Network Alignment over graph-structured data has received considerable attention in many recent applications. Global network alignment tries to uniquely find the best mapping for a node in one network to only one node in another network. The mapping is performed according to some matching criteria that depend on the nature of data. In molecular biology, functional orthologs, protein complexes, and evolutionary conserved pathways are some examples of information uncovered by global network alignment. Current techniques for global network alignment suffer from several drawbacks, e.g., poor performance and high memory requirements. We address these problems by proposing IBNAL, Indexes-Based Network ALigner, for better alignment quality and faster results. To accelerate the alignment step, IBNAL makes use of a novel clique-based index and is able to align large networks in seconds. IBNAL produces a higher topological quality alignment and comparable biological match in alignment relative to other state-of-the-art aligners even though topological fit is primarily used to match nodes. IBNAL's results confirm and give another evidence that homology information is more likely to be encoded in network topology than sequence information.

Prostate specific antigen (PSA) has long been used as a biological marker for prostatic cancer. Recent studies have demonstrated that PSA synthesis can be induced by steroid hormones in several tissues of women. Menstrual cycle is regulated by the cyclic variation of estradiol and progesterone. This study was undertaken in order to study the correlation of serum PSA to both these corpus luteal hormones. 110 serum samples and 10 saliva samples were collected from healthy women aged 18-45 years of age having normal menstrual cycles. Active PSA DSL-9700 ultrasensitive kit with detection limit 0.001 ng/ml was used to analyze PSA. 38.2 % of all serum samples and 10 % of saliva samples had detectable concentrations of PSA. The serum PSA was highest during mid follicular phase (between 4th and 8th days of cycle). Variation in PSA levels seemed to follow the variations in progesterone with a lag period of 12-14 days, but did not appear to bear any relationship with the estradiol levels.

Factor V Leiden G1691A (FVL) and Factor II prothrombin G20210A (PGM) mutations are the leading causes of thrombophilia. In this study, we have investigated the prevalence of the FVL G1691A and PGM G20210A single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) among Libyan deep vein thrombosis (DVT) and myocardial infarction (MI) patients. SNP genotyping was performed using high-resolution melt analysis (HRM) and DNA sequencing. Biochemical parameters conducted on 112 males and 93 females showed no significant difference in means between the control group and the deep vein thrombosis and myocardial infarction groups. For Factor V Leiden, 40 samples were genotyped. Of the 40 samples, 6 (15.0%) of them were heterozygous and no one was homozygous. As for Factor II SNP, 59 samples were genotyped and only 2 (3.3%) were heterozygous. All the heterozygous samples showed 100% concordance between the HRM-PCR and DNA sequence analysis. Our study showed, for the first time, that both the FVL and PGM mutations are present among Libyan DVT and MI patients and that the FVL mutation is significantly associated with DVT but not with MI. However, our results do not support the association of PGM G20210A mutation with DVT or MI.

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