Two new species of the genus Stenus Latreille from China (Coleoptera: Staphylinidae: Steninae)

Two new species of the genus Stenus Latreille (subgenus Stenus s. str.) are described: Stenus (s. str.) affinisecretus, sp. n., from Beijing, and S. (s. str.) guandiensis, sp. n., from Shanxi, China. These two new species were collected in the mountain areas. Important morphological characters, like those of hind wings, 8th and 9th abdominal sternites of male, and the aedeagus are illustrated for the new species. All the types are deposited in the Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing

Charged lepton flavor violating Higgs decays at future e+e−e^+e^- colliders

After the discovery of the Higgs boson, several future experiments have been proposed to study the Higgs boson properties, including two circular lepton colliders, the CEPC and the FCC-ee, and one linear lepton collider, the ILC. We evaluate the precision reach of these colliders in measuring the branching ratios of the charged lepton flavor violating Higgs decays $H\to e^\pm\mu^\mp$, $e^\pm\tau^\mp$ and $\mu^\pm\tau^\mp$. The expected upper bounds on the branching ratios given by the circular (linear) colliders are found to be $\mathcal{B}(H\to e^\pm\mu^\mp) < 1.2\ (2.1) \times 10^{-5}$, $\mathcal{B}(H\to e^\pm\tau^\mp) < 1.6\ (2.4) \times 10^{-4}$ and $\mathcal{B}(H\to \mu^\pm\tau^\mp) < 1.4\ (2.3) \times 10^{-4}$ at 95\% CL, which are improved by one to two orders compared to the current experimental bounds. We also discuss the constraints that these upper bounds set on certain theory parameters, including the charged lepton flavor violating Higgs couplings, the corresponding parameters in the type-III 2HDM, and the new physics cut-off scales in the SMEFT, in RS models and in models with heavy neutrinos.Comment: 20 pages, 2 figures (extend the CEPC study to the FCC-ee and the ILC, and to match the published version

Protease-associated cellular networks in malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum

Abstract Background Malaria continues to be one of the most severe global infectious diseases, responsible for 1-2 million deaths yearly. The rapid evolution and spread of drug resistance in parasites has led to an urgent need for the development of novel antimalarial targets. Proteases are a group of enzymes that play essential roles in parasite growth and invasion. The possibility of designing specific inhibitors for proteases makes them promising drug targets. Previously, combining a comparative genomics approach and a machine learning approach, we identified the complement of proteases (degradome) in the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum and its sibling species 123, providing a catalog of targets for functional characterization and rational inhibitor design. Network analysis represents another route to revealing the role of proteins in the biology of parasites and we use this approach here to expand our understanding of the systems involving the proteases of P. falciparum. Results We investigated the roles of proteases in the parasite life cycle by constructing a network using protein-protein association data from the STRING database 4, and analyzing these data, in conjunction with the data from protein-protein interaction assays using the yeast 2-hybrid (Y2H) system 5, blood stage microarray experiments 678, proteomics 9101112, literature text mining, and sequence homology analysis. Seventy-seven (77) out of 124 predicted proteases were associated with at least one other protein, constituting 2,431 protein-protein interactions (PPIs). These proteases appear to play diverse roles in metabolism, cell cycle regulation, invasion and infection. Their degrees of connectivity (i.e., connections to other proteins), range from one to 143. The largest protease-associated sub-network is the ubiquitin-proteasome system which is crucial for protein recycling and stress response. Proteases are also implicated in heat shock response, signal peptide processing, cell cycle progression, transcriptional regulation, and signal transduction networks. Conclusions Our network analysis of proteases from P. falciparum uses a so-called guilt-by-association approach to extract sets of proteins from the proteome that are candidates for further study. Novel protease targets and previously unrecognized members of the protease-associated sub-systems provide new insights into the mechanisms underlying parasitism, pathogenesis and virulence.</p