フォワード・ジェネティクスで同定した新規睡眠制御遺伝子解明

筑波大学 (University of Tsukuba)201

The OCaml system release 5.0: Documentation and user's manual

This manual documents the release 5.0 of the OCaml system. It is organized as follows. Part I, "An introduction to OCaml", gives an overview of the language. Part II, "The OCaml language", is the reference description of the language. Part III, "The OCaml tools", documents the compilers, toplevel system, and programming utilities. Part IV, "The OCaml library", describes the modules provided in the standard library. Part V, “Indexes”, contains an index of all identifiers defined in the standard library, and an index of keywords

Controlled drug release from oriented biodegradable polymers

This research is the first systematic investigation of solid-state orientation as a novel method for controlling drug release from biodegradable polymers. The effect of various degrees of polymer orientation was studied in oriented Poly (L-lactic acid) (PLA) films containing curcumin and theophylline as model drugs. Additionally, direction specific drug release was studied from oriented PLA rods containing paracetamol. The films oriented to 2X uniaxial constant width (UCW) or 2X2Y biaxial draw ratio showed retardation of drug release, when their nematic structure was stabilised by the presence of crystalline theophylline. Contrarily, the same films when contained solid solution of curcumin, shrunk in the release medium and exhibited a release profile similar to the un-oriented films. All films oriented to the UCW draw ratio ≥ 3X contained α crystalline form of PLA and showed acceleration of drug release proportionate to the draw ratio. According to the proposed mechanism augmented formation of water filled channels in these films was responsible for faster drug release. Similarly, the paracetamol loaded PLA rods die-drawn to uniaxial draw ratios ≥ 3X exhibited enhancement of drug release. Importantly, the amount of drug released along the oriented chain axis was significantly larger than that in the perpendicular direction. Drug release from the die-drawn rods was accelerated by a greater degree than that observed from the oriented films. This can be correlated to the differences in their size, geometry and the crystalline form of PLA. In conclusion, the current study provided substantial evidence that solid-state orientation can offer a control over drug release from PLA

Butterflies of the southern Rocky Mountains area, and their natural history and behavior

This book reports the biology of the butterflies of the southern Rocky Mountains area, including all the species in Colorado, although surrounding areas are also discussed, especially the rest of the Southern Rocky Mts. in Wyoming and New Mexico and into Utah. This book presents what is known of the biology of the butterflies of Colorado and vicinity, including hostplants, eggs/larvae/pupae appearance and habits, behavior including flight habits and migration and mate-locating and mating and basking and roosting, and the flowers and other foods of adult butterflies, and natural history aspects of their biochemistry, plus mimicry, flight periods and number of generations, etc. It also includes taxonomic matters to assist identification of all the species and subspecies and forms. Much research on the biology of Colorado area butterflies has been done recently, but it has been published in many scattered publications and scientific journals and is not readily available, and some good research is unpublished; this book attempts to make it available, and provides the sources for good published research.Text only. To view Papilio (New Series) #28, 29, 30, 31 for photos, please see Associated Publications below

Advanced Platforms for Multiplexed Nucleic Acid Research

Nucleic acid is the basic genetic material of all life forms on earth. In recent years, nucleic acid technology has assumed an essential role in widespread fields ranging from medicine to agriculture. In the field of molecular diagnostics, nucleic acid analysis has become widely adopted due to their high specificity, sensitivity and their capability for multiplexing. The critical first step in nucleic acid analysis is sample preparation, which involves isolation and purification of DNA/RNA from diverse samples, such as blood and serum. Compared to rapid advances in genomic analysis methods, DNA extraction techniques have remained nearly unchanged over the past 20 years. While spin columns and magnetic microparticles dominate due to their speed and ease-of-use, these methods fragment DNA and are incapable of sufficient DNA quality for the newest long-read sequencing and genome mapping technologies. Moreover, despite all the technological advancements, nucleic acid techniques that allow large-scale multiplexed analysis of polymorphic genetic loci remain needed for theoretical and practical nucleic acid research, such as the study of oncogenic mutations and genetic disease diagnosis. In addition, the cost-effectiveness of infectious disease diagnosis by nucleic acid analysis counts on the multiplex scale in panel testing. So far, solid-phase probe hybridization, PCR and LCR are the three domain assays for locus-specific analysis but none of them can be adapted to the practical needs. Therefore, developing novel and effective strategies for large-scale multiplexed analysis is still a compelling need. In this thesis, we present advanced platforms for multiplexed analysis of nucleic acids including 1) a simple silica nanomembrane-based method to extract high molecular weight, high purity DNA, 2) a Ratiometric Fluorescence Coding strategy for multiplexed detection of nucleic acids and 3) an easy single-molecule, fluorescence spectroscopic method to measure absolute telomere lengths in a variety of DNA samples. We start by discussing the existing DNA extraction methods and current strategies for expanding the multiplexed detection capacity of nucleic acid amplification testing. We also introduce the confocal single-molecule spectroscopy and its capability for screening analytes that are not amendable to amplification-based analysis (Chapter 1). Then, we introduce the thermoplastic silica nanomaterial named Nanobind and demonstrate its capability of extracting DNA > 5.7 Mb within 45 mins surpassing any existing methods (Chapter 2). Next, we present and demonstrate our Ratiometric Fluorescence Coding strategy for multiplexed detection of DNA targets from six infectious diseases and the potential for further expanding its multiplexing capability (Chapter 3). Finally, we implement the confocal single-molecule fluorescence spectroscopy to measure the absolute telomere lengths and demonstrate the accurate detection of telomeres as short as 100 bp with high reproducibility and profiling of telomere lengths in human cancer cell lines and primary cells (Chapter 4)