T26248G-transversion mutation in exon7 of the putative methyltransferase Nsun7 gene causes a change in protein folding associated with reduced sperm motility in asthenospermic men

2015 ◽  
Vol 27 (3) ◽  
pp. 471 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nahid Khosronezhad ◽  
Abasalt Hosseinzadeh Colagar ◽  
Syed Golam Ali Jorsarayi

The NOP2/Sun domain family, member 7 (Nsun7) gene, which encodes putative methyltransferase Nsun7, has a role in sperm motility in mice. In humans, this gene is located on chromosome 4 with 12 exons. The aim of the present study was to investigate mutations of exon 7 in the normospermic and asthenospermic men. Semen samples were collected from the Fatemezahra IVF centre (Babol, Iran) and analysed on the basis of World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines using general phenol–chloroform DNA extraction methods. Exon 7 was amplified using Sun7-F and Sun7-R primers. Bands on samples from asthenospermic men that exhibited different patterns of movement on single-strand conformation polymorphism gels compared with normal samples were identified and subjected to sequencing for further identification of possible mutations. Direct sequencing of polymerase chain reaction (PCR) products, along with their analysis, confirmed C26232T-transition and T26248G-transversion mutations in asthenospermic men. Comparison of normal and mutant protein structures of Nsun7 indicated that the amino acid serine was converted to alanine, the structure of the helix, coil and strand was changed, and the protein folding and ligand binding sites were changed in samples from asthenospermic men with a transversion mutation in exon 7, indicating impairment of protein function. Because Nsun7 gene products have a role in sperm motility, if an impairment occurs in exon 7 of this gene, it may lead to infertility. The transversion mutation in exon 7 of the Nsun7 gene can be used as an infertility marker in asthenospermic men.

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (12) ◽  
pp. 5535-5542
Author(s):  
Purohit Om Hemantkumar ◽  
Rakshit Lodha ◽  
Meghna Bajoria ◽  
R. Sujatha

Pneumonia is an infection caused by bacteria and viruses. It can shift from mellow to serious cases. This disease causes severe damages to the lungs since they fill with fluids. This situation causes difficulty in breathing. It further prevents oxygen to reach the blood. Pneumonia is diagnosed with the help of a chest X-rays, which can also use in the diagnosis of diseases like emphysema, lung cancer, and tuberculosis. According to WHO (World Health Organization (WHO). 2001. Standardization of Interpretation of Chest Radiographs for the Diagnosis of Pneumonia in Children. p.4.), Chest X-rays, at present, is the best available method for detecting pneumonia. Feature extraction methods like DiscreteWavelet Transform (DWT),Wavelet Frame Transform (WFT), andWavelet Packet Transform (WPT) can be used followed by any classification algorithm. In this paper, models like Squeezenet, DenseNet, and Resnet34 have been used for image recognition. In our system, the medical images were taken from Kaggle database and were recorded using a suitable imaging system. The images retrieved were then considered for input for the system where the images go through the various phases of image processing like pre-processing, edge detection and feature extraction. Later, a variety of training models are applied to know which model offers the highest accuracy.


1999 ◽  
Vol 27 (01) ◽  
pp. 123-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jung-Chou Chen ◽  
Ming-Xiong Xu ◽  
Leih-Der Chen ◽  
Yan-Nian Chen ◽  
Tsan Hung Chiu

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of Panax notoginseng extracts on inferior sperm motility in vitro. Semen samples were collected from 23 patients with sperm motility between 20% and 40%. The sperm count was over 20 × 106/ml in accordance with the World Health Organization standard. 1.0 mg/ml and 2.0 mg/ml of Panax notoginseng extracts including aqueous extract, n-butanol extract, and polysaccharide fraction on sperm motility and progression were evaluated by computer assisted semen analysis. The results demonstrated that sperm motility as well as progression on inferior sperm motility were enhanced at 1 hour and 2 hours after incubation with all three types of extracts.


2015 ◽  
Vol 53 (10) ◽  
pp. 3325-3333 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. T. Hayden ◽  
J. Preiksaitis ◽  
Y. Tong ◽  
X. Pang ◽  
Y. Sun ◽  
...  

Quantitative detection of cytomegalovirus (CMV) DNA has become a standard part of care for many groups of immunocompromised patients; recent development of the first WHO international standard for human CMV DNA has raised hopes of reducing interlaboratory variability of results. Commutability of reference material has been shown to be necessary if such material is to reduce variability among laboratories. Here we evaluated the commutability of the WHO standard using 10 different real-time quantitative CMV PCR assays run by eight different laboratories. Test panels, including aliquots of 50 patient samples (40 positive samples and 10 negative samples) and lyophilized CMV standard, were run, with each testing center using its own quantitative calibrators, reagents, and nucleic acid extraction methods. Commutability was assessed both on a pairwise basis and over the entire group of assays, using linear regression and correspondence analyses. Commutability of the WHO material differed among the tests that were evaluated, and these differences appeared to vary depending on the method of statistical analysis used and the cohort of assays included in the analysis. Depending on the methodology used, the WHO material showed poor or absent commutability with up to 50% of assays. Determination of commutability may require a multifaceted approach; the lack of commutability seen when using the WHO standard with several of the assays here suggests that further work is needed to bring us toward true consensus.


2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (9) ◽  
pp. e1501188 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrew E. Brereton ◽  
P. Andrew Karplus

During protein folding and as part of some conformational changes that regulate protein function, the polypeptide chain must traverse high-energy barriers that separate the commonly adopted low-energy conformations. How distortions in peptide geometry allow these barrier-crossing transitions is a fundamental open question. One such important transition involves the movement of a non-glycine residue between the left side of the Ramachandran plot (that is, ϕ < 0°) and the right side (that is, ϕ > 0°). We report that high-energy conformations with ϕ ~ 0°, normally expected to occur only as fleeting transition states, are stably trapped in certain highly resolved native protein structures and that an analysis of these residues provides a detailed, experimentally derived map of the bond angle distortions taking place along the transition path. This unanticipated information lays to rest any uncertainty about whether such transitions are possible and how they occur, and in doing so lays a firm foundation for theoretical studies to better understand the transitions between basins that have been little studied but are integrally involved in protein folding and function. Also, the context of one such residue shows that even a designed highly stable protein can harbor substantial unfavorable interactions.


2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-84 ◽  
Author(s):  
Silvia W. Lestari ◽  
Manggiasih D. Larasati ◽  
Indra G. Mansur ◽  
Muhammad F. Soelaeman ◽  
Favian A. Rahmat ◽  
...  

Axoneme structures in sperm tail, is a supramolecular protein complex with motor protein and regulatory which playing a crucial role in determining sperm motility. Dynein, one of the three members of cytoskeletal motor protein, has a ring of six AAA+ which linked together into one large polypeptide that contribute to the formation of sperm flagella bending. The previously research reported that the first two AAA motor domains, AAA1 and AAA2, were a major site in ATP hydrolysis associated with motility in the flagellum. Intrauterine Insemination (IUI) as a management of infertility requires sperm preparation procedures, by Swim-up (SU) and Density Gradient Centrifugation (DGC), in order to enhance the quality regarding concentration and motility of the initial sperm. This study aimed to evaluate the efficiency of the DGC and SU methods in selecting sperm, based the expression of sperm dynein AAA1 and AAA2. Semen samples were obtained from men underwent sperm preparation for IUI and divided into two groups, normozoospermia and asthenozoospermia, according to World Health Organization 2010 guideline. Semen analysis was performed to measure the sperm motility and velocity, before and after sperm preparation. The axoneme was isolated from the obtained samples from SU and DGC methods, while the level of AAA1 and AAA2 was measured by ELISA. This study showed that the percentage of motile sperm and velocity of prepared sperm in both groups in prepared sperm (post-SU and post-DGC) was higher compared to whole semen. The expression of sperm dynein AAA1 of prepared sperm in normozoospermia group showed higher, while in asthenozoospermia group showed lower activities compared to whole semen. The expression of sperm dynein AAA2 of prepared sperm in both groups showed lower activities compared to whole semen. The sperm preparation enhanced the quality of sperm and may increase the expression of sperm dynein AAA1 compared to the whole semen, without the involvement of sperm dynein AAA2.


IUCrJ ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Miranda L. Lynch ◽  
Edward H. Snell ◽  
Sarah E. J. Bowman

The global COVID-19 pandemic caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has wreaked unprecedented havoc on global society, in terms of a huge loss of life and burden of morbidity, economic upheaval and social disruption. Yet the sheer magnitude and uniqueness of this event has also spawned a massive mobilization of effort in the scientific community to investigate the virus, to develop therapeutics and vaccines, and to understand the public health impacts. Structural biology has been at the center of these efforts, and so it is advantageous to take an opportunity to reflect on the status of structural science vis-à-vis its role in the fight against COVID-19, to register the unprecedented response and to contemplate the role of structural biology in addressing future outbreak threats. As the one-year anniversary of the World Health Organization declaration that COVID-19 is a pandemic has just passed, over 1000 structures of SARS-CoV-2 biomolecules have been deposited in the Worldwide Protein Data Bank (PDB). It is rare to obtain a snapshot of such intense effort in the structural biology arena and is of special interest as the 50th anniversary of the PDB is celebrated in 2021. It is additionally timely as it overlaps with a period that has been termed the `resolution revolution' in cryoelectron microscopy (CryoEM). CryoEM has recently become capable of producing biomolecular structures at similar resolutions to those traditionally associated with macromolecular X-ray crystallography. Examining SARS-CoV-2 protein structures that have been deposited in the PDB since the virus was first identified allows a unique window into the power of structural biology and a snapshot of the advantages of the different techniques available, as well as insight into the complementarity of the structural methods.


2001 ◽  
Vol 29 (01) ◽  
pp. 155-160 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jung-Chou Chen ◽  
Leih-Der Chen ◽  
Wei Tsauer ◽  
Chin Chuan Tsai ◽  
Bih-Chern Chen ◽  
...  

The purpose of the study was to investigate the effects of two constituents of Panax notoginseng flower extract, Ginsenoside Rb2 and Rc, on human sperm motility and proression in vitro. Semen samples were collected from 20 patients with sperm motility between 20% and 40% of normal. All samples had sperm counts of over 20 million per milliliter, in accordance with the World Health Organization standard. Sperm were separated by a Percoll discontinuous gradient technique, and divided into a Percoll sperm control group, and three Ginsenoside Rb2 experimental groups (0.1, 0.01 and 0.001 mg/ml) and three Ginsenoside Rc experimental groups (0.1, 0.01 and 0.001 mg/ml). The results showed that at concentrations of 0.01 mg/ml and 0.001 mg/ml, Ginsenoxide Rc enhanced both sperm motility and sperm progression significantly at the end of the 1st and 2nd hour. However, the three concentrations of Ginsenoside Rb2 did not increase sperm motility at the 1st or 2nd hour, but promoted sperm progression at the 2nd hour, when compared to the Percoll group.


Toxins ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 61
Author(s):  
Wannes Hugo R. Van Hassel ◽  
Mirjana Andjelkovic ◽  
Benoit Durieu ◽  
Viviana Almanza Marroquin ◽  
Julien Masquelier ◽  
...  

In the context of increasing occurrences of toxic cyanobacterial blooms worldwide, their monitoring in Belgium is currently performed by regional environmental agencies (in two of three regions) using different protocols and is restricted to some selected recreational ponds and lakes. Therefore, a global assessment based on the comparison of existing datasets is not possible. For this study, 79 water samples from a monitoring of five lakes in Wallonia and occasional blooms in Flanders and Brussels, including a canal, were analyzed. A Liquid Chromatography with tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS) method allowed to detect and quantify eight microcystin congeners. The mcyE gene was detected using PCR, while dominant cyanobacterial species were identified using 16S RNA amplification and direct sequencing. The cyanobacterial diversity for two water samples was characterized with amplicon sequencing. Microcystins were detected above limit of quantification (LOQ) in 68 water samples, and the World Health Organization (WHO) recommended guideline value for microcystins in recreational water (24 µg L−1) was surpassed in 18 samples. The microcystin concentrations ranged from 0.11 µg L−1 to 2798.81 µg L−1 total microcystin. For 45 samples, the dominance of the genera Microcystis sp., Dolichospermum sp., Aphanizomenon sp., Cyanobium/Synechococcus sp., Planktothrix sp., Romeria sp., Cyanodictyon sp., and Phormidium sp. was shown. Moreover, the mcyE gene was detected in 75.71% of all the water samples.


2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 94-100
Author(s):  
Md. Selim Morshed ◽  
AKM Khurshidul Alam ◽  
AKM Anwarul Islam ◽  
Sojib Bin Zaman ◽  
Mohammad Saruar Alam ◽  
...  

Prevalence of varicocele is approximately 15.1% of the general population. Studies showed that surgical correction of clinically palpable varicocele could improve the semen parameters. However, there is scarce of study to demonstrate post-operative outcome of varicocelectomy among the patients with abnormal semen parameter. Therefore, this study tried to compare the microscopic changes in sperm concentration, sperm motility, and sperm morphology before and after varicocelectomy. This quasi-experimental study was done in Urology Department of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujib Medical University (BSMMU), Dhaka, Bangladesh from November 2014 to April 2016. Forty five patients with clinically palpable varicocele were finally includedin the study. Semen parameters of these patients were assessed by following the World Health Organization′s 5th manual of semen parameter, 2010. Subinguinal varicocelectomy was performed in every case. Follow up was done three months and six months after surgery. Data were analysed with statistical software SPSS 20 and level of significance was assessed by paired t-test.Almost 60.0% of patients were from 25 to 35 years age group. Of them, 87.1% patients were presented with left-sided varicocele, and 80% were grade III. All the patients showed oligospermia on semen analysis, whereas the number of abnormal sperm motility and abnormal morphology was 39, and 09, respectively. After surgical correction of varicocele, mean improvement of sperm concentration, motility and morphology found in 35 patients (77.7%), 31 patients (79.4%) and six patients (66.6%) respectively. The improvement was statistically significant (p<0.05). This study showed that surgical treatment could lead to the betterment of semen parameters in patients with clinically palpable varicocele, which will guide in deciding the management of varicocele patients presented with abnormal semen parameter. However, to recommend varicocelectomy as a most useful procedure in treating infertility cases; further longitudinal studies are recommended to establish the impact of varicocelectomy on


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