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- Ade, Peter, et al.
(författare)
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The Simons Observatory : science goals and forecasts
- 2019
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Ingår i: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. - : IOP Publishing. - 1475-7516. ; :2
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Simons Observatory (SO) is a new cosmic microwave background experiment being built on Cerro Toco in Chile, due to begin observations in the early 2020s. We describe the scientific goals of the experiment, motivate the design, and forecast its performance. SO will measure the temperature and polarization anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background in six frequency bands centered at: 27, 39, 93, 145, 225 and 280 GHz. The initial con figuration of SO will have three small-aperture 0.5-m telescopes and one large-aperture 6-m telescope, with a total of 60,000 cryogenic bolometers. Our key science goals are to characterize the primordial perturbations, measure the number of relativistic species and the mass of neutrinos, test for deviations from a cosmological constant, improve our understanding of galaxy evolution, and constrain the duration of reionization. The small aperture telescopes will target the largest angular scales observable from Chile, mapping approximate to 10% of the sky to a white noise level of 2 mu K-arcmin in combined 93 and 145 GHz bands, to measure the primordial tensor-to-scalar ratio, r, at a target level of sigma(r) = 0.003. The large aperture telescope will map approximate to 40% of the sky at arcminute angular resolution to an expected white noise level of 6 mu K-arcmin in combined 93 and 145 GHz bands, overlapping with the majority of the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope sky region and partially with the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument. With up to an order of magnitude lower polarization noise than maps from the Planck satellite, the high-resolution sky maps will constrain cosmological parameters derived from the damping tail, gravitational lensing of the microwave background, the primordial bispectrum, and the thermal and kinematic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effects, and will aid in delensing the large-angle polarization signal to measure the tensor-to-scalar ratio. The survey will also provide a legacy catalog of 16,000 galaxy clusters and more than 20,000 extragalactic sources.
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- Adlerz, Linda, et al.
(författare)
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Accumulation of the amyloid precursor-like protein APLP2 and reduction of APLP1 in retinoic acid-differentiated human neuroblastoma cells upon curcumin-induced neurite retraction
- 2003
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Ingår i: Brain Research. Molecular Brain Research. - : Elsevier BV. - 0169-328X .- 1872-6941. ; 119:1, s. 62-72
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Amyloid precursor protein (APP) belongs to a conserved gene family, also including the amyloid precursor-like proteins, APLP1 and APLP2. The function of these three proteins is not yet fully understood. One of the proposed roles of APP is to promote neurite outgrowth. The aim of this study was to investigate the regulation of the expression levels of APP family members during neurite outgrowth. We observed that retinoic acid (RA)-induced neuronal differentiation of human SH-SY5Y cells resulted in increased expression of APP, APLP1 and APLP2. We also examined the effect of the NFκB, AP-1 and c-Jun N-terminal kinase inhibitor curcumin (diferuloylmethane) on the RA-induced expression levels of these proteins. We found that treatment with curcumin counteracted the RA-induced mRNA expression of all APP family members. In addition, we observed that curcumin treatment resulted in neurite retraction without any effect on cell viability. Surprisingly, curcumin had differential effects on the APLP protein levels in RA-differentiated cells. RA-induced APLP1 protein expression was blocked by curcumin, while the APLP2 protein levels were further increased. APP protein levels were not affected by curcumin treatment. We propose that the sustained levels of APP and the elevated levels of APLP2, in spite of the reduced mRNA expression, are due to altered proteolytic processing of these proteins. Furthermore, our results suggest that APLP1 does not undergo the same type of regulated processing as APP and APLP2.
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| 4. |
- Althoff, Karin, 1974, et al.
(författare)
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Tracking Contrast in Echocardiography by a Combined Snake and Optical Flow Technique
- 2000
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Ingår i: IEEE Conf. on Computers in Cardiology. ; 27
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Konferensbidrag (refereegranskat)abstract
- Contrast-echocardiography in conjunction with real-time video-densiometry can be an effective means of studying right ventricular (RV) structural changes, e.g. in patients diagnosed with Arrhythmogenic Right Ventricular Dysplasia (ARVD). In order to characterize RV flow pattern it may be necessary to track the front of the contrast agent as it enters the RV. Active contour models (ACM) is a standard image analysis method,which can be applied to time-dynamic tracking problem.To improve tracking speed we extended the formulationof ACM by including an additional force, derived fromthe optical flow field, another standard image analysisalgorithm. This reduced the number of iterations needed to find the front of the contrast agent significantly. Also the changes in intensity of the contrast agent over time were studied. Two groups were compared, one with30 patients diagnosed with ARVD and one with 18healthy volunteers. Our study shows that that using our suggested method (calculating wash-in and wash-out time indices) it is possible to discriminate between thetwo groups.
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- Beckman, Marie, et al.
(författare)
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Activation of cathepsin D by glycosaminoglycans
- 2009
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Ingår i: The FEBS Journal. - : Wiley. - 1742-464X .- 1742-4658. ; 276:24, s. 7343-7352
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- We have previously shown that heparin can increase the activity of the proenzyme form of Alzheimer's beta-site amyloid precursor protein cleaving enzyme 1 (BACE1). Cathepsin D (CD) is a member of the aspartic protease family and has sequence similarity to BACE1. Therefore, we examined whether heparin and other glycosaminoglycans (GAGs) can influence the activity of CD. Heparin and other GAGs were found to stimulate the activity of recombinant proCD. Desulfation of heparin almost abolished the stimulation, indicating that sulfate groups were important for the stimulatory effect. In addition, the stimulation was dependent on the length of the GAG chain, as larger GAGs were more potent in their ability to stimulate proCD than shorter fragments. In the presence of heparin, limited autocatalytic proteolysis of the proenzyme was increased, suggesting that heparin increases the activity of proCD by accelerating the conversion of proCD, which has little activity, to pseudoCD, an active form lacking residues 1-26 of the prodomain. Furthermore, the activity of spleen-derived mature CD, which lacks the entire 44 amino acid residue prodomain, was also increased by heparin, indicating that the catalytic domain of CD contains at least one region to which GAGs bind and stimulate enzyme activity. Because heparin also stimulated the activity of pseudoCD, proenzyme activation was probably accelerated by the interaction of heparin with the catalytic domain of pseudoCD. However, it is possible that heparin may also activate the proenzyme directly. On the basis of this study, we propose that GAGs may regulate CD activity in vivo.
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| 6. |
- Beckman, Marie, et al.
(författare)
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Nucleus and Nuclear Envelope : Methods for Preparation
- 2010
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Bok (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The cell nucleus of eukaryotic organisms contains the genome surrounded by a nuclear envelope consisting of a double-lipid membrane with embedded nuclear pores and an underlying nuclear lamina. The uniformity in size and density makes it possible to isolate pure intact nuclei at high yields from tissue homogenates by centrifugation through a sucrose cushion. Nuclear envelopes can be prepared from isolated nuclei by enzymatic degradation of their nucleic acid content. The resulting nuclear envelope preparations contain structurally well-conserved inner and outer nuclear membranes with attached ribosomes, nuclear pore complexes and nuclear lamina. Reliable methods for preparation of nuclei and nuclear envelopes play an important role in the successful identification of components that are located in nuclei and in nuclear subcompartments.
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| 7. |
- Beckman, Marie, 1961-
(författare)
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Temporal events in neuronal differentiation and cell death : expression and processing of the Alzheimer's amyloid precursor protein family and a protein at the nuclear pore
- 2003
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The present study had two major objectives: 1) to elucidate the involvement of Alzheimer’s amyloid precursor protein (APP) family in neuronal differentiation, and the effect of the Alzheimer’s disease (AD)-linked mutation APPV642I on signal transduction; 2) to investigate the fate of the nuclear pore complex protein POM121 during apoptosis and to examine the possibility of using green fluorescent protein (GFP)-labelled POM121 as a non-invasive sensor of apoptosis in living (non-fixed) cells.APP is the parent protein of the b-amyloid peptide, which is the major peptide constituent in the “senile plaques” of AD. APP and the homologous amyloid precursor-like proteins, APLP1 and APLP2, are members of the APP family. We compared the temporal expression patterns of these proteins during retinoic acid (RA)-induced neuronal differentiation of human neuroblastoma cells. To this end, we established a quantitative non-radioactive Northern blot assay for APLP1, APLP2 and APP. We found that the transcripts of all three APP family members were increased in response to RA. This occurred simultaneously with progressive neurite outgrowth and increased expression of neuronal markers. In addition, we observed that the increase in APLP2 mRNA was similar to that of APP mRNA, whereas the increase in APLP1 mRNA was significantly higher. The elevated mRNA levels also resulted in an in-creased protein expression of APLP1, APLP2 and the neuronal APP695 isoform. Studies using curcumin (diferuloylmethane), an inhibitor of the transcription factors NFkB/AP-1, and the mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) JNK (c-Jun N-terminal kinase), revealed a diffe-rential regulation of APLP1 and APLP2. Curcumin suppressed the RA-induced mRNA expression of the APP family, in particular that of APLP1. On the protein level, curcumin also reduced the expression of APLP1. In contrast, curcumin induced an accumulation of APLP2, which we propose is due to inhibition of its proteolytic processing. Furthermore, curcumin induced neurite retraction in RA-differentiated cells without affecting their viability. Our results suggest that NFkB/AP-1 signal transduction pathways mediate a co-ordinated regula-tion of the mRNA expression of the APP family and that APLP1 processing is not regulated by the same mechanisms as the processing of APLP2 and APP. Our results are in agreement with important functions for APLP1, APLP2 and APP within the period of neurite extension and synaptic maturation, and a proposed role for these proteins in neuronal differentiation and synaptic plasticity.Using a doxycycline-controlled gene expression system (Tet-On), we investigated the effect of wild-type APP695 and the pathogenic familial AD-linked APPV642I mutant on signal transduction. Overexpression was induced at different levels in rat pheochromocytoma (PC12) Tet-On cells. We observed a nerve growth factor-dependent increase in the levels of phosphorylated extracellular regulated kinases 1 and 2 in response to expression of mutant APP. Our results support that increased signalling via MAPKs may have a role in the development of AD. In addition, we found that the inducing agent doxycycline in itself affected cell signalling and protected against oxidative stress. This information is critical for evaluation of the effects of transgene expression using Tet systems.Finally, we showed that POM121 is cleaved by a caspase-3-dependent mechanism at aspartate 531 during apoptosis. Characterising the degradation of POM121-GFP in relation to other apoptotic events, revealed that it can be applied as an early non-invasive sensor of nuc-lear apoptosis in living cells using fluorescence microscopy or fluorimetric analysis.
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