Sharif Digital Repository

Cancer immunotherapy has been emerged as a promising strategy for treatment of a broad spectrum of malignancies ranging from hematological to solid tumors. One of the principal approaches of cancer immunotherapy is transfer of natural or engineered tumor-specific T-cells into patients, a so called "adoptive cell transfer", or ACT, process. Construction of allogeneic T-cells is dependent on the employment of a gene-editing tool to modify donor-extracted T-cells and prepare them to specifically act against tumor cells with enhanced function and durability and least side-effects. In this context, CRISPR technology can be used to produce universal T-cells, equipped with recombinant T cell... 

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) caused the COVID-19 pandemic that has been spreading around the world since December 2019. More than 10 million affected cases and more than half a million deaths have been reported so far, while no vaccine is yet available as a treatment. Considering the global healthcare urgency, several techniques, including whole genome sequencing and computed tomography imaging have been employed for diagnosing infected people. Considerable efforts are also directed at detecting and preventing different modes of community transmission. Among them is the rapid detection of virus presence on different surfaces with which people may come in... 

The primary challenge of spectroscopic techniques in selective detection and characterization of tautomeric structures of DNA and RNA bases, and moreover, the accurate interpretation and explanation of the experimental results are the main motives of theoretical studies. Surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) can be a powerful approach to distinguish cytosine in the presence of its tautomers. For this respect, herein, the theoretical simulation of the SERS spectra of cytosine and its three most stable tautomers adsorbed on silver clusters is carried out. The calculations of SERS spectra is based on the excited-state energy gradient approximation as a well-established approach that gives... 

Semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) are among the few photostable optical emitters that are ideal for sensing, imaging, drug delivery, and monitoring of protein activity. These applications often require strategies for immobilizing proteins onto the nanotube while preserving the optical properties of the SWCNTs. Site-specific and oriented immobilization strategies, in particular, offer advantages for improving sensor and optical signaling responses. In this study, we demonstrate site-specific protein immobilization of a model of enhanced yellow fluorescent protein with a single engineered cysteine residue, using either single-stranded DNA or a pyrene-containing linker to... 

In this paper, a bottom-up hydrothermal route is reported for the synthesis of oxygen and nitrogen co-decorated carbon quantum dots (CQDs) using ammonium hydrogen citrate (AHC) as a single precursor. DLS data approved the formation of 4.0 nm (average size) CQDs. XRD pattern shows the interlayer spacing (002) of 3.5 Å for CQDs, which is exactly the same as that of crystalline graphite. XPS and FTIR spectra verified the formation of oxygen and nitrogen functional groups on the CQDs surface. Co-decorated carboxyl, hydroxyl and amine groups on the CQDs surfaces make them as promising polyelectrolyte for gene delivery. Toxicity assay showed a survival rate of 70% under different incubation times... 

The role of quantum tunneling in altering the structure of nucleotides to each other and causing a mutational event in DNA has been a topic of debate for years. Here, we introduce a new quantum mechanical approach for analyzing a typical point-mutation in DNA strands. Assuming each codon as a base state, a superposition of codon states could provide a physical description for a set of codons encoding the same amino acid and there are transition amplitudes between them. We choose the amino acids Phe and Ile as our understudy bio-systems which are encoded by two and three codons, respectively. We treat them as large quantum systems and use double- and triple-well potential models to study the... 

The highly sensitive impedimetric biosensor in label free approach for hepatitis B virus DNA (HPV DNA) detection based on tellurium doped ZnO nanowires was fabricated. The NWs were grown by hybrid thin film oxidation in the physical vapor deposition (PVD) mechanism. The morphology characterization of the synthesized NWs was performed by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and the images demonstrated that the diameter and the length of the materialized NWs were around 50 nm and several micrometers, respectively. The high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) image indicated that the fabricated NWs were crystalline and their phase characterization was validated by... 

Purpose: Endometriosis is a gynecological disease that causes the uterine lining to appear in other organs outside the uterus. As DNA methylation has an important role in this disorder, its profiling can reveal new information to improve the diagnosis and treatment of endometriosis patients. Methods: We conducted a genome-wide methylation profiling of ectopic and eutopic endometrial tissues from women with and without endometriosis using Infinium Human Methylation 450K BeadChip arrays. DNA methylation samples were collected from nine ectopic and nine eutopic endometrial tissues of endometriosis and six endometrial tissues of healthy controls. Results: Correlation heatmaps and the principal... 

Current techniques in sequencing a genome allow a service provider (e.g. a sequencing company) to have full access to the genome information, and thus the privacy of individuals regarding their lifetime secret is violated. In this paper, we introduce the problem of private DNA sequencing, where the goal is to keep the DNA sequence private to the sequencer. We propose an architecture, where the task of reading fragments of DNA and the task of DNA assembly are separated, the former is done at the sequencer(s), and the later is completed at a local trusted data collector. To satisfy the privacy constraint at the sequencer and reconstruction condition at the data collector, we create an... 

Objective(s): Hepatitis B virus infection causes chronic disease such as cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. The metabolomics investigations have been demonstrated to be related to pathophysiologic mechanisms in many disorders such as hepatitis B infection. The aim of this study was to investigate the saliva metabolic profile of patients with chronic hepatitis B infection and to identify underlying mechanisms as well as potential biomarkers associated with the disease. Materials and Methods: Saliva from 16 healthy subjects and 20 patients with chronic hepatitis B virus were analyzed by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Then, multivariate statistical analysis was performed to identify... 

Herein, we present a novel, simple, and ultrasensitive electrochemical DNA (E-DNA) sensor based on hollow carbon spheres (HCS) decorated with polyaniline (PANI). A thiolated 21-mer oligonucleotide, characteristic of HBV DNA, is immobilized via electrodeposited gold nanoparticles on HCS-PANI. Cyclic voltammetry (CV), differential pulse voltammetry (DPV), and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) are used to characterize the electrochemical properties of the prepared nanocomposite. Scanning electron microscopy is employed to investigate the morphological texture of the fabricated modifier. An enhanced intrinsic signal of PANI is probed to evaluate the biosensing ability of the prepared... 

DNA sequencing has faced a huge demand since it was first introduced as a service to the public. This service is often offloaded to the sequencing companies who will have access to full knowledge of individuals' sequences, a major violation of privacy. To address this challenge, we propose a solution, which is based on separating the process of reading the fragments of sequences, which is done at a sequencing machine, and assembling the reads, which is done at a trusted local data collector. To confuse the sequencer, in a pooled sequencing scenario, in which multiple sequences are going to be sequenced simultaneously, for each target individual, we add fragments of one non-target individual,... 

Several evidences support the idea that a small population of tumour cells representing self-renewal potential are involved in initiation, maintenance, metastasis, and outcomes of cancer therapy. Elucidation of microRNAs/genes regulatory networks activated in cancer stem cells (CSCs) is necessary for the identification of new targets for cancer therapy. The aim of the present study was to predict the miRNAs pattern, which can target both metastasis and self-renewal pathways using integration of literature and data mining. For this purpose, mammospheres derived from MCF-7, MDA-MB231, and MDA-MB468 were used as breast CSCs model. They had higher migration, invasion, and colony formation... 

An impedimetric human papilloma virus (HPV) DNA biosensor based on gold nanotubes (AuNTs) in label free detection was materialized. The AuNTs decorated nanoporous polycarbonate (AuNTs-PC) template as biosensor electrode was fabricated by electrodeposition method. The single strand DNA (ss-DNA) probe was covalently immobilized onto the AuNTs-PC electrode. The hybridization of target sequences with the ss-DNA probe was observed by the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS). The biosensor showed high selectivity and could differentiate between the complementary, mismatch and non-complementary DNA sequences. The EIS measurements were matched to Randle's equivalent circuit. The... 

Background: Long reads provide valuable information regarding the sequence composition of genomes. Long reads are usually very noisy which renders their alignments on the reference genome a daunting task. It may take days to process datasets enough to sequence a human genome on a single node. Hence, it is of primary importance to have an aligner which can operate on distributed clusters of computers with high performance in accuracy and speed. Results: In this paper, we presented IMOS, an aligner for mapping noisy long reads to the reference genome. It can be used on a single node as well as on distributed nodes. In its single-node mode, IMOS is an Improved version of Meta-aligner (IM)... 

Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS) addresses the problem of associating subsequences of individuals' genomes to the observable characteristics called phenotypes. In a genome of length G, it is observed that each characteristic is only related to a specific subsequence of it with length L, called the causal subsequence. The objective is to recover the causal subsequence, using a dataset of N individuals' genomes and their observed characteristics. Recently, the problem has been investigated from an information theoretic point of view in [1]. It has been shown that there is a threshold effect for reliable learning of the causal subsequence at Gh ( N L/G ) by characterizing the capacity of... 

Background: Breast cancer is currently the most common neoplasm diagnosed in women globally. There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that human papillomavirus (HPV) infection may play a key role in invasiveness of breast cancer. The aim of this study was to determine the presence of HPV in patients with breast cancer and its possible association with cancer progression. Methods: Breast specimens were collected from 72 patients with breast cancer and 31 healthy controls. The presence of HPV was investigated by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and genotyping was performed for positive cases. We also evaluated the viral factors such as E6, E2, and E7 in HPV positive cases. Enzyme-linked... 

In electronic computers, extensive amount of computations required for searching biological sequences in big databases leads to vast amount of energy consumption for electrical processing and cooling. On the other hand, optical processing is much faster than electrical counterpart, due to its parallel processing capability, at a fraction of energy consumption level and cost. In this regard, this paper proposes a correlation-based optical algorithm using metamaterial, taking advantages of optical parallel processing, to efficiently locate the edits as a means of DNA sequence comparison. Specifically, the proposed algorithm partitions the read DNA sequence into multiple overlapping intervals,... 

This paper presents a novel optical processing approach for exploring genome sequences built upon an optical correlator for global alignment and the extended dual-vector-curve-curve (DV-curve) method for local alignment. To overcome the problem of the traditional DV-curve method for presenting an accurate and simplified output, we propose the hybrid amplitude wavelength polarization optical DV-curve (HAWPOD) method, built upon the DV-curve method, to analyze genome sequences in three steps: DNA coding, alignment, and post-Analysis. For this purpose, a tunable graphene-based color filter is designed for wavelength modulation of optical signals. Moreover, all-optical implementation of the... 

In the problems of Genome-Wide Association Study (GWAS), the objective is to associate subsequences of individual's genomes to the observable characteristics called phenotypes. The genome containing the biological information of an individual can be represented by a sequence of length G. Many observable characteristics of the individuals can be related to a subsequence of a given length L, called causal subsequence. The environmental affects make the relation between the causal subsequence and the observable characteristics a stochastic function. Our objective in this paper is to detect the causal subsequence of a specific phenotype using a dataset of N individuals and their observed...