| 1. |
- Klionsky, Daniel J., et al.
(författare)
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Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy
- 2012
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Ingår i: Autophagy. - : Informa UK Limited. - 1554-8635 .- 1554-8627. ; 8:4, s. 445-544
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- In 2008 we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, research on this topic has continued to accelerate, and many new scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Accordingly, it is important to update these guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Various reviews have described the range of assays that have been used for this purpose. Nevertheless, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to measure autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. A key point that needs to be emphasized is that there is a difference between measurements that monitor the numbers or volume of autophagic elements (e.g., autophagosomes or autolysosomes) at any stage of the autophagic process vs. those that measure flux through the autophagy pathway (i.e., the complete process); thus, a block in macroautophagy that results in autophagosome accumulation needs to be differentiated from stimuli that result in increased autophagic activity, defined as increased autophagy induction coupled with increased delivery to, and degradation within, lysosomes (in most higher eukaryotes and some protists such as Dictyostelium) or the vacuole (in plants and fungi). In other words, it is especially important that investigators new to the field understand that the appearance of more autophagosomes does not necessarily equate with more autophagy. In fact, in many cases, autophagosomes accumulate because of a block in trafficking to lysosomes without a concomitant change in autophagosome biogenesis, whereas an increase in autolysosomes may reflect a reduction in degradative activity. Here, we present a set of guidelines for the selection and interpretation of methods for use by investigators who aim to examine macroautophagy and related processes, as well as for reviewers who need to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of papers that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a formulaic set of rules, because the appropriate assays depend in part on the question being asked and the system being used. In addition, we emphasize that no individual assay is guaranteed to be the most appropriate one in every situation, and we strongly recommend the use of multiple assays to monitor autophagy. In these guidelines, we consider these various methods of assessing autophagy and what information can, or cannot, be obtained from them. Finally, by discussing the merits and limits of particular autophagy assays, we hope to encourage technical innovation in the field.
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| 2. |
- Hudson, Lawrence N., et al.
(författare)
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The PREDICTS database : a global database of how local terrestrial biodiversity responds to human impacts
- 2014
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Ingår i: Ecology and Evolution. - : Wiley. - 2045-7758. ; 4:24, s. 4701-4735
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species' threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeographic extents, and that support computation of a range of biodiversity indicators, is necessary to enable better understanding of historical declines and to project - and avert - future declines. We describe and assess a new database of more than 1.6 million samples from 78 countries representing over 28,000 species, collated from existing spatial comparisons of local-scale biodiversity exposed to different intensities and types of anthropogenic pressures, from terrestrial sites around the world. The database contains measurements taken in 208 (of 814) ecoregions, 13 (of 14) biomes, 25 (of 35) biodiversity hotspots and 16 (of 17) megadiverse countries. The database contains more than 1% of the total number of all species described, and more than 1% of the described species within many taxonomic groups - including flowering plants, gymnosperms, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, beetles, lepidopterans and hymenopterans. The dataset, which is still being added to, is therefore already considerably larger and more representative than those used by previous quantitative models of biodiversity trends and responses. The database is being assembled as part of the PREDICTS project (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems - ). We make site-level summary data available alongside this article. The full database will be publicly available in 2015.
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| 4. |
- Cocchi, Guido, et al.
(författare)
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International Trends of Down Syndrome 1993-2004 : Births in Relation to Maternal Age and Terminations of Pregnancies
- 2010
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Ingår i: Birth defects research. Clinical and molecular teratology. - : Wiley. - 1542-0752 .- 1542-0760. ; 88:6, s. 474-479
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- BACKGROUND: The aim of this study was to examine trends of Down syndrome (DS) in relation to maternal age and termination of pregnancies (ToP) in 20 registries of the International Clearinghouse for Birth Defects Surveillance and Research (ICBDSR). METHODS: Trends of births with DS (live-born and stillborn), ToP with DS, and maternal age (percentage of mothers older than 35 years) were examined by year over a 12-year period (1993-2004). The total mean number of births covered was 1550,000 annually. RESULTS: The mean percentage of mothers older than 35 years of age increased from 10.9% in 1993 to 18.8% in 2004. However, a variation among the different registers from 4-8% to 20-25% of mothers >35 years of age was found. The total mean prevalence of DS (still births, live births, and ToP) increased from 13.1 to 18.2/10,000 births between 1993 and 2004. The total mean prevalence of DS births remained stable at 8.3/10,000 births, balanced by a great increase of ToP. In the registers from France, Italy, and the Czech Republic, a decrease of DS births and a great increase of ToP was observed. The number of DS births remained high or even increased in Canada Alberta, and Norway during the study period. CONCLUSIONS: Although an increase in older mothers was observed in most registers, the prevalence of DS births remained stable in most registers as a result of increasing use of prenatal diagnostic procedures and ToP with DS.
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| 7. |
- Lees, Rosemary Susan, et al.
(författare)
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Review : Improving our knowledge of male mosquito biology in relation to genetic control programmes
- 2014
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Ingår i: Acta Tropica. - : Elsevier BV. - 0001-706X .- 1873-6254. ; 132, s. S2-S11
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Forskningsöversikt (refereegranskat)abstract
- The enormous burden placed on populations worldwide by mosquito-borne diseases, most notably malaria and dengue, is currently being tackled by the use of insecticides sprayed in residences or applied to bednets, and in the case of dengue vectors through reduction of larval breeding sites or larviciding with insecticides thereof. However, these methods are under threat from, amongst other issues, the development of insecticide resistance and the practical difficulty of maintaining long-term community-wide efforts. The sterile insect technique (SIT), whose success hinges on having a good understanding of the biology and behaviour of the male mosquito, is an additional weapon in the limited arsenal against mosquito vectors. The successful production and release of sterile males, which is the mechanism of population suppression by SIT, relies on the release of mass-reared sterile males able to confer sterility in the target population by mating with wild females. A five year Joint FAO/IAEA Coordinated Research Project brought together researchers from around the world to investigate the pre-mating conditions of male mosquitoes (physiology and behaviour, resource acquisition and allocation, and dispersal), the mosquito mating systems and the contribution of molecular or chemical approaches to the understanding of male mosquito mating behaviour. A summary of the existing knowledge and the main novel findings of this group is reviewed here, and further presented in the reviews and research articles that form this Acta Tropica special issue.
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| 8. |
- Pettifer, Steve, et al.
(författare)
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The EMBRACE web service collection
- 2010
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Ingår i: Nucleic Acids Research. - : Oxford University Press (OUP). - 0305-1048 .- 1362-4962. ; 38, s. W683-W688
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The EMBRACE ( European Model for Bioinformatics Research and Community Education) web service collection is the culmination of a 5-year project that set out to investigate issues involved in developing and deploying web services for use in the life sciences. The project concluded that in order for web services to achieve widespread adoption, standards must be defined for the choice of web service technology, for semantically annotating both service function and the data exchanged, and a mechanism for discovering services must be provided. Building on this, the project developed: EDAM, an ontology for describing life science web services; BioXSD, a schema for exchanging data between services; and a centralized registry (http://www.embraceregistry.net) that collects together around 1000 services developed by the consortium partners. This article presents the current status of the collection and its associated recommendations and standards definitions.
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| 9. |
- Pitcairn, Iain K., et al.
(författare)
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The gold conveyor belt : Large-scale gold mobility in an active orogen
- 2014
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Ingår i: Ore Geology Reviews. - : Elsevier BV. - 0169-1368 .- 1872-7360. ; 62, s. 129-142
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The Southern Alps of New Zealand are part of an active collisional orogen where metamorphism, hydrothermal fluid flow and the formation of orogenic gold deposits are ongoing. The Southern Alps are forming due to transpressional collision between continental crust fragments on the Pacific and Australian tectonic plates. The plate tectonic rates and geometries, the sources of fluid and broad-scale fluid pathways in the hydrogeological system, and the geochemical compositions of the Torlesse Terrane rock that is being advected through the orogen are well defined so that a mass balance of metal mobility during active orogenic processing in the Southern Alps of New Zealand can be calculated. Advection of a 10 km wide x 5 km deep section of Torlesse rock through the orogen at tectonic rates (0.01 m/yr) that is then metamorphosed up to amphibolite fades causes mobilisation of over 11,27 t Au, 10.1 Mt As, 47,000 t Hg, 560,000 t Sb and 14,000 Mt H2O in 1 Myrs. The masses of elements mobilised at the same rate along the length of the Southern Alps (>200 km) for 5 Myrs would be more than 100 times greater. The metals were mobilised by the metamorphic fluid produced during the orogenic processing of the Torlesse Terrane rocks and the concentrations of Au, As, Hg and Sb in this fluid are calculated to be 0.08, 711, 3, and 40 mg/kg, respectively. The mobilised metals form the orogenic gold deposits that occur in the Southern Alps. Different styles of gold deposits form contemporaneously during the active orogenesis of the Southern Alps, including those with a fluid temperature > rock temperature that may appear to have formed after the peak of metamorphism but are instead just the product hydrothermal fluid mineralising rocks on their retrograde metamorphic path. The mass balance shows that there has been orders of magnitude more metal mobilised in the orogen than resides in the currently known deposits. There is a clear potential for large gold deposits occurring in the yet to be uplifted parts of the Southern Alps if there have been efficient enough fluid focusing and metal precipitation mechanisms occurring under the Southern Alps.
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| 10. |
- Stahl, Günter K., et al.
(författare)
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Sociocultural integration in mergers and acquisitions: Unresolved paradoxes and directions for future research
- 2013
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Ingår i: Thunderbird International Business Review. - : Wiley. - 1096-4762 .- 1520-6874. ; 55:4, s. 333-356
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- Despite decades of research, the key factors for success in mergers and acquisitions (M&As) and the reasons why M&As often fail remain poorly understood. While attempts to explain M&A success and failure have traditionally focused on strategic and financial factors, an emergent field of inquiry has been directed at the sociocultural and human resources issues involved in the integration of acquired or merging firms. This research has sought to explain M&A performance and underperformance in terms of the impact that variables such as cultural fit, management style similarity, the pattern of dominance between merging firms, the acquirer's degree of cultural tolerance, and the social climate surrounding a takeover have on the postmerger integration process. In this article, we attempt to take stock of, and synthesize, the findings from research on sociocultural and human resources integration in M&A, to identify conflicting perspectives and unresolved questions as well as several underresearched areas, and then use our analyses to propose an agenda for the next stage of research in this field. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
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| 11. |
- Tripodi, Lorenzo, et al.
(författare)
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Broadband CMOS Millimeter-Wave Frequency Multiplier With Vivaldi Antenna in 3-D Chip-Scale Packaging
- 2012
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Ingår i: IEEE transactions on microwave theory and techniques. - 0018-9480 .- 1557-9670. ; 60:12, s. 3761-3768
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- This paper describes a frequency multiplier able to emit a broadband signal with a frequency range from 70 GHz up to at least 170 GHz. The device is composed of a nonlinear transmission line (NLTL) implemented in commercial CMOS 65-nm technology and an off-chip Vivaldi antenna. These two elements are packaged together with a 3-D chip-scale packaging technology. Characterization of the whole device and of the standalone NLTL is presented at frequencies up to 170 GHz.
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| 12. |
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| 13. |
- Zhang, Zhiqun, et al.
(författare)
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Human traumatic brain injury induces autoantibody response against glial fibrillary acidic protein and its breakdown products
- 2014
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Ingår i: PLOS ONE. - San Francisco, USA : Public Library of Science (PLoS). - 1932-6203. ; 9:3
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Tidskriftsartikel (refereegranskat)abstract
- The role of systemic autoimmunity in human traumatic brain injury (TBI) and other forms of brain injuries is recognized but not well understood. In this study, a systematic investigation was performed to identify serum autoantibody responses to brain-specific proteins after TBI in humans. TBI autoantibodies showed predominant immunoreactivity against a cluster of bands from 38-50 kDa on human brain immunoblots, which were identified as GFAP and GFAP breakdown products. GFAP autoantibody levels increased by 7 days after injury, and were of the IgG subtype predominantly. Results from in vitro tests and rat TBI experiments also indicated that calpain was responsible for removing the amino and carboxyl termini of GFAP to yield a 38 kDa fragment. Additionally, TBI autoantibody staining co-localized with GFAP in injured rat brain and in primary rat astrocytes. These results suggest that GFAP breakdown products persist within degenerating astrocytes in the brain. Anti-GFAP autoantibody also can enter living astroglia cells in culture and its presence appears to compromise glial cell health. TBI patients showed an average 3.77 fold increase in anti-GFAP autoantibody levels from early (0-1 days) to late (7-10 days) times post injury. Changes in autoantibody levels were negatively correlated with outcome as measured by GOS-E score at 6 months, suggesting that TBI patients with greater anti-GFAP immune-responses had worse outcomes. Due to the long lasting nature of IgG, a test to detect anti-GFAP autoantibodies is likely to prolong the temporal window for assessment of brain damage in human patients.
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