Molecular Characterization of Growth Hormone-producing Tumors in the GC Rat Model of Acromegaly

D.A.C. was supported by the Nicolás Monardes program of the Andalusian Ministry of Health (C-0015-2014) and by a grant from the Andalusian Ministry of Science and Innovation (CTS-7478). A.S-M and A.L.C were supported by grants from the ISCIII-Subdirección General de Evaluación y Fomento de la Investigación co-funded with Fondos FEDER (PI12/0143 and PI13/02043, respectively) and the Andalusian Regional Government (CTS-444) and a grant from Pfizer Spain. R.L.C. was supported by a grant from Andalusian Ministry of Health (PI0302-2012). R.M.L. was supported by grants from Proyecto de Investigación en Salud (FIS) PI13- 00651 (funded by Instituto de Salud Carlos III), CTS-1406, PI-0639-2012, BIO-0139 (funded by Junta de Andalucía) and by Ayuda Merck Serono 2013. J. P. C. was funded by a grant (BFU2013-43282-R) from Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. CIBER is an initiative of Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Ministerio de Sanidad, Servicios Sociales e Igualdad, Spain. J.F.M.R. is supported by the “Sara Borrell” program from the Instituto de Salud Carlos III. R.M. Luque and J.P. Castaño have received grants and lecture fees from Ipsen and Novartis. E. Venegas-Moreno and A. Soto-Moreno received grants and lecture fees from Ipsen, Novartis and Pfizer. A. Leal-Cerro received grants from Novartis and Pfizer. David Cano received a grant from Novartis

Unification of couplings and soft supersymmetry breaking terms in 4D superstring models

We consider the predictions for the hierarchy of mass scales, the fine structure constant, the radii of compactification and the soft SUSY breaking terms which follow if SUSY breaking is triggered by a gaugino condensate.Comment: 16 pages (LaTeX) Oxford preprint OUTP-93-32

Unification Scale in String Theory

We study the unification scale and gauge coupling constant in 4D string theory. We show that the fine structure constant is determined by the dimension of the hidden gauge group and only $SU(6)$ and $SO(9)$ are consistent with minimal string unification while the unification scale can be of order of $10^{16}\,GeV$.Comment: 12 pages (LaTeX

Effects of SO(10) D-Term on Yukawa Unification and Unstable Minima of the Supersymmetric Scalar Potential

We study the effects of SO(10) D-terms on the allowed parameter space (APS) in models with $t - b - \tau$ and $b - \tau$ Yukawa unifiction. The former is allowed only for moderate values of the D-term, if very precise ($\le$ 5%) unification is required. Next we constrain the parameter space by looking for different dangerous directions where the scalar potential may be unbounded from below (UFB1 and UFB3). The common trilinear coupling $A_0$ plays a significant role in constraing the APS. For very precise $t - b - \tau$ Yukawa unification, $-m_{16} < or \approx A_0 < or \approx m_{16}$ can be probed at the LHC, where $m_{16}$ is the common soft breaking mass for the sfermions. Moreover, an interesting mass hierarchy with very heavy sfermions but light gauginos, which is strongly disfavoured in models without D-terms, becomes fairly common in the presence of the D-terms. The APS exhibits interesting characteristics if $m_{16}$ is not the same as the soft breaking mass $m_{10}$ for the Higgs sector. In $b - \tau$ unification models with D-terms, the APS consistent with Yukawa unification and radiative electroweak symmetry breaking, increases as the UFB1 constraint becomes weaker. However for $A_0 \leq 0$, a stronger UFB3 condition still puts, for a given $m_{16}$, a stringent upper bound on the common gaugino mass ($m_{1/2}$) and a lower bound on $m_{16}$ for a given $m_{1/2}$. The effects of sign of $\mu$ on Yukawa unification and UFB constraints are also discussed.Comment: Plain Latex, 22 pages, 11 figures. Small changes in the abstract, the pattern of discussion changed signifiantly, no change in the figures and results, a few new references added, version published in JP

The truncated somatostatin receptor sst5TMD4 stimulates the angiogenic process and is associated to lymphatic metastasis and disease-free survival in breast cancer patients

This work has been funded by the following grants: BIO-0139, CTS-1406, PI-0639-2012, BFU2010-19300, BFU2013-43282-R, PI13/00651 and CIBERobn (to RML and JPC); PI-0541-2013 and “Miguel Servet” program (to MDG); PI13/00132, RETICC RD12/0036/0007, S2010/ BMD-2303 (to GMB). CIBER is an initiative of Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Ministerio de Sanidad, Servicios Sociales e Igualdad, Spain

The Fourteenth Data Release of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey: First Spectroscopic Data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey and from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment

The fourth generation of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS-IV) has been in operation since July 2014. This paper describes the second data release from this phase, and the fourteenth from SDSS overall (making this, Data Release Fourteen or DR14). This release makes public data taken by SDSS-IV in its first two years of operation (July 2014-2016). Like all previous SDSS releases, DR14 is cumulative, including the most recent reductions and calibrations of all data taken by SDSS since the first phase began operations in 2000. New in DR14 is the first public release of data from the extended Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey (eBOSS); the first data from the second phase of the Apache Point Observatory (APO) Galactic Evolution Experiment (APOGEE-2), including stellar parameter estimates from an innovative data driven machine learning algorithm known as "The Cannon"; and almost twice as many data cubes from the Mapping Nearby Galaxies at APO (MaNGA) survey as were in the previous release (N = 2812 in total). This paper describes the location and format of the publicly available data from SDSS-IV surveys. We provide references to the important technical papers describing how these data have been taken (both targeting and observation details) and processed for scientific use. The SDSS website (www.sdss.org) has been updated for this release, and provides links to data downloads, as well as tutorials and examples of data use. SDSS-IV is planning to continue to collect astronomical data until 2020, and will be followed by SDSS-V.Comment: SDSS-IV collaboration alphabetical author data release paper. DR14 happened on 31st July 2017. 19 pages, 5 figures. Accepted by ApJS on 28th Nov 2017 (this is the "post-print" and "post-proofs" version; minor corrections only from v1, and most of errors found in proofs corrected

Consolidated bioprocessing of corn cob-derived hemicellulose: engineered industrial Saccharomyces cerevisiae as efficient whole cell biocatalysts

Background Consolidated bioprocessing, which combines saccharolytic and fermentative abilities in a single microorganism, is receiving increased attention to decrease environmental and economic costs in lignocellulosic biorefineries. Nevertheless, the economic viability of lignocellulosic ethanol is also dependent of an efficient utilization of the hemicellulosic fraction, which contains xylose as a major component in concentrations that can reach up to 40% of the total biomass in hardwoods and agricultural residues. This major bottleneck is mainly due to the necessity of chemical/enzymatic treatments to hydrolyze hemicellulose into fermentable sugars and to the fact that xylose is not readily consumed by Saccharomyces cerevisiaethe most used organism for large-scale ethanol production. In this work, industrial S. cerevisiae strains, presenting robust traits such as thermotolerance and improved resistance to inhibitors, were evaluated as hosts for the cell-surface display of hemicellulolytic enzymes and optimized xylose assimilation, aiming at the development of whole-cell biocatalysts for consolidated bioprocessing of corn cob-derived hemicellulose. Results These modifications allowed the direct production of ethanol from non-detoxified hemicellulosic liquor obtained by hydrothermal pretreatment of corn cob, reaching an ethanol titer of 11.1 g/L corresponding to a yield of 0.328 g/g of potential xylose and glucose, without the need for external hydrolytic catalysts. Also, consolidated bioprocessing of pretreated corn cob was found to be more efficient for hemicellulosic ethanol production than simultaneous saccharification and fermentation with addition of commercial hemicellulases. Conclusions These results show the potential of industrial S. cerevisiae strains for the design of whole-cell biocatalysts and paves the way for the development of more efficient consolidated bioprocesses for lignocellulosic biomass valorization, further decreasing environmental and economic costs.This work has been carried out at the Biomass and Bioenergy Research Infrastructure (BBRI)-LISBOA-01-0145-FEDER-022059, supported by Operational Programme for Competitiveness and Internationalization (PORTUGAL2020), by Lisbon Portugal Regional Operational Programme (Lisboa 2020) and by North Portugal Regional Operational Programme (Norte 2020) under the Portugal 2020 Partnership Agreement, through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) and has been supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) under the scope of the strategic funding of UIDB/04469/2020, the “Contrato-Programa” UIDB/04050/2020, the MIT-Portugal Program (Ph.D. Grant PD/BD/128247/2016 to Joana T. Cunha) and through Project FatVal (POCI-01-0145-FEDER-032506) and BioTecNorte operation (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000004) funded by the European Regional Development Fund under the scope of Norte2020 - Programa Operacional Regional do Norte.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Identification of candidate tumour suppressor genes frequently methylated in renal cell carcinoma

Promoter region hyermethylation and transcriptional silencing is a frequent cause of tumour suppressor gene (TSG) inactivation in many types of human cancers. Functional epigenetic studies, in which gene expression is induced by treatment with demethylating agents, may identify novel genes with tumour-specific methylation. We used high-density gene expression microarrays in a functional epigenetic study of 11 renal cell carcinoma (RCC) cell lines. Twenty-eight genes were then selected for analysis of promoter methylation status in cell lines and primary RCC. Eight genes (BNC1, PDLIM4, RPRM, CST6, SFRP1, GREM1, COL14A1 and COL15A1) showed frequent (30% of RCC tested) tumour-specific promoter region methylation. Hypermethylation was associated with transcriptional silencing. Re-expression of BNC1, CST6, RPRM and SFRP1 suppressed the growth of RCC cell lines and RNA interference knock-down of BNC1, SFRP1 and COL14A1 increased the growth of RCC cell lines. Methylation of BNC1 or COL14A1 was associated with a poorer prognosis independent of tumour size, stage or grade. The identification of these epigenetically inactivated candidate RCC TSGs can provide insights into renal tumourigenesis and a basis for developing novel therapies and biomarkers for prognosis and detection. © 2010 Macmillan Publishers Limited.Published versio

Comprehensive inventory of true flies (Diptera) at a tropical site

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