1,721,014 research outputs found

    The ams proteins and the amylovoran biosynthetic pathway: an extensive bioinformatic study

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    The genus Erwinia includes plant-pathogenic, non-pathogenic and even opportunistic human pathogens. Among them, Erwinia amylovora is one of the most studied species, as the etiological agent of the relevant necrotic plant disease fire blight. Its most important pathogenicity factor is amylovoran, an exopolysaccharide essential in the formation of a protective biofilm used by the bacterium to escape the plant protection mechanisms. Amylovoran biosynthesis, regulation and secretion require the concerted action of twelve genes clustered in a region spanning 16 kb, the ams operon. Most of the encoded proteins build and polymerize the repeating oligosaccharide units of galactose, glucose, glucuronic acid and pyruvate, others have signalling, regulation and secretion functions. We compared the ams operon organisation, predicted 3D structure of the encoded proteins of Erwinia amylovora in eighteen Erwinia species. We detected the presence of a paralog (for the amsG gene) and some rearrangements in the EPS biosynthetic operon in specific taxa that could be connected to the species-specific pathogenicity profile. The present study adds fundamental information about the genomic determinants of exopolysaccharide secretion in the Erwinia genus, and clarifies the evolutionary relationships among the genes in the ams operon

    A novel HMGA1-CCNE2-YAP axis regulates breast cancer aggressiveness

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    High Mobility Group A1 (HMGA1) is an architectural chromatin factor that promotes neoplastic transformation and progression. However, the mechanism by which HMGA1 exerts its oncogenic function is not fully understood. Here, we show that cyclin E2 (CCNE2) acts downstream of HMGA1 to regulate the motility and invasiveness of basal-like breast cancer cells by promoting the nuclear localization and activity of YAP, the downstream mediator of the Hippo pathway. Mechanistically, the activity of MST1/2 and LATS1/2, the core kinases of the Hippo pathway, are required for the HMGA1- and CCNE2-mediated regulation of YAP localization. In breast cancer patients, high levels of HMGA1 and CCNE2 expression are associated with the YAP/TAZ signature, supporting this connection. Moreover, we provide evidence that CDK inhibitors induce the translocation of YAP from the nucleus to the cytoplasm, resulting in a decrease in its activity. These findings reveal an association between HMGA1 and the Hippo pathway that is relevant to stem cell biology, tissue homeostasis, and cancer

    Architecture of The Human Ape1 Interactome Defines Novel Cancers Signatures

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    APE1 is essential in cancer cells due to its central role in the Base Excision Repair pathway of DNA lesions and in the transcriptional regulation of genes involved in tumor progression/chemoresistance. Indeed, APE1 overexpression correlates with chemoresistance in more aggressive cancers, and APE1 protein-protein interactions (PPIs) specifically modulate different protein functions in cancer cells. Although important, a detailed investigation on the nature and function of protein interactors regulating APE1 role in tumor progression and chemoresistance is still lacking. The present work was aimed at analyzing the APE1-PPI network with the goal of defining bad prognosis signatures through systematic bioinformatics analysis. By using a well-characterized HeLa cell model stably expressing a flagged APE1 form, which was subjected to extensive proteomics analyses for immunocaptured complexes from different subcellular compartments, we here demonstrate that APE1 is a central hub connecting different subnetworks largely composed of proteins belonging to cancer-associated communities and/or involved in RNA- and DNA-metabolism. When we performed survival analysis in real cancer datasets, we observed that more than 80% of these APE1-PPI network elements is associated with bad prognosis. Our findings, which are hypothesis generating, strongly support the possibility to infer APE1-interactomic signatures associated with bad prognosis of different cancers; they will be of general interest for the future definition of novel predictive disease biomarkers. Future studies will be needed to assess the function of APE1 in the protein complexes we discovered. Data are available via ProteomeXchange with identifier PXD013368

    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

    Author Index

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    koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist

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    We have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
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