Spontaneous Breaking of Gauge Groups to Discrete Symmetries

Many models of beyond Standard Model physics connect flavor symmetry with a discrete group. Having this symmetry arise spontaneously from a gauge theory maintains compatibility with quantum gravity and can be used to systematically prevent anomalies. We minimize a number of Higgs potentials that break gauge groups to discrete symmetries of interest, and examine their scalar mass spectra.Comment: 45 page

Arousal of Cancer-Associated Stroma: Overexpression of Palladin Activates Fibroblasts to Promote Tumor Invasion

Background: Cancer-associated fibroblasts, comprised of activated fibroblasts or myofibroblasts, are found in the stroma surrounding solid tumors. These myofibroblasts promote invasion and metastasis of cancer cells. Mechanisms regulating the activation of the fibroblasts and the initiation of invasive tumorigenesis are of great interest. Upregulation of the cytoskeletal protein, palladin, has been detected in the stromal myofibroblasts surrounding many solid cancers and in expression screens for genes involved in invasion. Using a pancreatic cancer model, we investigated the functional consequence of overexpression of exogenous palladin in normal fibroblasts in vitro and its effect on the early stages of tumor invasion. Principal Findings: Palladin expression in stromal fibroblasts occurs very early in tumorigenesis. In vivo, concordant expression of palladin and the myofibroblast marker, alpha smooth muscle actin (a-SMA), occurs early at the dysplastic stages in peri-tumoral stroma and progressively increases in pancreatic tumorigenesis. In vitro introduction of exogenous 90 kD palladin into normal human dermal fibroblasts (HDFs) induces activation of stromal fibroblasts into myofibroblasts as marked by induction of a-SMA and vimentin, and through the physical change of cell morphology. Moreover, palladin expression in the fibroblasts enhances cellular migration, invasion through the extracellular matrix, and creation of tunnels through which cancer cells can follow. The fibroblast invasion and creation of tunnels results from the development o

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