Search results for "MACRO"

Governance forms drivers in bio-pharmaceutial inter-firm relationships

2012

Networking benefits are acknowledged by many studies in the industrial organization and strategic management fields; transaction cost theory agency and property right theory provide the economic foundations to the market-hierarchy dilemma; while Resource based-view (RBV), relational and evolutionary theories provide the strategic foundation of the inter-firm relationships. All this theoretical strands investigate reasons that push firms to formalize their relationship in different governance structures. The bio-pharmaceutical industry has the characteristics to offer to the potential partners both exploitation or exploration alliances benefits. In particular some elements play a “pivot” rol…

E-Government in Marketing a Country: A Strategy for Reducing Transaction Cost of Doing Business in Tanzania

2011

Published version of an article in International Journal of Marketing Studies, 3(4), 2-16. Also available from the publisher at http://dx.doi.org/10.5539/ijms.v3n4p2 There are limited studies examining the role of Investment Promotion Agencies (IPA’s) and their respective marketing techniques used in attracting Foreign Direct Investment (FDI). Using an exploratory case study approach, this article addresses this research gap by exploring the role of e-government as a promotion technique in eliminating barriers to FDI inflows in Tanzania; particularly barriers related to information accessibility and bureaucratic procedures facing foreign investors in acquiring relevant licenses and business…

Attitudes towards the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership in the European Union: The treaty partner heuristic and issue attention

2018

Why has the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partisanship met with strong public resistance among some Europeans and in some European Union member states, but not in others? This article argues that one important perspective to explain the pattern of support for TTIP is the role of heuristic opinion formation and issue attention. Analysing multiple waves of Eurobarometer data, I find that views of the two treaty partners, the US and the European Union, shape attitudes towards TTIP and that the largely post-materialist concerns over TTIP resonated specifically in those European countries whose citizens’ attention was less focused on economic issues. In showing how opinions towards concret…

Molecular characterization of an inducible p-coumaric acid decarboxylase from Lactobacillus plantarum: gene cloning, transcriptional analysis, overex…

1997

By using degenerate primers designed from the first 19 N-terminal amino acids of Lactobacillus plantarum p-coumaric acid decarboxylase (PDC), a 56-bp fragment was amplified from L. plantarum in PCRs and used as a probe for screening an L. plantarum genomic bank. Of the 2,880 clones in the genomic bank, one was isolated by colony hybridization and contained a 519-bp open reading frame (pdc gene) followed by a putative terminator structure. The pdc gene is expressed on a monocistronic transcriptional unit, which is transcribed from promoter sequences homologous to Lactococcus promoter sequences. No mRNA from pdc and no PDC activity were detected in uninduced cell extracts, indicating that the…

Urokinase activates macrophage PON2 gene transcription via the PI3K/ROS/MEK/SREBP-2 signalling cascade mediated by the PDGFR-β

2009

Aims We have recently shown that urokinase plasminogen activator (uPA) increases oxidative stress (OS), cholesterol biosynthesis, and paraoxonase 2 (PON2) expression in macrophages via binding to its receptor, the uPAR. Since PON2 is regulated by both OS and cholesterol content, we hypothesized that uPA elicits a cascade of signal transduction events shared by NADPH oxidase and cholesterol biosynthesis that culminates in PON2 gene expression. Here, we investigated the signalling pathway that leads to the expression of PON2 in macrophages in response to uPA. Methods and results The increase in macrophage PON2 mRNA levels in response to uPA was shown to depend on PON2 gene promoter activation…

Interleukin-4 induces secretion of CSF for granulocytes and CSF for macrophages by peripheral blood monocytes.

1989

Abstract T cells are known to interact cooperatively with monocytes to produce Colony-Stimulating Factors (CSF), although T cell-mediated signals leading to CSF secretion by monocytes are not completely understood. We have made use of Northern blot hybridization and specific bioassays to study the effects of the T cell product interleukin-4 (IL-4) on monocyte CSF expression. The results suggest a previously unrecognized role of IL-4 as a CSF inducer since exposure of monocytes to IL-4 resulted in accumulation of transcripts for granulocyte-CSF (G-CSF) and macrophage-CSF (M-CSF). Consequently, IL-4-activated monocytes released factors in their culture supernatants biologically and antigenica…

Activation and methotrexate-mediated suppression of the TNF alpha promoter in T cells and macrophages.

1998

Regulation of the tumor marker Fascin by the viral oncoprotein Tax of human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1) depends on promoter activation and …

2015

AbstractAdult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma is a highly infiltrative neoplasia of CD4+ T-lymphocytes that occurs in about 5% of carriers infected with the deltaretrovirus human T-cell leukemia virus type 1 (HTLV-1). The viral oncoprotein Tax perturbs cellular signaling pathways leading to upregulation of host cell factors, amongst them the actin-bundling protein Fascin, an invasion marker of several types of cancer. However, transcriptional regulation of Fascin by Tax is poorly understood. In this study, we identified a triple mode of transcriptional induction of Fascin by Tax, which requires (1) NF-κB-dependent promoter activation, (2) a Tax-responsive region in the Fascin promoter, and (3) a p…

The yopJ locus is required for Yersinia-mediated inhibition of NF-kappaB activation and cytokine expression: YopJ contains a eukaryotic SH2-like doma…

1998

Upon exposure to bacteria, eukaryotic cells activate signalling pathways that result in the increased expression of several defence-related genes. Here, we report that the yopJ locus of the enteropathogen Yersinia pseudotuberculosis encodes a protein that inhibits the activation of NF-kappaB transcription factors by a mechanism(s), which prevents the phosphorylation and subsequent degradation of the inhibitor protein IkappaB. Consequently, eukaryotic cells infected with YopJ-expressing Yersinia become impaired in NF-kappaB-dependent cytokine expression. In addition, the blockage of inducible cytokine production coincides with yopJ-dependent induction of apoptosis. Interestingly, the YopJ pr…

Plasmid conjugation from Proteobacteria as evidence for the origin of xenologous genes in Cyanobacteria

2014

Comparative genomics have shown that 5% of Synechococcus elongatus PCC 7942 genes are of probable proteobacterial origin. To investigate the role of interphylum conjugation in cyanobacterial gene acquisition, we tested the ability of a set of prototype proteobacterial conjugative plasmids (RP4, pKM101, R388, R64, and F) to transfer DNA from Escherichia coli to S. elongatus. A series of BioBrick-compatible, mobilizable shuttle vectors was developed. These vectors were based on the putative origin of replication of the Synechococcus resident plasmid pANL. Not only broad-host-range plasmids, such as RP4 and R388, but also narrower-host-range plasmids, such as pKM101, all encoding MPFT-type IV …