64 research outputs found

    Unearthing the Problematic Terrain of Prolonged Occupation

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    This paper will explore the travaux préparatoires of the legal instruments of the laws of war and international humanitarian law (IHL) with a view to obtaining crucial insight into their drafters’ ‘original’ understandings as to the issues of the provisional nature and the temporal length of occupation. The findings of the travaux show that the framers of the ‘classic’ laws of war instruments agreed on the general premise that the legal regime of occupation ought to be provisional. In the concurrent doctrinal discourses, this premise was endorsed by most scholars. The examinations of the draft records of the 1949 Geneva Civilians Convention reveal that even the proponents of ‘transformative occupation’ did not seem to envisage the occupation of the kind that would endure for decades. Nevertheless, by the time the 1977 Additional Protocol I was crafted, several instances of protracted occupation persisted. This seemed to be decisive for a shift in the argumentative structure. There is no gainsaying the applicability of IHL to any occupied territories, irrespective of the length of occupation. Yet, the suggestion that nothing under IHL would forestall an occupying power from engaging in a long-term occupation departs from the traditional premise that occupation ought to be provisional. This also seems to be paradoxical in historical perspectives

    Identification of cis-acting promoter sequences required for expression of the glycerol-3-phosphate acyltransferase 1 gene in mice

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    Glycerol-3-phosphate acyltransferase 1 (GPAT1) is a rate limiting enzyme in de novo glycerophospholipid synthesis. The murine GPAT1 promoter sequence (the “classical” sequence) was reported previously. However, the organization of this DNA sequence does not fully match the mouse genome sequences on NCBI/GenBank. Here we have identified net cis-acting promoter sequences for the mouse GPAT1 gene: promoter 1a which includes part of the classical sequence and the downstream promoter 1b. Promoter 1a facilitates transcription of two alternative GPAT1 transcript variants, GPAT1-V1 and V2, while promoter 1b produces a third transcript variant, GPAT1-V3. Upstream stimulating factor-1 (USF-1) controlled both promoters whereas sterol regulatory element-binding protein-1 (SREBP-1) exclusively regulated promoter 1a activity in vitro. Feeding increased GPAT1-V1 and V2, but not V3 mRNA levels in mouse liver. The obese condition of db/db mice did not alter the hepatic expression levels of any of the three GPAT1 variants. Feeding enhanced hepatic mRNA levels, intranuclear protein levels and promoter 1a-binding levels of SREBP-1, but not of USF-1. Thus, promoter 1a was exclusively activated by routine feeding in vivo. Our results indicate differential roles of the two promoters in the regulation of hepatic GPAT1 gene expression in mice

    DOCK2 is involved in the host genetics and biology of severe COVID-19

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    「コロナ制圧タスクフォース」COVID-19疾患感受性遺伝子DOCK2の重症化機序を解明 --アジア最大のバイオレポジトリーでCOVID-19の治療標的を発見--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2022-08-10.Identifying the host genetic factors underlying severe COVID-19 is an emerging challenge. Here we conducted a genome-wide association study (GWAS) involving 2, 393 cases of COVID-19 in a cohort of Japanese individuals collected during the initial waves of the pandemic, with 3, 289 unaffected controls. We identified a variant on chromosome 5 at 5q35 (rs60200309-A), close to the dedicator of cytokinesis 2 gene (DOCK2), which was associated with severe COVID-19 in patients less than 65 years of age. This risk allele was prevalent in East Asian individuals but rare in Europeans, highlighting the value of genome-wide association studies in non-European populations. RNA-sequencing analysis of 473 bulk peripheral blood samples identified decreased expression of DOCK2 associated with the risk allele in these younger patients. DOCK2 expression was suppressed in patients with severe cases of COVID-19. Single-cell RNA-sequencing analysis (n = 61 individuals) identified cell-type-specific downregulation of DOCK2 and a COVID-19-specific decreasing effect of the risk allele on DOCK2 expression in non-classical monocytes. Immunohistochemistry of lung specimens from patients with severe COVID-19 pneumonia showed suppressed DOCK2 expression. Moreover, inhibition of DOCK2 function with CPYPP increased the severity of pneumonia in a Syrian hamster model of SARS-CoV-2 infection, characterized by weight loss, lung oedema, enhanced viral loads, impaired macrophage recruitment and dysregulated type I interferon responses. We conclude that DOCK2 has an important role in the host immune response to SARS-CoV-2 infection and the development of severe COVID-19, and could be further explored as a potential biomarker and/or therapeutic target

    The whole blood transcriptional regulation landscape in 465 COVID-19 infected samples from Japan COVID-19 Task Force

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    「コロナ制圧タスクフォース」COVID-19患者由来の血液細胞における遺伝子発現の網羅的解析 --重症度に応じた遺伝子発現の変化には、ヒトゲノム配列の個人差が影響する--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2022-08-23.Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a recently-emerged infectious disease that has caused millions of deaths, where comprehensive understanding of disease mechanisms is still unestablished. In particular, studies of gene expression dynamics and regulation landscape in COVID-19 infected individuals are limited. Here, we report on a thorough analysis of whole blood RNA-seq data from 465 genotyped samples from the Japan COVID-19 Task Force, including 359 severe and 106 non-severe COVID-19 cases. We discover 1169 putative causal expression quantitative trait loci (eQTLs) including 34 possible colocalizations with biobank fine-mapping results of hematopoietic traits in a Japanese population, 1549 putative causal splice QTLs (sQTLs; e.g. two independent sQTLs at TOR1AIP1), as well as biologically interpretable trans-eQTL examples (e.g., REST and STING1), all fine-mapped at single variant resolution. We perform differential gene expression analysis to elucidate 198 genes with increased expression in severe COVID-19 cases and enriched for innate immune-related functions. Finally, we evaluate the limited but non-zero effect of COVID-19 phenotype on eQTL discovery, and highlight the presence of COVID-19 severity-interaction eQTLs (ieQTLs; e.g., CLEC4C and MYBL2). Our study provides a comprehensive catalog of whole blood regulatory variants in Japanese, as well as a reference for transcriptional landscapes in response to COVID-19 infection

    Carbonyl Reductase 3 (CBR3) Mediates 9-cis-Retinoic Acid-Induced Cytostatis and is a Potential Prognostic Marker for Oral Malignancy

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    The molecular mechanisms of growth suppression by retinoic acid (RA) were examined. Our results suggest that the cytostatic effects of RA could be mediated by the activation of endogenous CBR3 gene in oral squamous cell carcinomas (OSCCs), and the expression is a potential marker for oral malignancy

    Observation of gravitational waves from the coalescence of a 2.5−4.5 M⊙ compact object and a neutron star

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    Search for gravitational-lensing signatures in the full third observing run of the LIGO-Virgo network

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    Gravitational lensing by massive objects along the line of sight to the source causes distortions of gravitational wave-signals; such distortions may reveal information about fundamental physics, cosmology and astrophysics. In this work, we have extended the search for lensing signatures to all binary black hole events from the third observing run of the LIGO--Virgo network. We search for repeated signals from strong lensing by 1) performing targeted searches for subthreshold signals, 2) calculating the degree of overlap amongst the intrinsic parameters and sky location of pairs of signals, 3) comparing the similarities of the spectrograms amongst pairs of signals, and 4) performing dual-signal Bayesian analysis that takes into account selection effects and astrophysical knowledge. We also search for distortions to the gravitational waveform caused by 1) frequency-independent phase shifts in strongly lensed images, and 2) frequency-dependent modulation of the amplitude and phase due to point masses. None of these searches yields significant evidence for lensing. Finally, we use the non-detection of gravitational-wave lensing to constrain the lensing rate based on the latest merger-rate estimates and the fraction of dark matter composed of compact objects
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