Books published by Humana Press Inc.

In recent years, molecular imaging techniques have grown to be invaluable tools for molecular biology research and, to a more modest extent, clinical medicine.

These techniques are applicable to a wide range of topics, including molecular functionality of NB-LRR proteins and other immune signaling components, and functional characterization of effector proteins and other pathogen components that sabotage host immunity.

Later chapters describe how these paradigms are used to model the progression of drug addiction, providing insight into the clinical symptomatology of addiction from acquisition of drug use through compulsive drug taking to withdrawal and relapse.

Due to their rare combination of high chemical stability, exceptional optical and electrical properties, high surface-to-volume ratio, and high aspect ratio, carbon nanotubes (CNTs) have made an enormous impact on materials science, molecular biology, biomedicine, and bioanalytical chemistry.

As mass spectrometric methods now offer a level of specificity and sensitivity unrealized by spectrophotometric- and immunoassay-based methods, mass spectrometry has entered the clinical laboratory where it is being used for a wide range of applications.

Immunoendocrinology is a rapidly developing field of research that seeks to understand the intersection of the immune and endocrine systems. Immunoendocrinology: Scientific and Clinical Aspects explores in detail the current knowledge of immunoendocrinology, namely endocrine disorders produced by disorders of immune function.

This book is intended for scientifc researchers, clinical laboratorians, clinical and translational scientists, and others interested in proteomics and biomarker discovery.

While the utilization of microarrays for gene expression studies has been widely published, Microarray Methods for Drug Discovery describes the use of this technology for a multitude of other vital applications. Covering the field of drug discovery through its various aspects, including high throughput screening, target identification, drug metabolism and toxicity screening as well as clinical sample handling, this volume also addresses new emerging fields like miRNA profiling, ribonomic and glycomic profiling. All chapters, contributed by experts in the field, follow the highly successful Methods in Molecular Biology(TM) series format, which is comprised of brief introductions, lists of required materials and reagents, readily reproducible, step-by-step lab protocols, along with detailed tips on troubleshooting and avoiding known pitfalls, making this book an easy read for investigators at all levels of expertise. Authoritative and cutting-edge, Microarray Methods for Drug Discovery  provides an ideal desk reference for scientists who wish to use microarray technology in order to better understand a variety of biological interactions in their respective fields.

Stem cells, characterized by the ability to both self-renew and to generate diff- entiated functional cell types, have been derived from the embryo and from va- ous sources of the postnatal animals and human.

In Membrane Transporters in Drug Discovery and Development: Methods and Protocols, expert researchers provide practical methodologies of the ongoing research on membrane transporters, considering applications of transporter technologies in drug discovery and development.

Plants come in myriads of shapes and colors, and the beauty of plants has fascinated mankind for thousands of years. In the last few decades, plant developmental biology has pinpointed a large number of developmental regulators and their interactions and the mechanisms that govern plant development start to emerge.

Despite being known and studied for years, peptides have never before attracted enough attention to necessitate the invention of the term "peptidomics" in order to specify the study of the complement of peptides from a cell, organelle, tissue or organism.

Among the first volumes to meld consideration of immunotoxicity testing strategies with a comprehensive presentation of detailed laboratory protocols, chapters include a description of the evolution of immunotoxicity testing, a look at the importance of immunotoxicity testing for health risk reduction, and ideas concerning the future of the field.

The mature T and NK cell lymphomas are rare, comprising approximately 10% of all malignant lymphomas. While the overall incidence of B-cell lymphomas has begun to decline in the United States, the incidence of T-cell lymphomas continues to rise.

Protein expression in a heterologous host is a cornerstone of biomedical research and of the biotechnology industry. For example, membrane proteins constitute a significant percentage of the total cellular proteins but as a class are very difficult to overexpress, especially in a heterologous host.

Developed for a range of tissues where the culture environment takes into account the spatial organization of the cells therein, 3D cell culture models serve to bridge the gap between in vivo studies at one extreme with that of simple cell monolayers at the other.

Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) offer an unlimited self-renewing capacity, as opposed to the limits of adult stem cells;

Fluorescence in situ Hybridization (FISH) belongs to that special category of well-established molecular biology techniques that, since their inception a few decades ago, have succeeded in keeping a prominent position within the constantly expanding list of laboratory pro- dures for biomedical research and clinical diagnostics.

Acute coronary syndrome (ACS) continues to challenge our health care system in the complexity of presentation and the ever increasing number of patients exhibiting signs and symptoms of an acute coronary syndrome.

Studies related to pathogen-mediated virus resistance in plants were instrumental in providing some of the historical observations which ultimately led to the vital discovery of double-stranded RNA (dsRNA)-induced gene silencing or RNA interference (RNAi), which has since revolutionized research on plant-virus interactions.