Academic literature on the topic 'Antiretroviral agents. Genetic regulation'

It is obvious that the process of developing cancer—oncogenesis—is a multistep process. We know that smoking, obesity, and a family history are strong independent predictors of developing malignancy; yet, in clinics, we often see that some heavy smokers live into their nineties and that some people with close relatives affected by cancer spend many years worrying about a disease that, in the end, they never contract. For many centuries scientists have struggled to understand the process that make cancer cells different from normal cells. There were those in ancient times who believed that tumo

The autoinflammatory diseases are disorders of innate immunity which result in chronic or recurrent multisystem inflammatory disease. This chapter concentrates on the currently known inherited periodic fever syndromes. These rare genetic diseases have resulted in major advances in the understanding of innate immunity in general and the regulation of interleukin (IL)-1 in particular. It now seems clear that autoinflammatory conditions are disorders of the regulation of IL-1 and NFκ‎‎B. The treatment and prognosis of these diseases have been radically improved by the availability of cytokine-blocking agents.

The roles of diet and environment on health have been known since ancient times. Cancer is both a genetic and an epigenetic disease and a complex interplay mechanism of genetic and environmental factors composed of multiple stages in which gene expression, protein and metabolite function operate synchronically. Disruption of epigenetic processes results in life-threatening diseases, in particular, cancer. Epigenetics involves altered gene expression without any change of nucleotide sequences, such as DNA methylation, histone modifications and non-coding RNAs in the regulation of genome. According to current studies, cancer is preventable with appropriate or balanced food and nutrition, in some cases. Nutrient intake is an environmental factor, and dietary components play an importent role in both cancer development and prevention. Due to epigenetic events induce changes in DNA and thus influencing over all gene expression in response to the food components, bioactive compounds and phytochemicals as potent antioxidants and cancer preventive agents have important roles in human diet. Several dietray components can alter cancer cell behavior and cancer risk by influencing key pathways and steps in carcinogenesis, including signaling, apoptosis, differentiation, or inflammation. To date, multiple biologically active food components are strongly suggested to have protective potential against cancer formation, such as methyl-group donors, fatty acids, phytochemicals, flavonoids, isothiocyanates, etc. Diet considered as a source of either carcinogens that are present in certain foods or acting in a protective manner such as vitamins, antioxidants, detoxifying substances, chelating agents etc. Thus, dietary phytochemicals as epigenetic modifiers in cancer and effects of dietary phytochemicals on gene expression and signaling pathways have been widely studied in cancer. In this chapter, current knowledge on interactions between cancer metabolism, epigenetic gene regulation, and how both processes are affected by dietary components are summerized. A comprehensive overview of natural compounds with epigenetic activity on tumorogenesis mechanisms by which natural compounds alter the cancer epigenome is provided. Studies made in epigenetics and cancer research demonstrated that genetic and epigenetic mechanisms are not separate events in cancer; they influence each other during carcinogenesis, highlighting plant-derived anticancer compounds with epigenetic mechanisms of action, and potential use in epigenetic therapy. Recent investigations involving epigenetic modulations suggest that diet rich in phytochemicals not only reduce the risk of developing cancer, but also affect the treatment outcome.

Social insect nest architectures can be complex, intricate structures. Stigmergy (see section 1.2.3), that is, the coordination of activities through the environment, is an important mechanism underlying nest construction in social insects. Two types of stigmergy are distinguished: quantitative, or continuous stigmergy, in which the different stimuli that trigger behavior are quantitatively different; and qualitative, or discrete stigmergy, in which stimuli can be classified into different classes that differ qualitatively. If quantitative stigmergy can explain the emergence of pillars in termites, the building behavior of the paper wasps Polistes dominulus seems to be better described by qualitative stigmergy. In this chapter, a simple agent-based model inspired by discrete stigmergy is introduced. In the model, agents move in a three-dimensional grid and drop elementary building blocks depending on the configuration of blocks in their neighborhood. From the viewpoint of bricks, this model is a model of self-assembly. The model generates a large proportion of random or space-filling forms, but some patterns appear to be structured. Some of the patterns even look like wasp nests. The properties of the structured shapes obtained with the model, and of the algorithms that generate them, are reviewed. Based on these properties, a fitness function is constructed so that structured architectures have a large fitness and unstructured patterns a small fitness. A genetic algorithm based on the fitness function is used to explore the space of architectures. Several examples of self-assembling systems in robotics, engineering, and architecture are described. Self-assembling or self-reconfigurable robotic systems, although they are not directly inspired by nest construction in social insects, could benefit from the discrete-stigmergy model of nest building. The method of evolutionary design, that is, the creation of new designs by computers using evolutionary algorithms, is a promising way of exploring the patterns that self-assembling models can produce. Many animals can produce very complex architectures that fulfill numerous functional and adaptive requirements (protection from predators, substrate of social life and reproductive activities, thermal regulation, etc.).