Rte-1, a retrotransposon-like element in Caenorhabditis elegans

AbstractWe have characterized a retrotransposon-like element (Rte-1) in C. elegans. It was identified while we were sequencing the pim related kinase-1 (prk-1) gene. The element is 3,298 bp long and flanked by a 200 bp direct repeat. 95 bp of the direct repeat are present in the coding region of prk-1. Rte-1 contains an open reading frame, in the opposite orientation of prk-1, potentially encoding 625 amino acids, with similarity to reverse transcriptases. The element is most similar to members of the non-LTR group of retrotransposable elements. There is weak homology of the predicted amino acid sequence of Rte-1 to several reverse transcriptase-like genes identified by the C. elegans genome sequencing consortium, suggesting that there may be a large family of these elements. Southern blots indicate that there are approximately 10–15 additional Rte-1 elements in the C. elegans Bristol N2 genome and a similar number is found in the genomes of two other geographically distinct strains. The insertion pattern of Rte-1 is polymorphic between these strains

A New Boson with a Mass of 125 GeV Observed with the CMS Experiment at the Large Hadron Collider

The Higgs boson was postulated nearly five decades ago within the framework of the standard model of particle physics and has been the subject of numerous searches at accelerators around the world. Its discovery would verify the existence of a complex scalar field thought to give mass to three of the carriers of the electroweak force-the W+, W-, and Z(0) bosons-as well as to the fundamental quarks and leptons. The CMS Collaboration has observed, with a statistical significance of five standard deviations, a new particle produced in proton-proton collisions at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. The evidence is strongest in the diphoton and four-lepton (electrons and/or muons) final states, which provide the best mass resolution in the CMS detector. The probability of the observed signal being due to a random fluctuation of the background is about 1 in 3 x 10(6). The new particle is a boson with spin not equal to 1 and has a mass of about 1.25 giga-electron volts. Although its measured properties are, within the uncertainties of the present data, consistent with those expected of the Higgs boson, more data are needed to elucidate the precise nature of the new particle

Observation of a new boson at a mass of 125 GeV with the CMS experiment at the LHC

The article is the pre-print version of the final publishing paper that is available from the link below.Results are presented from searches for the standard model Higgs boson in proton–proton collisions At √s = 7 and 8 TeV in the Compact Muon Solenoid experiment at the LHC, using data samples corresponding to integrated luminosities of up to 5.1 fb−1 at 7TeV and 5.3 fb−1 at 8 TeV. The search is performed in five decay modes: γγ, ZZ, W+W−, τ+τ−, and bb. An excess of events is observed above the expected background, with a local significance of 5.0 standard deviations, at a mass near 125 GeV, signalling the production of a new particle. The expected significance for a standard model Higgs boson of that mass is 5.8 standard deviations. The excess is most significant in the two decay modes with the best mass resolution, γγ and ZZ; a fit to these signals gives a mass of 125.3±0.4(stat.)±0.5(syst.) GeV. The decay to two photons indicates that the new particle is a boson with spin different from one