The Glucuronyltransferase GlcAT-P Is Required for Stretch Growth of Peripheral Nerves in Drosophila

During development, the growth of the animal body is accompanied by a concomitant elongation of the peripheral nerves, which requires the elongation of integrated nerve fibers and the axons projecting therein. Although this process is of fundamental importance to almost all organisms of the animal kingdom, very little is known about the mechanisms regulating this process. Here, we describe the identification and characterization of novel mutant alleles of GlcAT-P, the Drosophila ortholog of the mammalian glucuronyltransferase b3gat1. GlcAT-P mutants reveal shorter larval peripheral nerves and an elongated ventral nerve cord (VNC). We show that GlcAT-P is expressed in a subset of neurons in the central brain hemispheres, in some motoneurons of the ventral nerve cord as well as in central and peripheral nerve glia. We demonstrate that in GlcAT-P mutants the VNC is under tension of shorter peripheral nerves suggesting that the VNC elongates as a consequence of tension imparted by retarded peripheral nerve growth during larval development. We also provide evidence that for growth of peripheral nerve fibers GlcAT-P is critically required in hemocytes; however, glial cells are also important in this process. The glial specific repo gene acts as a modifier of GlcAT-P and loss or reduction of repo function in a GlcAT-P mutant background enhances VNC elongation. We propose a model in which hemocytes are required for aspects of glial cell biology which in turn affects the elongation of peripheral nerves during larval development. Our data also identifies GlcAT-P as a first candidate gene involved in growth of integrated peripheral nerves and therefore establishes Drosophila as an amenable in-vivo model system to study this process at the cellular and molecular level in more detail

Plasma and cellular fibronectin: distinct and independent functions during tissue repair

Fibronectin (FN) is a ubiquitous extracellular matrix (ECM) glycoprotein that plays vital roles during tissue repair. The plasma form of FN circulates in the blood, and upon tissue injury, is incorporated into fibrin clots to exert effects on platelet function and to mediate hemostasis. Cellular FN is then synthesized and assembled by cells as they migrate into the clot to reconstitute damaged tissue. The assembly of FN into a complex three-dimensional matrix during physiological repair plays a key role not only as a structural scaffold, but also as a regulator of cell function during this stage of tissue repair. FN fibrillogenesis is a complex, stepwise process that is strictly regulated by a multitude of factors. During fibrosis, there is excessive deposition of ECM, of which FN is one of the major components. Aberrant FN-matrix assembly is a major contributing factor to the switch from normal tissue repair to misregulated fibrosis. Understanding the mechanisms involved in FN assembly and how these interplay with cellular, fibrotic and immune responses may reveal targets for the future development of therapies to regulate aberrant tissue-repair processes

Combination of searches for heavy spin-1 resonances using 139 fb−1 of proton-proton collision data at s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector

A combination of searches for new heavy spin-1 resonances decaying into different pairings of W, Z, or Higgs bosons, as well as directly into leptons or quarks, is presented. The data sample used corresponds to 139 fb−1 of proton-proton collisions at = 13 TeV collected during 2015–2018 with the ATLAS detector at the CERN Large Hadron Collider. Analyses selecting quark pairs (qq, bb, , and tb) or third-generation leptons (τν and ττ) are included in this kind of combination for the first time. A simplified model predicting a spin-1 heavy vector-boson triplet is used. Cross-section limits are set at the 95% confidence level and are compared with predictions for the benchmark model. These limits are also expressed in terms of constraints on couplings of the heavy vector-boson triplet to quarks, leptons, and the Higgs boson. The complementarity of the various analyses increases the sensitivity to new physics, and the resulting constraints are stronger than those from any individual analysis considered. The data exclude a heavy vector-boson triplet with mass below 5.8 TeV in a weakly coupled scenario, below 4.4 TeV in a strongly coupled scenario, and up to 1.5 TeV in the case of production via vector-boson fusion

Search for resonant production of dark quarks in the dijet final state with the ATLAS detector

This paper presents a search for a new Z′ resonance decaying into a pair of dark quarks which hadronise into dark hadrons before promptly decaying back as Standard Model particles. This analysis is based on proton-proton collision data recorded at $$\sqrt{s}$$ s = 13 TeV with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider between 2015 and 2018, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 139 fb−1. After selecting events containing large-radius jets with high track multiplicity, the invariant mass distribution of the two highest-transverse-momentum jets is scanned to look for an excess above a data-driven estimate of the Standard Model multijet background. No significant excess of events is observed and the results are thus used to set 95% confidence-level upper limits on the production cross-section times branching ratio of the Z′ to dark quarks as a function of the Z′ mass for various dark-quark scenarios

Electron and photon energy calibration with the ATLAS detector using LHC Run 2 data

This paper presents the electron and photon energy calibration obtained with the ATLAS detector using 140 fb-1 of LHC proton-proton collision data recorded at √(s) = 13 TeV between 2015 and 2018. Methods for the measurement of electron and photon energies are outlined, along with the current knowledge of the passive material in front of the ATLAS electromagnetic calorimeter. The energy calibration steps are discussed in detail, with emphasis on the improvements introduced in this paper. The absolute energy scale is set using a large sample of Z-boson decays into electron-positron pairs, and its residual dependence on the electron energy is used for the first time to further constrain systematic uncertainties. The achieved calibration uncertainties are typically 0.05% for electrons from resonant Z-boson decays, 0.4% at ET ∼ 10 GeV, and 0.3% at ET ∼ 1 TeV; for photons at ET ∼ 60 GeV, they are 0.2% on average. This is more than twice as precise as the previous calibration. The new energy calibration is validated using J/ψ → ee and radiative Z-boson decays

Accuracy versus precision in boosted top tagging with the ATLAS detector

Abstract The identification of top quark decays where the top quark has a large momentum transverse to the beam axis, known as top tagging, is a crucial component in many measurements of Standard Model processes and searches for beyond the Standard Model physics at the Large Hadron Collider. Machine learning techniques have improved the performance of top tagging algorithms, but the size of the systematic uncertainties for all proposed algorithms has not been systematically studied. This paper presents the performance of several machine learning based top tagging algorithms on a dataset constructed from simulated proton-proton collision events measured with the ATLAS detector at √ s = 13 TeV. The systematic uncertainties associated with these algorithms are estimated through an approximate procedure that is not meant to be used in a physics analysis, but is appropriate for the level of precision required for this study. The most performant algorithms are found to have the largest uncertainties, motivating the development of methods to reduce these uncertainties without compromising performance. To enable such efforts in the wider scientific community, the datasets used in this paper are made publicly available.</jats:p

Combined measurement of the Higgs boson mass from the H → γγ and H → ZZ∗ → 4ℓ decay channels with the ATLAS detector using √s = 7, 8, and 13 TeV pp collision data

A measurement of the mass of the Higgs boson combining the H → Z Z ∗ → 4 ℓ and H → γ γ decay channels is presented. The result is based on 140     fb − 1 of proton-proton collision data collected by the ATLAS detector during LHC run 2 at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV combined with the run 1 ATLAS mass measurement, performed at center-of-mass energies of 7 and 8 TeV, yielding a Higgs boson mass of 125.11 ± 0.09 ( stat ) ± 0.06 ( syst ) = 125.11 ± 0.11     GeV . This corresponds to a 0.09% precision achieved on this fundamental parameter of the Standard Model of particle physics