Acquisition of Differential Object Marking in Argentine Spanish

Acquisition of Differential Object Marking in Argentine Spanish Humanities, Department of Modern and Classical Languages and Literatures Variation is ubiquitous to language. For example, Spanish marks animate and specific direct objects (DO) with “a” (as in: Vi a un niño ‘I saw a boy’ vs. Vi un carro ‘I saw a car’), a phenomenon known as Differential Object Marking (DOM). DOM has been shown to be probabilistically constrained by a number of linguistic factors the speech of Spanish-speaking adults. The only study on first language acquisition of DOM to date, however, has concentrated only on contexts considered categorical (i.e., using “a” where it is ‘required’ and zero marking where DOM is ‘prohibited’) and its results are commonly used to suggest very early and errorless acquisition of DOM, albeit in categorical contexts. This study investigates how monolingual Spanish-speaking children arrive at adult-like use of DOM including –and specifically- in contexts where it is probabilistically conditioned. All utterances containing transitive verbs were manually extracted from the Remedi longitudinal corpus of a monolingual Argentine child, available in the online Child Language Data Exchange System database. The corpus contains 14 transcripts of naturalistic conversation between a child aged 1;10-2;11 and her father. Data were further coded for a number of predictor variables known to impact DOM use (such as presence of clitic doubling, DO animacy, DO definiteness, DO specificity). Preliminary analyses revealed that DOM use by both the child and caregiver does not follow categorical rules, revealing a number of datapoints not considered in past research. Analysis of all tokens produced by the child indicates that children may not be as adult-like in DOM use at age two as suggested in the previous literature, but that they are acquiring DOM in a piecemeal fashion

ATBF1 and NQO1 as candidate targets for allelic loss at chromosome arm 16q in breast cancer: Absence of somatic ATBF1 mutations and no role for the C609T NQO1 polymorphism

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Loss of heterozygosity (LOH) at chromosome arm 16q is frequently observed in human breast cancer, suggesting that one or more target tumor suppressor genes (TSGs) are located there. However, detailed mapping of the smallest region of LOH has not yet resulted in the identification of a TSG at 16q. Therefore, the present study attempted to identify TSGs using an approach based on mRNA expression.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A cDNA microarray for the 16q region was constructed and analyzed using RNA samples from 39 breast tumors with known LOH status at 16q.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Five genes were identified to show lower expression in tumors with LOH at 16q compared to tumors without LOH. The genes for NAD(P)H dehydrogenase quinone (<it>NQO1</it>) and AT-binding transcription factor 1 (<it>ATBF1</it>) were further investigated given their functions as potential TSGs. <it>NQO1 </it>has been implicated in carcinogenesis due to its role in quinone detoxification and in stabilization of p53. One inactive polymorphic variant of <it>NQO1 </it>encodes a product showing reduced enzymatic activity. However, we did not find preferential targeting of the active <it>NQO1 </it>allele in tumors with LOH at 16q. Immunohistochemical analysis of 354 invasive breast tumors revealed that NQO1 protein expression in a subset of breast tumors is higher than in normal epithelium, which contradicts its proposed role as a tumor suppressor gene.</p> <p><it>ATBF1 </it>has been suggested as a target for LOH at 16q in prostate cancer. We analyzed the entire coding sequence in 48 breast tumors, but did not identify somatic sequence changes. We did find several in-frame insertions and deletions, two variants of which were reported to be somatic pathogenic mutations in prostate cancer. Here, we show that these variants are also present in the germline in 2.5% of 550 breast cancer patients and 2.9% of 175 healthy controls. This indicates that the frequency of these variants is not increased in breast cancer patients. Moreover, there is no preferential LOH of the wildtype allele in breast tumors.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Two likely candidate TSGs at 16q in breast cancer, <it>NQO1 </it>and <it>ATBF1</it>, were identified here as showing reduced expression in tumors with 16q LOH, but further analysis indicated that they are not target genes of LOH. Furthermore, our results call into question the validity of the previously reported pathogenic variants of the <it>ATBF1 </it>gene.</p

Acquisition of Differential Object Marking in Argentine Spanish

Abstract. Variation is ubiquitous to language. For example, Spanish marks animate and specific direct objects (DO) with “a” (as in: Vi a un niño ‘I saw a boy’ vs. Vi un carro ‘I saw a car’), a phenomenon known as Differential Object Marking (DOM). DOM has been shown to be probabilistically constrained by a number of linguistic factors in the speech of Spanish-speaking adults. The only studies on first language acquisition of DOM to date, however, have concentrated only on contexts considered categorical (i.e., using “a” where it is ‘required’ and zero marking where DOM is ‘prohibited’) and their results are commonly used to suggest very early and errorless acquisition of DOM, albeit in categorical contexts. This study investigates how a monolingual Spanish-speaking child begins to use DOM including –and specifically- in contexts where it is probabilistically conditioned. All utterances containing transitive verbs were manually extracted from the Remedi longitudinal corpus of a monolingual Argentine child Spanish (Remedi et al. submitted), available in the online Child Language Data Exchange System (CHILDES) database. The corpus contains 14 transcripts of naturalistic conversation between a child aged 1;10-2;11 and her father. Data were further coded for a number of predictor variables known to impact DOM use (such as presence of clitic doubling, DO animacy, DO definiteness, DO specificity). Preliminary analyses revealed that DOM use by both the child and caregiver does not follow categorical rules predicted by some linguistic analyses (Aissen 2003), revealing a number of datapoints not considered in past research. Analysis of all tokens produced by the child indicates that children may be acquiring DOM in a piecemeal fashion

Scoring treatment response in patients with relapsing multiple sclerosis

BACKGROUND: We employed clinical and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measures in combination, to assess patient responses to interferon in multiple sclerosis. OBJECTIVE: To optimize and validate a scoring system able to discriminate responses to interferon treatment in patients with relapsing-remitting multiple sclerosis (RRMS). METHODS: Our analysis included two large, independent datasets of RRMS patients who were treated with interferons that included 4-year follow-up data. The first dataset ("training set") comprised of 373 RRMS patients from a randomized clinical trial of subcutaneous interferon beta-1a. The second ("validation set") included an observational cohort of 222 RRMS patients treated with different interferons. The new scoring system, a modified version of that previously proposed by Rio et al., was first tested on the training set, then validated using the validation set. The association between disability progression and risk group, as defined by the score, was evaluated by Kaplan Meier survival curves and Cox regression, and quantified by hazard ratios (HRs). RESULTS: The score (0-3) was based on the number of new T2 lesions (>5) and clinical relapses (0,1 or 2) during the first year of therapy. The risk of disability progression increased with higher scores. In the validation set, patients with score of 0 showed a 3-year progression probability of 24%, while those with a score of 1 increased to 33% (HR = 1.56; p = 0.13), and those with score greater than or equal to 2 increased to 65% (HR = 4.60; p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: We report development of a simple, quantitative and complementary tool for predicting responses in interferon-treated patients that could help clinicians make treatment decisions

Impact of age at primary breast cancer on contralateral breast cancer risk in BRCA1/2 mutation carriers

Purpose: To determine prospectively overall and age-specific estimates of contralateral breast cancer (CBC) risk for young patients with breast cancer with or without BRCA1/2 mutations. Patients and Methods A cohort of 6,294 patients with invasive breast cancer diagnosed under 50 years of age and treated between 1970 and 2003 in 10 Dutch centers was tested for the most prevalent BRCA1/2 mutations. We report absolute risks and hazard ratios within the cohort from competing risk analyses. Results: After a median follow-up of 12.5 years, 578 CBCs were observed in our study population. CBC risk for BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutation carriers was two to three times higher than for noncarriers (hazard ratios, 3.31 [95% CI, 2.41 to 4.55; P < .001] and 2.17 [95% CI,1.22 to 3.85; P = .01], respectively). Ten-year cumulative CBC risks were 21.1% (95% CI, 15.4 to 27.4) for BRCA1, 10.8% (95% CI, 4.7 to 19.6) for BRCA2 mutation carriers and 5.1% (95% CI, 4.5 to 5.7) for noncarriers. Age at diagnosis of the first breast cancer was a significant predictor of CBC risk in BRCA1/2 mutation carriers only; those diagnosed before age 41 years had a 10-year cumulative CBC risk of 23.9% (BRCA1: 25.5%; BRCA2: 17.2%) compared with 12.6% (BRCA1: 15.6%; BRCA2: 7.2%) for those 41 to 49 years of age (P = .02); our review of published studies showed ranges of 24% to 31% before age 40 years (BRCA1: 24% to 32%; BRCA2:17% to 29%) and 8% to 21% after 40 years (BRCA1: 11% to 52%; BRCA2: 7% to 18%), respectively. Conclusion: Age at first breast cancer is a strong risk factor for cumulative CBC risk in BRCA1/2 mutation carriers. Considering the available evidence, age-specific risk estimates should be included in counseling

BRCA1 genomic deletions are major founder mutations in Dutch breast cancer patients

To date, more than 300 distinct small deletions, insertions and point mutations, mostly leading to premature termination of translation, have been reported in the breast/ovarian-cancer susceptibility gene BRCA1. The elevated frequencies of some mutations in certain ethnic subpopulations are caused by founder effects, rather than by mutation hotspots. Here we report that the currently available mutation spectrum of BRCA1 has been biased by PCR-based mutation-screening methods, such as SSCP, the protein truncation test (PTT) and direct sequencing, using genomic DNA as template. Three large genomic deletions that are not detected by these approaches comprise 36% of all BRCA1 mutations found in Dutch breast-cancer families to date. A 510-bp Alu- mediated deletion comprising exon 22 was found in 8 of 170 breast-cancer families recruited for research purposes and in 6 of 49 probands referred to the Amsterdam Family Cancer Clinic for genetic counselling. In addition, a 3,835-bp Alu-mediated deletion encompassing exon 13 was detected in 6 of the 170 research families, while an deletion of approximately 14 kb was detected in a single family. Haplotype analyses indicated that each recurrent deletion had a single common ancestor

Prediction of BRCA1 Status in Patients with Breast Cancer Using Estrogen Receptor and Basal Phenotype

Purpose: To investigate the proportion of breast cancers arising inpatients with germ line BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations expressing basal markers and developing predictive tests for identification of high-risk patients. Experimental Design: Histopathologic material from 182 tumors in BRCA1 mutation carriers, 63 BRCA2 carriers, and 109 controls, collected as part of the international Breast Cancer Linkage Consortium were immunohistochemically stained for CK14, CK5/6, CK17, epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), and osteonectin. Results: All five basal markers were commoner in BRCA1 tumors than in control tumors (CK14: 61% versus 12%; CK5/6: 58% versus 7%; CK17: 53% versus 10%; osteonectin: 43% versus 19%; EGFR: 67% versus 21%; P &lt; 0.0001 in each case). In a multivariate analysis, CK14, CK5/6, and estrogen receptor (ER) remained significant predictors of BRCA1 carrier status. In contrast, the frequency of basal markers in BRCA2 tumors did not differ significant from controls. Conclusion: The use of cytokeratin staining in combination with ER and morphology provides a more accurate predictor of BRCA1 mutation status than previously available, that may be useful in selecting patients for BRCA1 mutation testing. The high percentage of BRCA1 cases positive for EGFR suggests that specific anti-tyrosine kinase therapy may be of potential benefit in these patients