70 research outputs found

    The integration of the immigrants in spain and its regions

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    Este artículo presenta un novedoso sistema de medición de la integración de las personas inmigrantes en las regiones españolas. Complementando en varios aspectos la iniciativa lanzada años atrás por las instituciones europeas (Declaración de Zaragoza), el sistema de medición propuesto comprende 24 indicadores que abarcan cuatro áreas: la situación laboral; las relaciones sociales e intergrupales; el bienestar individual, y el acceso a derechos de ciudadanía. Basándose en un amplio abanico de fuentes secundarias, consigue algo inédito: una completa cobertura estadística a escala infraestatal. El sistema sienta las bases para un seguimiento longitudinal y su ejecución con datos de 2011 permite comprobar el impacto de los primeros años de crisis económica sobre la integración de la población inmigrante. Los resultados señalan cierta ambivalencia, con una situación crecientemente desfavorecida de las personas inmigrantes en los ámbitos de Empleo y Bienestar, en comparación con la población nativa. En cambio, en los ámbitos de Ciudadanía y Relaciones Sociales se observa una evolución positiva, incluso en el periodo de recesión económica. La naturaleza polifacética de estos procesos y las disparidades territoriales dan lugar a tres perfiles regionales distintos.Peer Reviewe

    Wfs1 Is Expressed In Dopaminoceptive Regions Of The Amniote Brain And Modulates Levels Of D1-Like Receptors

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    During amniote evolution, the construction of the forebrain has diverged across different lineages, and accompanying the structural changes, functional diversification of the homologous brain regions has occurred. This can be assessed by studying the expression patterns of marker genes that are relevant in particular functional circuits. In all vertebrates, the dopaminergic system is responsible for the behavioral responses to environmental stimuli. Here we show that the brain regions that receive dopaminergic input through dopamine receptor D1 are relatively conserved, but with some important variations between three evolutionarily distant vertebrate lines–house mouse (Mus musculus), domestic chick (Gallus gallus domesticus) / common quail (Coturnix coturnix) and red-eared slider turtle (Trachemys scripta). Moreover, we find that in almost all instances, those brain regions expressing D1-like dopamine receptor genes also express Wfs1. Wfs1 has been studied primarily in the pancreas, where it regulates the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress response, cellular Ca2+ homeostasis, and insulin production and secretion. Using radioligand binding assays in wild type and Wfs1-/- mouse brains, we show that the number of binding sites of D1-like dopamine receptors is increased in the hippocampus of the mutant mice. We propose that the functional link between Wfs1 and D1-like dopamine receptors is evolutionarily conserved and plays an important role in adjusting behavioral reactions to environmental stimuli

    Characterization of extracellular vesicles labelled with a lipophilic dye using fluorescence nanoparticle tracking analysis

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    Research on extracellular vesicles (EVs) has intensified over the past decade, including fluorescent membrane labeling of EVs. An optimal fluorescent method requires the size of EVs to be preserved after labeling. Lipophilic fluorescent dyes, such as CellMask™ Green (CMG), have been widely used for this purpose. Here, we investigated conditions affecting the optimum CMG labeling of EVs derived from human choriocarcinoma cells (JAr) and different biological fluids using fluorescence NTA (fl-NTA). The effect of CMG labeling on the size, concentration and zeta potential (ZP) on JAr EVs purified with different methods were measured along with biological fluid-derived EVs. With the increase of CMG dye concentration, a significant decrease in the mean size of fluorescent nanoparticles (fl-NPs) was observed. The ZP of fl-NPs originating from JAr cells with the lowest and highest dye concentrations showed a significant shift towards more and less negative ZP values, respectively. Differences in the concentration of fl-NPs were observed for JAr EVs purified using size-exclusion chromatography (SEC) alone and SEC in combination with tangential flow filtration. The proportion of CMG labeling of NPs varied across different biological sources. CMG labeling may be a reliable technique for the detection of EVs using fl-NTA

    Low nonpaternity rate in an old Afrikaner family

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    Extrapair paternity is a crucial parameter for evolutionary explanations of reproductive behavior. Early studies and human testis size suggest that human males secure/suffer frequent extrapair paternity. If these high rates are indeed true, it brings into question studies that use genealogies to infer human life history and the history of diseases since the recorded genealogies do not reflect paths of genetic inheritance. We measure the rate of nonpaternity in an old Afrikaner family in South Africa by comparing Y-chromosome short tandem repeats to the genealogy of males. In this population, the nonpaternity rate was 0.73%. This low rate is observed in other studies that matched genealogies to genetic markers and more recent studies that also find estimates below 1%. It may be that imposed religious morals have led to reduced extrapair activities in some historic populations. We also found that the mutation rate is high for this family, but is unrelated to age at conception.http://www.ehbonline.orghb2016Genetic

    Broken replication forks trigger heritable DNA breaks in the terminus of a circular chromosome

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    <p><u>(A) Circular map of the <i>E</i>. <i>coli</i> chromosome</u>: <i>oriC</i>, <i>dif</i> and <i>terD</i> to <i>terB</i> sites are indicated. Numbers refer to the chromosome coordinates (in kb) of MG1655. (<u>B) Linear map of the terminus region:</u> chromosome coordinates are shown increasing from left to right, as in the marker frequency panels (see Figure 1C for example), therefore in the opposite direction to the circular map. In addition to <i>dif</i> and <i>ter</i> sites, the positions of the <i>parS</i><sub>pMT1</sub> sites used for microscopy experiments are indicated. (<u>C) MFA analysis of terminus DNA loss in the <i>recB</i> mutant</u>: sequence read frequencies of exponential phase cells normalized to the total number of reads were calculated for each strain. Ratios of normalized reads in isogenic wild-type and <i>recB</i> mutant are plotted against chromosomal coordinates (in kb). The profile ratio of the terminus region is enlarged and the profile of the corresponding entire chromosomes is shown in inset. Original normalized profiles used to calculate ratios are shown in <a href="http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1007256#pgen.1007256.s005" target="_blank">S1 Fig</a>. The position of <i>dif</i> is indicated by a red arrow. The <i>ter</i> sites that arrest clockwise forks (<i>terC</i>, <i>terB</i>, green arrow) and counter-clockwise forks (<i>terA</i>, <i>terD</i>, blue arrow) are shown. <u>(D) Schematic representation of focus loss in the <i>recB</i> mutant:</u> Time-lapse microscopy experiments showed that loss of a focus in the <i>recB</i> mutant occurs concomitantly with cell division in one of two daughter cells, and that the cell that keeps the focus then generates a focus-less cell at each generation. The percentage of initial events was calculated as the percentage of cell divisions that generate a focus-less cell, not counting the following generations. In this schematic representation, two initial events occurred (generations #2 and #7) out of 9 generations, and focus loss at generation #2 is heritable. Panels shown in this figure were previously published in [<a href="http://www.plosgenetics.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pgen.1007256#pgen.1007256.ref019" target="_blank">19</a>] and are reproduced here to introduce the phenomenon.</p

    Replication Fork Reversal after Replication–Transcription Collision

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    Replication fork arrest is a recognized source of genetic instability, and transcription is one of the most prominent causes of replication impediment. We analyze here the requirement for recombination proteins in Escherichia coli when replication–transcription head-on collisions are induced at a specific site by the inversion of a highly expressed ribosomal operon (rrn). RecBC is the only recombination protein required for cell viability under these conditions of increased replication-transcription collisions. In its absence, fork breakage occurs at the site of collision, and the resulting linear DNA is not repaired and is slowly degraded by the RecJ exonuclease. Lethal fork breakage is also observed in cells that lack RecA and RecD, i.e. when both homologous recombination and the potent exonuclease V activity of the RecBCD complex are inactivated, with a slow degradation of the resulting linear DNA by the combined action of the RecBC helicase and the RecJ exonuclease. The sizes of the major linear fragments indicate that DNA degradation is slowed down by the encounter with another rrn operon. The amount of linear DNA decreases nearly two-fold when the Holliday junction resolvase RuvABC is inactivated in recB, as well as in recA recD mutants, indicating that part of the linear DNA is formed by resolution of a Holliday junction. Our results suggest that replication fork reversal occurs after replication–transcription head-on collision, and we propose that it promotes the action of the accessory replicative helicases that dislodge the obstacle

    Individuals responses to economic cycles: Organizational relevance and a multilevel theoretical integration

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    Physical Analyses of E. coli Heteroduplex Recombination Products In Vivo: On the Prevalence of 5′ and 3′ Patches

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    BACKGROUND: Homologous recombination in Escherichia coli creates patches (non-crossovers) or splices (half crossovers), each of which may have associated heteroduplex DNA. Heteroduplex patches have recombinant DNA in one strand of the duplex, with parental flanking markers. Which DNA strand is exchanged in heteroduplex patches reflects the molecular mechanism of recombination. Several models for the mechanism of E. coli RecBCD-mediated recombinational double-strand-end (DSE) repair specify that only the 3'-ending strand invades the homologous DNA, forming heteroduplex in that strand. There is, however, in vivo evidence that patches are found in both strands. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPLE FINDINGS: This paper re-examines heteroduplex-patch-strand polarity using phage lambda and the lambdadv plasmid as DNA substrates recombined via the E. coli RecBCD system in vivo. These DNAs are mutant for lambda recombination functions, including orf and rap, which were functional in previous studies. Heteroduplexes are isolated, separated on polyacrylamide gels, and quantified using Southern blots for heteroduplex analysis. This method reveals that heteroduplexes are still found in either 5' or 3' DNA strands in approximately equal amounts, even in the absence of orf and rap. Also observed is an independence of the RuvC Holliday-junction endonuclease on patch formation, and a slight but statistically significant alteration of patch polarity by recD mutation. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: These results indicate that orf and rap did not contribute to the presence of patches, and imply that patches occurring in both DNA strands reflects the molecular mechanism of recombination in E. coli. Most importantly, the lack of a requirement for RuvC implies that endonucleolytic resolution of Holliday junctions is not necessary for heteroduplex-patch formation, contrary to predictions of all of the major previous models. This implies that patches are not an alternative resolution of the same intermediate that produces splices, and do not bear on models for splice formation. We consider two mechanisms that use DNA replication instead of endonucleolytic resolution for formation of heteroduplex patches in either DNA strand: synthesis-dependent-strand annealing and a strand-assimilation mechanism
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