The regulatory role of γ-aminobutyric acid in chickpea plants depends on drought tolerance and water scarcity level.

γ-Aminobutyric acid (GABA) is a non-protein amino acid with multifunctional roles in dynamic plant responses. To determine the effects of exogenous GABA application (0, 25 and 50 µM) on drought response, two chickpea cultivars with contrasting tolerance to water deficit were examined. Plants were exposed to four irrigation levels (irrigation to 100, 60, 40 and 20% field capacity). Water deficit decreased growth, chlorophyll content, and photosynthetic efficiency. It increased electrolyte leakage and lipid peroxidation owing to both higher ROS accumulation and lower antioxidant enzyme activity. These negative effects of water deficit and the alleviating role of GABA application were more prominent in the sensitive, as compared to the tolerant cultivar. Water deficit also increased proline and GABA contents more in the tolerant cultivar, whereas their content was more enhanced by GABA application in the sensitive one. This may confer an additional level of regulation that results in better alleviation of drought damage in tolerant chickpea cultivars. In conclusion, the stimulatory effect of GABA on growth and physiological modulation depends on both the water stress severity and the cultivar sensitivity to it, implying a probable unknown GABA-related mechanism established by tolerant chickpea cultivars; a lost or not gained mechanism in susceptible ones.

Diabetes Mellitus and Tinnitus: an Epidemiology Study.

Objectives: Tinnitus is the perception of sound that does not arise from an external source. It is a chronic sensation that virtually all would prefer not to experience, but for most people it is not disabling and treatments for disturbing tinnitus are limited. Diabetes causes several side effects, among which its impact on the neural system is one of the most important ones. Considering that the hearing system is part of the neural system, this paper investigates the likelihood of tinnitus occurrence and its potential role of risk factor in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM). Methodology: This study was conducted on 250 patients from the diabetes center of Birjand, Iran. Data from all patients were collected in 2018, using a demographic questionnaire together with a standard questionnaire. Results:Sixty six of the 250 patients in the sample set had tinnitus (26% likelihood of tinnitus occurrence), with 53% of all subjects having minor disorder. A meaningful dependency between patient's age and severity of tinnitus (p <0.05) was found, with tinnitus-related problems becoming more severe among older patients. Also, a meaningful dependency was identified between the duration of diabetes and tinnitus, with the hearing disorder being more severe among patients who had diabetes for more than ten years. No meaningful dependency was found between either patient's gender and tinnitus or the level of fasting blood sugar (FBS) and glycated hemoglobin (HbA1C). The severity of tinnitus was identified. Conclusion:The present study indicates that there is an association between the age of patients with diabetes and the severity of tinnitus. Also, the duration of diabetes impacts the likelihood of having tinnitus. In patients with diabetes, tinnitus can be considered as an indicator of the development of neuropathy or a level of microangiopathy of the inner ear.

A multiscale agent-based framework integrated with a constraint-based metabolic network model of cancer for simulating avascular tumor growth.

In recent years, many efforts have been made in the field of computational modeling of cancerous tumors, in order to obtain a better understanding and predictions of their growth patterns. Furthermore, constraint-based modeling of metabolic networks has become increasingly popular, which is appropriate for the systems-level reconstruction of cell physiology. The goal of the current study is to integrate a multiscale agent-based modeling framework with a constraint-based metabolic network model of cancer cells in order to simulate the three dimensional early growth of avascular tumors. In order to develop the integrated model, a previously published generic metabolic network model of cancer cells was introduced into a multiscale agent-based framework. This model is initiated with a single tumor cell. Nutrients can diffuse through the simulation space and the cells uptake or excrete metabolites, grow, proliferate or become necrotic based on certain defined criteria and flux values of particular reactions. The simulation was run for a period of 20 days and the plots corresponding to various features such as the growth profile and necrotic core evolution were obtained. These features were compared with the ones observed in other (experimental) studies. One interesting characteristic of our modeling is that it provides us with the ability to predict gene expression patterns through different layers of a tumor, which can have important implications, especially in drug target selection in the field of cancer therapy.