Abstract Candida albicans is a commensal fungal pathogen that grows in yeast and hyphal forms in the human gut. C. albicans causes mucosal and cutaneous diseases that can result in significant mortality following systematic infections and it also exhibits drug resistance. Zebrafish have been an excellent model to investigate C. albicans infections because of their transparency and the availability of many transgenic lines. However, there is a limitation in using zebrafish as a model because the fish embryos cannot survive at 37°C therefore it is not suitable for studying Candida infections at physiological relevant human body temperature. In this thesis, the normal embryonic development of Arabian killifish (A. dispar) is investigated, revealing that embryogenesis was divided into 32 stages based on diagnostic patterns of development. A. dispar can also found to tolerate a wide range of temperatures and salinities. This suggests that A. dispar could be developed as a novel model to investigate host-pathogen interactions. The tolerance of A. dispar to high temperatures may in part be attributable to brown pigment cells with a highly fluorescent character that may have developed to allow the fish to adapt to live within extreme environmental conditions with strong sunlight and a wide range of temperatures (Chapter 3). In terms of Candida infections, this study examined A. dispar as a model to test C. albicans pathogenicity. The survival of A. dispar embryos following Candida infection showed a dose dependent relationship. We also found that A. dispar can survive longer than zebrafish after infection. Furthermore, C. albicans cells were observed to undergo a transition from yeast to hyphae at 37°C. An investigation of the ability of mutant strains of C. albicans with defects in cell wall mannosylation revealed a significant impact on virulence, host mortality, and the fishes’ immune response. The present study found that although the deletion of O- and N-mannan from the cell wall of C. albicans, affected fungal burden (attenuation), and the survival of the infected embryos per se was significantly decreased in the infections of the mutant strains compared to the WT. This data confirms the importance of the mannosylation state of the cell wall in triggering an immune recognition event (Chapter 4). A. dispar is also shown to be suitable for studying the effectiveness of 3 | P a g e antifungals. Fluconazole treatment of infected embryos and eggs promoted greater rates of survival at high doses, alongside a significant reduction of C. albicans CFUs (Chapter 4). When looking at the Candida-host interaction, we directly observed phagocytosed yeast cells within macrophages. Various detection methods were used to follow macrophages and neutrophils including Western blotting, immunostaining and histological staining (Sudan black and FITC-tyramide) allowing the monitoring of the time course of the immune cells. A biphasic response of macrophages was detected by L-plastin Western blotting, suggesting activation of two different type of macrophage: activated macrophage (M1) and alternative macrophage (M2). We also assayed reactive oxygen species (ROS) within infected embryos using a fluorescent probe (H2DCFDA), revealing the accumulation of the fluorescent probe at the sites of infection. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of the oxidative and immune response using the H2DCFDA and qPCR were also accomplished within A. dispar embryos after infection with both the WT and mutant strains of Candida albicans (WT, pmr1∆, mnt1-mnt2∆, and och1∆). The results confirmed that the mutant strains did not activate a host oxidative stress response nor immune cell accumulation when compared to WT, suggesting that the immune response is less activated against these mutants. Finally, a new transgenic line of A. dispar fish was developed using Betaactin-DsR-LoxP-GFP. The new transgenic A. dispar is suggested to be an ideal model for real time observation of host-pathogen interactions and for investigation of molecular functions of the immune response. Overall these results improve our understanding of the use of a new transparent fish model to study fungal pathogenesis and demonstrates the potential advantages of using this species in future studies of bacterial, fungal and viral pathogens at a physiologically relevant temperature for human infection. Such a model could lead us to investigate in more depth the key interactions between pathogens and their host and permit the screening and development of new antifungal therapies (that might target the pathogens directly or target the host immune system). View full metadata
Volumetric chemical adsorption was done in a volumetric apparatus using hydrogen gas at room temperature on eleven platinum catalyst, commercial catalysts (RG-412,RG-402 ,RG-432, RG-451, RG-482, and PS-10) and prepared platinum catalysts with 0.1, 0.2 , 0.45 , and 0.55% by weight of Pt supported with Y-alumina. The results show that the metal crystallite area increases with increasing platinum content. The dispersion and particle size of metal crystallite located between 48.2-96.1% and 3.85-12.72 nm, respectively. For bimetallic catalysts, the hydrogen intake decrease in the following order : Re < Sn < Ir.
A new series of chalcone derivatives featuring an oxadiazole-quinoline moiety were successfully synthesized through a multi-step reaction sequence, commencing with quinoline-2-carboxylic acid as the starting material. First, the carboxylic group was chlorinated to form an acid chloride, following reacted with hydrazine hydrate. The resulting product underwent cyclization with carbon disulfide in an alkaline solution to produce 5-(quinolin-2-yl)-1,3,4-oxadiazole-2-thiol, followed by alkylation using chloroacetone. In the final step, an aldol condensation reaction was carried out by grinding the acetone derivative with various aromatic aldehydes, yielding the desired chalcones. The synthesized compounds were characterized by Rf, FTIR,
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In this study, a mathematical model for the kinetics of solute transport in liquid membrane systems (LMSs) has been formulated. This model merged the mechanisms of consecutive and reversible processes with a “semi-derived” diffusion expression, resulting in equations that describe solute concentrations in the three sections (donor, acceptor and membrane). These equations have been refined into linear forms, which are satisfying in the special conditions for simplification obtaining the important kinetic constants of the process experimentally.
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Botnet detection develops a challenging problem in numerous fields such as order, cybersecurity, law, finance, healthcare, and so on. The botnet signifies the group of co-operated Internet connected devices controlled by cyber criminals for starting co-ordinated attacks and applying various malicious events. While the botnet is seamlessly dynamic with developing counter-measures projected by both network and host-based detection techniques, the convention techniques are failed to attain sufficient safety to botnet threats. Thus, machine learning approaches are established for detecting and classifying botnets for cybersecurity. This article presents a novel dragonfly algorithm with multi-class support vector machines enabled botnet
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Generalized multivariate transmuted Bessel distribution belongs to the family of probability distributions with a symmetric heavy tail. It is considered a mixed continuous probability distribution. It is the result of mixing the multivariate Gaussian mixture distribution with the generalized inverse normal distribution. On this basis, the paper will study a multiple compact regression model when the random error follows a generalized multivariate transmuted Bessel distribution. Assuming that the shape parameters are known, the parameters of the multiple compact regression model will be estimated using the maximum likelihood method and Bayesian approach depending on non-informative prior information. In addition, the Bayes factor was used
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In this paper an attempt to provide a single degree of freedom lumped model for fluid structure interaction (FSI) dynamical analysis will be presented. The model can be used to clarify some important concept in the FSI dynamics such as the added mass, added stiffness, added damping, wave coupling ,influence mass coefficient and critical fluid depth . The numerical results of the model show that the natural frequency decrease with the increasing of many parameters related to the structure and the fluid .It is found that the interaction phenomena can become weak or strong depending on the depth of the containing fluid .The damped and un damped free response are plotted in time domain and phase plane for different model parameters It is fou
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Because the Coronavirus epidemic spread in Iraq, the COVID-19 epidemic of people quarantined due to infection is our application in this work. The numerical simulation methods used in this research are more suitable than other analytical and numerical methods because they solve random systems. Since the Covid-19 epidemic system has random variables coefficients, these methods are used. Suitable numerical simulation methods have been applied to solve the COVID-19 epidemic model in Iraq. The analytical results of the Variation iteration method (VIM) are executed to compare the results. One numerical method which is the Finite difference method (FD) has been used to solve the Coronavirus model and for comparison purposes. The numerical simulat
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