Microbiological cultureA microbiological culture, or microbial culture, is a method of multiplying microbial organisms by letting them reproduce in predetermined culture medium under controlled laboratory conditions. Microbial cultures are foundational and basic diagnostic methods used as research tools in molecular biology. The term culture can also refer to the microorganisms being grown. Microbial cultures are used to determine the type of organism, its abundance in the sample being tested, or both.
Chemical libraryA chemical library or compound library is a collection of stored chemicals usually used ultimately in high-throughput screening or industrial manufacture. The chemical library can consist in simple terms of a series of stored chemicals. Each chemical has associated information stored in some kind of database with information such as the chemical structure, purity, quantity, and physiochemical characteristics of the compound.
Magnetic tweezersMagnetic tweezers (MT) are scientific instruments for the manipulation and characterization of biomolecules or polymers. These apparatus exert forces and torques to individual molecules or groups of molecules. It can be used to measure the tensile strength or the force generated by molecules. Most commonly magnetic tweezers are used to study mechanical properties of biological macromolecules like DNA or proteins in single-molecule experiments. Other applications are the rheology of soft matter, and studies of force-regulated processes in living cells.
Extracellular spaceExtracellular space refers to the part of a multicellular organism outside the cells, usually taken to be outside the plasma membranes, and occupied by fluid. This is distinguished from intracellular space, which is inside the cells. The composition of the extracellular space includes metabolites, ions, proteins, and many other substances that might affect cellular function. For example, neurotransmitters "jump" from cell to cell to facilitate the transmission of an electric current in the nervous system.
Antibiotic sensitivity testingAntibiotic sensitivity testing or antibiotic susceptibility testing is the measurement of the susceptibility of bacteria to antibiotics. It is used because bacteria may have resistance to some antibiotics. Sensitivity testing results can allow a clinician to change the choice of antibiotics from empiric therapy, which is when an antibiotic is selected based on clinical suspicion about the site of an infection and common causative bacteria, to directed therapy, in which the choice of antibiotic is based on knowledge of the organism and its sensitivities.
Hepatocellular carcinomaHepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is the most common type of primary liver cancer in adults and is currently the most common cause of death in people with cirrhosis. HCC is the third leading cause of cancer-related deaths worldwide. The development of HCC is attributed to fibrosis and cirrhosis, which occur in the setting of chronic liver injury and inflammation. The latter being closely linked to chronic viral hepatitis infection (hepatitis B or C) or exposure to toxins such as alcohol, aflatoxin, or pyrrolizidine alkaloids.
CirrhosisCirrhosis, also known as liver cirrhosis or hepatic cirrhosis, and end-stage liver disease, is the impaired liver function caused by the formation of scar tissue known as fibrosis due to damage caused by liver disease. Damage to the liver leads to repair of liver tissue and subsequent formation of scar tissue. Over time, scar tissue can replace normal functioning tissue, leading to the impaired liver function of cirrhosis. The disease typically develops slowly over months or years.
Orphan drugAn orphan drug is a pharmaceutical agent that is developed to treat certain rare medical conditions. An orphan drug would not be profitable to produce without government assistance, due to the small population of patients affected by the conditions. The conditions that orphan drugs are used to treat are referred to as orphan diseases. The assignment of orphan status to a disease and to drugs developed to treat it is a matter of public policy that depends on the legislation (if there is any) of the country.
Three-dimensional spaceIn geometry, a three-dimensional space (3D space, 3-space or, rarely, tri-dimensional space) is a mathematical space in which three values (coordinates) are required to determine the position of a point. Most commonly, it is the three-dimensional Euclidean space, the Euclidean n-space of dimension n=3 that models physical space. More general three-dimensional spaces are called 3-manifolds. Technically, a tuple of n numbers can be understood as the Cartesian coordinates of a location in a n-dimensional Euclidean space.
Embryonic stem cellEmbryonic stem cells (ESCs) are pluripotent stem cells derived from the inner cell mass of a blastocyst, an early-stage pre-implantation embryo. Human embryos reach the blastocyst stage 4–5 days post fertilization, at which time they consist of 50–150 cells. Isolating the inner cell mass (embryoblast) using immunosurgery results in destruction of the blastocyst, a process which raises ethical issues, including whether or not embryos at the pre-implantation stage have the same moral considerations as embryos in the post-implantation stage of development.
Extracellular fluidIn cell biology, extracellular fluid (ECF) denotes all body fluid outside the cells of any multicellular organism. Total body water in healthy adults is about 60% (range 45 to 75%) of total body weight; women and the obese typically have a lower percentage than lean men. Extracellular fluid makes up about one-third of body fluid, the remaining two-thirds is intracellular fluid within cells. The main component of the extracellular fluid is the interstitial fluid that surrounds cells.
Cell junctionCell junctions or junctional complexes, are a class of cellular structures consisting of multiprotein complexes that provide contact or adhesion between neighboring cells or between a cell and the extracellular matrix in animals. They also maintain the paracellular barrier of epithelia and control paracellular transport. Cell junctions are especially abundant in epithelial tissues. Combined with cell adhesion molecules and extracellular matrix, cell junctions help hold animal cells together.
