Acetyl esterases are an important component of the enzymatic machinery fungi use to degrade plant biomass and are classified in several Carbohydrate Esterase families of the CAZy classification ...system. Carbohydrate Esterase family 16 (CE16) is one of the more recently discovered CAZy families, but only a small number of its enzyme members have been characterized so far, revealing activity on xylan-derived oligosaccharides, as well as activity related to galactoglucomannan. The number of CE16 genes differs significantly in the genomes of filamentous fungi. In this study, four CE16 members were identified in the genome of Aspergillus niger NRRL3 and it was shown that they belong to three of the four phylogenetic Clades of CE16. Significant differences in expression profiles of the genes and substrate specificity of the enzymes were revealed, demonstrating the diversity within this family of enzymes. Detailed characterization of one of these four A. niger enzymes (HaeA) demonstrated activity on oligosaccharides obtained from acetylated glucuronoxylan, galactoglucomannan and xyloglucan, thus establishing this enzyme as a general hemicellulose acetyl esterase. Their broad substrate specificity makes these enzymes highly interesting for biotechnological applications in which deacetylation of polysaccharides is required.
•Aspergillus niger possesses four CE16 genes with diverse sequences and expression patterns.•CE16 enzymes are hemicellulose acetyl esterases with diverse substrate specificity.•niger HaeA can remove acetyl from xylan, galactoglucomannan and xyloglucan.
•First head-to-head comparison of QUADAS, QUADAS-2, DAQS measurement properties.•Inter-tester reliability of individual items of the tools was poor.•Summary scores were imprecise and convergent ...validity was often low.•The quality of the included studies was mixed.•A new quality assessment tool should exclude items relating to generalizability.
To determine the reliability, internal consistency, measurement error, convergent validity, and floor and ceiling effects of three quality assessment tools commonly used to evaluate the quality of diagnostic test accuracy studies in physical therapy. A secondary aim was to describe the quality of a sample of diagnostic accuracy studies.
50 studies were randomly selected from a comprehensive database of physical therapy-relevant diagnostic accuracy studies. Two reviewers independently rated each study with the Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies (QUADAS), Quality Assessment of Diagnostic Accuracy Studies 2 (QUADAS-2) and Diagnostic Accuracy Quality Scale (DAQS) tools in random sequence.
Only 7% of QUADAS items, 14% of QUADAS-2 items, and 33% of DAQS items had at least moderate inter-rater reliability (kappa>0.40). Internal consistency and convergent validity measures were acceptable (>0.70) in 33% and 50% of cases respectively. Floor or ceiling effects were not present in any tool. The quality of studies was mixed: most avoided case–control sampling strategies and used the same reference standard on all subjects, but many failed to enroll a consecutive or random sample of subjects or provide confidence intervals about estimates of diagnostic accuracy.
The QUADAS, QUADAS-2 and DAQS tools provide unreliable estimates of the quality of studies of diagnostic accuracy in physical therapy.
For years it has been clear that plasminogen from different sources and enolase from different sources interact strongly. What is less clear is the nature of the structures required for them to ...interact. This work examines the interaction between canine plasminogen (dPgn) and Streptococcus pyogenes enolase (Str enolase) using analytical ultracentrifugation (AUC), surface plasmon resonance (SPR), fluorescence polarization, dynamic light scattering (DLS), isothermal titration calorimetry (ITC), and simple pull-down reactions. Overall, our data indicate that a non-native structure of the octameric Str enolase (monomers or multimers) is an important determinant of its surface-mediated interaction with host plasminogen. Interestingly, a non-native structure of plasminogen is capable of interacting with native enolase. As far as we can tell, the native structures resist forming stable mixed complexes.
Epigenetic modifications are stable during cell division and can be transmitted transgenerationally.6 An increasing amount of evidence suggests that developmental exposure to nutritional imbalance or ...environmental contaminants--including metals, pesticides, persistent organic pollutants, and chemicals in drinking water, such as triethyltin, chloroform, and trihalomethanes--can affect epigenetic changes, thus suggesting a mechanism for their effects on adult health.7,8 Similarly, prenatal exposure to air pollutants has been associated with epigenetic changes and subsequent effects on children's respiratory health.9 Nyani Quarmyne/Panos Knowledge that in-utero and early childhood experiences affect the risk of NCD development provides an opportunity to target interventions at the time when they have the greatest effect. Because these exposures are not controlled directly by the individual, especially when the exposures might have occurred to the individual's parents or grandparents, early-life interventions can reduce the perception of blame that the individual's own lifestyle has caused his or her disease.
ABSTRACT The Australia Telescope 20GHz (AT20G) survey is a blind survey of the whole Southern sky at 20GHz with follow-up observations at 4.8, 8.6 and 20 GHz carried out with the Australia Telescope ...Compact Array (ATCA) from 2004 to 2008. In this paper we present an analysis of radio spectral properties in total intensity and polarization, sizes, optical identifications and redshifts of the sample of the 5808 extragalactic sources in the survey catalogue of confirmed sources over 6.1 sr in the Southern sky (i.e. the whole Southern sky excluding the strip at Galactic latitude |b| < ). The sample has a flux density limit of 40mJy. Completeness has been measured as a function of scan region and flux density. Averaging over the whole survey area the follow-up survey is 78 per cent complete above 50mJy and 93 per cent complete above 100mJy. 3332 sources with declination δ < -15° have good quality almost simultaneous observations at 4.8, 8.6 and 20GHz. The spectral analysis shows that the sample is dominated by flat-spectrum sources, with 69 per cent having spectral index α208.6 > - 0.5 (Sνα). The fraction of flat-spectrum sources decreases from 81 per cent for S20GHz > 500 mJy to 60 per cent for S20GHz < 100 mJy. There is also a clear spectral steepening at higher frequencies with the median α decreasing from -0.16 between 4.8 and 8.6 GHz to -0.28 between 8.6 and 20 GHz. Simultaneous observations in polarization are available for all the sources at all the frequencies. 768 sources have a good-quality detection of polarized flux density at 20 GHz; 467 of them were also detected in polarization at 4.8 and/or at 8.6 GHz so that it has been possible to compare the spectral behaviour in total intensity and polarization. We have found that the polarized fraction increases slightly with frequency and decreases with flux density. The spectral indices in total intensity and in polarization are, on average, close to each other, but we also found several sources for which the spectral shape of the polarized emission is substantially different from the spectral shape in total intensity. The correlation between the spectral indices in total intensity and in polarization is weaker for flat-spectrum sources. Cross-matches and comparisons have been made with other catalogues at lower radio frequencies, and in the optical, X-ray and γ-ray bands. Redshift estimates are available for 825 sources. PUBLICATION ABSTRACT
A signaling complex comprising members of the LORELEI (LRE)-LIKE GPI-anchored protein (LLG) and Catharanthus roseus RECEPTOR-LIKE KINASE 1-LIKE (CrRLK1L) families perceive RAPID ALKALINIZATION FACTOR ...(RALF) peptides and regulate growth, reproduction, immunity, and stress responses in Arabidopsis (Arabidopsis thaliana). Genes encoding these proteins are members of multigene families in most angiosperms and could generate thousands of signaling complex variants. However, the links between expansion of these gene families and the functional diversification of this critical signaling complex as well as the evolutionary factors underlying the maintenance of gene duplicates remain unknown. Here, we investigated LLG gene family evolution by sampling land plant genomes and explored the function and expression of angiosperm LLGs. We found that LLG diversity within major land plant lineages is primarily due to lineage-specific duplication events, and that these duplications occurred both early in the history of these lineages and more recently. Our complementation and expression analyses showed that expression divergence (i.e. regulatory subfunctionalization), rather than functional divergence, explains the retention of LLG paralogs. Interestingly, all but one monocot and all eudicot species examined had an LLG copy with preferential expression in male reproductive tissues, while the other duplicate copies showed highest levels of expression in female or vegetative tissues. The single LLG copy in Amborella trichopoda is expressed vastly higher in male compared to in female reproductive or vegetative tissues. We propose that expression divergence plays an important role in retention of LLG duplicates in angiosperms.
Accurate and timely health information is an essential foundation for strengthening health systems. Data for decision making (DDM) is a training curriculum designed to enhance capacity of health ...department staff to capture and use high-quality data to address priority health issues. In 2013, the Pacific Public Health Surveillance Network adapted and piloted the DDM curriculum as an ‘at work, from work, for work’ field epidemiology training programme component for low-income and middle-income Pacific Island jurisdictions. Based on lessons learned from the pilot, we made several innovations, including delivery on-site at each district (rather than bringing trainees to a central location), conducting pre-DDM consultations and ongoing contact with health leaders across the programme, taking more care in selecting trainees and enrolling a larger cohort of students from within each health department. The decentralised programme was delivered in-country at four sites (both at national and state levels) in the Federated States of Micronesia. Following delivery, we performed an external evaluation of the programme to assess student outcomes, benefits to the health department and general programme effectiveness. Of the 48 trainees who completed all four classroom modules, 40 trainees participated in the evaluation. Thirty-two of these trainees completed the programme’s capstone field project. Eighteen of these projects directly contributed to changes in legislation, revised programme budgets, changes in programme strategy to augment outreach and to target disease and risk factor ‘hot spots’.
Consuming watercress is thought to provide health benefits as a consequence of its phytonutrient composition. However, for watercress there are currently limited genetic resources underpinning ...breeding efforts for either yield or phytonutritional traits. In this paper, we use RNASeq data from twelve watercress accessions to characterize the transcriptome, perform candidate gene mining and conduct differential expression analysis for two key phytonutritional traits: antioxidant (AO) capacity and glucosinolate (GLS) content.
The watercress transcriptome was assembled to 80,800 transcripts (48,732 unigenes); 71 % of which were annotated based on orthology to Arabidopsis. Differential expression analysis comparing watercress accessions with 'high' and 'low' AO and GLS resulted in 145 and 94 differentially expressed loci for AO capacity and GLS respectively. Differentially expressed loci between high and low AO watercress were significantly enriched for genes involved in plant defence and response to stimuli, in line with the observation that AO are involved in plant stress-response. Differential expression between the high and low GLS watercress identified links to GLS regulation and also novel transcripts warranting further investigation. Additionally, we successfully identified watercress orthologs for Arabidopsis phenylpropanoid, GLS and shikimate biosynthesis pathway genes, and compiled a catalogue of polymorphic markers for future applications.
Our work describes the first transcriptome of watercress and establishes the foundation for further molecular study by providing valuable resources, including sequence data, annotated transcripts, candidate genes and markers.
Microtubule-targeting agents (MTAs) are widely used anticancer agents, but toxicities such as neuropathy limit their clinical use. MTAs bind to and alter the stability of microtubules, causing cell ...death in mitosis. We describe DZ-2384, a preclinical compound that exhibits potent antitumor activity in models of multiple cancer types. It has an unusually high safety margin and lacks neurotoxicity in rats at effective plasma concentrations. DZ-2384 binds the vinca domain of tubulin in a distinct way, imparting structurally and functionally different effects on microtubule dynamics compared to other vinca-binding compounds. X-ray crystallography and electron microscopy studies demonstrate that DZ-2384 causes straightening of curved protofilaments, an effect proposed to favor polymerization of tubulin. Both DZ-2384 and the vinca alkaloid vinorelbine inhibit microtubule growth rate; however, DZ-2384 increases the rescue frequency and preserves the microtubule network in nonmitotic cells and in primary neurons. This differential modulation of tubulin results in a potent MTA therapeutic with enhanced safety.
PDF
