Proteomics analysis for amino acid misincorporation detection: mini review

Protein biosynthesis is a highly accurate biological process essential for life. Amino acid misincorporation errors (mistranslation) normally occur at low levels, but can increase sharply upon amino acid starvation, exposure to drugs, oxidative stress and other physiological perturbations. These processes disrupt protein function and are normally regarded as being deleterious, however, recent work has shown that they can also be regulated to produce advantageous phenotypes in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes. The biology of such unexpected adaptive mistranslation is poorly understood due to technical difficulties in the identification and quantification of amino acid misincorporations. In this mini-review, we describe proteome scale methodologies involving the use of massspectrometry and bioinformatics tools to directly detect and quantify mistranslation events and also indirect functional methods that permit sensitive, flexible and low-cost analysis of site specific amino acid variation.publishe

A Framework for the Design and Implementation of Learning Objects: a Competence-based Approach

This paper presents a framework for the design and implementation of learning objects using a competence-based approach. This framework is illustrated by the development of a standalone Windows application (Trilho GOA) whose primary purpose is to create standardized pedagogical contents trough the aggregation and standardization of instructional resources in several formats that can be used later on a Learning Management System (LMS) supporting SCORM 1.2. The paper contains a brief introduction to the developed software, its system architecture, main features and several pedagogical advantages for its users

Reproductive biology of winter-spring spawners of Illex argentinus (Cephalopoda: Ommastrephidae) off Southern Brazil

The reproduction and fecundity of winter-spring spawners of the shortfin squid Illex argentinus off southern Brazil (27°S-34°S) were studied in samples from bottom trawl surveys on the outer shelf and upper slope from 1986 to 1992. The mantle length-total weight relationships were for males: TW = 0.00002456 ML2.974 for females: TW = 0.00004265 ML 2.842 and pooled: TW = 0.00005376 ML 2.809. Males were heavier than females at the same ML. Fully mature squids were found from July to October. Mantle length and total weight of fully mature males ranged from 188 to 296 mm (mean 252.2 mm) and 195.5 to 611 g (mean 382.7 g) and for females from 225 to 356 mm (mean 307.4 mm) and 234 to 772 g (mean 558.4 g). Total weight was maximum at full maturity and decreased in the subsequent stages of both sexes. Mean weight and mean major axis length of ripe oocytes in the oviducts were 0.48 mg (sd= 0.10 mg) and 1.27 mm (sd= 0.08 mm), respectively. Total and oviduct mean fecundities, in thousands of oocytes larger than 0.4 mm, in ten fully mature females (294-336 mm ML) were 177.2 (93.0 to 294.3) and 118.4 (51.5 to 233.9), respectively. Spawning season in this region seems to be more protracted than in higher latitudes. Our results suggest that a northward migration could take place prior to spawning and that in winter and spring, southern Brazil may be a major spawning ground of Illex argentinus that contributes to the local and to the Uruguay and northeastern Argentina recruitment

Entrepreneurship research: A bibliometric study of the EnANPADs 1997-2008

We have witnessed a fast growth in academic interest on entrepreneurship over the past two to three decades, although at disparate paces in different countries. A wealth of papers presented and published, books, dedicated journals, websites, professional and research groups have emerged accompanying this increased interest. It is thus important to understand what are these scholars studying. In this paper we examine the state of the art in entrepreneurship research in Brazil, by scrutinizing the entire track record of the papers presented at the EnANPAD over a twelve years period: 1997 -to 2008. The results of the bibliometric analysis revealed that entrepreneurship research maintains a broad spectrum of interests, focusing both on contextual, individual and process issues. Less visible is a unified theoretical background or the use of established theories foundational to other management disciplines. It is notable the increase in Brazilian entrepreneurship research, both empiric, theoretical and case-study based. We conclude with an umbrella discussion and suggestions for future research.entrepreneurship research, entrepreneur, bibliometric study, EnANPAD

Mergers & Acquisitions research: A bibliometric study of top strategy journals, 2000 - 2009

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are important modes through which firms undertake their domestic and international strategies. This bibliometric review examines the extant research on M&As in the top five strategic management journals during a ten years period ? from 2000 to 2009. The 90 articles identified in these top journals denote an eclectic theoretical focus with the prevalence of four theories ? resource-based view, transaction costs, agency theory and institutional theory. We present a brief analysis of the key issues in M&A research, as well as the samples and theories more commonly used. We conclude by presenting a broad discussion comprising the methods used, the research questions investigated, the type of articles, as well as limitations and avenues for future enquiry.mergers & acquisitions; strategic management journals, bibliometric study

Evolution of collective action in adaptive social structures

Many problems in nature can be conveniently framed as a problem of evolution of collective cooperative behaviour, often modelled resorting to the tools of evolutionary game theory in well-mixed populations, combined with an appropriate N-person dilemma. Yet, the well-mixed assumption fails to describe the population dynamics whenever individuals have a say in deciding which groups they will participate. Here we propose a simple model in which dynamical group formation is described as a result of a topological evolution of a social network of interactions. We show analytically how evolutionary dynamics under public goods games in finite adaptive networks can be effectively transformed into a N-Person dilemma involving both coordination and co-existence. Such dynamics would be impossible to foresee from more conventional 2-person interactions as well as from descriptions based on infinite, well-mixed populations. Finally, we show how stochastic effects help rendering cooperation viable, promoting polymorphic configurations in which cooperators prevail.This research was supported by FCT-Portugal through grants PTDC/FIS/101248/2008 and PTDC/MAT/122897/2010, by multi-annual funding of CMAF-UL and INESC-ID (under the project PEst-OE/EEI/LA0021/2011) provided by FCT-Portugal. Partial Financial support by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. NSF PHY11-25915 is also gratefully acknowledged

Emergent social NPC interactions in the Social NPCs Skyrim mod and beyond

This work presents an implementation of a social architecture model for authoring Non-Player Character (NPC) in open world games inspired in academic research on agentbased modeling. Believable NPC authoring is burdensome in terms of rich dialogue and responsive behaviors. We briefly present the characteristics and advantages of using a social agent architecture for this task and describe an implementation of a social agent architecture CiF-CK released as a mod Social NPCs for The Elder Scrolls V: SkyrimComment: Originally a chapter for Game AI Pro, contains 14 pages, 3 figure

Transcriptome variability in yeast strains

In order to understand yeast natural genome and transcriptome variability and evaluate whether such variability correlates with phenotypic diversity, we have isolated approximately 1000 yeast strains from Portuguese vineyards, namely from the Bairrada and Minho wine regions, genotyped them and selected the most divergent ones for genome and transcriptome characterization, using comparative genome hybridization on array (aCGH) and mRNA profiling, respectively. For comparative purposes, strains isolated from opportunistic clinical infections and commercial strains used by the wine industry were also included in the study. Approximately 3 % of the ORFeome showed copy number alterations relative to the reference strain S288C, which was associated with sub-telomeric instability and Ty element transposition. Interestingly, one third of the Ty elements identified in the genome of the reference laboratory strain (S288C) were absent in the wine strains, but were present in the clinical isolates. Distinct gene functional classes were affected by copy number changes in wine and clinical strains. However, no correlation was found between genome alterations and geographical origin. Transcriptome profiling of the same strains grown in synthetic must, using a common reference design, showed important variation in mRNA levels during fermentation, in particular in the wine isolates. Some genes showed patterns of activation that were consistent with gene copy number differences, while others pointed to strain specific regulation. Substantial variability in expression levels were detected among genes associated with fermentation in the wine strains. Therefore, transcriptome variability is relevant to understand yeast adaptation to new ecological niches, yeast evolution, and also to design strategies to select strains with particular phenotypes.National Facility for DNAInstitute of Electronics and Telecommunications of the University of Aveiro (IEETA)Microarray - projecto Ref: CTS 12 (Instituto de Investigação da Universidade de Aveiro)Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - Bolsas CONC-REEQ/737/200, POCI/SAU-MMO/55476/2004, FEDER/POCI/BIA-PRO/55472/2004Biocant Institute, Cantanhede, Portugal

Transcriptome variability of yeast strains

Comunicação em forma de painel, apresentado por Laura CarretoThis work was supported by the National Facility for DNA Microarrays, The University of Aveiro and Biocant