record linkage of banks and municipalities through multiple criteria and neural networks

Record linkage aims to identify records from multiple data sources that refer to the same entity of the real world. It is a well known data quality process studied since the second half of the last century, with an established pipeline and a rich literature of case studies mainly covering census, administrative or health domains. In this paper, a method to recognize matching records from real municipalities and banks through multiple similarity criteria and a Neural Network classifier is proposed: starting from a labeled subset of the available data, first several similarity measures are combined and weighted to build a feature vector, then a Multi-Layer Perceptron (MLP) network is trained and tested to find matching pairs. For validation, seven real datasets have been used (three from banks and four from municipalities), purposely chosen in the same geographical area to increase the probability of matches. The training only involved two municipalities, while testing involved all sources (municipalities vs. municipalities, banks vs banks and and municipalities vs. banks). The proposed method scored remarkable results in terms of both precision and recall, clearly outperforming threshold-based competitors

Coherent PON system with high-sensitivity polarization-independent receiver and no ADC/DSP

A 1.25 Gb/s ASK PON system with -51dBm sensitivity (at BER=2-103) is enabled by a polarization-independent coherent receiver that needs no DSP (nor ADC). The system just uses common DFBs and commercial electronic devices and has 52 dB dynamic range

Secondary immune-mediated thrombocytopenia in dogs naturally infected by Leishmania infantum.

Forty-four dogs naturally infected by Leishmania infantum were divided into two groups: 20 thrombocytopenic dogs with fewer than 150 x 10(9) platelets/l, and 24 non-thrombocytopenic dogs with more than 200 x 10(9) platelets/l. Ten clinically healthy dogs were used as controls. A haematological profile was obtained and the dogs' serum was used to assess the presence of platelet-binding IgM and IgG antibodies using a flow cytometry technique. Nineteen of the 20 thrombocytopenic dogs, and 13 of the 24 non-thrombocytopenic dogs had detectable levels of platelet-binding immunoglobulins, but none of the control dogs did so. The differences were significantly different for both IgM and IgG platelet-binding antibodies

<i>In vivo </i>and <i>in vitro</i> protein imaging in thermophilic archaea by exploiting a novel protein tag

Protein imaging, allowing a wide variety of biological studies both in vitro and in vivo, is of great importance in modern biology. Protein and peptide tags fused to proteins of interest provide the opportunity to elucidate protein location and functions, detect protein-protein interactions, and measure protein activity and kinetics in living cells. Whereas several tags are suitable for protein imaging in mesophilic organisms, the application of this approach to microorganisms living at high temperature has lagged behind. Archaea provide an excellent and unique model for understanding basic cell biology mechanisms. Here, we present the development of a toolkit for protein imaging in the hyperthermophilic archaeon Sulfolobus islandicus. The system relies on a thermostable protein tag (H5) constructed by engineering the alkylguanine-DNA-alkyl-transferase protein of Sulfolobus solfataricus, which can be covalently labeled using a wide range of small molecules. As a suitable host, we constructed, by CRISPR-based genome-editing technology, a S. islandicus mutant strain deleted for the alkylguanine-DNA-alkyl-transferase gene (Δogt). Introduction of a plasmid-borne H5 gene in this strain led to production of a functional H5 protein, which was successfully labeled with appropriate fluorescent molecules and visualized in cell extracts as well as in Δogt live cells. H5 was fused to reverse gyrase, a peculiar thermophile-specific DNA topoisomerase endowed with positive supercoiling activity, and allowed visualization of the enzyme in living cells. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report of in vivo imaging of any protein of a thermophilic archaeon, filling an important gap in available tools for cell biology studies in these organisms

A novel thermostable protein-tag: optimization of the Sulfolobus solfataricus DNA- alkyl-transferase by protein engineering

In the last decade, a powerful biotechnological tool for the in vivo and in vitro specific labeling of proteins (SNAP-tag™ technology) was proposed as a valid alternative to classical protein-tags (green fluorescent proteins, GFPs). This was made possible by the discovery of the irreversible reaction of the human alkylguanine-DNA-alkyl-transferase (hAGT) in the presence of benzyl-guanine derivatives. However, the mild reaction conditions and the general instability of the mesophilic SNAP-tag™ make this new approach not fully applicable to (hyper-)thermophilic and, in general, extremophilic organisms. Here, we introduce an engineered variant of the thermostable alkylguanine-DNA-alkyl-transferase from the Archaea Sulfolobus solfataricus (SsOGT-H5), which displays a catalytic efficiency comparable to the SNAP-tag™ protein, but showing high intrinsic stability typical of proteins from this organism. The successful heterologous expression obtained in a thermophilic model organism makes SsOGT-H5 a valid candidate as protein-tag for organisms living in extreme environments

ensembles of probabilistic principal surfaces and competitive evolution on data two different approaches to data classification

Probabilistic Principal Surfaces (PPS) offer very powerful visualization and classification capabilities and overcome most of the shortcomings of other neural tools such as SOM, GTM, etc. More specifically PPS build a probability density function of a given data set of patterns lying in a D-dimensional space (with D ≫ 3) which can be expressed in terms of a limited number of latent variables laying in a Q-dimensional space (Q is usually 2-3) which can be used to visualize the data in the latent space. PPS may also be arranged in ensembles to tackle very complex classification tasks. Competitive Evolution on Data (CED) is instead an evolutionary system in which the possible solutions (cluster centroids) compete to conquer the largest possible number of resources (data) and thus partition the input data set in clusters. We discuss the application of Spherical-PPS to two data sets coming, respectively, from astronomy (Great Observatory Origins Deep Survey) and from genetics (microarray data from yeast genoma) and of CED to the genetics data only

Dissection of reverse gyrase activities: insight into the evolution of a thermostable molecular machine†

Reverse gyrase is a peculiar DNA topoisomerase, specific of thermophilic microorganisms, which induces positive supercoiling into DNA molecules in an ATP-dependent reaction. It is a modular enzyme and comprises an N-terminal helicase-like module fused to a C-terminal topoisomerase IA-like domain. The exact molecular mechanism of this unique reaction is not understood, and a fundamental mechanistic question is how its distinct steps are coordinated. We studied the cross-talk between the components of this molecular motor and probed communication between the DNA-binding sites and the different activities (DNA relaxation, ATP hydrolysis and positive supercoiling). We show that the isolated ATPase and topoisomerase domains of reverse gyrase form specific physical interactions, retain their own DNA binding and enzymatic activities, and when combined cooperate to achieve the unique ATP-dependent positive supercoiling activity. Our results indicate a mutual effect of both domains on all individual steps of the reaction. The C-terminal domain shows ATP-independent topoisomerase activity, which is repressed by the N-terminal domain in the full-length enzyme; experiments with the isolated domains showed that the C-terminal domain has stimulatory influence on the ATPase activity of the N-terminal domain. In addition, the two domains showed a striking reciprocal thermostabilization effect

Inhibition of translesion DNA polymerase by archaeal reverse gyrase

Reverse gyrase is a unique DNA topoisomerase endowed with ATP-dependent positive supercoiling activity. It is typical of microorganisms living at high temperature and might play a role in maintenance of genome stability and repair. We have identified the translesion DNA polymerase SsoPolY/Dpo4 as one partner of reverse gyrase in the hyperthermophilic archaeon Sulfolobus solfataricus. We show here that in cell extracts, PolY and reverse gyrase co-immunoprecipitate with each other and with the single strand binding protein, SSB. The interaction is confirmed in vitro by far-western and Surface Plasmon Resonance. In functional assays, reverse gyrase inhibits PolY, but not the S. solfataricus B-family DNA polymerase PolB1. Mutational analysis shows that inhibition of PolY activity depends on both ATPase and topoisomerase activities of reverse gyrase, suggesting that the intact positive supercoiling activity is required for PolY inhibition. In vivo, reverse gyrase and PolY are degraded after induction of DNA damage. Inhibition by reverse gyrase and degradation might act as a double mechanism to control PolY and prevent its potentially mutagenic activity when undesired. Inhibition of a translesion polymerase by topoisomerase-induced modification of DNA structure may represent a previously unconsidered mechanism of regulation of these two-faced enzymes

HIV Capsid is a Tractable Target for Small Molecule Therapeutic Intervention

Despite a high current standard of care in antiretroviral therapy for HIV, multidrug-resistant strains continue to emerge, underscoring the need for additional novel mechanism inhibitors that will offer expanded therapeutic options in the clinic. We report a new class of small molecule antiretroviral compounds that directly target HIV-1 capsid (CA) via a novel mechanism of action. The compounds exhibit potent antiviral activity against HIV-1 laboratory strains, clinical isolates, and HIV-2, and inhibit both early and late events in the viral replication cycle. We present mechanistic studies indicating that these early and late activities result from the compound affecting viral uncoating and assembly, respectively. We show that amino acid substitutions in the N-terminal domain of HIV-1 CA are sufficient to confer resistance to this class of compounds, identifying CA as the target in infected cells. A high-resolution co-crystal structure of the compound bound to HIV-1 CA reveals a novel binding pocket in the N-terminal domain of the protein. Our data demonstrate that broad-spectrum antiviral activity can be achieved by targeting this new binding site and reveal HIV CA as a tractable drug target for HIV therapy