Genome-Wide Linkage Scan of Bipolar Disorder in a Colombian Population Isolate Replicates Loci on Chromosomes 7p21–22, 1p31, 16p12 and 21q21–22 and Identifies a Novel Locus on Chromosome 12q

Background/Aims: Bipolar disorder (BP) is a severe psychiatric illness, characterised by alternating episodes of depression and mania, which ranks among the top ten causes of morbidity and life-long disability world-wide. We have previously performed a whole-genome linkage scan on 6 pedigrees segregating severe BP from the well-characterised population isolate of Antioquia, Colombia. We recently collected genotypes for the same set of 382 autosomal microsatellite markers in 9 additional Antioquian BP pedigrees. Here, we report the analysis of the combined pedigree set

The stone adze and obsidian assemblage from the Talasiu site, Kingdom of Tonga

Typological and geochemical analyses of stone adzes and other stone tools have played a significant role in identifying directionality of colonisation movements in early migratory events in the Western Pacific. In later phases of Polynesian prehistory, stone adzes are important status goods which show substantial spatial and temporal variation. However, there is a debate when standardisation of form and manufacture appeared, whether it can be seen in earliest populations colonising the Pacific or whether it is a later development. We present in this paper a stone adze and obsidian tool assemblage from an early Ancestral Polynesian Society Talasiu site on Tongatapu, Kingdom of Tonga. The site shows a wide variety of adze types; however, if raw material origin is taken into account, emerging standardisation in adze form might be detected. We also show that Tongatapu was strongly connected in a network of interaction to islands to the North, particularly Samoa, suggesting that these islands had permanent populations

TBP Dynamics in Living Human Cells: Constitutive Association of TBP with Mitotic Chromosomes

The recruitment of TATA binding protein (TBP) to gene promoters is a critical rate-limiting step in transcriptional regulation for all three eukaryotic RNA polymerases. However, little is known regarding the dynamics of TBP in live mammalian cells. In this report, we examined the distribution and dynamic behavior of green fluorescence protein (GFP)-tagged TBP in live HeLa cells using fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP) analyses. We observed that GFP-TBP associates with condensed chromosomes throughout mitosis without any FRAP. These results suggest that TBP stably associates with the condensed chromosomes during mitosis. In addition, endogenous TBP and TBP-associated factors (TAFs), specific for RNA polymerase II and III transcription, cofractionated with mitotic chromatin, suggesting that TBP is retained as a TBP-TAF complex on transcriptionally silent chromatin throughout mitosis. In interphase cells, GFP-TBP distributes throughout the nucleoplasm and shows a FRAP that is 100-fold slower than the general transcription factor GFP-TFIIB. This difference supports the idea that TBP and, most likely, TBP-TAF complexes, remain promoter- bound for multiple rounds of transcription. Altogether, our observations demonstrate that there are cell cycle specific characteristics in the dynamic behavior of TBP. We propose a novel model in which the association of TBP-TAF complexes with chromatin during mitosis marks genes for rapid transcriptional activation as cells emerge from mitosis