The crystal structure of the plant small GTPase OsRac1 reveals its mode of binding to NADPH oxidase

This research was originally published in Journal of Biological Chemistry. Ken-ichi Kosami, Izuru Ohki, Minoru Nagano, Kyoko Furuita, Toshihiko Sugiki, Yoji Kawano, Tsutomu Kawasaki, Toshimichi Fujiwara, Atsushi Nakagawa, Ko Shimamoto and Chojiro Kojima. The crystal structure of the plant small GTPase OsRac1 reveals its mode of binding to NADPH oxidase. Journal of Biological Chemistry. 2014; 289, 28569-28578. © the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

A novel clinical entity, IgG4-related disease (IgG4RD): general concept and details

IgG4-related disease (IgG4RD) is a novel clinical disease entity characterized by elevated serum IgG4 concentration and tumefaction or tissue infiltration by IgG4-positive plasma cells. IgG4RD may be present in a certain proportion of patients with a wide variety of diseases, including Mikulicz’s disease, autoimmune pancreatitis, hypophysitis, Riedel thyroiditis, interstitial pneumonitis, interstitial nephritis, prostatitis, lymphadenopathy, retroperitoneal fibrosis, inflammatory aortic aneurysm, and inflammatory pseudotumor. Although IgG4RD forms a distinct, clinically independent disease category and is attracting strong attention as a new clinical entity, many questions and problems still remain to be elucidated, including its pathogenesis, the establishment of diagnostic criteria, and the role of IgG4. Here we describe the concept of IgG4RD and up-to-date information on this emerging disease entity

Risk analysis of software process measurements

Quantitative process management (QPM) and causal analysis and resolution (CAR) are requirements of capability maturity model (CMM) levels 4 and 5, respectively. They indicate the necessity of process improvement based on objective evidence obtained from statistical analysis of metrics. However, it is difficult to achieve these requirements in practice, and only a few companies have done so successfully. Evidence-based risk-management methods have been proposed for the control of software processes, but are not fully appreciated, compared to clinical practice in medicine. Furthermore, there is no convincing answer as to why these methods are difficult to incorporate in software processes, despite the fact that they are well established in some business enterprises and industries. In this article, we challenge this issue, point out a problem peculiar to software processes, and develop a generally applicable method for identifying the risk of failure for a project in its early stages. The proposed method is based on statistical analyses of process measurements collected continuously throughout a project by a risk assessment and tracking system (RATS). Although this method may be directly applicable to only a limited number of process types, the fundamental idea might be useful for a broader range of applications

EMPRESS. XII. Statistics on the Dynamics and Gas Mass Fraction of Extremely-Metal Poor Galaxies

We present demography of the dynamics and gas-mass fraction of 33 extremely metal-poor galaxies (EMPGs) with metallicities of $0.015-0.195~Z_\odot$ and low stellar masses of $10^4-10^8~M_\odot$ in the local universe. We conduct deep optical integral-field spectroscopy (IFS) for the low-mass EMPGs with the medium high resolution ($R=7500$) grism of the 8m-Subaru FOCAS IFU instrument by the EMPRESS 3D survey, and investigate H$\alpha$ emission of the EMPGs. Exploiting the resolution high enough for the low-mass galaxies, we derive gas dynamics with the H$\alpha$ lines by the fitting of 3-dimensional disk models. We obtain an average maximum rotation velocity ($v_\mathrm{rot}$) of $15\pm3~\mathrm{km~s^{-1}}$ and an average intrinsic velocity dispersion ($\sigma_0$) of $27\pm10~\mathrm{km~s^{-1}}$ for 15 spatially resolved EMPGs out of the 33 EMPGs, and find that all of the 15 EMPGs have $v_\mathrm{rot}/\sigma_0<1$ suggesting dispersion dominated systems. There is a clear decreasing trend of $v_\mathrm{rot}/\sigma_0$ with the decreasing stellar mass and metallicity. We derive the gas mass fraction ($f_\mathrm{gas}$) for all of the 33 EMPGs, and find no clear dependence on stellar mass and metallicity. These $v_\mathrm{rot}/\sigma_0$ and $f_\mathrm{gas}$ trends should be compared with young high-$z$ galaxies observed by the forthcoming JWST IFS programs to understand the physical origins of the EMPGs in the local universe.Comment: 18 pages, 9 figures, accepted for publication in Ap

EMPRESS. IX. Extremely Metal-Poor Galaxies are Very Gas-Rich Dispersion-Dominated Systems: Will JWST Witness Gaseous Turbulent High-z Primordial Galaxies?

We present kinematics of 6 local extremely metal-poor galaxies (EMPGs) with low metallicities ($0.016-0.098\ Z_{\odot}$) and low stellar masses ($10^{4.7}-10^{7.6} M_{\odot}$). Taking deep medium-high resolution ($R\sim7500$) integral-field spectra with 8.2-m Subaru, we resolve the small inner velocity gradients and dispersions of the EMPGs with H$\alpha$ emission. Carefully masking out sub-structures originated by inflow and/or outflow, we fit 3-dimensional disk models to the observed H$\alpha$ flux, velocity, and velocity-dispersion maps. All the EMPGs show rotational velocities ($v_{\rm rot}$) of 5--23 km s$^{-1}$ smaller than the velocity dispersions ($\sigma_{0}$) of 17--31 km s$^{-1}$, indicating dispersion-dominated ($v_{\rm rot}/\sigma_{0}=0.29-0.80<1$) systems affected by inflow and/or outflow. Except for two EMPGs with large uncertainties, we find that the EMPGs have very large gas-mass fractions of $f_{\rm gas}\simeq 0.9-1.0$. Comparing our results with other H$\alpha$ kinematics studies, we find that $v_{\rm rot}/\sigma_{0}$ decreases and $f_{\rm gas}$ increases with decreasing metallicity, decreasing stellar mass, and increasing specific star-formation rate. We also find that simulated high-$z$ ($z\sim 7$) forming galaxies have gas fractions and dynamics similar to the observed EMPGs. Our EMPG observations and the simulations suggest that primordial galaxies are gas-rich dispersion-dominated systems, which would be identified by the forthcoming James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) observations at $z\sim 7$.Comment: Submitted to ApJ; After revisio