1,720,959 research outputs found

    Solid Supported Membranes Doped with PIP2: Influence of Ionic Strength and pH on Bilayer Formation and Membrane Organization

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    Phosphoinositides and in particular L-alpha-phosphatidylinositol-4,5-bisphosphate (PIP2) are key lipids controlling many cellular events and serve as receptors for a large number of intracellular proteins. To quantitatively analyze protein-PIP2 interactions in vitro in a time-resolved manner, planar membranes on solid substrates are highly desirable. Here, we describe an optimized protocol to form PIP2 containing planar solid supported membranes on silicon surfaces by vesicle spreading. Supported lipid bilayers (SLBs) were obtained by spreading POPC/PIP2 (92:8) small unilamellar vesicles onto hydrophilic silicon substrates at a low pH of 4.8. These membranes were capable of binding ezrin, resulting in large protein coverage as concluded from reflectometric interference spectroscopy and fluorescence microscopy. As deduced from fluorescence microscopy, only under low pH conditions, a homogeneously appearing distribution of fluorescently labeled PIP2 molecules in the membrane was achieved. Fluorescence recovery after photobleaching experiments revealed that PIP2 is not mobile in the bottom layer of the SLBs, while PIP2 is fully mobile in the top layer with diffusion coefficients of about 3 mu m(2)/s. This diffusion coefficient was considerably reduced by a factor of about 3 if ezrin has been bound to PIP2 in the membrane

    Phosphorylation of C-terminal polycystin-2 influences the interaction with PIGEA14: A QCM study based on solid supported membranes

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    Polycystin-2 (PC2) trafficking has been proposed to be a result of the interaction of PIGEA14 with PC2 as a function of the phosphorylation state of PC2. Here, we investigated the interaction of PIGEA14 with the C-terminal part of polycystin-2 wild type (cPC2wt) and the pseudophosphorylated mutant (cPC2S812D) to first, quantify the binding affinity between cPC2 and PIGEA14 and second, to elucidate the influence of PC2 phosphorylation on PIGEA14 binding. Solid supported membranes composed of octanethiol/1,2-dioleoyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine doped with the receptor lipid DOGS-NTA-Ni were used to attach PIGEA14 to the membrane via its hexahistidine tag. By means of the quartz crystal microbalance technique, binding affinities as well as kinetic constants of the interaction were extracted in a label-free manner by applying the scaled particle theory. The results show that the dissociation constant of cPC2 to PIGEA14 is in the 10 nM regime providing strong evidence of a very specific interaction of cPC2 with PIGEA14. The interaction of cPC2wt is twofold larger than that of cPC2S812D. The moderate higher binding affinity of cPC2wt to PIGEA14 is discussed in light of PC2 trafficking to the plasma membrane. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

    Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis

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    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

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    “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

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    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

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    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
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