Searching for hot Jupiter transits around cool stars

In this thesis, I describe the search for transiting hot Jupiters with a focus on cool dwarfs, low-mass main-sequence stars. I detail the results of our Pan-Planets survey and the necessary follow-up and show a discovered planet in the Beehive cluster M44, a transiting hot Neptune around an M dwarf. Finally, I evaluate our results in the context of planet occurrence rate and demonstrate that we set more precise limits for hot Jupiters in M dwarf systems than other projects before us.Deutsche Übersetzung des Titels: Die Suche nach heißen Jupiter-Transits um kühle Stern

Searching for hot Jupiter transits around cool stars

In this thesis, I describe the search for transiting hot Jupiters with a focus on cool dwarfs, low-mass main-sequence stars. I detail the results of our Pan-Planets survey and the necessary follow-up and show a discovered planet in the Beehive cluster M44, a transiting hot Neptune around an M dwarf. Finally, I evaluate our results in the context of planet occurrence rate and demonstrate that we set more precise limits for hot Jupiters in M dwarf systems than other projects before us.Deutsche Übersetzung des Titels: Die Suche nach heißen Jupiter-Transits um kühle Stern

Gene expression profiling via LongSAGE in a non-model plant species: a case study in seeds of Brassica napus

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Serial analysis of gene expression (LongSAGE) was applied for gene expression profiling in seeds of oilseed rape (<it>Brassica napus </it>ssp. <it>napus)</it>. The usefulness of this technique for detailed expression profiling in a non-model organism was demonstrated for the highly complex, neither fully sequenced nor annotated genome of <it>B. napus </it>by applying a tag-to-gene matching strategy based on <it>Brassica </it>ESTs and the annotated proteome of the closely related model crucifer <it>A. thaliana</it>.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Transcripts from 3,094 genes were detected at two time-points of seed development, 23 days and 35 days after pollination (DAP). Differential expression showed a shift from gene expression involved in diverse developmental processes including cell proliferation and seed coat formation at 23 DAP to more focussed metabolic processes including storage protein accumulation and lipid deposition at 35 DAP. The most abundant transcripts at 23 DAP were coding for diverse protease inhibitor proteins and proteases, including cysteine proteases involved in seed coat formation and a number of lipid transfer proteins involved in embryo pattern formation. At 35 DAP, transcripts encoding napin, cruciferin and oleosin storage proteins were most abundant. Over both time-points, 18.6% of the detected genes were matched by <it>Brassica </it>ESTs identified by LongSAGE tags in antisense orientation. This suggests a strong involvement of antisense transcript expression in regulatory processes during <it>B. napu</it>s seed development.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>This study underlines the potential of transcript tagging approaches for gene expression profiling in <it>Brassica </it>crop species via EST matching to annotated <it>A. thaliana </it>genes. Limits of tag detection for low-abundance transcripts can today be overcome by ultra-high throughput sequencing approaches, so that tag-based gene expression profiling may soon become the method of choice for global expression profiling in non-model species.</p

Subject-Oriented Business Process Management

Activities performed in organizations are coordinated via communication between the people involved. The sentences used to communicate are naturally structured by subject, verb, and object. The subject describes the actor, the verb the action and the object what is affected by the action. Subject-oriented Business Process Management (S-BPM) as presented in this book is based on this simple structure which enables process-oriented thinking and process modeling. S-BPM puts the subject of a process at the center of attention and thus deals with business processes and their organizational environment from a new perspective, meeting organizational requirements in a much better way than traditional approaches. Subjects represent agents of an action in a process, which can be either technical or human (e.g. a thread in an IT system or a clerk). A process structures the actions of each subject and coordinates the required communication among the subjects. S-BPM provides a coherent procedural framework to model and analyze business processes: its focus is the cooperation of all stakeholders involved in the strategic, tactical, and operational issues, sharing their knowledge in a networked structure. The authors illustrate how each modeling activity through the whole development lifecycle can be supported through the use of appropriate software tools. The presentation style focuses on professionals in industry, and on students specializing in process management or organizational modeling. Each chapter begins with a summary of key findings and is full of examples, hints, and possible pitfalls. An interpreter model, a toolbox, and a glossary summarizing the main terms complete the book. The web site www.i2pm.net provides additional software tools and further material

Subject-Oriented Business Process Management

Information Systems Applications (incl.Internet); Business Information Systems; Computer Appl. in Administrative Data Processing; Management of Computing and Information System

Subject-Oriented Business Process Management

Information Systems Applications (incl.Internet); Business Information Systems; Computer Appl. in Administrative Data Processing; Management of Computing and Information System

Direct access to millions of mutations by whole genome sequencing of an oilseed rape mutant population

Induced mutations are an essential source of genetic variation in plant breeding. Ethyl methanesulfonate (EMS) mutagenesis has been frequently applied, and mutants have been detected by phenotypic or genotypic screening of large populations. In the present study, a rapeseed M2 population was derived from M1 parent cultivar 'Express' treated with EMS. Whole genomes were sequenced from fourfold (4×) pools of 1988 M2 plants representing 497 M2 families. Detected mutations were not evenly distributed and displayed distinct patterns across the 19 chromosomes with lower mutation rates towards the ends. Mutation frequencies ranged from 32/Mb to 48/Mb. On average, 284 442 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) per M2 DNA pool were found resulting from EMS mutagenesis. 55% of the SNPs were C → T and G → A transitions, characteristic for EMS induced ('canonical') mutations, whereas the remaining SNPs were 'non-canonical' transitions (15%) or transversions (30%). Additionally, we detected 88 725 high confidence insertions and deletions per pool. On average, each M2 plant carried 39 120 canonical mutations, corresponding to a frequency of one mutation per 23.6 kb. Approximately 82% of such mutations were located either 5 kb upstream or downstream (56%) of gene coding regions or within intergenic regions (26%). The remaining 18% were located within regions coding for genes. All mutations detected by whole genome sequencing could be verified by comparison with known mutations. Furthermore, all sequences are accessible via the online tool 'EMSBrassica' (http://www.emsbrassica.plantbreeding.uni-kiel.de), which enables direct identification of mutations in any target sequence. The sequence resource described here will further add value for functional gene studies in rapeseed breeding

Linkage disequilibrium in the genome of synthetic Brassica napus populations

New technologies as high-density single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping arrays are a powerful tool that can give valuable insight into patterns of linkage disequilibrium (LD) in the recent domesticated Brassica napus genome. This study used the Brassica 60k SNP Illumina consortium genotyping array to assess the distribution of LD and haplotype structure in a diverse panel of 200 synthetic lines of winter oilseed rape (Brassica napus). Pairwise LD analysis was conducted within the A- and C-subgenomes of oilseed rape. Results revealed that LD decayed, on average, more rapidly in the A-subgenome (0.15 Mb) than in the C-subgenome (2.00 Mb). Our findings suggest the presence of a strong selection of large genomic regions associated with important agronomical traits, especially on the Csubgenome. These results imply that during oilseed rape artificial and natural selection, the C-subgenome was of particular interest for breeders. Increasing the genetic diversity and recombination rate on the whole genome level is of crucial importance for future breeding efforts