Abstract Candida albicans is a commensal fungal pathogen that grows in yeast and hyphal forms in the human gut. C. albicans causes mucosal and cutaneous diseases that can result in significant mortality following systematic infections and it also exhibits drug resistance. Zebrafish have been an excellent model to investigate C. albicans infections because of their transparency and the availability of many transgenic lines. However, there is a limitation in using zebrafish as a model because the fish embryos cannot survive at 37°C therefore it is not suitable for studying Candida infections at physiological relevant human body temperature. In this thesis, the normal embryonic development of Arabian killifish (A. dispar) is investigated, revealing that embryogenesis was divided into 32 stages based on diagnostic patterns of development. A. dispar can also found to tolerate a wide range of temperatures and salinities. This suggests that A. dispar could be developed as a novel model to investigate host-pathogen interactions. The tolerance of A. dispar to high temperatures may in part be attributable to brown pigment cells with a highly fluorescent character that may have developed to allow the fish to adapt to live within extreme environmental conditions with strong sunlight and a wide range of temperatures (Chapter 3). In terms of Candida infections, this study examined A. dispar as a model to test C. albicans pathogenicity. The survival of A. dispar embryos following Candida infection showed a dose dependent relationship. We also found that A. dispar can survive longer than zebrafish after infection. Furthermore, C. albicans cells were observed to undergo a transition from yeast to hyphae at 37°C. An investigation of the ability of mutant strains of C. albicans with defects in cell wall mannosylation revealed a significant impact on virulence, host mortality, and the fishes’ immune response. The present study found that although the deletion of O- and N-mannan from the cell wall of C. albicans, affected fungal burden (attenuation), and the survival of the infected embryos per se was significantly decreased in the infections of the mutant strains compared to the WT. This data confirms the importance of the mannosylation state of the cell wall in triggering an immune recognition event (Chapter 4). A. dispar is also shown to be suitable for studying the effectiveness of 3 | P a g e antifungals. Fluconazole treatment of infected embryos and eggs promoted greater rates of survival at high doses, alongside a significant reduction of C. albicans CFUs (Chapter 4). When looking at the Candida-host interaction, we directly observed phagocytosed yeast cells within macrophages. Various detection methods were used to follow macrophages and neutrophils including Western blotting, immunostaining and histological staining (Sudan black and FITC-tyramide) allowing the monitoring of the time course of the immune cells. A biphasic response of macrophages was detected by L-plastin Western blotting, suggesting activation of two different type of macrophage: activated macrophage (M1) and alternative macrophage (M2). We also assayed reactive oxygen species (ROS) within infected embryos using a fluorescent probe (H2DCFDA), revealing the accumulation of the fluorescent probe at the sites of infection. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the oxidative and immune response using the H2DCFDA and qPCR were also accomplished within A. dispar embryos after infection with both the WT and mutant strains of Candida albicans (WT, pmr1∆, mnt1-mnt2∆, and och1∆). The results confirmed that the mutant strains did not activate a host oxidative stress response nor immune cell accumulation when compared to WT, suggesting that the immune response is less activated against these mutants. Finally, a new transgenic line of A. dispar fish was developed using Betaactin-DsR-LoxP-GFP. The new transgenic A. dispar is suggested to be an ideal model for real time observation of host-pathogen interactions and for investigation of molecular functions of the immune response. Overall these results improve our understanding of the use of a new transparent fish model to study fungal pathogenesis and demonstrates the potential advantages of using this species in future studies of bacterial, fungal and viral pathogens at a physiologically relevant temperature for human infection. Such a model could lead us to investigate in more depth the key interactions between pathogens and their host and permit the screening and development of new antifungal therapies (that might target the pathogens directly or target the host immune system). View full metadata
The article considers a creolized text as a means of modern communication, describing its key verbal and visual components; the relationship of concepts polycode and creolized text has been shown; the universal basic image features have been called; the following kinds of creolized texts have been distinguished; it has been proved that the effective means of attracting the attention of the addressee is the use of expressive font features, which are divided into two groups: topographics (mechanisms of varying of areal syntagmatic of a text) and supragraphcs (change of typeface of font).
The present study aims to study the correlation between visfatin levels and metabolic syndrome in Iraqi obese adolescence (with and without metabolic syndrome) and its relation with other studied biochemical parameters. Sixty obese adolescences were depended in this study (with and without metabolic syndrome), compared with (30) non-obese children as control group. This study was done in the period from April 2020 until the end of December 2020, in the National Diabetes Centre/Mustansiriya University, Baghdad/Iraq. There were no significant differences in age, height, waist circumferences (WC), and diastolic blood pressure (DBP) in the patients' groups. In contrast, a significant increase differs (p<0.05) was recorded in the values of
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The synthesis of nanoparticles (GNPs) from the reduction of HAuCl4 .3H2O by aluminum metal was obtained in aqueous solution with the use of Arabic gum as a stabilizing agent. The GNPs were characterized by TEM, AFM and Zeta potential spectroscopy. The reduction process was monitored over time by measuring ultraviolet spectra at a range of λ 520-525 nm. Also the color changes from yellow to ruby red, shape and size of GNP was studied by TEM. Shape was spherical and the size of particles was (12-17.5) nm. The best results were obtained at pH 6.
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The advertising mail is considered as one of potential tools that followed to transfer the printed messages to the consumers and public customers whom are located at homes or works. This type of advertising is preferable due to the zero expense to receive the announcements of products, which became recently one of the successful procedures to create new customers and keep them in touch with direct communication. It is also possible to send them to specific group of people who can be classified by the advertisers to select even by name their own clients to give the personality to the clients for a long term of communication.
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This study aims to encapsulate atenolol within floating alginate-ethylcellulose beads as an oral controlled-release delivery system using aqueous colloidal polymer dispersion (ACPD) method.To optimize drug entrapment efficiency and dissolution behavior of the prepared beads, different parameters of drug: polymer ratio, polymer mixture ratio, and gelling agent concentration were involved.The prepared beads were investigated with respect to their buoyancy, encapsulation efficiency, and dissolution behavior in the media: 0.1 N HCl (pH 1.2), acetate buffer (pH 4.6) and phosphate buffer (pH 6.8). The release kinetics and mechanism of the drug from the prepared beads was investigated.All prepared atenolol beads remained f
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This research was aimed to evaluate activity of Rosemary volatile oil and Nisin A in vivo and on B. cereus isolated from some canned meat products in vitro. The results showed that the activity of Rosemary volatile oil (2000 µg/ml) and Nisin A (350 µg\ml) attained to 27 and 19 mm inhibitory zone diameter respectively in well diffusion method. The viable plate count from samples of canned meat treated with effective concentration of Rosemary volatile oil and Nisin A were examined. The samples with Rosemary volatile oil was not showed any CFU/g after 9 days of preservation while sample with Nisin A and control observed 49 and 45 CFU/g respectively. In vivo experiment on mice, two weeks after oral dose of Rosemary volatile oil (2000
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Ni2O3 nanomaterial, a phase of nickel oxide, is synthesized by a simple chemical process. The pure raw materials used in the present process were nickel chloride hexahydrate NiCl2.6H2O and potassium hydroxide KOH by utilizing temperature at 250 oC for 2 hour. The structural, morphological and optical properties of the synthesized specimens of Ni2O3 were investigated employing diverse techniques such as XRD, AFM, SEM and UV-Vis, respectively. The XRD technique confirms the presence of Ni2O3 nanomaterial with crystal size of 57.083 nm which indexing to the (2θ) of 31.82; this results revealed the Ni2O3 was a phase of nickel oxide with Nano structure. The synthesized Ni2O3 will be useful in manufacturng electrodes materials f
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The research explores the confessional aspect in Audre Lorde's poem" Who Said It Was Simple ". Lorde depicts her personality under the stress of race, sex and sexuality. She discloses her own bitter experience concerning racism, sexism and sexuality in her poem to revive the retrospective truth of the Afro-Americans' life in the USA. This publicly manifestation of her personality and tribulation throughthe language ofpoetry has been regarded as the hallmark of confessional poetry.
Conflict, peace, and sports have a long history as practical realities, and their correlation has become an important subject of study in the last decades of the twentieth century. Sport has infiltrated peace and conflict studies as a tool for resolving conflict and building peace, but opinions have differed between those who say it is a positive tool and others who see it as negative. The Gulf Cup is one of the champions that have never been studied, and in-depth research about it has not been done. This tournament has affected the relations between the states involved. The politics cast its shadow on the Gulf Cup. The paper aims to shed light on how political events in the region have consistently affected the Gulf Cup and how politics in
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