1,720,962 research outputs found

    Akt induces apoptosis in neuroblastoma cells expressing a C98X vasopressin mutant following autophagy suppression

    No full text
    Mutations in the arginine vasopressin (AVP)-neurophysin II (NP-II) gene that affect the folding and transport of the prohormone result in loss of secretion of the anti-diuretic hormone AVP from pituitary nerve terminals and cause autosomal dominant familial neurohypophyseal diabetes insipidus (adFNDI). One such mutation consists of the replacement of a Cys residue at position 98 with a stop codon (C98X) in the AVP precursor (corresponding to C67X in NP domain). In neuroblastoma cells over-expressing this truncated AVP precursor autophagy, a macromolecular degradation process, was shown to be essential for assuring cell survival. In the present study, we investigated the role of the Akt pro-survival signalling in the regulation of autophagy and of apoptosis linked with the handling of C98X AVP. Impairing autophagy-lysosomal sequestration or cathepsin D (CD)-mediated proteolysis triggered the activation of the intrinsic death pathway of apoptosis in C98X-expressing cells, but not in the wild-type -AVP-expressing cells. This was shown by the expression of a Vps34 dominant negative, which down-regulates the PI3k class III-dependent signalling needed for autophagosome (APH) formation, by genetic silencing as a result of RNA interference (RNAi) of Lamp2, a protein indispensable for the fusion of APHs with lysosomes, and by RNAi silencing of the lysosomal protease CD. Ectopic expression of either the wild-type or the mutated C98X AVP altered neither the expression nor the phosphorylation of the pro-survival signalling molecule Akt. Strikingly, the ectopic adenoviral-directed expression of a constitutively active Akt, instead of preserving cell survival, resulted in the suppression of autophagy, and precipitated Bax-mediated cell death. The present data demonstrate the need for autophagy-mediated degradation of mutated C98X peptides, which otherwise become toxic to the cell, and suggest that, in the presence of mis-folded proteins, the stimulation of the Akt signalling counteracts the beneficial effects of autophagy and precipitates cell death. It follows that growth factors impinging on the Akt pathway may have deleterious effect in neurones expressing mutant neuropeptides. This can provide an explanation for the late onset and progressive neuronal cell loss observed in hypothalamic magnocellular neurones of adFNDI patients

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

    Full text link
    The present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed

    Variations on the Author

    Full text link
    “Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship

    Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis

    Full text link
    We provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis

    Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts

    Full text link
    We conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more sophisticated methods

    Author Index

    No full text
    Nao informado
    corecore