Mapping from Statistical to Biological Proximity

We verify whether the proximity claimed by state-of-the-art statistical similarity measures are indeed biologically appropriate or not. We present some analytical results on it

Constructing Families: Associative Networks in the Seventeenth-century Cases of Mary and Katherine Hampson

Wills and other evidence related to the married Mary Hampson and her sister-in-law the never married Katherine Hampson place each within associative networks and detail their financial and emotional situations throughout their lives. Mary Hampson’s printed autobiography and legal documents detailing years of marital abuse reveal the loss of her small fortune and her financial destitution that contributed to her inability to maintain her familial and class associations. In contrast, her sister-in-law the never married Katherine Hampson died possessed of wealth that increased dramatically under her financial management. Katherine Hampson’s detailed will illustrates a complex associative network that reveals her familial connectedness and emotional well-being throughout her life. The cases of these two women challenge normative conceptions of the relationship between marital status and financial, social, and emotional stability in early modern England

A Database for TSSs of Human MicroRNAs

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are small endogeneous non-coding RNAs of about 22nt length. These short RNAs regulate the expression of mRNAs by hybridizing with their 3'-UTRs or by translational repression. They have been shown to take crucial roles in many biological processes. Many of the current studies are focused over how mature miRNAs regulate mRNAs, even though there is very limited knowledge about their transcriptional loci. Primary miRNAs (pri-miRs) are first transcribed from the DNA, followed by the formation of precursor miRNA (pre-miR) by endonucleases activity, which finally produces mature miRNAs. Unfortunately, the identification of the loci of pri-miRs, and the associated information about transcription start sites (TSSs) and promoters is still in progress. This information, even though limited, may be useful for further study on the regulation of miRNAs. In this paper, we provide a novel database of miRNA TSSs (miRT) that might be a valuable resource for advanced research on miRNA regulation