Ashraf,M.I.; Ebner,M.; Wallner,C.; Haller,M.; Khalid,S.; Schwelberger,H.; Koziel,K.; Enthammer,M.; Hermann,M.; Sickinger,S.; Soleiman,A.; Steger,C.; Vallant,S.; Sucher,R.; Brandacher,G.; Santer,P.; Dragun,D.; Troppmair,J.; Background: Many diseases and pathological conditions are characterized by transient or constitutive overproduction of reactive oxygen species (ROS). ROS are causal for ischemia/reperfusion (IR)-associated tissue injury (IRI), a major contributor to organ dysfunction or failure. Preventing IRI with antioxidants failed in the clinic, most likely due to the difficulty to timely and efficiently target them to the site of ROS production and action. [Read More]

Kokkotou,K.; Ioannou,E.; Nomikou,M.; Pitterl,F.; Vonaparti,A.; Siapi,E.; Zervou,M.; Roussis,V.; The global metabolic profile of Laurencia crude red algal extracts was addressed by applying high-throughput analytical techniques, namely UHPLC-PDA-HRMS and 2D HSQC NMR. An integrated platform including software tools and databases, such as Xcalibur, ToxID, ACD/Labs and MarinLit, has been developed to mine the complex analytical data towards the accelerated identification of known metabolites and the detection of new natural products at the early stages of phytochemical analysis. [Read More]

Pallua,J.D.; Unterberger,S.H.; Metzler,G.; Pfaller,K.; Pallua,A.K.; Lackner,R.; Pallua,A.F.; Recheis,W.; Poder,R.; Tens of thousands of known mushrooms (incl. mycelia) represent, besides their nutritional and economic value, a huge reservoir of biologically active substances. A growing list of publications reports beneficial or therapeutic health effects (e.g., immunomodulatory, lipid-lowering, and antitumor properties) of so called “medicinal mushrooms”. Their potential pharmacological properties, however, still have not been sufficiently investigated. Therefore, any novel approach that improves our knowledge on the medicinal relevance, as well as quality control in the cultivation of medicinal mushrooms, should be welcome. [Read More]

Phillips,C.; Parson,W.; Lundsberg,B.; Santos,C.; Freire-Aradas,A.; Torres,M.; Eduardoff,M.; Borsting,C.; Johansen,P.; Fondevila,M.; Morling,N.; Schneider,P.; E.UROFORGEN-NoEConsortium; Carracedo,A.; Lareu,M.V.; Emerging next-generation sequencing technologies will enable DNA analyses to add pigmentation predictive and ancestry informative (AIM) SNPs to the range of markers detectable from a single PCR test. This prompted us to re-appraise current forensic and genomics AIM-SNPs and from the best sets, to identify the most divergent markers for a five population group differentiation of Africans, Europeans, East Asians, Native Americans and Oceanians by using our own online genome variation browsers. [Read More]

Rominger,C.; Weiss,E.M.; Nagl,S.; Niederstätter,H.; Parson,W.; Papousek,I.; Genetic factors may explain part of the interindividual variability in hypnotizability. A new avenue that may provide more comprehensive understanding of the phenotypic effects of genetic variations is the study of gene-trait interaction. In this study, the authors investigate the relationship of the dopamine-related COMT and the serotonin-related 5-HTTLPR polymorphisms to hypnotizability by taking individual differences in executive attention into account. Homozygosity for the COMT Met allele, putatively linked to the capability or proneness to dissociate from reality, was associated with high hypnotizability only if paired with high-attention ability. [Read More]