CDK-dependent nuclear localization of B-Cyclin Clb1 promotes FEAR activation during meiosis I in budding yeast

Cyclin-dependent kinases (CDK) are master regulators of the cell cycle in eukaryotes. CDK activity is regulated by the presence, post-translational modification and spatial localization of its regulatory subunit cyclin. In budding yeast, the B-cyclin Clb1 is phosphorylated and localizes to the nucleus during meiosis I. However the functional significance of Clb1's phosphorylation and nuclear localization and their mutual dependency is unknown. In this paper, we demonstrate that meiosis-specific phosphorylation of Clb1 requires its import to the nucleus but not vice versa. While Clb1 phosphorylation is dependent on activity of both CDK and polo-like kinase Cdc5, its nuclear localization requires CDK but not Cdc5 activity. Furthermore we show that increased nuclear localization of Clb1 during meiosis enhances activation of FEAR (Cdc Fourteen Early Anaphase Release) pathway. We discuss the significance of our results in relation to regulation of exit from meiosis I

Politicians must heed health effects of climate change.

published_or_final_versio

Quantitative principles of cis-translational control by general mRNA sequence features in eukaryotes.

BackgroundGeneral translational cis-elements are present in the mRNAs of all genes and affect the recruitment, assembly, and progress of preinitiation complexes and the ribosome under many physiological states. These elements include mRNA folding, upstream open reading frames, specific nucleotides flanking the initiating AUG codon, protein coding sequence length, and codon usage. The quantitative contributions of these sequence features and how and why they coordinate to control translation rates are not well understood.ResultsHere, we show that these sequence features specify 42-81% of the variance in translation rates in Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, Arabidopsis thaliana, Mus musculus, and Homo sapiens. We establish that control by RNA secondary structure is chiefly mediated by highly folded 25-60 nucleotide segments within mRNA 5' regions, that changes in tri-nucleotide frequencies between highly and poorly translated 5' regions are correlated between all species, and that control by distinct biochemical processes is extensively correlated as is regulation by a single process acting in different parts of the same mRNA.ConclusionsOur work shows that general features control a much larger fraction of the variance in translation rates than previously realized. We provide a more detailed and accurate understanding of the aspects of RNA structure that directs translation in diverse eukaryotes. In addition, we note that the strongly correlated regulation between and within cis-control features will cause more even densities of translational complexes along each mRNA and therefore more efficient use of the translation machinery by the cell

Expression and Differential Responsiveness of Central Nervous System Glial Cell Populations to the Acute Phase Protein Serum Amyloid A

Acute-phase response is a systemic reaction to environmental/inflammatory insults and involves hepatic production of acute-phase proteins, including serum amyloid A (SAA). Extrahepatically, SAA immunoreactivity is found in axonal myelin sheaths of cortex in Alzheimer's disease and multiple sclerosis (MS), although its cellular origin is unclear. We examined the responses of cultured rat cortical astrocytes, microglia and oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) to master pro-inflammatory cytokine tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-\u3b1 and lipopolysaccaride (LPS). TNF-\u3b1 time-dependently increased Saa1 (but not Saa3) mRNA expression in purified microglia, enriched astrocytes, and OPCs (as did LPS for microglia and astrocytes). Astrocytes depleted of microglia were markedly less responsive to TNF-\u3b1 and LPS, even after re-addition of microglia. Microglia and enriched astrocytes showed complementary Saa1 expression profiles following TNF-\u3b1 or LPS challenge, being higher in microglia with TNF-\u3b1 and higher in astrocytes with LPS. Recombinant human apo-SAA stimulated production of both inflammatory mediators and its own mRNA in microglia and enriched, but not microglia-depleted astrocytes. Co-ultramicronized palmitoylethanolamide/luteolin, an established anti-inflammatory/neuroprotective agent, reduced Saa1 expression in OPCs subjected to TNF-\u3b1 treatment. These last data, together with past findings suggest that co-ultramicronized palmitoylethanolamide/luteolin may be a novel approach in the treatment of inflammatory demyelinating disorders like MS

Parental transfer of the antimicrobial protein LBP/BPI protects Biomphalaria glabrata eggs against oomycete infections

Copyright: © 2013 Baron et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This work was funded by ANR (ANR-07-BLAN-0214 and ANR-12-EMMA-00O7-01), CNRS and INRA. PvW was financially supported by the BBSRC. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Variation of Maximum Tree Height and Annual Shoot Growth of Smith Fir at Various Elevations in the Sygera Mountains, Southeastern Tibetan Plateau

Little is known about tree height and height growth (as annual shoot elongation of the apical part of vertical stems) of coniferous trees growing at various altitudes on the Tibetan Plateau, which provides a high-elevation natural platform for assessing tree growth performance in relation to future climate change. We here investigated the variation of maximum tree height and annual height increment of Smith fir (Abies georgei var. smithii) in seven forest plots (30 m×40 m) along two altitudinal transects between 3,800 m and 4,200/4,390 m above sea level (a.s.l.) in the Sygera Mountains, southeastern Tibetan Plateau. Four plots were located on north-facing slopes and three plots on southeast-facing slopes. At each site, annual shoot growth was obtained by measuring the distance between successive terminal bud scars along the main stem of 25 trees that were between 2 and 4 m high. Maximum/mean tree height and mean annual height increment of Smith fir decreased with increasing altitude up to the tree line, indicative of a stress gradient (the dominant temperature gradient) along the altitudinal transect. Above-average mean minimum summer (particularly July) temperatures affected height increment positively, whereas precipitation had no significant effect on shoot growth. The time series of annual height increments of Smith fir can be used for the reconstruction of past climate on the southeastern Tibetan Plateau. In addition, it can be expected that the rising summer temperatures observed in the recent past and anticipated for the future will enhance Smith fir's growth throughout its altitudinal distribution range

Residential end-uses disaggregation and demand response evaluation using integral transforms

[EN] Demand response is a basic tool used to develop modern power systems and electricity markets. Residential and commercial segments account for 40%-50% of the overall electricity demand. These segments need to overcome major obstacles before they can be included in a demand response portfolio. The objective of this paper is to tackle some of the technical barriers and explain how the potential of enabling technology (smart meters) can be harnessed, to evaluate the potential of customers for demand response (end-uses and their behaviors) and, moreover, to validate customers' effective response to market prices or system events by means of non-intrusive methods. A tool based on the Hilbert transform is improved herein to identify and characterize the most suitable loads for the aforesaid purpose, whereby important characteristics such as cycling frequency, power level and pulse width are identified. The proposed methodology allows the filtering of aggregated load according to the amplitudes of elemental loads, independently of the frequency of their behaviors that could be altered by internal or external inputs such as weather or demand response. In this way, the assessment and verification of customer response can be improved by solving the problem of load aggregation with the help of integral transforms.This work has been supported by Spanish Government (Ministerio de Economia, Industria y Competitividad) and EU FEDER fund (No. ENE2013-48574-C2-2-P&1-P, No. ENE2015-70032-REDT).Gabaldón Marín, A.; Molina, R.; Marin-Parra, A.; Valero, S.; Álvarez, C. (2017). Residential end-uses disaggregation and demand response evaluation using integral transforms. Journal of Modern Power Systems and Clean Energy. 5(1):91-104. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40565-016-0258-8S9110451Chardon A, Almén O, Lewis PE (2009) Demand response: a decisive breakthrough for Europe. Capgemini, Enerdata. https://www.capgemini.com/resources/demand_response_a_decisive_breakthrough_for_europeFaruqui A, Harris D, Hledick R (2010) Unlocking the €53 billion savings from smart meters in the EU: how increasing the adoption of dynamic tariffs could make or break the EU’s smart grid investment. Energy Policy 38(10):6222–6231Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) (2015) Assessment of demand response and advanced metering, staff report. http://www.ferc.gov/legal/staff-reports/2015/demand-response.pdfFERC Order 745 (December 2011) & 719 (December 2009). http://www.ferc.gov/legal/maj-ord-reg.aspEuropean Commission (2011) Energy efficiency plan 2011, COM (2011) 109 final. http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServJoitn Research Center (JRC), European Commission (2010) Energy Service Companies market in Europe, status report 2010. http://publications.jrc.ec.europa.eu/repository/handle/111111111/15108European Commission (2011) Impact assessment accompanying document “Energy Efficiency Plan 2011”, SEC (2011) 277 final. http://www.eurosfaire.prd.fr/7pc/bibliotheque/consulter.php?id=2357European Environment Agency (EEA) (2012) Final energy consumption by sector and fuel. http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/indicators/final-energy-consumption-by-sector-8/assessment-2Piette MA, Watson D, Motegi N et al (2007) Automated critical peak pricing field tests: 2006 pilot program description and results. California Energy Commission, PIER Energy Systems Integration Research Program: CEC-500-03-026Gomatom K, Holmes C, Kresta D (2013) Non-intrusive load monitoring. https://www.e3tnw.orgDimetrosky S, Parkinson K, Lieb N (2013) Residential lighting evaluation protocol, Report NREl/SR-7A30-53827. National Renewable Energy LaboratoryZeifman M, Roth K (2011) Nonintrusive appliance load monitoring: review and outlook. IEEE Trans Consum Electron 57(1):76–84Liang J, Simon K, Kendall G et al (2010) Load signature study part I: basic concept, structure and methodology. IEEE Trans Power Deliv 25(2):551–560Hart GW (1992) Nonintrusive appliance load monitoring. Proc IEEE 80(12):1870–1891Powers J, Margossian B, Smith B (1991) Using a rule-based algorithm to disaggregate end-use load profiles from premise-level data. IEEE Comput Appl Power 4(2):42–47Farinaccio L, Zmeureanu R (1999) Using a pattern recognition approach to disaggregate the total electricity consumption in a house into the major end-uses. Energy Build 30(3):245–259Marceau ML, Zmeureanu R (2000) Nonintrusive load disaggregation computer program to estimate the energy consumption of major end uses in residential buildings. Energy Convers Manag 41(13):1389–1403Baransju M, Voss J (2004) Genetic algorithm for pattern detection in NIALM systems. In: IEEE international conference on systems, man and cybernetics, 10–13 Oct, pp 3462–3468Baranski H, Voss J (2004) Detecting patterns of appliances from total load data using a dynamic programming approach. In: Fourth IEEE international conference on data mining (ICDM’04), 1–4 Nov, Brighton, UK, pp 327–330Sankara A (2015) Energy disaggregation in NIALM using hidden Markov models. Masters Theses, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Paper 7414Kolter J, Jaakkola T (2012) Approximate inference in additive factorial HMMs with application to energy disaggregation. J Mach Learn 22:1472–1482Leeb SB, Shaw SR, Kirtley SL (1995) Transient event detection in spectral envelope estimates for nonintrusive load monitoring. IEEE Trans Power Deliv 10(3):1200–1210Patel SN, Robertson T, Kientz JA et al (2007) At the flick of a switch: detecting and classifying unique electrical events on the residential power line. In: Conference on ubiquitous computing, pp 271–288Bonglifi R, Squartini S, Fagiani M et al (2015) Unsupervised algorithms for non-intrusive load monitoring: an up-to-date overview. In: EEEIC conference. doi: 10.1109/EEEIC.2015.7165334Browne TJ, Vittal V, Heydt GT et al (2008) A comparative assessment of two techniques for modal identification from power system measurements. IEEE Trans Power Syst 23(3):1408–1415Senroy N, Suryanarayanan S, Ribeiro PF (2007) An improved Hilbert–Huang method for analysis of time-varying waveforms in power quality. IEEE Trans Power Syst 22(4):1843–1850Gabaldon A, Ortiz M, Molina R et al (2014) Disaggregation of electric loads of small customers through the application of the Hilbert transform. Energ Effic 7(4):711–728. doi: 10.1007/s12053-013-9250-6Kolter JZ, Johnson MJ (2011) REDD: a public data set for energy disaggregation research. http://101.96.10.59/people.csail.mit.edu/mattjj/papers/kddsust2011.pdfFibaro wall switches. http://www.fibaro.com/en/the-fibaro-system/IP-Symcon: innovative centre for the entire building automation. https://www.symcon.de/Energy Information Administration (2001) End-use consumption electricity 2001. http://www.eia.gov/emeu/recs/recs2001/enduse2001/enduse2001.htmlPoularikas AD (1999) The Hilbert transform, handbook of formulas and tables for signal processing. CRC Press LLC, Boca RatonHuang NE, Shen Z, Long SR et al (1998) The empirical mode decomposition and the Hilbert spectrum for nonlinear and nonstationary time series analysis. Proced R Soc Lond 454(1971):903–995Deering R, Kaiser JF (2005) The use of a masking signal to improve empirical mode decomposition. In: Proceedings IEEE international conference acoustic, speech, and signal processing, pp 485–488Liang J, Simon K, Kendall G, Cheng J et al (2010) Load signature study part II: disaggregation framework, simulation, and applications. IEEE Trans Power Deliv 25(2):561–569Load participation in ancillary services. http://www1.eere.energy.gov/analysis/pdfsGabaldón A, Guillamón A, Ruiz MC et al (2010) Development of a methodology for clustering electricity-price series to improve customer response initiatives. IET Gener Transm Distrib 4(6):706–71

New Measurement of Parity Violation in Elastic Electron-Proton Scattering and Implications for Strange Form Factors

We have measured the parity-violating electroweak asymmetry in the elastic scattering of polarized electrons from the proton. The result is A = -15.05 +- 0.98(stat) +- 0.56(syst) ppm at the kinematic point theta_lab = 12.3 degrees and Q^2 = 0.477 (GeV/c)^2. The measurement implies that the value for the strange form factor (G_E^s + 0.392 G_M^s) = 0.025 +- 0.020 +- 0.014, where the first error is experimental and the second arises from the uncertainties in electromagnetic form factors. This measurement is the first fixed-target parity violation experiment that used either a `strained' GaAs photocathode to produce highly polarized electrons or a Compton polarimeter to continuously monitor the electron beam polarization.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, Tex, elsart.cls; revised version as accepted for Phys. Lett.

Synthesis and Photoluminescence Property of Silicon Carbide Nanowires Via Carbothermic Reduction of Silica

Silicon carbide nanowires have been synthesized at 1400 °C by carbothermic reduction of silica with bamboo carbon under normal atmosphere pressure without metallic catalyst. X-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy and Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy were used to characterize the silicon carbide nanowires. The results show that the silicon carbide nanowires have a core–shell structure and grow along <111> direction. The diameter of silicon carbide nanowires is about 50–200 nm and the length from tens to hundreds of micrometers. The vapor–solid mechanism is proposed to elucidate the growth process. The photoluminescence of the synthesized silicon carbide nanowires shows significant blueshifts, which is resulted from the existence of oxygen defects in amorphous layer and the special rough core–shell interface