[Nucleosome fracton of extracellular dna as the index of apoptosis].

Review is devoted to the analysis of changes of the extracellular DNA (excDNA) in pathological conditions involving the process of apoptosis, and the possibility of using of excDNA in the diagnosis and evaluation of course of various diseases. Apoptosis is the main mechanism of the appearance of the DNA in the circulation. ExcDNA found in the norm, its function is considered to be the part of the immune response. The excDNA content increases substantially during the induction of apoptosis. Dynamics of increase of excDNA content in stroke allows to diagnose the form of stroke and massiveness of destruction of brain tissue. Reduced content of excDNA is associated with the inhibition of apoptosis, it was shown that under such conditions there is a change of composition of excDNA. Investigation of excDNA character changes in the progression and treatment of cancer substantiates the possibility of early assessment the effectiveness of treatment. It is experimentally shown the immunosuppressive action of excDNA of tumor and its transforming effect on the cells. Ionizing radiation is an examples that demonstrated the association of induction of apoptosis and the release of excDNA. It is characterize some of the genome sequences of excDNA. Created on the basis of excDNA study tests of minimally invasive diagnostics are potentially useful in oncology and other areas of medicine. The study of tandem repeats, which are absent in the assembled genome, but there is a part of excDNA, will create tests for the diagnosis of cancer in the early stages.

[Long-term recording of single unit activity and criteria for estimation of stability].

Stable single-unit recording in the brain of vertebrates allows to investigate processes underlying neural plasticity. In applied aspect long-term single-unit recording can be useful for development of invasive brain--computer interface. Here we propose a criterion for identification of neurons that were recorded for more than one day. Based only on the spike forms classification yields ambiguous result. Additional parameters (such as form of interspike interval histogram or certain parameters of that histogram) decreased misclassification probability considerably. Using proposed criterion we were able to identify 82 neurons that were recoded for more than one day. In extreme case activity of one neuron was observed for 94 days.