dialysis and poorer general state of patients. Our research was carried out as a prospective study, for the period of 36 months. In the study were included 31 patients, which are on chronic haemodialysis treatment. During this study, we are followed all complications, which occurred at temporary, and permanent tunneled haemodialysis catheters. Complications have occurred in terms of thrombotic problems, low blood flow, occurrence of infection. All patients are divided in two groups, 16 patients with permanent and 15 patients with temporary catheters. In the course of the study was analyzed blood flow and dialysis adequacy (Kt/Vdp) as well as complications and results was compared with randomly selected 16 patients who haemodialysis treatment performed by artery venous fistula (AVF). Two patients were lost to further follow-up to the end of the study. 26 patients at the end of the study had functional catheters, while in the case of 3 patients the catheter was removed. Infection was found in 10 patients while thrombotic complications were observed in 27 cases regardless of catheter type. Mean blood flow in patients with permanent catheter was significantly higher (296,9+/-28,45 cm3/min) compared to patients with temporary catheter (226,3+/-39,8 cm3/min) (p<0,001). Kt/Vdp delivered was 1,22+/-0,15 on patients with permanent catheter and 1,30+/-0,18 for artery venous fistula (AVF) access respectively. The loss of dialysis efficacy using catheters was estimated at 6%. However, in all cases Kt/Vdp values remained above the recommended values (Kt/Vdp > or = 1,2).