Biomedical subjects

Lorena Casciani

Publications and source records attributed to Lorena Casciani.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

A metabonomic study of transgenic maize (Zea mays) seeds revealed variations in osmolytes and branched amino acids.

The aim of the research was to investigate metabolic variations associated with genetic modifications in the grains of Zea mays using metabonomic techniques. With this in mind, the non-targeted characteristic of the technique is useful to identify metabolites peculiar to the genetic modification and initially undefined. The results obtained showed that the genetic modification, introducing Cry1Ab gene expression, induces metabolic variations involving the primary nitrogen pathway. Concerning the methodological aspects, the experimental protocol used has been applied in this field for the first time. It consists of a combination of partial least square-discriminant analysis and principal component analysis. The most important metabolites for discrimination were selected and the metabolic correlations linking them are identified. Principal component analysis on selected signals confirms metabolic variations, highlighting important details about the changes induced on the metabolic network by the presence of a Bt transgene in the maize genome.

Amino Acids, Branched-Chain↗

PubMed2005

LF-NMR and multivariate data analysis: compression of data to classify hydrogel contact lenses.

Hydrogel contact lenses swollen in viscoelastic artificial tears solution have been studied, measuring transversal relaxation times of water molecules using LF-NMR techniques. Data were processed by classical multiexponential fitting, by principal component analysis and by SLICING, a multi-way analysis method. The reason for using multivariate data analysis was not to obtain a better fitting, but rather more effective data description. The single-sample relaxation curves were projected in a space spanned by the loading curves, and in this space it was simpler to compare data. In particular, it contributed to the description of the variability of motion characteristics of the water molecule 'families' contained in the studied samples. Applying multivariate techniques, we were able to group lenses with different Equilibrium Water Content (EWC) and with the same water content but different compositions. Accordingly, we were able to point out that, if the lenses are swollen first in physiological solution and then in viscoelastic artificial tears solution, hydration characteristics remained unchanged in all the studied samples, except for 38% EWC lenses.

Algorithms↗

PubMed2004

NMR-based metabonomic study of transgenic maize.

The aim of this research was to verify the possibility of identifying and classifying maize seeds obtained from transgenic plants, in different classes according to the modification, on the basis of the concerted variation in metabolite levels detected by NMR spectra. It was possible to recognise the discriminant metabolites of transgenic samples as well as to classify non-a priori defined samples of maize. It is important to underline that the obtained results are useful to point out the metabolic consequences of a specific genic modification on a plant, without using a targeted analysis of the different metabolites, in fact it was possible to classify the seeds also without the complete assignment of the spectra. The analysis was performed by applying multivariate techniques (principal component analysis and partial least squares-discriminant analysis) to NMR data.

Gene Expression↗

PubMed2004

LF-NMR water self-diffusion and relaxation time measurements of hydrogel contact lenses interacting with artificial tears.

The different swelling properties of ionic and non-ionic lenses, immersed in sodium chloride or artificial tears, were investigated by Low-Field Nuclear Magnetic Resonance (LF-NMR) through relaxation time and self-diffusion coefficient measurements. A new model was developed to estimate the water self-diffusion coefficient inside the lenses, the results of which revealed a different mechanism of interaction for ionic versus non-ionic materials with artificial tears. The consequence of this finding suggests clinical implications.

Contact Lenses↗