Search results for "1300 General Biochemistry"
showing 10 items of 42 documents
Anthropoid versus strepsirhine status of the African Eocene primates Algeripithecus and Azibius: craniodental evidence.
2009
Recent fossil discoveries have demonstrated that Africa and Asia were epicentres for the origin and/or early diversification of the major living primate lineages, including both anthropoids (monkeys, apes and humans) and crown strepsirhine primates (lemurs, lorises and galagos). Competing hypotheses favouring either an African or Asian origin for anthropoids rank among the most hotly contested issues in paleoprimatology. The Afrocentric model for anthropoid origins rests heavily on the >45 Myr old fossil Algeripithecus minutus from Algeria, which is widely acknowledged to be one of the oldest known anthropoids. However, the phylogenetic position of Algeripithecus with respect to other p…
Molecular characterization of Treponema pallidum subsp. pallidum in Switzerland and France with a new multilocus sequence typing scheme
2018
Syphilis is an important public health problem and an increasing incidence has been noted in recent years. Characterization of strain diversity through molecular data plays a critical role in the epidemiological understanding of this re-emergence. We here propose a new high-resolution multilocus sequence typing (MLST) scheme for Treponema pallidum subsp. pallidum (TPA). We analyzed 30 complete and draft TPA genomes obtained directly from clinical samples or from rabbit propagated strains to identify suitable typing loci and tested the new scheme on 120 clinical samples collected in Switzerland and France. Our analyses yielded three loci with high discriminatory power: TP0136, TP0548, and TP…
TGF-β signalling is required for CD4⁺ T cell homeostasis but dispensable for regulatory T cell function.
2013
Signalling by the cytokine TGF-β regulates mature CD4+ T cell populations but is not involved in the survival and function of regulatory T cells.
Kernel manifold alignment for domain adaptation
2016
The wealth of sensory data coming from different modalities has opened numerous opportu- nities for data analysis. The data are of increasing volume, complexity and dimensionality, thus calling for new methodological innovations towards multimodal data processing. How- ever, multimodal architectures must rely on models able to adapt to changes in the data dis- tribution. Differences in the density functions can be due to changes in acquisition conditions (pose, illumination), sensors characteristics (number of channels, resolution) or different views (e.g. street level vs. aerial views of a same building). We call these different acquisition modes domains, and refer to the adaptation proble…
The community structure of the global corporate network.
2013
We investigate the community structure of the global ownership network of transnational corporations. We find a pronounced organization in communities that cannot be explained by randomness. Despite the global character of this network, communities reflect first of all the geographical location of firms, while the industrial sector plays only a marginal role. We also analyze the network in which the nodes are the communities and the links are obtained by aggregating the links among firms belonging to pairs of communities. We analyze the network centrality of the top 50 communities and we provide the first quantitative assessment of the financial sector role in connecting the global economy.
Developing and Integrating Advanced Movement Features Improves Automated Classification of Ciliate Species
2015
Recent advances in tracking technologies such as GPS or video tracking systems describe the movement paths of individuals in unprecedented details and are increasingly used in different fields, including ecology. However, extracting information from raw movement data requires advanced analysis techniques, for instance to infer behaviors expressed during a certain period of the recorded trajectory, or gender or species identity in case data is obtained from remote tracking. In this paper, we address how different movement features affect the ability to automatically classify the species identity, using a dataset of unicellular microbes (i.e., ciliates). Previously, morphological attributes a…
Sequestration of biological reactive intermediates by trapping as covalent enzyme-intermediate complex
2001
One important class of biological reactive intermediates arising in the course of human xenobiotic metabolism are arene and alkene oxides. The major safeguard against the potential genotoxic effects of these compounds is the microsomal epoxide hydrolase (mEH). This enzyme has a broad substrate specificity but--on the first sight--seems to be inadequately suited for this protection task due to its low turnover number with most of its substrates. The recent progress in the understanding of the mechanism of enzymatic epoxide hydrolysis has shed new light on this apparent dilemma: Epoxide hydrolases convert their substrates via the intermediate formation of a covalent enzyme-substrate complex, …
Seasonal changes in predator community switch the direction of selection for prey defences
2014
Insect communities consist of aposematic species with efficient warning colours against predation, as well as abundant examples of crypsis. To understand such coexistence, we here report results from a field experiment where relative survival of artificial larvae, varying in conspicuousness, was estimated in natural bird communities over an entire season. This takes advantage of natural variation in the proportion of naive predators: naivety peaks when young birds have just fledged. We show that the relative benefit of warning signals and crypsis changes accordingly. When naive birds are rare (early and late in the season), conspicuous warning signals improve survival, but conspicuousness b…
Insensitivity of Tree-Ring Growth to Temperature and Precipitation Sharpens the Puzzle of Enhanced Pre-Eruption NDVI on Mt. Etna (Italy)
2017
On Mt. Etna (Italy), an enhanced Normalized Difference in Vegetation Index (NDVI) signature was detected in the summers of 2001 and 2002 along a distinct line where, in November 2002, a flank eruption subsequently occurred. These observations suggest that pre-eruptive volcanic activity may have enhanced photosynthesis along the future eruptive fissure. If a direct relation between NDVI and future volcanic eruptions could be established, it would provide a straightforward and low-cost method for early detection of upcoming eruptions. However, it is unclear if, or to what extent, the observed enhancement of NDVI can be attributed to volcanic activity prior to the subsequent eruption. We conse…
Release of choline in the isolated heart, an indicator of ischemic phospholipid degradation and its protection by ischemic preconditioning: No eviden…
2003
Abstract The release of choline as a water-soluble product of phospholipid hydrolysis was measured in the perfusate of rat hearts to monitor ischemic membrane degradation and its protection by ischemic preconditioning (IPC). Hearts were subjected to global ischemia (GI; 30 min of no-flow) followed by 60 min of reperfusion. To induce IPC, GI was preceded by four no-flow episodes of 5 min each. Deleterious consequences of GI and reperfusion, namely coronary flow reduction, incidence of arrhythmias and release of cardiac troponin T, were significantly attenuated by IPC. The release of choline increased during reperfusion in a biphasic manner: a first phase peaked immediately after GI and was f…