Project description:BACKGROUND: Since the "War on Cancer" was declared in 1971, the United States alone has expended some $300 billion on research, with a heavy focus on the role of genomics in anticancer therapy. Voluminous data have been collected and analyzed. However, in hindsight, any achievements made have not been realized in clinical practice in terms of overall survival or quality of life extended. This might be justified because cancer is not one disease but a conglomeration of multiple diseases, with widespread heterogeneity even within a single tumor type. DISCUSSION: Only a few types of cancer have been described that are associated with one major signaling pathway. This enabled the initial successful deployment of targeted therapy for such cancers. However, soon after this targeted approach was initiated, it was subverted as cancer cells learned and reacted to the initial treatments, oftentimes rendering the treatment less effective or even completely ineffective. During the past 30 plus years, the cancer classification used had, as its primary aim, the facilitation of communication and the exchange of information amongst those caring for cancer patients with the end goal of establishing a standardized approach for the diagnosis and treatment of cancers. This approach should be modified based on the recent research to affect a change from a service-based to an outcome-based approach. The vision of achieving long-term control and/or eradicating or curing cancer is far from being realized, but not impossible. In order to meet the challenges in getting there, any newly proposed anticancer strategy must integrate a personalized treatment outcome approach. This concept is predicated on tumor- and patient-associated variables, combined with an individualized response assessment strategy for therapy modification as suggested by the patient's own results. As combined strategies may be outcome-orientated and integrate tumor-, patient- as well as cancer-preventive variables, this approach is likely to result in an optimized anticancer strategy. SUMMARY: Herein, we introduce such an anticancer strategy for all cancer patients, experts, and organizations: Imagine a World without Cancer.
Project description:Most perceived parameters of sound (e.g. pitch, duration, timbre) can also be imagined in the absence of sound. These parameters are imagined more veridically by expert musicians than non-experts. Evidence for whether loudness is imagined, however, is conflicting. In music, the question of whether loudness is imagined is particularly relevant due to its role as a principal parameter of performance expression. This study addressed the hypothesis that the veridicality of imagined loudness improves with increasing musical expertise. Experts, novices and non-musicians imagined short passages of well-known classical music under two counterbalanced conditions: 1) while adjusting a slider to indicate imagined loudness of the music and 2) while tapping out the rhythm to indicate imagined timing. Subtests assessed music listening abilities and working memory span to determine whether these factors, also hypothesised to improve with increasing musical expertise, could account for imagery task performance. Similarity between each participant's imagined and listening loudness profiles and reference recording intensity profiles was assessed using time series analysis and dynamic time warping. The results suggest a widespread ability to imagine the loudness of familiar music. The veridicality of imagined loudness tended to be greatest for the expert musicians, supporting the predicted relationship between musical expertise and musical imagery ability.
Project description:Amnesic patients have a well established deficit in remembering their past experiences. Surprisingly, however, the question as to whether such patients can imagine new experiences has not been formally addressed to our knowledge. We tested whether a group of amnesic patients with primary damage to the hippocampus bilaterally could construct new imagined experiences in response to short verbal cues that outlined a range of simple commonplace scenarios. Our results revealed that patients were markedly impaired relative to matched control subjects at imagining new experiences. Moreover, we identified a possible source for this deficit. The patients' imagined experiences lacked spatial coherence, consisting instead of fragmented images in the absence of a holistic representation of the environmental setting. The hippocampus, therefore, may make a critical contribution to the creation of new experiences by providing the spatial context into which the disparate elements of an experience can be bound. Given how closely imagined experiences match episodic memories, the absence of this function mediated by the hippocampus, may also fundamentally affect the ability to vividly re-experience the past.
Project description:This experiment contains a subset of data from the BLUEPRINT Epigenome project ( http://www.blueprint-epigenome.eu ), which aims at producing a reference haemopoetic epigenomes for the research community. 29 samples of primary cells or cultured primary cells of different haemopoeitc lineages from cord blood are included in this experiment. This ArrayExpress record contains only meta-data. Raw data files have been archived at the European Genome-Phenome Archive (EGA, www.ebi.ac.uk/ega) by the consortium, with restricted access to protect sample donors' identity. The relevant accessions of EGA data sets is EGAD00001001165. Details on how to apply for data access via the BLUEPRINT data access committee are on the EGA data set pages. The mapping of samples to these EGA accessions can be found in the 'Sample Data Relationship Format' file of this ArrayExpress record. Information on individual samples and sequencing libraries can also be found on the BLUEPRINT data coordination centre (DCC) website: http://dcc.blueprint-epigenome.eu
Project description:This experiment contains a subset of data from the BLUEPRINT Epigenome project ( http://www.blueprint-epigenome.eu ), which aims at producing a reference haemopoetic epigenomes for the research community. 4 samples of primary cells from tonsil with cell surface markes CD20med/CD38high in young individuals (3 to 10 years old) are included in this experiment. This ArrayExpress record contains only meta-data. Raw data files have been archived at the European Genome-Phenome Archive (EGA, www.ebi.ac.uk/ega) by the consortium, with restricted access to protect sample donors' identity. The relevant accessions of EGA data sets is EGAD00001001523. Details on how to apply for data access via the BLUEPRINT data access committee are on the EGA data set pages. The mapping of samples to these EGA accessions can be found in the 'Sample Data Relationship Format' file of this ArrayExpress record. Information on individual samples and sequencing libraries can also be found on the BLUEPRINT data coordination centre (DCC) website: http://dcc.blueprint-epigenome.eu
Project description:Reprogramming of histone modification regulates gene expression and mammal preimplantation development. Trimethylation of lysine 4 on histone 3 (H3K4me3) has unique landscape in mouse oocytes and early embryos. However, the dynamics and function of H3K4me3 in livestock embryos remain unclear. To address how it is reprogrammed in domestic animals, we profiled changes of H3K4me3 during bovine early embryo development. Notably, the overall signal of H3K4me3 decreased during embryonic genome activation (EGA). By utilizing ultra-low-input native ChIP-seq (ULI-NChIP-seq) technology, we observed widespread broad H3K4me3 domains in oocytes and embryos. The signal of broad H3K4me3 began to decrease after fertilization and was lowest after EGA. Along with the removal of broad H3K4me3, deposition of H3K4me3 at promoter regions enhanced gradually. Besides, the transcriptional activity and signal of promoter H3K4me3 showed positive correlation after the erasure of broad H3K4me3 at 16-cell stage. Moreover, knocking down of demethylases KDM5A, KDM5B and KDM5C caused EGA delay and blastocyst formation failure. RNA-seq analysis revealed 47.8% down-regulated genes in knockdown embryos at 8/16-cell stage were EGA genes, and 63.1% of up-regulated genes were maternal transcripts. Particularly, the positive correlation between transcriptional activity and promoter H3K4me3 during EGA was restrained when knocking down of KDM5A, KDM5B and KDM5C. Overall, our work initiatively mapped the genomic reprogramming of H3K4me3 during bovine preimplantation development, and KDM5A/B/C played roles in modulating oocyte-to-embryonic transition (OET) through timely erasure of broad H3K4me3 domains far away from promoters.
Project description:Reprogramming of histone modification regulates gene expression and mammal preimplantation development. Trimethylation of lysine 4 on histone 3 (H3K4me3) has unique landscape in mouse oocytes and early embryos. However, the dynamics and function of H3K4me3 in livestock embryos remain unclear. To address how it is reprogrammed in domestic animals, we profiled changes of H3K4me3 during bovine early embryo development. Notably, the overall signal of H3K4me3 decreased during embryonic genome activation (EGA). By utilizing ultra-low-input native ChIP-seq (ULI-NChIP-seq) technology, we observed widespread broad H3K4me3 domains in oocytes and embryos. The signal of broad H3K4me3 began to decrease after fertilization and was lowest after EGA. Along with the removal of broad H3K4me3, deposition of H3K4me3 at promoter regions enhanced gradually. Besides, the transcriptional activity and signal of promoter H3K4me3 showed positive correlation after the erasure of broad H3K4me3 at 16-cell stage. Moreover, knocking down of demethylases KDM5A, KDM5B and KDM5C caused EGA delay and blastocyst formation failure. RNA-seq analysis revealed 47.8% down-regulated genes in knockdown embryos at 8/16-cell stage were EGA genes, and 63.1% of up-regulated genes were maternal transcripts. Particularly, the positive correlation between transcriptional activity and promoter H3K4me3 during EGA was restrained when knocking down of KDM5A, KDM5B and KDM5C. Overall, our work initiatively mapped the genomic reprogramming of H3K4me3 during bovine preimplantation development, and KDM5A/B/C played roles in modulating oocyte-to-embryonic transition (OET) through timely erasure of broad H3K4me3 domains far away from promoters.
Project description:This experiment contains a subset of data from the BLUEPRINT Epigenome project ( http://www.blueprint-epigenome.eu ), which aims at producing a reference haemopoetic epigenomes for the research community. 74 samples of primary cells or cultured primary cells of different haemopoeitc lineages from cord blood, venous blood, bone marrow and thymus are included in this experiment. This ArrayExpress record contains only meta-data. Raw data files have been archived at the European Genome-Phenome Archive (EGA, www.ebi.ac.uk/ega) by the consortium, with restricted access to protect sample donors' identity. There are 32 EGA data set accessions, which can be found under the Comment[EGA_DATA_SET] column in the 'Sample Data Relationship Format' (SDRF) file of this ArrayExpress record (http://www.ebi.ac.uk/arrayexpress/files/E-MTAB-3827/E-MTAB-3827.sdrf.txt). Details on how to apply for data access via the BLUEPRINT data access committee are on the EGA data set pages. Likewise, mapping of samples to these EGA accessions can be found in the SDRF file. Please note that the raw data files for 11 sequencing runs have yet been deposited at EGA, so they are marked with \\ot available\\ under the Comment[SUBMITTED_FILE_NAME] field in the SDRF file, and were included for the sake of completeness. Further iInformation on individual samples and sequencing libraries can also be found on the BLUEPRINT data coordination centre (DCC) website: http://dcc.blueprint-epigenome.eu\
Project description:Following fertilization, the new embryo reprograms parental genomes to begin transcription (embryonic genome activation, EGA). EGA is indispensable for development, but its dynamics, profile or when it initiates in vertebrates are unknown. We here characterize the onset of transcription in mouse one-cell embryos. Precise embryo staging eliminated noise to reveal a cascading program of de novo transcription initiating within six hours of fertilization. This immediate EGA (iEGA) utilized canonical promoters, produced spliced transcripts, was distinctive and predominantly driven by the maternal genome. Expression represented pathways not only associated with embryo development but with cancer. In human one-cell embryos, hundreds of genes were up-regulated, days earlier than thought, with conservation to mouse iEGA. These findings provide a functional basis for epigenetic analysis in early-stage embryos and illuminate networks governing totipotency and other cell-fate transitions.