Posters

The majority of marketed drugs are natural compounds or derivatives thereof. The compounds availability is often unclear. Therefore we have compiled a database of ~50,000 natural compounds. Starting point for in silico screenings are about 2,500 well-known, classified natural compounds or imported molecules. Possible medical applications can be detected and about three million conformers computed to account for the flexibility during usage of the 3D-superposition algorithm.

Five years ago, the NCBI Probe database (ProbeDB) was established to provide a centralized archive of molecular probes used in biomedical applications. Currently ProbeDB contains around 10 million probes of 65 types including gene silencing agents, in situ hybridization probes, and probes for variation analysis and genome mapping. Presently, ProbeDB is the largest and most extensive database of this type available in public domain.

The main objective of this sudy is to obtain an increased insight into the mechanisms of action of epigenetic carcinogens. Although the expected number of non-genotoxic carcinogens among newly registered compounds is unknown, there is a growing concern that when numbers of 2-year cancer bioassays are significantly reduced, non-genotoxic carcinogens may go undetected. Therefore there is a need for the development of alternative methods for their detection.

Accurate identification of functional vasculature is of critical importance in evaluating construct integration. Digital volumetric imaging (DVI) is an automated serial sectioning and microscopic imaging technique that can bridge the resolution gap between micro-computed tomography and conventional histology. We use DVI to study in vivo vascularization of tissue engineering constructs in a variety of settings.

Spinocerebellar ataxia type 1(SCA1) is an inherited cerebellar neurodegenerative disorder caused by a polyglutamine tract expansion in the ataxin-1 protein.

Half of rural Guatemala's population is indigenous; most births are attended at home by traditional midwives. Perinatal mortality is 2nd highest in Latin America. We administered a survey and implemented a training aimed at reducing perinatal mortality.

Multiplex PCR is an advantageous technique used in PCR applications to amplify multiple targets in a single reaction. As useful as it is, this technique presents a new set of challenges that further complicates PCR setup. For example, reactions are more prone to off-target amplifications such as mis-priming and primer dimer due to the increased number of primer pairs. Furthermore, preferential amplification of certain targets leads to an unequal distribution of amplicon products, making quantifi

PCR is a widely used scientific tool employed by a variety of applications. Various Hot Start technologies have already been developed using modified PCR components to increase specificity of a reaction. Recently developed CleanAmpTM dNTPs are modified nucleoside triphosphates with a thermolabile 3’-tetrahydrofuranyl protecting group that is released at higher temperatures. These modified dNTPs prevent low temperature primer extension, which can often be a significant problem in PCR. At higher t

Our gene expression profiling strategy High Performance Chip Data Analysis (HPCDA) was improved with a method for quantifying the quality of different gene lists (GLs) with the new Gene List Significance Index (GLSI). With GLSI it is possible to decide which of two different extracted GLs has highest fraction of true positives, of high fold change or low p-value genes. With GLSI we could empirically optimize HPCDA-Score for ranking genes.