Pan-phylum genome-wide identification of sodium calcium exchangers reveal heterogeneous expansions and possible roles in nematode parasitism.

Calcium signaling is ubiquitous in nematode development from fertilization to cell specification to apoptosis. Calcium also regulates dauer entry in Caenorhabditis elegans, which corresponds to the infective stage of parasitic nematodes. In diverse parasites such as Trypanosoma cruzi and Toxoplasma gondii calcium has been shown to regulate host cell entry and egress, and perturbing calcium signaling represents a possible route to inhibit infection and parasitism in these species.

Transglottic corticosteroid injection for treatment of soft post-intubation subglottic stenosis: a retrospective analysis of 26 children.

Purpose: Surgical treatment is generally recommended for severe subglottic lesions following traumatic endotracheal intubation in children. An alternative approach is early transglottic corticosteroid administration to reduce scar formation and prevent the need for subsequent surgical intervention. This technique has been practiced successfully for several decades at the Children's Hospital of Cologne and the outcomes of 26 subsequent patients reviewed in this analysis.

An inducible model of human amylin overexpression reveals diverse transcriptional changes.

Human Islet Amyloid Polypeptide or amylin is a neuroendocrine peptide with important endocrine and paracrine functions. Excessive production and accumulation of human amylin in the pancreas can lead to its aggregation and apoptosis of islet β-cells. Amylin has been shown to function within the central nervous system to decrease food intake, and more recently, it has been revealed that amylin is directly transcribed from neurons of the central nervous system, including the hypothalamus, arcuate nucleus, medial preoptic area, and nucleus accumbens.

NCX-DB: a unified resource for integrative analysis of the sodium calcium exchanger super-family.

Na/Ca exchangers are low-affinity high-capacity transporters that mediate Ca extrusion by coupling Ca efflux to the influx of Na ions. The Na/Ca exchangers form a super-family comprised of three branches each differing in ion-substrate selectivity: Na/Ca exchangers (NCX), Na/Ca/K exchangers, and Ca/cation exchangers. Their primary function is to maintain Ca homeostasis and play a particularly important role in excitable cells that experience transient Ca fluxes.

STITCHER 2.0: primer design for overlapping PCR applications.

Overlapping polymerase chain reaction (PCR) is a common technique used by researchers in very diverse fields that enables the user to 'stitch' individual pieces of DNA together. Previously, we have reported a web based tool called STITCHER that provides a platform for researchers to automate the design of primers for overlapping PCR applications. Here we present STITCHER 2.