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The presence of a rival male modified the courting behavior of males and agonistic behavior among males was observed before and during mating.Cholesteryl ester transfer protein (CETP) regulates high density lipoproteins (HDL)-cholesterol (C) and HDL-C is essential for fetal development. We hypothesized that women giving birth to large-for-gestational-age (LGA) and small-for-gestational age (SGA) infants differed in longitudinal changes in lipoproteins, CETP activity and HDL-C and that placentas from women with higher or lower circulating HDL-C displayed differential expression of mRNAs involved in cholesterol/nutrient transport, insulin signaling, inflammation/ extracellular matrix (ECM) remodeling. Circulating lipids and CETP activity was measured during pregnancy, NMR lipidomics in late pregnancy, and associations with LGA and SGA infants investigated. RNA sequencing was performed in 28 placentas according to higher and lower maternal HDL-C levels. Lipidomics revealed high triglycerides in large VLDL and lipids/cholesterol/cholesteryl esters in small HDL in women giving birth to SGA infants. Placentas from women with higher HDL-C had decreased levels of CETP expression which was associated with mRNAs involved in cholesterol/nutrient transport, insulin signaling and inflammation/ECM remodeling. Both placental and circulating CETP levels were associated with growth of the fetus. Low circulating CETP activity at 36-38 weeks was associated with giving birth to SGA infants. Our findings suggest a link between increased maternal HDL-C levels, low CETP levels both in circulation and placenta, and SGA infants.The reticulon family of integral membrane proteins are conserved across all eukaryotes and typically localize to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER), where they are involved in generating highly-curved tubules. We recently demonstrated that Reticulon-like protein B13 (RTNLB13) from Arabidopsis thaliana contains a curvature-responsive amphipathic helix (APH) important for the proteins’ ability to induce curvature in the ER membrane, but incapable of generating curvature by itself. We suggested it acts as a feedback element, only folding/binding once a sufficient degree of curvature has been achieved, and stabilizes curvature without disrupting the bilayer. However, it remains unclear whether this is unique to RTNLB13 or is conserved across all reticulons-to date, experimental evidence has only been reported for two reticulons. Here we used biophysical methods to characterize a minimal library of putative APH peptides from across the 21 A. thaliana isoforms. We found that reticulons with the closest evolutionary relationship to RTNLB13 contain curvature-sensing APHs in the same location with sequence conservation. TAK-901 in vivo Our data reveal that a more distantly-related branch of reticulons developed a ~ 20-residue linker between the transmembrane domain and APH. This may facilitate functional flexibility as previous studies have linked these isoforms not only to ER remodeling but other cellular activities.The recent SARS-CoV-2 pandemic manifests itself as a mild respiratory tract infection in most individuals, leading to COVID-19 disease. However, in some infected individuals, this can progress to severe pneumonia and acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS), leading to multi-organ failure and death. This study explores the proteomic differences between mild, severe, and critical COVID-19 positive patients to further understand the disease progression, identify proteins associated with disease severity, and identify potential therapeutic targets. Blood protein profiling was performed on 59 COVID-19 mild (n = 26), severe (n = 9) or critical (n = 24) cases and 28 controls using the OLINK inflammation, autoimmune, cardiovascular and neurology panels. Differential expression analysis was performed within and between disease groups to generate nine different analyses. From the 368 proteins measured per individual, more than 75% were observed to be significantly perturbed in COVID-19 cases. Six proteins (IL6, CKAP4, Gal-9, IL-1ra, LILRB4 and PD-L1) were identified to be associated with disease severity. The results have been made readily available through an interactive web-based application for instant data exploration and visualization, and can be accessed at https//phidatalab-shiny.rosalind.kcl.ac.uk/COVID19/ . Our results demonstrate that dynamic changes in blood proteins associated with disease severity can potentially be used as early biomarkers to monitor disease severity in COVID-19 and serve as potential therapeutic targets.The aim of our study was to validate the method of head-shake static posturography (HS-posturography) in healthy individuals and to establish the value of this novel method in the diagnostics of patients with unilateral vestibular lesion (UV). The study included 202 participants divided into two groups, one consisting of 133 patients with canal paresis CP > 19% and one of 69 healthy subjects. Participant was tested according to the standard protocol of static posturography (SP), and with head movements of 0.3 Hz (HS 40), 0.6 Hz (HS 70) in random order controlled by a metronome. HS-posturography revealed a similar repeatability and internal consistency as the standard posturography. In patients with UV, 4th condition revealed higher sensitivity (74%) and specificity (71%) in HS 40 than in the standard posturography (67%, 65% respectively) and HS 70 (54%, 70% respectively). Static posturography and HS- posturography revealed a high reliability of the testing method. The head movements added to static posturography improve the sensitivity and specificity of the method in group with vestibular impairment. The most important test for that purpose seems to be the one on unstable surface with the eyes closed, with low frequency of head movements.Although paclitaxel plus bevacizumab (PB) therapy is an effective chemotherapeutic regimen for HER2-negative advanced breast cancer (ABC), predictive markers for its effectiveness remain undefined. We investigated the usefulness of systemic immunity markers associated with lymphocytes as predictive markers for PB therapy in patients with HER2-negative ABC. We retrospectively reviewed data from 114 patients with HER2-negative ABC who underwent PB therapy from November 2011 to December 2019. We calculated the absolute lymphocyte count (ALC), neutrophil-to-lymphocyte ratio (NLR), platelet-to-lymphocyte ratio (PLR), and lymphocyte-to-monocyte ratio (LMR) as representative systemic immunity markers. The time to treatment failure (TTF) and overall survival (OS) of the patients with high ALC, low NLR, and high LMR were significantly longer compared with those of the patients with low ALC, high NLR, and low LMR. A multivariable analysis revealed that high ALC, low NLR, and low PLR were independent predictors for TTF and high ALC, low NLR, and high LMR were independent predictors for OS.