MicroRNA100 Inhibits Self-Renewal of Breast Cancer Stem–like Cells and Breast Tumor Development

miRNAs are essential for self-renewal and differentiation of normal and malignant stem cells by regulating the expression of key stem cell regulatory genes. Here, we report evidence implicating the miR100 in self-renewal of cancer stem-like cells (CSC). We found that miR100 expression levels relate to the cellular differentiation state, with lowest expression in cells displaying stem cell markers. Utilizing a tetracycline-inducible lentivirus to elevate expression of miR100 in human cells, we found that increasing miR100 levels decreased the production of breast CSCs. This effect was correlated with an inhibition of cancer cell proliferation in vitro and in mouse tumor xenografts due to attenuated expression of the CSC regulatory genes SMARCA5, SMARCD1, and BMPR2. Furthermore, miR100 induction in breast CSCs immediately upon their orthotopic implantation or intracardiac injection completely blocked tumor growth and metastasis formation. Clinically, we observed a significant association between miR100 expression in breast cancer specimens and patient survival. Our results suggest that miR100 is required to direct CSC self-renewal and differentiation

Differential cross section measurements for the production of a W boson in association with jets in proton–proton collisions at √s = 7 TeV

Measurements are reported of differential cross sections for the production of a W boson, which decays into a muon and a neutrino, in association with jets, as a function of several variables, including the transverse momenta (pT) and pseudorapidities of the four leading jets, the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT), and the difference in azimuthal angle between the directions of each jet and the muon. The data sample of pp collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV was collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponds to an integrated luminosity of 5.0 fb[superscript −1]. The measured cross sections are compared to predictions from Monte Carlo generators, MadGraph + pythia and sherpa, and to next-to-leading-order calculations from BlackHat + sherpa. The differential cross sections are found to be in agreement with the predictions, apart from the pT distributions of the leading jets at high pT values, the distributions of the HT at high-HT and low jet multiplicity, and the distribution of the difference in azimuthal angle between the leading jet and the muon at low values.United States. Dept. of EnergyNational Science Foundation (U.S.)Alfred P. Sloan Foundatio

Search for stop and higgsino production using diphoton Higgs boson decays

Results are presented of a search for a "natural" supersymmetry scenario with gauge mediated symmetry breaking. It is assumed that only the supersymmetric partners of the top-quark (stop) and the Higgs boson (higgsino) are accessible. Events are examined in which there are two photons forming a Higgs boson candidate, and at least two b-quark jets. In 19.7 inverse femtobarns of proton-proton collision data at sqrt(s) = 8 TeV, recorded in the CMS experiment, no evidence of a signal is found and lower limits at the 95% confidence level are set, excluding the stop mass below 360 to 410 GeV, depending on the higgsino mass

Impacts of the Tropical Pacific/Indian Oceans on the Seasonal Cycle of the West African Monsoon

The current consensus is that drought has developed in the Sahel during the second half of the twentieth century as a result of remote effects of oceanic anomalies amplified by local land–atmosphere interactions. This paper focuses on the impacts of oceanic anomalies upon West African climate and specifically aims to identify those from SST anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Oceans during spring and summer seasons, when they were significant. Idealized sensitivity experiments are performed with four atmospheric general circulation models (AGCMs). The prescribed SST patterns used in the AGCMs are based on the leading mode of covariability between SST anomalies over the Pacific/Indian Oceans and summer rainfall over West Africa. The results show that such oceanic anomalies in the Pacific/Indian Ocean lead to a northward shift of an anomalous dry belt from the Gulf of Guinea to the Sahel as the season advances. In the Sahel, the magnitude of rainfall anomalies is comparable to that obtained by other authors using SST anomalies confined to the proximity of the Atlantic Ocean. The mechanism connecting the Pacific/Indian SST anomalies with West African rainfall has a strong seasonal cycle. In spring (May and June), anomalous subsidence develops over both the Maritime Continent and the equatorial Atlantic in response to the enhanced equatorial heating. Precipitation increases over continental West Africa in association with stronger zonal convergence of moisture. In addition, precipitation decreases over the Gulf of Guinea. During the monsoon peak (July and August), the SST anomalies move westward over the equatorial Pacific and the two regions where subsidence occurred earlier in the seasons merge over West Africa. The monsoon weakens and rainfall decreases over the Sahel, especially in August.Peer reviewe

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Search for anomalous production of events with three or more leptons in pp collisions at √s = 8TeV

Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published articles title, journal citation, and DOI.A search for physics beyond the standard model in events with at least three leptons is presented. The data sample, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 19.5fb-1 of proton-proton collisions with center-of-mass energy s=8TeV, was collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC during 2012. The data are divided into exclusive categories based on the number of leptons and their flavor, the presence or absence of an opposite-sign, same-flavor lepton pair (OSSF), the invariant mass of the OSSF pair, the presence or absence of a tagged bottom-quark jet, the number of identified hadronically decaying τ leptons, and the magnitude of the missing transverse energy and of the scalar sum of jet transverse momenta. The numbers of observed events are found to be consistent with the expected numbers from standard model processes, and limits are placed on new-physics scenarios that yield multilepton final states. In particular, scenarios that predict Higgs boson production in the context of supersymmetric decay chains are examined. We also place a 95% confidence level upper limit of 1.3% on the branching fraction for the decay of a top quark to a charm quark and a Higgs boson (t→cH), which translates to a bound on the left- and right-handed top-charm flavor-violating Higgs Yukawa couplings, λtcH and λctH, respectively, of |λtcH|2+|λctH|2<0.21

Study of W boson production in pPb collisions at vsNN = 5.02 TeV

The first study of W boson production in pPb collisions is presented, for bosons decaying to a muon or electron, and a neutrino. The measurements are based on a data sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 34.6 nb-1 at a nucleon–nucleon centre-of-mass energy of vsNN = 5.02 TeV, collected by the CMS experiment. The W boson differential cross sections, lepton charge asymmetry, and forward–backward asymmetries are measured for leptons of transverse momentum exceeding 25 GeV/c, and as a function of the lepton pseudorapidity in the |?lab| < 2.4range. Deviations from the expectations based on currently available parton distribution functions are observed, showing the need for including W boson data in nuclear parton distribution global fits

Breast Cancer Stem Cells Transition between Epithelial and Mesenchymal States Reflective of their Normal Counterparts

International audiencePrevious studies have suggested that breast cancer stem cells (BCSCs) mediate metastasis, are resistant to radiation and chemotherapy, and contribute to relapse. Although several BCSC markers have been described, it is unclear whether these markers identify the same or independent BCSCs. Here, we show that BCSCs exist in distinct mesenchymal-like (epithelial-mesenchymal transition [EMT]) and epithelial-like (mesenchymal-epithelial transition [MET]) states. Mesenchymal-like BCSCs characterized as CD24(-)CD44(+) are primarily quiescent and localized at the tumor invasive front, whereas epithelial-like BCSCs express aldehyde dehydrogenase (ALDH), are proliferative, and are located more centrally. The gene-expression profiles of mesenchymal-like and epithelial-like BCSCs are remarkably similar across different molecular subtypes of breast cancer, and resemble those of distinct basal and luminal stem cells found in the normal breast. We propose that the plasticity of BCSCs that allows them to transition between EMT- and MET-like states endows these cells with the capacity for tissue invasion, dissemination, and growth at metastatic sites

microRNA100 inhibits self-renewal of breast cancer stem-like cells and breast tumor development

microRNAs are essential for self-renewal and differentiation of normal and malignant stem cells by regulating the expression of key stem cell regulatory genes. Here we report evidence implicating the microRNA100 (miR-100) in self-renewal of cancer stem-like cells (CSC). We found that miR-100 expression levels relate to the cellular differentiation state with lowest expression in cells displaying stem cell markers. Utilizing a tetracycline-inducible lentivirus to elevate expression of miR-100 in human cells, we found that increasing mir-100 levels decreased the production of breast CSCs. This effect was correlated with an inhibition of cancer cell proliferation in vitro and in mouse tumor xenografts due to attenuated expression of the CSC regulatory genes SMARCA5, SMARCD1 and BMPR2. Furthermore, miR-100 induction in breast CSC immediately upon their orthotopic implantation or intracardiac injection completely blocked tumor growth and metastasis formation. Clinically, we observed a significant association between miR-100 expression in breast cancer specimens and patient survival. Our results suggest that miR-100 is required to direct CSC self-renewal and differentiation