Lower Permian facies of the Palo Duro Basin, Texas : depositional systems, shelf-margin evolution, paleogeography, and petroleum potential

UT Librarie

Uraniferous Asphaltine in Moore and Potter Counties, Texas

This report presents data regarding the origin, occurrence, distribution, and relative abundance of uraniferous asphaltite in the Red Cave Formation and "Panhandle lime" from Moore County and portions of Potter County, Texas. It is a brief survey that was based largely upon (1) microscopic examination of drill cuttings stored at the Well Sample and Core Library, University of Texas Balcones Research Center, and (2) megascopic examination of several cores loaned to the Bureau of Economic Geology by the U.S. Bureau of Mines - Branch of Helium Operations, Maynard Oil Company, and Colorado Interstate Gas Company.Bureau of Economic Geolog

Decelerating Spread of West Nile Virus by Percolation in a Heterogeneous Urban Landscape

Vector-borne diseases are emerging and re-emerging in urban environments throughout the world, presenting an increasing challenge to human health and a major obstacle to development. Currently, more than half of the global population is concentrated in urban environments, which are highly heterogeneous in the extent, degree, and distribution of environmental modifications. Because the prevalence of vector-borne pathogens is so closely coupled to the ecologies of vector and host species, this heterogeneity has the potential to significantly alter the dynamical systems through which pathogens propagate, and also thereby affect the epidemiological patterns of disease at multiple spatial scales. One such pattern is the speed of spread. Whereas standard models hold that pathogens spread as waves with constant or increasing speed, we hypothesized that heterogeneity in urban environments would cause decelerating travelling waves in incipient epidemics. To test this hypothesis, we analysed data on the spread of West Nile virus (WNV) in New York City (NYC), the 1999 epicentre of the North American pandemic, during annual epizootics from 2000–2008. These data show evidence of deceleration in all years studied, consistent with our hypothesis. To further explain these patterns, we developed a spatial model for vector-borne disease transmission in a heterogeneous environment. An emergent property of this model is that deceleration occurs only in the vicinity of a critical point. Geostatistical analysis suggests that NYC may be on the edge of this criticality. Together, these analyses provide the first evidence for the endogenous generation of decelerating travelling waves in an emerging infectious disease. Since the reported deceleration results from the heterogeneity of the environment through which the pathogen percolates, our findings suggest that targeting control at key sites could efficiently prevent pathogen spread to remote susceptible areas or even halt epidemics

The Evolution of Extracellular Fibrillins and Their Functional Domains

Fibrillins constitute the major backbone of multifunctional microfibrils in elastic and non-elastic extracellular matrices, and are known to interact with several binding partners including tropoelastin and integrins. Here, we study the evolution of fibrillin proteins. Following sequence collection from 39 organisms representative of the major evolutionary groups, molecular evolutionary genetics and phylogeny inference software were used to generate a series of evolutionary trees using distance-based and maximum likelihood methods. The resulting trees support the concept of gene duplication as a means of generating the three vertebrate fibrillins. Beginning with a single fibrillin sequence found in invertebrates and jawless fish, a gene duplication event, which coincides with the appearance of elastin, led to the creation of two genes. One of the genes significantly evolved to become the gene for present-day fibrillin-1, while the other underwent evolutionary changes, including a second duplication, to produce present-day fibrillin-2 and fibrillin-3. Detailed analysis of several sequences and domains within the fibrillins reveals distinct similarities and differences across various species. The RGD integrin-binding site in TB4 of all fibrillins is conserved in cephalochordates and vertebrates, while the integrin-binding site within cbEGF18 of fibrillin-3 is a recent evolutionary change. The proline-rich domain in fibrillin-1, glycine-rich domain in fibrillin-2 and proline-/glycine-rich domain in fibrillin-3 are found in all analyzed tetrapod species, whereas it is completely replaced with an EGF-like domain in cnidarians, arthropods, molluscs and urochordates. All collected sequences contain the first 9-cysteine hybrid domain, and the second 8-cysteine hybrid domain with exception of arthropods containing an atypical 10-cysteine hybrid domain 2. Furin cleavage sites within the N- and C-terminal unique domains were found for all analyzed fibrillin sequences, indicating an essential role for processing of the fibrillin pro-proteins. The four cysteines in the unique N-terminus and the two cysteines in the unique C-terminus are also highly conserved

Facies patterns and depositional history of a Permian sabkha complex -- Red Cave Formation, Texas Panhandle

Project funded by U.S. Department of Energy contract no. DE-AC97-79ET-44614UT Librarie

Backbone ¹H, ¹³C and ¹⁵N resonance assignment of the C-terminal EGF-cbEGF pair of LTBP1 and flanking residues.

Latent TGFβ binding protein 1 (LTBP1) is a large extracellular protein that has been shown to bind covalently to the propeptide of TGFβ cytokines and form a large latent complex, which is then incapable of binding TGFβ receptors. LTBP1 has also been demonstrated to interact with a number of insoluble extracellular matrix components, such as fibrillin, which may play a role in TGFβ regulation. Here we present the backbone (1)H, (13)C and (15)N assignments for two EGF domains of human LTBP1, and flanking regions, together forming a 12 kDa protein fragment at the C-terminus of LTBP1. This region is of particular interest as it is postulated to be involved in interactions with fibrillin microfibrils

¹H, ¹³C and ¹⁵N assignments of the four N-terminal domains of human fibrillin-1.

Fibrillins are extracellular, disulphide-rich glycoproteins that form 10-12 nm diameter microfibrils in connective tissues. They are found in the majority of higher animals, from jellyfish to humans. Fibrillin microfibrils confer properties of elasticity and strength on connective tissue and regulate growth factor availability in the extracellular matrix (ECM). Mutations in FBN1, the human gene encoding the fibrillin-1 isoform, are linked to several inherited connective tissue disorders. The fibrillin-1 N-terminus forms many functionally-important interactions, both with other fibrillin molecules and various ECM components. In particular, the first four domains, the fibrillin unique N-terminal (FUN) and three epidermal growth factor (EGF)-like domains (FUN-EGF3), are implicated in microfibril assembly and growth factor sequestration. The structure of these domains, which comprise 134 residues, is unknown. We have produced a recombinant fragment corresponding to this region of human fibrillin-1. Here, we report (1)H, (13)C and (15)N resonance assignments of the FUN-EGF3 fragment. Assignments will facilitate structure determination, analysis of interdomain dynamics and the mapping of interaction surfaces