Ariel - Volume 4 Number 1

Editors David A. Jacoby Eugenia Miller Tom Williams Associate Editors Paul Bialas Terry Burt Michael Leo Gail Tenikat Editor Emeritus and Business Manager Richard J. Bonnano Movie Editor Robert Breckenridg

EDDY CURRENT DETECTION OF Al-Si PENETRATIONS IN CANNED SLUGS

An instrument for detecting Al-Si alloy penetrations in the Al jacket of fuel slugs is described. The instrument is of the eddy current type, and the sensing element is a small probe that does not touch the specimen under inspection. Al-Si inclusions 0.020 in. in diameter that penetrate to within 0.005 in. of the can surface can be detected. The response of the circuits is such that a slug 8 in. long can be scanned in 45 sec. (auth

Multidimensional scaling reveals a color dimension unique to 'color-deficient' observers

Normal color vision depends on the relative rates at which photons are absorbed in three types of retinal cone:short-wave (S), middle-wave (M) and long-wave (L) cones, maximally sensitive near 430, 530 and 560nm, respectively. But 6% of men exhibit an X-linked variant form of color vision called deuteranomaly [1]. Their color vision is thought to depend on S cones and two forms of long-wave cone (L, L′) [2,3]. The two types of L cone contain photopigments that are maximally sensitive near 560nm, but their spectral sensitivities are different enough that the ratio of their activations gives a useful chromatic signal

DOE 6430.1a compliance checklist for the rotary mode core sampling exhauster flammable gas interlock

This document examines the Safety Class I criteria in DOE 6430.1a and determines applicability to the rotary mode core sampling exhauster flammable gas interlock. Purpose of the interlock is to prevent the design basis accident of deflagration in single shell flammable gas watchlist tank

G protein-coupled receptor kinase 2 is a Rho-dependent scaffold protein for the ERK MAPK cascade

The G protein-coupled receptor kinases (GRKs) are best known for their role in phosphorylating and desensitising G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs). The GRKs can also regulate signalling downstream of other families of receptors and are now known to have a number of non-receptor substrates and binding partners. Here I identify RhoAGTP, Raf1 and ERK2 as novel binding partners of GRK2 and report a previously unsuspected function for this kinase. GRK2 acts as a RhoA-activated scaffold protein for the ERK MAP kinase cascade downstream of the epidermal growth factor (EGF) receptor. The ability of GRK2 to bind to Raf1, MEK1 and ERK2 is dependent on RhoAGTP binding to the catalytic domain of the kinase, however, while RhoAGTP binding is common to all of the ubiquitously expressed GRKs, the ability to act as a RhoA-regulated Raf/MEK/ERK scaffold is specific to GRK2. GRK2 over-expression in HEK-293 cells potentiates EGF-induced ERK activation in a Rho-dependent fashion. Conversely, depleting GRK2 expression by RNAi reveals that GRK2 is required for EGF-induced thymidine incorporation in vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs). Rho-dependent ERK MAP kinase scaffolding by GRK2 may therefore have an important role in the vasculature, where increased levels of GRK2 and RhoA have been associated with hypertension

Design and analysis of Bar-seq experiments

High-throughput quantitative DNA sequencing enables the parallel phenotyping of pools of thousands of mutants. However, the appropriate analytical methods and experimental design that maximize the efficiency of these methods while maintaining statistical power are currently unknown. Here, we have used Bar-seq analysis of the Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast deletion library to systematically test the effect of experimental design parameters and sequence read depth on experimental results. We present computational methods that efficiently and accurately estimate effect sizes and their statistical significance by adapting existing methods for RNA-seq analysis. Using simulated variation of experimental designs, we found that biological replicates are critical for statistical analysis of Bar-seq data, whereas technical replicates are of less value. By subsampling sequence reads, we found that when using four-fold biological replication, 6 million reads per condition achieved 96% power to detect a two-fold change (or more) at a 5% false discovery rate. Our guidelines for experimental design and computational analysis enables the study of the yeast deletion collection in up to 30 different conditions in a single sequencing lane. These findings are relevant to a variety of pooled genetic screening methods that use high-throughput quantitative DNA sequencing, including Tn-seq