Sentence production in semantic dementia (Koukoulioti et al., 2018)

<div><b>Purpose:</b> Language production in semantic dementia</div><div>(SD) is characterized by a lexical–semantic deficit</div><div>and largely preserved argument structure and inflection</div><div>production. This study investigates (a) the effect</div><div>of argument structure on verb retrieval and (b) the</div><div>interrelation between inflection marking and verb retrieval</div><div>in SD.</div><div><b>Method: </b>Seven individuals with SD and 7 healthy controls</div><div>performed 2 sentence elicitation tasks. In Experiment 1,</div><div>participants described the action taking place in a video.</div><div>In Experiment 2, they watched the same videos preceded</div><div>by a phrase prompting the production of past tense.</div><div>Three verb classes were tested: (a) unergative (e.g., to</div><div>walk), (b) unaccusative (e.g., to fall ), and (c) transitive with</div><div>1 object (e.g., to read a book).</div><div><b>Results:</b> There was not any quantitative difference among</div><div>the verb classes in Experiment 1, but error analysis hinted</div><div>at difficulties related with argument structure complexity.</div><div>The findings of Experiment 2 suggest no general effect of</div><div>inflection on verb retrieval; nevertheless, inflection marking</div><div>impeded the retrieval of verbs with complex argument</div><div>structure. Large individual variation was established.</div><div><b>Conclusions: </b>Argument structure complexity may challenge</div><div>speakers with SD. Verb retrieval and inflection marking</div><div>seem to interrelate at the expense of the former. Inflection</div><div>production may be affected at severe stages of the disease.</div><div><b><br></b></div><div><b>Supplemental Material S1.</b> Description of the language profile of the patients and details on the selection criteria.<br></div><div><br></div><div><b>Supplemental Material S2.</b> Comments on the construction of the material: Experiment 1. <br></div><div><b><br></b></div><div><b>Supplemental Material S3.</b> Verbs used in each verb class.<br></div><div><br></div><div><div><b>Supplemental Material S4. </b>Comments on the construction of the material: Experiment 2.</div><div><br></div><div><b>Supplemental Material S5. </b>Overview of the material used in Experiment 2. </div><div><br></div><div><b>Supplemental Material S6. </b>Comparisons of the individual scores to the scores of the control group.</div><div><br></div><div><b>Supplemental Material S7.</b> Comparison of the individual patient performance to the performance of the control group in Experiment 1. </div><div><br></div><div><b>Supplemental Material S8.</b> Comparison of the individual patient performance to the performance of the control group in Experiment 2. </div><div><br></div><div><b>Supplemental Material S9.</b> Comparison of the individual patients to the control group with respect to the difference in the scores between the tasks. </div></div><div><br></div><div>Koukoulioti, V., Stavrakaki, S., Konstantinopoulou, E., & Ioannidisd, P. (2018). Lexical and grammatical factors in sentence production in semantic dementia: Insights from Greek. <i>Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 61, </i>870–886<i>.</i> https://doi.org/10.1044/2017_JSLHR-L-17-0024 </div

The Diversity and Evolution of <em>Wolbachia</em> Ankyrin Repeat Domain Genes

<div><p>Ankyrin repeat domain-encoding genes are common in the eukaryotic and viral domains of life, but they are rare in bacteria, the exception being a few obligate or facultative intracellular Proteobacteria species. Despite having a reduced genome, the arthropod strains of the alphaproteobacterium <em>Wolbachia</em> contain an unusually high number of ankyrin repeat domain-encoding genes ranging from 23 in <em>w</em>Mel to 60 in <em>w</em>Pip strain. This group of genes has attracted considerable attention for their astonishing large number as well as for the fact that ankyrin proteins are known to participate in protein-protein interactions, suggesting that they play a critical role in the molecular mechanism that determines host-<em>Wolbachia</em> symbiotic interactions. We present a comparative evolutionary analysis of the <em>w</em>Mel-related ankyrin repeat domain-encoding genes present in different <em>Drosophila</em>-<em>Wolbachia</em> associations. Our results show that the ankyrin repeat domain-encoding genes change in size by expansion and contraction mediated by short directly repeated sequences. We provide examples of intra-genic recombination events and show that these genes are likely to be horizontally transferred between strains with the aid of bacteriophages. These results confirm previous findings that the <em>Wolbachia</em> genomes are evolutionary mosaics and illustrate the potential that these bacteria have to generate diversity in proteins potentially involved in the symbiotic interactions.</p> </div

Repetitive DNA sequences and ankyrin repeat domain number polymorphism.

<p>The example of WD0766. A) Only the ankyrin repeat domain containing regions are shown. Blue rectangles represent individual ankyrin repeat domains. Dark gray rectangles with dotted outline represent ankyrin repeat domain remnants. The light gray shading between the ANK clusters indicates homologies between the different strains. Orange rectangles represent putative chimeric ankyrin repeat domains, and double arrows represent identical duplications. Small black arrows indicate direct repeats capable of engaging into illegitimate recombination. The reconstructed structure of disrupted <i>w</i>Yak and <i>w</i>San ANK homologs is also presented. The asterisk and the double yellow arrows correspond to a frame shift mutation and the position of the IS5 element, respectively. B<b>)</b> example of chimeric origin of <i>w</i>Mel (and <i>w</i>MelPop) ankyrin repeat domains 2. Identities with the parental ankyrin repeat domains 2 and 4 from <i>w</i>Au are shaded. Box shows the position of the repeated site between the three sequences. The vertical arrow indicates the loop between the two α-helices of the ankyrin repeat domain.</p

<i>Drosophila</i> lines and <i>Wolbachia</i> strains.

<p><i>Drosophila</i> lines and <i>Wolbachia</i> strains.</p

Density of direct repeats larger than 8nt per ANK gene.

<p>Box plot graph showing that ANK genes display ankyrin repeat number variations have greater DR density compared with genes that do not display variations (**P<0.005, Mann-Whitney test).</p

Comparative analysis of genetic diversity.

<p>The graph represents the patterns of synonymous substitutions within A-supergroup strains. (*: <i>w</i>Ri is an outlier, **: <i>w</i>Ha is an outlier).</p

Phylogeny of four chromosomal- (WD0441, WD0498, WD0754 and WD1213) and three prophage-associated (WD0596, WD0636, WD0637) ANK genes.

<p>The trees are midpoint-rooted and inferred using maximum likelihood. ML bootstrap support values inferred from 100 replicates are also presented. Bootstrap values lower than 50 are omitted. The discordant positions of strains <i>w</i>Yak, <i>w</i>San and <i>w</i>Ha between the chromosomal- and prophage-associated ANK gene phylogenies are highlighted with asterisks. Evolutionary model parameters were estimated with Modeltest under the Akaike Information Criterion: HKY (WD0441,WD1213); TrN+I (WD0498, WD0596); TVM+G (WD0754); TrN+G (WD0636); GTR+I (WD0637).</p

Shimodaira-Hasegawa test for the statistical significance of the topological incongruence between alternative chromosomal- and prophage-associated ankyrin genes.

<p>Values are the likelihood score (-ln L) of a given data set across its own ML tree (boldface), as well as across the alternative tree topologies. Significance levels are based on full optimization.</p>***<p><i>P</i><0.0001.</p

Major evolutionary events shaping <i>Wolbachia</i> ANK genes.

a<p>Prophage associated ANK genes are presented in bold face.</p>b<p>Strains potentially involved in recombination are shown in parenthesis.</p

New criteria for selecting the origin of DNA replication in and closely related bacteria-1

<p><b>Copyright information:</b></p><p>Taken from "New criteria for selecting the origin of DNA replication in and closely related bacteria"</p><p>http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2164/8/182</p><p>BMC Genomics 2007;8():182-182.</p><p>Published online 20 Jun 2007</p><p>PMCID:PMC1914354.</p><p></p>e sequences of the region from the A and B Wolbachia. Subgroups are denoted A1 and A2, and B1 and B2