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    A donor splice mutation and a single-base deletion produce two carboxyl-terminal variants of human serum albumin.

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    At least 35 allelic variants of human serum albumin have been sequenced at the protein level. All except two COOH-terminal variants, Catania and Venezia, are readily explainable as single-point substitutions. The two chain-termination variants are clustered in certain locations in Italy and are found in numerous unrelated individuals. In order to correlate the protein change in these variants with the corresponding DNA mutation, the two variant albumin genes have been cloned, sequenced, and compared to normal albumin genomic DNA. In the Catania variant, a single base deletion and subsequent frameshift leads to a shortened and altered COOH terminus. Albumin Venezia is caused by a mutation that alters the first consensus nucleotide of the 5' donor splice junction of intron 14 and the 3' end of exon 14, which is shortened from 68 to 43 base pairs. This change leads to an exon skipping event resulting in direct splicing of exon 13 to exon 15. The predicted Venezia albumin product has a truncated amino acid sequence (580 residues instead of 585), and the COOH-terminal sequence is altered after Glu-571. The variant COOH terminus ends with the dibasic sequence Arg-Lys that is apparently removed through stepwise cleavage by serum carboxypeptidase B to yield several forms of circulating albumin

    Structural characterization of three genetic variants of human serum albumin modified in subdomains IIB and IIIA.

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    Three new genetic variants of human serum albumin have been detected in Italy by routine clinical electrophoresis. Albumin Milano Slow is common in Northern Italy, while albumins Liprizzi and Trieste, which are fast migrating, are rare and local variants. Isoelectric focusing analysis of the CNBr fragments obtained from the carboxymethylated alloalbumins in all cases localized the mutation to fragment CB5 (residues 330-446). The modified CNBr fragments were isolated on a preparative scale and subjected to tryptic digestion. Sequence determination of the abnormal tryptic peptides revealed that all the variants are caused by single point mutations: Trieste, Lys359-->Asn, Milano Slow, Asp375-->His, and Liprizzi, Arg410-->Cys. These results were confirmed by sequence determination of a variant V8 peptide in the case of Trieste, and by DNA sequence analysis for the other two variants. The DNA analysis showed a G-->C transversion at nucleotide position 11969 for albumin Milano Slow, and a C-->T transition at position 13251 for Liprizzi. The latter represents a mutation at a hypermutable CpG dinucleotide site. Albumins Trieste and Milano Slow, as most of the variants thus far described, have mutations involving residues on the surface of the molecule. In contrast, albumin Liprizzi represents the first example of a mutation in the most active binding pocket of the molecule, placed in subdomain IIIA

    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

    Structural characterization of four genetic variants of human serum albumin associated with alloalbuminemia in Italy.

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    A long-term electrophoretic survey on plasma proteins, which was carried out in several clinical laboratories in Italy, identified 28 different genetic variants of human serum albumin and four cases of analbuminemia. We have previously characterized 16 point mutations, 3 C-terminal mutants, and the genetic defects in two analbuminemic subjects. Here, we report the molecular defects of four alloalbumins that have been characterized by protein structural analysis. Of these, three represent new single-point mutations: albumins Tregasio, Val122-->Glu, Bergamo, Asp314-->Gly, and Maddaloni, Val533-->Met. The fourth, albumin Besana Brianza, has the same Asp494-->Asn mutation that introduces a glycosylation site which has been previously reported in a variant from New Zealand, albumin Casebrook. However, in contrast to albumin Casebrook, albumin Besana Brianza is only partially glycosylated and the oligosaccharide is heterogeneous, consisting of a biantennary complex type N-glycan with either two or one sialic acid residue(s) on the antennae. Both albumin Maddaloni and Besana Brianza represent mutations at hypermutable CpG dinucleotide sites; albumin Maddaloni is a mutant that does not involve a charged amino acid

    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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