University of Texas / M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Newsletter

Monthly report discussing cancer care and research to inform physicians

University of Texas / M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Newsletter

Monthly report discussing cancer care and research to inform physicians

University of Texas / M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Newsletter

Monthly report discussing cancer care and research to inform physicians

University of Texas / M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Newsletter

Monthly report discussing cancer care and research to inform physicians

University of Texas / M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Newsletter

Monthly report discussing cancer care and research to inform physicians

University of Texas / M.D. Anderson Cancer Center Newsletter

Monthly report discussing cancer care and research to inform physicians

Sucrose is an early modulator of the key hormonal mechanisms controlling bud outgrowth in Rosa hybrida

Sugar has only recently been identified as a key player in triggering bud outgrowth, while hormonal control of bud outgrowth is already well established. To get a better understanding of sugar control, the present study investigated how sugar availability modulates the hormonal network during bud outgrowth in Rosa hybrida. Other plant models, for which mutants are available, were used when necessary. Buds were grown in vitro to manipulate available sugars. The temporal patterns of the hormonal regulatory network were assessed in parallel with bud outgrowth dynamics. Sucrose determined bud entrance into sustained growth in a concentration-dependent manner. Sustained growth was accompanied by sustained auxin production in buds, and sustained auxin export in a DR5::GUS-expressing pea line. Several events occurred ahead of sucrose-stimulated bud outgrowth. Sucrose upregulated early auxin synthesis genes (RhTAR1, RhYUC1) and the auxin efflux carrier gene RhPIN1, and promoted PIN1 abundance at the plasma membrane in a pPIN1::PIN1-GFP-expressing tomato line. Sucrose downregulated both RwMAX2, involved in the strigolactone-transduction pathway, and RhBRC1, a repressor of branching, at an early stage. The presence of sucrose also increased stem cytokinin content, but sucrose-promoted bud outgrowth was not related to that pathway. In these processes, several non-metabolizable sucrose analogues induced sustained bud outgrowth in R. hybrida, Pisum sativum, and Arabidopsis thaliana, suggesting that sucrose was involved in a signalling pathway. In conclusion, we identified potential hormonal candidates for bud outgrowth control by sugar. They are central to future investigations aimed at disentangling the processes that underlie regulation of bud outgrowth by sugar

Distribution and asymptotic behavior of the phylogenetic transfer distance

The transfer distance (TD) was introduced in the classification framework and studied in the context of phylogenetic tree matching. Recently, Lemoine et al. (2018) showed that TD can be a powerful tool to assess the branch support of phylogenies with large data sets, thus providing a relevant alternative to Felsenstein's bootstrap. This distance allows a reference branch β in a reference tree T to be compared to a branch b from another tree T, both on the same set of n taxa. The TD between these branches is the number of taxa that must be transferred from one side of b to the other in order to obtain β. By taking the minimum TD from β to all branches in T we define the transfer index, denoted by ϕ(β,T), measuring the degree of agreement of T with β. Let us consider a reference branch β having p tips on its light side and define the transfer support (TS) as 1 - ϕ(β,T)/(p-1). The aim of this article is to provide evidence that p-1 is a meaningful normalization constant in the definition of TS, and measure the statistical significance of TS, assuming that β is compared to a tree T drawn according to a null model. We obtain several results that shed light on these questions in a number of settings. In particular, we study the asymptotic behavior of TS when n tends to ∞, and fully characterize the distribution of ϕ when T is a caterpillar tree

In vitro degradation of porous poly(propylene fumarate)/poly(DL-lactic-co-glycolic acid) composite scaffolds.

Contains fulltext : 47475.pdf (publisher's version ) (Closed access)This study investigated the in vitro degradation of porous poly(propylene fumarate) (PPF-based) composites incorporating microparticles of blends of poly(DL-lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) and poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) during a 26-week period in pH 7.4 phosphate-buffered saline at 37 degrees C. Using a fractional factorial design, four formulations of composite scaffolds were fabricated with varying PEG content of the microparticles, microparticle mass fraction of the composite material, and initial leachable porogen content of the scaffold formulations. PPF scaffolds without microparticles were fabricated with varying leachable porogen content for use as controls. The effects of including PLGA/PEG microparticles in PPF scaffolds and the influence of alterations in the composite formulation on scaffold mass, geometry, water absorption, mechanical properties and porosity were examined for cylindrical specimens with lengths of 13 mm and diameters of 6.5 mm. The composite scaffold composition affected the extent of loss of polymer mass, scaffold length, and diameter, with the greatest loss of polymer mass equal to 15+/-5% over 26 weeks. No formulation, however, exhibited any variation in compressive modulus or peak compressive strength over time. Additionally, sample porosity, as determined by both mercury porosimetry and micro-computed tomography did not change during the period of this study. These results demonstrate that microparticle carriers can be incorporated into PPF scaffolds for localized delivery of bioactive molecules without altering scaffold mechanical or structural properties up to 26 weeks in vitro