PubMed Central (PMC3 - NLM DTD)
(2,081,148 recursos)
Archive of life sciences journal literature at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH), developed and managed by NIH's National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) in the National Library of Medicine (NLM).
63.
An Antivector Vaccine Protects against a Lethal Vector-Borne Pathogen - Labuda, Milan; Trimnell, Adama R; Li?ková, Martina; Kazimírová, Mária; Davies, Gillian M; Lissina, Olga; Hails, Rosie S; Nuttall, Patricia A
Vaccines that target blood-feeding disease vectors, such as mosquitoes and ticks, have the potential to protect against the many diseases caused by vector-borne pathogens. We tested the ability of an anti-tick vaccine derived from a tick cement protein (64TRP) of Rhipicephalus appendiculatus to protect mice against tick-borne encephalitis virus (TBEV) transmitted by infected Ixodes ricinus ticks. The vaccine has a dual action in immunized animals: when infested with ticks, the inflammatory and immune responses first disrupt the skin feeding site, resulting in impaired blood feeding, and then specific anti-64TRP antibodies cross-react with midgut antigenic epitopes, causing rupture of the tick...
64.
On the Mechanism of Gene Amplification Induced under Stress in Escherichia coli - Slack, Andrew; Thornton, P. C; Magner, Daniel B; Rosenberg, Susan M; Hastings, P. J
Gene amplification is a collection of processes whereby a DNA segment is reiterated to multiple copies per genome. It is important in carcinogenesis and resistance to chemotherapeutic agents, and can underlie adaptive evolution via increased expression of an amplified gene, evolution of new gene functions, and genome evolution. Though first described in the model organism Escherichia coli in the early 1960s, only scant information on the mechanism(s) of amplification in this system has been obtained, and many models for mechanism(s) were possible. More recently, some gene amplifications in E. coli were shown to be stress-inducible and to confer a selective...
65.
Genome-Wide Analysis of Menin Binding Provides Insights into MEN1 Tumorigenesis - Scacheri, Peter C; Davis, Sean; Odom, Duncan T; Crawford, Gregory E; Perkins, Stacie; Halawi, Mohamad J; Agarwal, Sunita K; Marx, Stephen J; Spiegel, Allen M; Meltzer, Paul S; Collins, Francis S
Multiple endocrine neoplasia type I (MEN1) is a familial cancer syndrome characterized primarily by tumors of multiple endocrine glands. The gene for MEN1 encodes a ubiquitously expressed tumor suppressor protein called menin. Menin was recently shown to interact with several components of a trithorax family histone methyltransferase complex including ASH2, Rbbp5, WDR5, and the leukemia proto-oncoprotein MLL. To elucidate menin's role as a tumor suppressor and gain insights into the endocrine-specific tumor phenotype in MEN1, we mapped the genomic binding sites of menin, MLL1, and Rbbp5, to approximately 20,000 promoters in HeLa S3, HepG2, and pancreatic islet cells using the...
66.
Dynamic Reprogramming of DNA Methylation at an Epigenetically Sensitive Allele in Mice - Blewitt, Marnie E; Vickaryous, Nicola K; Paldi, Andras; Koseki, Haruhiko; Whitelaw, Emma
There is increasing evidence in both plants and animals that epigenetic marks are not always cleared between generations. Incomplete erasure at genes associated with a measurable phenotype results in unusual patterns of inheritance from one generation to the next, termed transgenerational epigenetic inheritance. The Agouti viable yellow (Avy) allele is the best-studied example of this phenomenon in mice. The Avy allele is the result of a retrotransposon insertion upstream of the Agouti gene. Expression at this locus is controlled by the long terminal repeat (LTR) of the retrotransposon, and expression results in a yellow coat and correlates with hypomethylation of...
67.
A Model for Integrating Elementary Neural Functions into Delayed-Response Behavior - Gisiger, Thomas; Kerszberg, Michel
It is well established that various cortical regions can implement a wide array of neural processes, yet the mechanisms which integrate these processes into behavior-producing, brain-scale activity remain elusive. We propose that an important role in this respect might be played by executive structures controlling the traffic of information between the cortical regions involved. To illustrate this hypothesis, we present a neural network model comprising a set of interconnected structures harboring stimulus-related activity (visual representation, working memory, and planning), and a group of executive units with task-related activity patterns that manage the information flowing between them. The resulting dynamics allows...
68.
Data and animal management software for large-scale phenotype screening - Ching, Keith A.; Cooke, Michael P.; Tarantino, Lisa M.; Lapp, Hilmar
The mouse N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea (ENU) mutagenesis program at the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation (GNF) uses MouseTRACS to analyze phenotype screens and manage animal husbandry. MouseTRACS is a Web-based laboratory informatics system that electronically records and organizes mouse colony operations, prints cage cards, tracks inventory, manages requests, and reports Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee (IACUC) protocol usage. For efficient phenotype screening, MouseTRACS identifies mutants, visualizes data, and maps mutations. It displays and integrates phenotype and genotype data using likelihood odds ratio (LOD) plots of genetic linkage between genotype and phenotype. More detailed mapping intervals show individual single nucleotide...
75.
Functional Imaging of Numerical Processing in Adults and 4-y-Old Children - Cantlon, Jessica F; Brannon, Elizabeth M; Carter, Elizabeth J; Pelphrey, Kevin A
Adult humans, infants, pre-school children, and non-human animals appear to share a system of approximate numerical processing for non-symbolic stimuli such as arrays of dots or sequences of tones. Behavioral studies of adult humans implicate a link between these non-symbolic numerical abilities and symbolic numerical processing (e.g., similar distance effects in accuracy and reaction-time for arrays of dots and Arabic numerals). However, neuroimaging studies have remained inconclusive on the neural basis of this link. The intraparietal sulcus (IPS) is known to respond selectively to symbolic numerical stimuli such as Arabic numerals. Recent studies, however, have arrived at conflicting conclusions regarding...
78.
Structure-Guided Recombination Creates an Artificial Family of Cytochromes P450 - Otey, Christopher R; Landwehr, Marco; Endelman, Jeffrey B; Hiraga, Kaori; Bloom, Jesse D; Arnold, Frances H
Creating artificial protein families affords new opportunities to explore the determinants of structure and biological function free from many of the constraints of natural selection. We have created an artificial family comprising 3,000 P450 heme proteins that correctly fold and incorporate a heme cofactor by recombining three cytochromes P450 at seven crossover locations chosen to minimize structural disruption. Members of this protein family differ from any known sequence at an average of 72 and by as many as 109 amino acids. Most (>73%) of the properly folded chimeric P450 heme proteins are catalytically active peroxygenases; some are more thermostable than...
79.
Notch Promotes Neural Lineage Entry by Pluripotent Embryonic Stem Cells - Lowell, Sally; Benchoua, Alexandra; Heavey, Barry; Smith, Austin G
A central challenge in embryonic stem (ES) cell biology is to understand how to impose direction on primary lineage commitment. In basal culture conditions, the majority of ES cells convert asynchronously into neural cells. However, many cells resist differentiation and others adopt nonneural fates. Mosaic activation of the neural reporter
Sox-green fluorescent protein suggests regulation by cell-cell interactions. We detected expression of Notch receptors and ligands in mouse ES cells and investigated the role of this pathway. Genetic manipulation to activate Notch constitutively does not alter the stem cell phenotype. However, upon withdrawal of self-renewal stimuli, differentiation is directed rapidly...