University of Texas Medical Branch

About: University of Texas Medical Branch is a education organization based out in Galveston, Texas, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Virus. The organization has 22033 authors who have published 38268 publications receiving 1517502 citations. The organization is also known as: The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston & UTMB.

The Surgically Induced Stress Response

Abstract: The stress response to surgery, critical illness, trauma, and burns encompasses derangements of metabolic and physiological processes that induce perturbations in the inflammatory, acute phase, hormonal, and genomic responses. Hypermetabolism and hypercatabolism result, leading to muscle wasting, impaired immune function and wound healing, organ failure, and death. The surgery-induced stress response is largely similar to that triggered by traumatic injuries; the duration of the stress response, however, varies according to the severity of injury (surgical or traumatic). This spectrum of injuries and insults ranges from small lacerations to severe insults such as large poly-traumatic and burn injuries. Burn injuries provide an extreme model of trauma induced stress responses that can be used to study the long-term effects of a prolonged stress response. Although the stress response to acute trauma evolved to confer improved chances of survival following injury, in modern surgical practice the stress respo...

Medicine's ethical responsibility for health care reform - The top five list

Abstract: Dr. Howard Brody argues that to help control costs, each specialty society create a “Top Five” list of common tests or treatments that provide no meaningful benefit to major categories of patients.

Crystal structures of human DNA polymerase beta complexed with DNA: implications for catalytic mechanism, processivity, and fidelity

Abstract: Mammalian DNA polymerase β (pol β) is a small (39 kDa) DNA gap-filling enzyme that comprises an amino-terminal 8-kDa domain and a carboxy-terminal 31-kDa domain. In the work reported here, crystal structures of human pol β complexed with blunt-ended segments of DNA show that, although the crystals belong to a different space group, the DNA is nevertheless bound in the pol β binding channel in the same way as the DNA in previously reported structures of rat pol β complexed with a template−primer and ddCTP [Pelletier, H., Sawaya, M. R., Kumar, A., Wilson, S. H., & Kraut, J. (1994) Science 264, 1891−1903]. The 8-kDa domain is in one of three previously observed positions relative to the 31-kDa domain, suggesting that the 8-kDa domain may assume only a small number of stable conformations. The thumb subdomain is in a more open position in the human pol β−DNA binary complex than it is in the rat pol β−DNA−ddCTP ternary complex, and a closing thumb upon nucleotide binding could represent the rate-limiting confo...