Articles

3D electron tomographic and biochemical analysis of ER, Golgi and trans Golgi network membrane systems in stimulated Venus flytrap (Dionaea muscipula) glandular cells

The insect-trapping leaves of Dionaea muscipula provide a model for studying the secretory pathway of an inducible plant secretory system. The leaf glands were induced with bovine serum albumin to secrete proteas...

Authors: Zachary R. Gergely, Dana E. Martinez, Bryon S. Donohoe, Soren Mogelsvang, Rachel Herder and L. Andrew Staehelin

The family Raphitomidae (Mollusca: Gastropoda: Conoidea) in the Greek Seas with the description of two new species

The Raphitomidae family in the Mediterranean Sea is under revision. Accordingly, new data are of taxonomic and comparative relevance. In this study, new material from the Hellenic Seas is presented.

Authors: Thanasis Manousis, Constantinos Kontadakis, George Mbazios and Georgios Polyzoulis

Differences in trophic resources and niches of two juvenile predatory species in three Pangani estuarine zones, Tanzania: stomach contents and stable isotope approaches

Estuaries are primary habitats that serve as feeding and nursery grounds for most juvenile marine fish. However, estuaries have been used as fishing grounds by the artisanal fishers in Tanzania. The slow-growi...

Authors: Alistidia Paul Mwijage, Daniel Abel Shilla and John Ferdinand Machiwa

StarSeeker: an automated tool for mature duplex microRNA sequence identification based on secondary structure modeling of precursor molecule

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small, non-coding RNA molecules that play a key role in gene regulation in both plants and animals. MicroRNA biogenesis involves the enzymatic processing of a primary RNA transcript. The...

Authors: Paschalis Natsidis, Ilias Kappas and Wojciech M. Karlowski

Cortical microtubule orientation in Arabidopsis thaliana root meristematic zone depends on cell division and requires severing by katanin

Transverse cortical microtubule orientation, critical for anisotropic cell expansion, is established in the meristematic root zone. Intending to elucidate the possible prerequisites for this establishment and ...

Authors: Emmanuel Panteris, Barbara-Evelin Diannelidis and Ioannis-Dimosthenis S. Adamakis

Correction to: Molecular, biochemical and kinetic analysis of a novel, thermostable lipase (LipSm) from Stenotrophomonas maltophilia Psi‑1, the first member of a new bacterial lipase family (XIX)

We have recently (8th February 2018) published our article entitled “Molecular, biochemical and kinetic analysis of a novel, thermostable lipase (LipSm) from Stenotrophomonas maltophilia Psi-1, the first member o...

Authors: Maria Parapouli, Athanasios Foukis, Panagiota‑Yiolanda Stergiou, Maria Koukouritaki, Panagiotis Magklaras, Olga A. Gkini, Emmanuel M. Papamichael, Amalia‑Sofia Afendra and Efstathios Hatziloukas

Spatial and temporal patterns in the diet of barn owl (Tyto alba) in Cyprus

The barn owl, a nocturnal raptor with cosmopolitan distribution, shows a great adaptability to different environments. Regarding prey, the barn owl is a rather selective species, but if changes in the abundanc...

Authors: Michaella Moysi, Maria Christou, Vassilis Goutner, Nikos Kassinis and Savvas Iezekiel

Changes in the microstructure of compact and trabecular bone tissues of mice subchronically exposed to alcohol

Alcohol is one of the most commonly consumed neurotoxins by humans. Its negative effect on bone health is known for a long time. However, its impact on qualitative and quantitative 2D characteristics of the co...

Authors: Monika Martiniakova, Anna Sarocka, Ramona Babosova, Birgit Grosskopf, Edyta Kapusta, Zofia Goc, Grzegorz Formicki and Radoslav Omelka

The repeated emergence of asexuality, the hidden genomes and the role of parthenogenetic rare males in the brine shrimp Artemia

The backbone of this endeavour consists of three major components as they appear in the title. My intention is to summarise, as explicitly as possible, both existing and novel data on the occurrence of parthen...

Authors: Theodore J. Abatzopoulos

New marine gastropod records for the Hellenic waters

The Hellenic Seas are influenced by on-going environmental changes and the introduction of alien species, which are expected to have an impact on their biodiversity. This study contributes to the knowledge of ...

Authors: Thanasis Manousis, Constantinos Kontadakis, Georgios Polyzoulis, George Mbazios and Sofia Galinou-Mitsoudi

Cadmium uptake kinetics in parts of the seagrass Cymodocea nodosa at high exposure concentrations

Seagrass species have been recommended as biomonitors of environmental condition and as tools for phytoremediation, due to their ability to concentrate anthropogenic chemicals. This study aims to provide novel...

Authors: Paraskevi Malea, Theodoros Kevrekidis, Konstantina-Roxani Chatzipanagiotou and Athanasios Mogias

Molecular, biochemical and kinetic analysis of a novel, thermostable lipase (LipSm) from Stenotrophomonas maltophilia Psi-1, the first member of a new bacterial lipase family (XVIII)

Microbial lipases catalyze a broad spectrum of reactions and are enzymes of considerable biotechnological interest. The focus of this study was the isolation of new lipase genes, intending to discover novel li...

Authors: Maria Parapouli, Athanasios Foukis, Panagiota-Yiolanda Stergiou, Maria Koukouritaki, Panagiotis Magklaras, Olga A. Gkini, Emmanuel M. Papamichael, Amalia-Sofia Afendra and Efstathios Hatziloukas

Bone marrow stem cells to destroy circulating HIV: a hypothetical therapeutic strategy

Human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) still poses enigmatic threats to human life. This virus has mastered in bypassing anti retroviral therapy leading to patients’ death. Circulating viruses are phenomenal for t...

Authors: Umesh Chandra Halder

HaloDom: a new database of halophiles across all life domains

Halophilic organisms may thrive in or tolerate high salt concentrations. They have been studied for decades and a considerable number of papers reporting new halophilic species are being published every year. ...

Authors: Alexios Loukas, Ilias Kappas and Theodore J. Abatzopoulos

Genetic diversity analysis of cultivated Korarima [Aframomum corrorima (Braun) P.C.M. Jansen] populations from southwestern Ethiopia using inter simple sequence repeats (ISSR) marker

Korarima (Aframomum corrorima) is a perennial and aromatic herb native and widely distributed in southwestern Ethiopia. It is known for its fine flavor as a spice in various Ethiopian traditional dishes. Few mole...

Authors: Dagmawit Chombe and Endashaw Bekele

Effects of partial dietary supplementation of fish meal with soymeal on the stress and apoptosis response in the digestive system of common dentex (Dentex dentex)

Soybean is a common alternative protein source of plant origin in aquafeeds as it has a reasonably balanced amino acid profile and is widely available. This study aimed to investigate the influence of partial ...

Authors: Efthimia Antonopoulou, Eleni Chouri, Konstantinos Feidantsis, Antigone Lazou and Stavros Chatzifotis

Host species and pathogenicity effects in the evolution of the mitochondrial genomes of Eimeria species (Apicomplexa; Coccidia; Eimeriidae)

Mitochondria are fundamental organelles responsible for cellular metabolism and energy production in eukaryotes via the oxidative phosphorylation pathway. Mitochondrial DNA is often used in population and spec...

Authors: Asma Awadi

AFLP reveals low genetic diversity of the bryozoan Pectinatella magnifica (Leidy, 1851) in the Czech Republic

Non-native species have aroused scientific interest because of their ability to successfully colonise areas to which they have been introduced, despite their sometimes limited genetic variation compared to the...

Authors: Vendula Moravcová, Jana Moravcová, Vladislav Čurn, Zuzana Balounová, Josef Rajchard and Lenka Havlíčková

Evaluation of a simple method for storage of blood samples that enables isolation of circulating tumor cells 96 h after sample collection

Minimizing the effects of transportation on the properties of biological material is a major challenge for the scientific community. The viability of cells is important in cases where their study is urgent for...

Authors: Panagiotis Apostolou, Dimitrios-Athanasios Ntanovasilis and Ioannis Papasotiriou

MicroRNA-454 may function as an oncogene via targeting AKT in triple negative breast cancer

Altered microRNAs expression mediates tumor development and progression in many type cancers including triple negative breast cancer (TNBC). Here we detected the effect of miR-454 on cell proliferation, migrat...

Authors: Qun Li, Jia Liu, Xianying Meng, Renzhu Pang and Jie Li

Bone marker gene expression in calvarial bones: different bone microenvironments

In calvarial mice, mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) differentiate into osteoprogenitor cells and then differentiate into osteoblasts that differentiate into osteocytes, which become embedded within the bone matri...

Authors: Osama Al-Amer

Two single nucleotide polymorphisms sites in α1-AT gene and their association with somatic cell score in Chinese Holstein cows

Alpha 1-antitrypsin (α1-AT) may affect the susceptibility of mastitis in dairy cattle for its possible role in the protection of lactoferrin from proteolytic degradation in the mammary. Milk somatic cell score...

Authors: Xiao-Fei Guo, Wen-Ping Hu, Xian-Zheng Lang, Qiu-Ling Li, Xiang-Yu Wang, Ran Di, Qiu-Yue Liu, Xiao-Lin Liu, Yong-Fu An and Ming-Xing Chu

A survey of methods and tools to detect recent and strong positive selection

Positive selection occurs when an allele is favored by natural selection. The frequency of the favored allele increases in the population and due to genetic hitchhiking the neighboring linked variation diminis...

Authors: Pavlos Pavlidis and Nikolaos Alachiotis

Sudden infant death syndrome due to long QT syndrome: a brief review of the genetic substrate and prevalence

The pathophysiological mechanisms which lead to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) are not completely understood. Cardiac channelopathies are a well-established causative factor with long QT syndrome (LQTS) b...

Authors: Nikolaos S. Ioakeimidis, Theodora Papamitsou, Soultana Meditskou and Zafiroula Iakovidou-Kritsi

Protective role of hesperidin against γ-radiation-induced oxidative stress and apoptosis in rat testis

Gamma (γ) ray, an electromagnetic radiation, is occasionally accompanying the emission of an alpha or beta particle. Exposure to such radiation can cause cellular changes such as mutations, chromosome aberrati...

Authors: Nadia Z. Shaban, Ahmed M. Ahmed Zahran, Fatma H. El-Rashidy and Ahmad S. Abdo Kodous

The Aegean archipelago: a natural laboratory of evolution, ecology and civilisations

The Aegean archipelago, comprising numerous islands and islets with great heterogeneity in topographic, geological, historical and environmental properties, offers an ideal natural laboratory for ecological an...

Authors: Spyros Sfenthourakis and Kostas A. Triantis

Genetic diversity of Atlantic Bluefin tuna in the Mediterranean Sea: insights from genome-wide SNPs and microsatellites

Elucidating the patterns of the Atlantic Bluefin tuna [ABFT, Thunnus thynnus (Linnaeus, 1758)] population structure constitutes a challenging task of great importance. Most of the unique challenges stem from its ...

Authors: Aglaia Antoniou, Panagiotis Kasapidis, Georgios Kotoulas, Constantinos C. Mylonas and Antonios Magoulas

Evolution and inheritance of animal mitochondrial DNA: rules and exceptions

Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) has been studied intensely for “its own” merit. Its role for the function of the cell and the organism remains a fertile field, its origin and evolution is an indispensable part of th...

Authors: Emmanuel D. Ladoukakis and Eleftherios Zouros

Campanula lingulata populations on Mt. Olympus, Greece: where’s the “abundant centre”?

The abundant-centre hypothesis (ACH) assumes that a species becomes more abundant at the centre of its range, where the environmental conditions are most favorable. As we move away from this centre, abundance ...

Authors: Anastasia E. Tzortzaki, Despoina Vokou and John M. Halley

Effects of cell seeding density on real-time monitoring of anti-proliferative effects of transient gene silencing

Real-time cellular analysis systems enable impedance-based label-free and dynamic monitoring of various cellular events such as proliferation. In this study, we describe the effects of initial cell seeding den...

Authors: Cigdem Selli, Yasemin Erac and Metiner Tosun

DNA methylation changes and TE activity induced in tissue cultures of barley (Hordeum vulgare L.)

In vitro plant regeneration via androgenesis or somatic embryogenesis is capable of inducing (epi)mutations that may affect sexual progenies. While epimutations are associated with DNA methylation, mutations c...

Authors: Renata Orłowska, Joanna Machczyńska, Sylwia Oleszczuk, Janusz Zimny and Piotr Tomasz Bednarek

Identification and validation of Aeluropus littoralis reference genes for Quantitative Real-Time PCR Normalization

The use of stably expressed genes as normalizers has crucial role in accurate and reliable expression analysis estimated by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qPCR). Recent studies have shown th...

Authors: Seyyed Hamidreza Hashemi, Ghorbanali Nematzadeh, Gholamreza Ahmadian, Ahad Yamchi and Markus Kuhlmann

Hominin interbreeding and the evolution of human variation

Mitochondrial Eve confirms the “out of Africa” theory, but the evidence also supports interbreeding between Homo sapiens and other hominins: Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo heidelbergensis. This article explai...

Authors: Kwang Hyun Ko

Ganges: special at its origin

Authors: Krishna Khairnar

PredPhos: an ensemble framework for structure-based prediction of phosphorylation sites

Post-translational modifications (PTMs) occur on almost all proteins and often strongly affect the functions of modified proteins. Phosphorylation is a crucial PTM mechanism with important regulatory functions...

Authors: Yong Gao, Weilin Hao, Jing Gu, Diwei Liu, Chao Fan, Zhigang Chen and Lei Deng

Prediction of protein–protein interaction sites by means of ensemble learning and weighted feature descriptor

Reliable prediction of protein–protein interaction sites is an important goal in the field of bioinformatics. Many computational methods have been explored for the large-scale prediction of protein–protein int...

Authors: Xiuquan Du, Shiwei Sun, Changlin Hu, Xinrui Li and Junfeng Xia

Iterative ensemble feature selection for multiclass classification of imbalanced microarray data

Microarray technology allows biologists to monitor expression levels of thousands of genes among various tumor tissues. Identifying relevant genes for sample classification of various tumor types is beneficial...

Authors: Junshan Yang, Jiarui Zhou, Zexuan Zhu, Xiaoliang Ma and Zhen Ji

An approach to semantic query expansion system based on Hepatitis ontology

Ontology development, as an increasingly practical vehicle applied in various fields, plays a significant role in knowledge management. This paper, focusing on constructing and querying a hepatitis ontology, a...

Authors: Chen Yunzhi, Lu Huijuan, Linda Shapiro, Ravensara S. Travillian and Li Lanjuan

Targeted CYP2E1 quantification and its correlation to currently acceptable clinical biochemical indices

The Cytochrome P450 enzymes are commonly known for their major role in metabolism. Besides its metabolic role, CYP2E1 gene expression has been associated with the onset of diabetic nephropathy. CYP2E1 protein ...

Authors: Christina Gertrude Yap, Anuar Zaini and Iekhsan Othman

MiR-10b decreases sensitivity of glioblastoma cells to radiation by targeting AKT

Glioblastomas are the most aggressive brain tumors with extremely poor prognosis despite advances in treatment techniques. MiR-10b is highly expressed in glioblastoma and regulates cell proliferation, migratio...

Authors: Limin Zhen, Jian Li, Mingran Zhang and Kun Yang

Polymorphism of the melatonin receptor 1A (MNTR1A) gene and association with seasonality of reproductive activity in a local Greek sheep breed

Sheep’s reproductive physiology in temperate latitudes (such as Greece), is characterized by seasonality and is also regulated by photoperiodic exposure. Melatonin is the key hormone involved in this regulatio...

Authors: Ioannis A. Giantsis, George P. Laliotis, Olympia Stoupa and Melpomeni Avdi

Co-culturing bacteria and microalgae in organic carbon containing medium

Microalgae frequently grow in natural environment and long-term laboratory cultures in association with bacteria. Bacteria benefit the oxygen and extracellular substances generated by microalgae, and reimburse...

Authors: Jichang Han, Lin Zhang, Song Wang, Guanpin Yang, Lu Zhao and Kehou Pan

Effects of Laminaria japonica polysaccharides on exercise endurance and oxidative stress in forced swimming mouse model

Polysaccharides are the major active ingredients responsible for the bioactivities of Laminaria japonica. However, the effects of L. japonica polysaccharides (LJP) on exercise endurance and oxidative stress have ...

Authors: Feiwei Yan and Haitao Hao

Sequencing and characterization of leaf transcriptomes of six diploid Nicotiana species

Nicotiana belongs to the Solanaceae family that includes important crops such as tomato, potato, eggplant, and pepper. Nicotiana species are of worldwide economic importance and are im...

Authors: Ni Long, Xueliang Ren, Zhidan Xiang, Wenting Wan and Yang Dong

Effect of methyl-beta-cyclodextrin on the viability and acrosome damage of sex-sorted sperm in frozen-thawed bovine semen

The regulation of methyl-beta-cyclodextrin (MBCD) on cryodamage on X- and Y-sperm during cryopreservation of semen was investigated. The semen was collected from ten healthy bulls of proven fertility by an art...

Authors: Seunghyung Lee, Yong-Seung Lee, Sang-Hee Lee, Boo-Keun Yang and Choon-Keun Park

The ZmRCP-1 promoter of maize provides root tip specific expression of transgenes in plantain

Bananas and plantains (Musa spp.) provide 25 % of the food energy requirements for more than 100 million people in Africa. Plant parasitic nematodes cause severe losses to the crop due to lack of control options....

Authors: Stephen O. Onyango, Hugh Roderick, Jaindra N. Tripathi, Richard Collins, Howard J. Atkinson, Richard O. Oduor and Leena Tripathi

Gram-negative and -positive bacteria differentiation in blood culture samples by headspace volatile compound analysis

Identification of microorganisms in positive blood cultures still relies on standard techniques such as Gram staining followed by culturing with definite microorganism identification. Alternatively, matrix-ass...

Authors: Michael E. Dolch, Silke Janitza, Anne-Laure Boulesteix, Carola Graßmann-Lichtenauer, Siegfried Praun, Wolfgang Denzer, Gustav Schelling and Sören Schubert

Addressing huge spatial heterogeneity induced by virus infections in lentil breeding trials

Spatial heterogeneity can have serious effects on the precision of field experimentation in plant breeding. In the present study the capacity of the honeycomb design (HD) to sample huge spatial heterogeneity w...

Authors: Anastasia Kargiotidou, Dimitrios N. Vlachostergios, Constantinos Tzantarmas, Ioannis Mylonas, Chrysanthi Foti, George Menexes, Alexios Polidoros and Ioannis S. Tokatlidis

NaCl stress-induced transcriptomics analysis of Salix linearistipularis (syn. Salix mongolica)

Salix linearistipularis (syn. S. mongolica) is a woody halophyte, which is distributed naturally in saline-alkali soil of Songnen plain, Heilongjiang, China. It plays an important role...

Authors: Guixian Nan, Yan Zhang, Song Li, Imshik Lee, Tetsuo Takano and Shenkui Liu

Identification and functional analysis of the BIM interactome; new clues on its possible involvement in Epstein–Barr Virus-associated diseases

Epigenetic deregulation is a common feature in the pathogenesis of Epstein–Barr Virus (EBV)-related lymphomas and carcinomas. Previous studies have demonstrated a strong association between EBV latency in B-ce...

Authors: Erasmia Rouka and Despoina Kyriakou