Exit and Voice in a Marriage Market

In this paper, we present a model in which agents choose voice, exit, or stay options when their marital condition becomes bad. The voice option can be interpreted as a spouses e¤ort or investment in the household to resolve his/her dissatisfaction and improve the marital condition. If a spouse hopes to divorce, he/she chooses the exitoption. If a spouse does not hope to express his/her opinion and divorce, he/she chooses the stayoption. We focus on the role of exitand voicein a marriage and investigate the e¤ects of a divorce law that is based on fault or no-fault on divorce rates. Our study shows that divorce rates tend to be too high under a unilateral divorce law in the non-transferable utility case. On the other hand, mutual-consent divorce law generates multiple equilibria, and divorce rates are then ine ¢ cient even in the transferable utility case. In this multiple equilibrium case

Experimental Hypertension by Long-Term Emotional Stress and Changes of Adrenal Cortex Morphological and Morphometrical Study

Emotional stress in rats was induced by "stick-poking harassment" carried out over lengthy periods of 3 months and 1 year, and experimental hypertension was produced. Electron microscopic examination of the adrenal zona fasciculata cells in the experimental group revealed a significant enlargement of the mitochondrion and an increase in the number of lipid droplets in the 3-month group, and a significant enlargement of the mitochondrion in the 1-year group. The plasma corticosterone levels, which were measured at the same time, were significantly higher in the 3-month experimental group, but there was no significant difference noticed in the 1-year group. Corticosterone is a hypertensinogenic steroid, and its involvement in the hypertension was conjectured

Rotigotine suppresses sleep-related muscle activity augmented by injection of dialysis patients’ sera in a mouse model of restless legs syndrome

Idiopathic restless legs syndrome (RLS) has a genetic basis wherein BTBD9 is associated with a higher risk of RLS. Hemodialysis patients also exhibit higher rates of RLS compared with the healthy population. However, little is known about the relationship of BTBD9 and end-stage renal disease to RLS pathophysiology. Here we evaluated sleep and leg muscle activity of Btbd9 mutant (MT) mice after administration of serum from patients with either idiopathic or RLS due to end-stage renal disease (renal RLS) and investigated the efficacy of treatment with the dopamine agonist rotigotine. At baseline, the amount of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep was decreased and leg muscle activity during non-REM (NREM) sleep was increased in MT mice compared to wild-type (WT) mice. Wake-promoting effects of rotigotine were attenuated by injection of serum from RLS patients in both WT and MT mice. Leg muscle activity during NREM sleep was increased only in MT mice injected with serum from RLS patients of ideiopatic and renal RLS. Subsequent treatment with rotigotine ameliorated this altered leg muscle activity. Together these results support previous reports showing a relationship between the Btbd9/dopamine system and RLS, and elucidate in part the pathophysiology of RLS

Biotinylated-sortase self-cleavage purification (BISOP) method for cell-free produced proteins

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Technology used for the purification of recombinant proteins is a key issue for the biochemical and structural analyses of proteins. In general, affinity tags, such as glutathione-S-transferase or six-histidines, are used to purify recombinant proteins. Since such affinity tags often interfere negatively with the structural and functional analyses of proteins, they are usually removed by treatment with proteases. Previously, Dr. H. Mao reported self-cleavage purification of a target protein by fusing the sortase protein to its N-terminal end, and subsequently obtained tag-free recombinant protein following expression in <it>Escherichia coli</it>. This method, however, is yet to be applied to the cell-free based protein production.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The histidine tag-based self-cleavage method for purifying proteins produced by the wheat cell-free protein synthesis system showed high background, low recovery, and unexpected cleavage between the N-terminally fused sortase and target protein during the protein synthesis. Addition of calcium chelator BAPTA to the cell-free reaction inhibited the cleavage. In order to adapt the sortase-based purification method to the cell-free system, we next used biotin as the affinity tag. The biotinylated sortase self-cleavage purification (BISOP) method provided tag-free, highly purified proteins due to improved recovery of proteins from the resin. The N-terminal sequence analysis of the GFP produced by the BISOP method revealed that the cleavage indeed occurred at the right cleavage site. Using this method, we also successfully purified the E2 heterocomplex of USE2N and USE2v1. The c-terminal src kinase (CSK) obtained by the BISOP method showed high activity in phosphorylating the Src protein. Furthermore, we demonstrated that this method is suitable for automatically synthesizing and purifying proteins using robots.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We demonstrated that the newly developed BISOP method is very useful for obtaining high quality, tag-free recombinant proteins, produced using the cell-free system, for biochemical and structural analyses.</p

Discovery of High-Confidence Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms from Large-Scale De Novo Analysis of Leaf Transcripts of Aegilops tauschii, A Wild Wheat Progenitor

Construction of high-resolution genetic maps is important for genetic and genomic research, as well as for molecular breeding. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) are the,predominant class of genetic variation and can be used as molecular markers. Aegilops tauschii, the D-genome donor of common wheat, is considered a valuable genetic resource for wheat improvement. Our previous study implied that Ae. tauschii accessions can be genealogically divided into two major lineages. In this study, the transcriptome of two Ae. tauschii accessions from each lineage, lineage 1 (L1) and 2 (L2), was sequenced, yielding 9435 SNPs and 739 insertion/deletion polymorphisms (indels) after de novo assembly of the reads. Based on 36 contig sequences, 31 SNPs and six indels were validated on 20 diverse Ae. tauschii accessions. Because almost all of the SNP markers were polymorphic between L1 and L2, and the D-genome donor of common wheat is presumed to belong to L2, these markers are available for D-genome typing in crosses between common wheat varieties and L1-derived synthetic wheat. Due to the conserved synteny between wheat and barley chromosomes, the high-density expressed sequence tag barley map and the hypothetical gene order in barley can be applied to develop markers on target chromosomal regions in wheat