Cosmology of the Tachyon in Brane Inflation

In certain implementations of the brane inflationary paradigm, the exit from inflation occurs when the branes annihilate through tachyon condensation. We investigate various cosmological effects produced by this tachyonic era. We find that only a very small region of the parameter space (corresponding to slow-roll with tiny inflaton mass) allows for the tachyon to contribute some e-folds to inflation. In addition, non-adiabatic density perturbations are generated at the end of inflation. When the brane is moving relativistically this contribution can be of the same order as fluctuations produced 55 e-folds before the end of inflation. The additional contribution is very nearly scale-invariant and enhances the tensor/scalar ratio. Additional non-gaussianities will also be generated, sharpening current constraints on DBI-type models which already predict a significantly non-gaussian signal.Comment: 30 pages, 2 figures; v3, minor revision, JCAP versio

GWAS of bipolar disorder

Genome-wide association studies (GWASs) have identified several susceptibility loci for bipolar disorder (BD) and shown that the genetic architecture of BD can be explained by polygenicity, with numerous variants contributing to BD. In the present GWAS (Phase I/II), which included 2964 BD and 61 887 control subjects from the Japanese population, we detected a novel susceptibility locus at 11q12.2 (rs28456, P=6.4 × 10−9), a region known to contain regulatory genes for plasma lipid levels (FADS1/2/3). A subsequent meta-analysis of Phase I/II and the Psychiatric GWAS Consortium for BD (PGC-BD) identified another novel BD gene, NFIX (P best=5.8 × 10−10), and supported three regions previously implicated in BD susceptibility: MAD1L1 (P best=1.9 × 10−9), TRANK1 (P best=2.1 × 10−9) and ODZ4 (P best=3.3 × 10−9). Polygenicity of BD within Japanese and trans-European-Japanese populations was assessed with risk profile score analysis. We detected higher scores in BD cases both within (Phase I/II) and across populations (Phase I/II and PGC-BD). These were defined by (1) Phase II as discovery and Phase I as target, or vice versa (for ‘within Japanese comparisons’, Pbest~10−29, R2~2%), and (2) European PGC-BD as discovery and Japanese BD (Phase I/II) as target (for ‘trans-European-Japanese comparison,’ Pbest~10−13, R2~0.27%). This ‘trans population’ effect was supported by estimation of the genetic correlation using the effect size based on each population (liability estimates~0.7). These results indicate that (1) two novel and three previously implicated loci are significantly associated with BD and that (2) BD ‘risk’ effect are shared between Japanese and European populations

Sleep duration and the risk of breast cancer: the Ohsaki Cohort Study

In a prospective study of 23 995 Japanese women, short sleep duration was associated with higher risk of breast cancer (143 cases), compared with women who slept 7 h per day, the multivariate hazard ratio of those who slept ⩽6 h per day was 1.62 (95% confidence interval: 1.05–2.50; P for trend=0.03)

Crk and CrkL adaptor proteins: networks for physiological and pathological signaling

The Crk adaptor proteins (Crk and CrkL) constitute an integral part of a network of essential signal transduction pathways in humans and other organisms that act as major convergence points in tyrosine kinase signaling. Crk proteins integrate signals from a wide variety of sources, including growth factors, extracellular matrix molecules, bacterial pathogens, and apoptotic cells. Mounting evidence indicates that dysregulation of Crk proteins is associated with human diseases, including cancer and susceptibility to pathogen infections. Recent structural work has identified new and unusual insights into the regulation of Crk proteins, providing a rationale for how Crk can sense diverse signals and produce a myriad of biological responses

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead