Functions of CML24: A potential calcium sensor of Arabidopsis

Plants sense environmental conditions and respond by changing development and physiology. Calcium (Ca2+) is a second messenger thought to play a critical role in plant responses to developmental and environmental stimuli. Calmodulin (CaM) is the prototypical Ca2+ sensor that is highly conserved among eukaryotes. The Arabidopsis genome encodes 50 CaM-like (CML) proteins in addition to CaM. CML functions remain largely unknown. CML24 expression is strongly upregulated by diverse stimuli. The encoded protein shares characteristics with CaM, including primary sequence similarity, predicted tertiary structure, and Ca2+-induced conformational change. Plants with epigenetically silenced CML24 are delayed in the transition to flowering and have altered ion sensitivity. To further understand CML24 function, I employed genetic, biochemical, cellular, and physiological approaches. Mass spectroscopy analyses suggest that CML24 cysteines may form disulfides; therefore, CML24 may have the capability of transducing oxidative, in addition to Ca2+, signals. Apparent loss- and gain-of-function cml24 point mutants were identified and determined to have alterations in the timing of flowering induction. Despite the physiological consequences of the cml24 mutant amino acid substitutions, the mutant proteins retain the ability to undergo Ca2+-dependent conformational changes. cml24 mutants are defective in expression of the regulatory genes, CONSTANS and FLOWERING LOCUS C (FLC) and have aberrant nitric oxide (NO) accumulation. Altered NO levels underlie FLC enhanced expression in the late-flowering cml24 mutants and contribute in part to delayed flowering. NO-associated 1 (NOA1), not arginine-dependent NO synthase or nitrate reductase, is implicated, through an indirect mechanism, in NO accumulation in cml24 mutants. CML24 directly binds and may increase the enzymatic activity of Autophagy 4b (ATG4b), a cysteine protease that regulates autophagy, the cellular "self eating" process by which eukaryotic cells remove damaged and nonessential cytoplasmic components. Fluorescence imaging and western analysis of autophagy markers and seedling growth assays in response to nutrient-limitation indicate that the cml24 mutants may have defects in autophagy regulation. Together, this work implicates CML24 as a potential Ca2+ and redox sensor in the regulation of NO accumulation and, through direct interaction with ATG4b, in the regulation of autophagy progression

When Causal Intervention Meets Adversarial Examples and Image Masking for Deep Neural Networks

Discovering and exploiting the causality in deep neural networks (DNNs) are crucial challenges for understanding and reasoning causal effects (CE) on an explainable visual model. "Intervention" has been widely used for recognizing a causal relation ontologically. In this paper, we propose a causal inference framework for visual reasoning via do-calculus. To study the intervention effects on pixel-level features for causal reasoning, we introduce pixel-wise masking and adversarial perturbation. In our framework, CE is calculated using features in a latent space and perturbed prediction from a DNN-based model. We further provide the first look into the characteristics of discovered CE of adversarially perturbed images generated by gradient-based methods \footnote{~~https://github.com/jjaacckkyy63/Causal-Intervention-AE-wAdvImg}. Experimental results show that CE is a competitive and robust index for understanding DNNs when compared with conventional methods such as class-activation mappings (CAMs) on the Chest X-Ray-14 dataset for human-interpretable feature(s) (e.g., symptom) reasoning. Moreover, CE holds promises for detecting adversarial examples as it possesses distinct characteristics in the presence of adversarial perturbations.Comment: Noted our camera-ready version has changed the title. "When Causal Intervention Meets Adversarial Examples and Image Masking for Deep Neural Networks" as the v3 official paper title in IEEE Proceeding. Please use it in your formal reference. Accepted at IEEE ICIP 2019. Pytorch code has released on https://github.com/jjaacckkyy63/Causal-Intervention-AE-wAdvIm

A Bayesian measurement error model for two-channel cell-based RNAi data with replicates

RNA interference (RNAi) is an endogenous cellular process in which small double-stranded RNAs lead to the destruction of mRNAs with complementary nucleoside sequence. With the production of RNAi libraries, large-scale RNAi screening in human cells can be conducted to identify unknown genes involved in a biological pathway. One challenge researchers face is how to deal with the multiple testing issue and the related false positive rate (FDR) and false negative rate (FNR). This paper proposes a Bayesian hierarchical measurement error model for the analysis of data from a two-channel RNAi high-throughput experiment with replicates, in which both the activity of a particular biological pathway and cell viability are monitored and the goal is to identify short hair-pin RNAs (shRNAs) that affect the pathway activity without affecting cell activity. Simulation studies demonstrate the flexibility and robustness of the Bayesian method and the benefits of having replicates in the experiment. This method is illustrated through analyzing the data from a RNAi high-throughput screening that searches for cellular factors affecting HCV replication without affecting cell viability; comparisons of the results from this HCV study and some of those reported in the literature are included.Comment: Published in at http://dx.doi.org/10.1214/11-AOAS496 the Annals of Applied Statistics (http://www.imstat.org/aoas/) by the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (http://www.imstat.org

THE BALANCE EFFECT OF REARFOOT WEDGES WITH DIFFERENT HEIGHT FOR COLLEGIATE STUDENTS WITH CHRONIC ANKLE INSTABILITY: PILOT STUDY

Chronic ankle instability (CAI) is caused by recurrent lateral ankle sprain. Foot orthotic is one option of treatment. The purpose of this study was to determinate the balance effect of rearfoot wedges with different height in collegiate students with chronic ankle instability. Eight collegiate students with CAI subjects were voluntarily particapated in this study. The area of center of pressure was used as balance variable of outcome measurement. Seven height of rearfoot wedge was used to test, included 0°, 2°, 4°, 6° of medial wedge and 2°, 4°, 6° of lateral wedge. One-way ANOVA was used to analyze the difference among sevent height of wedge intervention in CAI group. The results were showed no significantly difference among seven height of wedge intervention. However, we found a trend of balance improvement with the wedge intervention, especially in 4 degrees of medial wedge intervention

SWITCHING THE HORIZONTAL GRF TO THE PATH OF PROGRESSION IN THE TABLE TENNIS FOREHAND DRIVE

Knowing the kinetic strategies of the lower limbs is a crucial factor to investigate the forehand drive which comprises the changes of the foot placement. It is difficult to directly evaluate the movement of feet with the data of ground reaction force (GRF) and impulse (GRI).This study tried to analyze table tennis forehand drives via the GRF and GRI data based upon the anatomical perspective. The motion and the GRF data were collected from eight right-handed Taiwanese elite table tennis players. The horizontal GRF data were transformed to a reference frame and then integrated with time to get the GRI. During the forehand drive shot, the participants performed a greater lateral impulse to cause the trunk rotation and decelerated their body from initial to mid-phase and then accelerated the body to perform a forehand drive shot

THE ROLE OF AGILE METHODOLOGY USE AND FEEDBACK ATTRIBUTES IN GAME DEVELOPMENT PROJECTS: IMPLICATIONS FOR GAME PROJECT QUALITY

Game development projects (GDPs) adopt agile methodology to leverage its flexibility especially when final design and consumer’s tastes are highly uncertain and unpredict-able. Although close customer collaboration is an important success factor for agile methodology, game development projects have difficulties in working closely with their end-users. As a result, team members tend to take advantage of game testers’ feedback to see whether the features meet the consumer’s tastes. Feedback from game testers con-tains technical and aesthetic aspects that contribute to the quality of a game, that is, stability, functionality and playability. This study argues that specific and immediate feedback from game testers can enhance the benefits of the agile methodology use to achieve the game project quality. To empirically test the model, an instrument has been developed while data collection nears completion