Table Of ContentMEDICINE AND BIOLOGY RESEARCH DEVELOPMENTS
BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HUMAN
HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
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MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY RESEARCH
DEVELOPMENTS
TSISANA SHARTAVA, M.D. – SERIES EDITOR
TBILISI, GEORGIA
General Anesthesia Research
Developments
Milo Hertzog and Zelig Kuhn (Editors)
2010. ISBN: 978-1-60876-395-5
(Hardcover)
978-1-61761-577-1 (E-book)
Venoms: Sources, Toxicity and
Therapeutic Uses
Jonas Gjersoe and Simen Hundstad
(Editors)
2010. ISBN: 978-1-60876-448-8
Parasitology Research Trends
Olivier De Bruyn and Stephane Peeters
(Editors)
2010. ISBN: 978-1-60741-436-0
(Hardcover)
978-1-61668-716-8 (E-book)
Biomaterials Developments
and Applications
Henri Bourg and Amaury Lisle (Editors)
2010. ISBN: 978-1-60876-476-1
(Hardcover)
978-1-61209-862-3 (E-book)
A Guide to Hemorrhoidal Disease
Pravin Jaiprakash Gupta
2010. ISBN: 978-1-60876-431-0
(Hardcover)
978-1-61761-480-4 (E-book)
Type III Secretion Chaperones:
A Molecular Toolkit for all Occasions
Matthew S. Francis
2010. ISBN: 978-1-60876-667-3
TRP Channels in Health and Disease:
Implications for Diagnosis and Therapy
Arpad Szallasi (Editor)
2010. ISBN: 978-1-61668-337-5
Recent Advances in BIS Guided
TCI Anesthesia
David A. Ferreira, Luís Antunes, Pedro
Amorim and Catarina Nunes
2010. ISBN: 978-1-61668-627-7
(Softcover)
978-1-61668-888-2 (E-book)
Tracing the Drainage Divide:
The Future Challenge for
Predictive Medicine
Enzo Grossi
ISBN: 978-1-61209-232-4 (E-book)
Nanotechnology and Advances
in Medicine
Maysaa El Sayed Zaki
2011. ISBN: 978-1-61209-640-7
Biological Aspects of Human Health
and Well-Being
Tsisana Shartava- (Editor)
2011. ISBN: 978-1-61209-134-1
MEDICINE AND BIOLOGY RESEARCH DEVELOPMENTS
BIOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF HUMAN
HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
TSISANA SHARTAVA
EDITOR
Nova Science Publishers, Inc.
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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Biological aspects of human health and well-being / [edited by] Tsisana
Shartava.
p. cm.
"INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MEDICAL AND BIOLOGICAL FRONTIERS Volume 16,
Issue 1/2."
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-61470-792-9 (eBook)
1. Biochemistry. 2. Clinical biochemistry. I. Shartava, Tsisana.
QP514.2.B574 2011
612'.015--dc22
2010047540
Published by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. � New York
CONTENTS
Preface
vii
Chapter I
Control of Emerging Infectious Agents Causing Nosocomial
and Community-Acquired Cross Infections
in Immunocompromised Hosts
1
Hossam M. Ashour
Chapter II
Genetic Tools Applications to Biotechnology of Cyanobacteria
5
Olga A. Koksharova
Chapter III
Why Glucose is the Principal Source of Energy for Living Beings?
And the Explanation of Human Diseases
27
Alberto Halabe Bucay
Chapter IV
The Evolution Biology of Health and Disease Clinical Medicine
as Seen from a Darwinian Perspective
39
Gerhard Mertens
Chapter V
A Quantitative Structure-Activity Relationship for the
Gastroprotective Effect of Flavonoids Evaluated in Human
Colon Adenocarcinoma HT-29 Cells
47
Jingli Zhang and Margot A. Skinner
Chapter VI
Sialylation Mechanism in Bacteria:Focused on CMP-N-
Acetylneuraminic Acid Synthetases and Sialyltransferases
85
Takeshi Yamamoto
Chapter VII
The Hepatocellular Dysfunction Criteria: Hepatocyte Carbohydrate
Metabolizing Enzymes and Kupffer Cell Lysosomal Enzymes
in 2’nitroimidazole Effect on Amoebic Liver Abscess
(Electron Microscopic – Enzyme Approach)
105
Rakesh Sharma
Chapter VIII
The Effect of Nitroimidazole on Glucokinase Enzyme Regulatory
Properties: Glucokinase as Biosensor
121
Rakesh Sharma and Vijay S. Singh
Contents
vi
Chapter IX
Post-Transcriptional Effects of Estrogens on Gene Expression:
Messenger RNA Stability and Translation Regulated
by MicroRNAs and Other Factors
131
Nancy H. Ing
Chapter X
Epigenetics of Gestational Trophoblastic Disease: Genomic
Imprinting and X Chromosome Inactivation
151
Pei Hui
Chapter XI
The Role of Supraspinal GABA and Glutamate in the Mediation
and Modulation of Pain
171
Kieran Rea and David P. Finn
Chapter XII
Multiphoton Microscopy of Intravital Deep Ocular Tissues
213
Bao-Gui Wang and Karl-Jürgen Halbhuber
Index
259
PREFACE
This book presents and discusses current research in the field of biology, with a particular
emphasis on biological factors and their role in health and well-being. Topics discussed
include the biotechnology of cyanobacteria; the reasons why glucose is the principal source of
energy for living beings; post-transcriptional effects of estrogen on gene expression;
sialylation mechanism in bacteria and the evolution biology of health and disease clinical
medicine from a Darwinian perspective.
Chapter I - Cross infection is the transmission of an infectious agent from one person to
another because of a poor barrier protection as in patients and other immunocompromised
hosts. This can be a direct transmission or an indirect transmission through instruments,
appliances, and surfaces. The most common are nosocomial cross infections, which are
acquired at hospitals or other healthcare facilities such as outpatient clinics. Community-
acquired cross infections have also been described.
Chapter II - Cyanobacteria, structurally Gram-negative prokaryotes and ancient relatives
of chloroplasts, can assist analysis of photosynthesis and its regulation more easily than can
studies with higher plants. Many genetic tools have been developed for unicellular and
filamentous strains of cyanobacteria during the past three decades. These tools provide
abundant opportunity for identifying novel genes; for investigating the structure, regulation
and evolution of genes; for understanding the ecological roles of cyanobacteria; and for
possible practical applications, such as molecular hydrogen photo production; production of
phycobiliproteins to form fluorescent antibody reagents; cyanophycin production;
polyhydroxybutyrate biosynthesis; osmolytes production; nanoparticles formation; mosquito
control; heavy metal removal; biodegradative ability of cyanobacteria; toxins formation by
bloom-forming cyanobacteria; use of natural products of cyanobacteria for medicine and
others aspects of cyanobacteria applications have been discussed in this chapter.
Chapter III - Man has attempted to explain the appearance of life on Earth in a very
complex manner, therefore the understanding of the diseases that affect human beings has
been equally complicated, and thus the treatment of many diseases has had to be very
aggressive; it being sufficient to mention the current treatments for cancer, autoimmune
diseases, and mitochondrial diseases.
Chapter IV - In its population genetic sense, evolution is defined as the ongoing change
of gene frequencies in populations due to one or several of the driving forces of evolution:
selection, drift, mutation and migration. Evolution’s role is central in the sub-discipline of
biology that addresses health and disease in humans and training in evolutionary thinking can
Tsisana Shartava
viii
both help biomedical researchers and clinicians ask useful questions they might not otherwise
pose.
The co-evolution of man and his environment of pathogenic micro-organisms, the rapidly
shifting antibiotic resistance of these pathogens and our persistent vulnerability to chronic
diseases should all be seen from an evolutionary perspective. These subjects form the core of
"evolutionary medicine", which will be illustrated by a number of thought inspiring examples.
The hypothesis that allergy can be viewed like cough and pain as a defence mechanism
evolved by natural selection, is gaining support from toxicological studies measuring lower
levels of carcinogens in allergic individuals.
Recent research, combining the effects of genes and environment, has provided
surprising clues to the cause of atherosclerosis, a major public health problem.
In medical microbiology, the combination of the short generation time of bacteria, the
exchange of resistance genes between species and the swift transfer of bacteria from animals
to humans and between humans, forms a life threatening cocktail with a critical role for
evolutionary mechanisms.
The HLA system which encodes proteins of the immune response, shows the most
extensive polymorphism of the whole human genome. The global distribution of HLA alleles
illustrates evolution by migration, while the polymorphism itself is promoted by natural
selection, operating through pre- and post-conceptual mechanisms.
An example of “recent” evolution in Homo sapiens by natural selection and a genetic
bottleneck, comes from the relation between Yersinia pestis and hemochromatosis. The
geographical distribution of the hemochromatosis gene correlates strictly with the area of the
14th century bubonic plague that raged through Europe, which can be explained by a
protective mechanism of the hemochromatosis gene against bacterial infection.
The examples above make a strong case for recognizing evolution biology as a basic
science for medicine.
Chapter V - Flavonoids are widely distributed in fruit and vegetables and form part of the
human diet. These compounds are thought to be a contributing factor to the health benefits of
fruit and vegetables in part because of their antioxidant activities. Despite the extensive use of
chemical antioxidant assays to assess the activity of flavonoids and other natural products that
are safe to consume, their ability to predict an in vivo health benefit is debateable. Some are
carried out at non-physiological pH and temperature, most take no account of partitioning
between hydrophilic and lipophilic environments, and none of them takes into account
bioavailability, uptake and metabolism of antioxidant compounds and the biological
component that is targeted for protection. However, biological systems are far more complex
and dietary antioxidants may function via multiple mechanisms. It is critical to consider
moving from using ‘the test tube’ to employing cell-based assays for screening foods,
phytochemicals and other consumed natural products for their potential biological activity.
The question then remains as to which cell models to use. Human immortalized cell lines
derived from many different cell types from a wide range of anatomical sites are available
and are established well-characterized models.
The cytoprotection assay was developed to be a more biologically relevant measurement
than the chemically defined antioxidant activity assay because it uses human cells as a
substrate and therefore accounts for some aspects of uptake, metabolism and location of
flavonoids within cells. Knowledge of structure-activity relationships in the cytoprotection
assay may be helpful in assessing potential in vivo cellular protective effects of flavonoids.
Preface
ix
This study will discuss the cytoprotective properties of flavonoids and focuses on the
relationship between their cytoprotective activity, physicochemical properties such as
lipophilicity (log P) and bond dissociation enthalpies (BDE), and their chemical structures.
The factors underlying the influence the different classes of flavonoids have in modulating
their ability to protect human gut cells are discussed and support the contention that the
partition coefficients of flavonoids as well as their rate of reaction with the relevant radicals
define the protective abilities in cellular environments. By comparing the geometries of
several flavonoids, the author were able to explain the structural dependency of the
antioxidant action of these flavonoids.
Chapter VI - Sialic acids are important components of carbohydrate chains and are linked
to terminal positions of the carbohydrate moiety of glycoconjugates, including glycoproteins
and glycolipids. Various studies have focused on clarifying the structure–function
relationship of sialic acids and have revealed that N-acetylneuraminic acid (Neu5Ac) is the
major sialic acids component of glycoconjugates, and that the sialylated carbohydrate chains
of glycoconjugates play significant roles in many biological processes, including
immunological responses, viral infections, cell–cell recognition,and inflammation.
Sialylated glycoconjugates are formed by specific sialyltransferases in the cell. All
sialyltransferases use cytidinemonophosphate N-acetylneuraminic acid(CMP-Neu5Ac) as the
common donor substrate. Up to the present, sialyltransferases have been cloned from various
sources, including mammalian organs, bacteria and virus. As to the sialyltransferases, all of
the sialyltransferases have been classified into five families in the CAZy (carbohydrate-active
enzymes) database (family29, 38, 42, 52 and 80), and all of the marine bacterial
sialyltransferases are classified into the family 80.
Generally, the enzymes with a bacterial origin are more stable and productive in
Escherichia coliprotein expression systems than the mammalian-derived enzymes. In
addition, the bacterial-derived sialyltransferases show broader acceptor substrate specificity
than the mammalian enzymes. These advantages highlight the capacity of bacterial enzymes
as efficient tools for the in vitro enzymatic synthesis of sialosides.
The recent increase in research focusing on sialyltransferases from a diverse range of
bacteria has led to the identification of many bacterial sialyltransferases. Several bacterial
CMP-Neu5Ac synthetases have also recently been identified. This article reviews the
bacterial CMP-Neu5Ac synthetases and sialyltransferases that show promise as tools for the
production of sialosides.
Chapter VII - Aim: to understand the 2’-nitroimidazole cytotoxicity and liver cell
interaction, the author proposed a “Hapatocellular Dysfunction Criteria”. Based on it, forty
eight patients with amoebic liver abscess on 2’-nitroimidazole therapy were studied for their
carbohydrate metabolizing enzymes in serum and hepatocellular enzymes in liver biopsy
tissues. Materials and Methods: Proven ten cases were studied for hepatocellular
cytomorphology by electron microscopy. The clinical status of amoebiasis was assessed by
enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) antibody titers and stool examination. Results
and Discussion: Out of forty eight, forty five patients showed elevated carbohydrate
metabolizing enzyme levels in serum. The enzymes hexokinase (in 80% samples), aldolase
(in 50% samples), phosphofructokinase (in 60% samples), malate dehydrogenase (in 75%
samples), isocitrate dehydrogenase (ICDH) (in 80% patients) were elevated while succinate
dehydrogenase and lactate dehydrogenase (LDH) levels remained unaltered. Lysosomal
enzymes β-glucuronidase, alkaline phosphatase, acid phosphatase, showed enhanced levels in
