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B Functions (b + function)
Selected AbstractsSix novel alleles identified in Italian hereditary fructose intolerance patients enlarge the mutation spectrum of the aldolase B gene,,HUMAN MUTATION, Issue 6 2004Gabriella Esposito Abstract Hereditary fructose intolerance (HFI) is a recessively inherited disorder of carbohydrate metabolism caused by impaired functioning of human liver aldolase (B isoform; ALDOB). To-date, 29 enzyme-impairing mutations have been identified in the aldolase B gene. Here we report six novel HFI single nucleotide changes identified by sequence analysis in the aldolase B gene. Three of these are missense mutations (g.6846T>C, g.10236G>T, g.10258T>C), one is a nonsense mutation (g.8187C>T) and two affect splicing sites (g.8180G>C and g.10196A>G). We have expressed in bacterial cells the recombinant proteins corresponding to the g.6846T>C (p.I74T), g.10236G>T (p.V222F), and g.10258T>C (p.L229P) natural mutants to study their effect on aldolase B function and structure. All the new variants were insoluble; molecular graphics data suggest this is due to impaired folding. © 2004 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Human disease resulting from gene mutations that interfere with appropriate nuclear factor-,B activationIMMUNOLOGICAL REVIEWS, Issue 1 2005Jordan S. Orange Summary:, The nuclear factor (NF)-,B family of transcription factors serves vital roles in a wide array of cell functions. An increasing number of human genetic lesions that result in defined disease entities are linked to inappropriate activation of NF-,B. The resulting aberrant NF-,B function can lead to cellular defects that ultimately impair normal developmental processes, host immune defenses, or both. Molecular defects that lie upstream in cell-signaling pathways and rely upon NF-,B activation tend to give a more specific phenotype, whereas those closer to the actual NF-,B proteins have broader defects. A detailed study of these diseases can provide insight into the biochemistry of NF-,B activation as well as the role of NF-,B in human health. [source] Aurora B expression in post-puberal testicular germ cell tumours,JOURNAL OF CELLULAR PHYSIOLOGY, Issue 2 2009Francesco Esposito Aurora/Ipl1-related kinases are a conserved family of proteins that are essential for the regulation of chromosome segregation and cytokinesis during mitosis. Aberrant expression and activity of these kinases occur in a wide range of human tumours and have been implicated in mechanisms leading to mitotic spindle aberrations, aneuploidy, and genomic instability. Previous studies of our group have shown that Aurora B expression is restricted to specific germinal cells. In this study, we have evaluated by immunohistochemical analysis Aurora B expression in post-puberal testicular germ cell tumours (22 seminomas, 2 teratomas, 15 embryonal carcinomas, 5 mixed germinal tumours with a prominent yolk sac tumour component and 1 choriocarcinoma). The Aurora B protein expression was detected in all intratubular germ cell tumours, seminomas and embryonal carcinomas analysed but not in teratomas and yolk sac carcinomas. The immunohistochemical data were further confirmed by Western blot analysis. In addition, the kinase Aurora B was vigorously expressed in GC-1 cells line derived from murine spermatogonia. The block of Aurora B function induced by a pharmacological inhibitor significantly reduced the growth of GC-1 cells suggesting that Aurora B is a potential therapeutic target. J. Cell. Physiol. 221: 435,439, 2009. © 2009 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source] Analysis of B function in legumes: PISTILLATA proteins do not require the PI motif for floral organ development in Medicago truncatulaTHE PLANT JOURNAL, Issue 1 2009Reyes Benlloch Summary The B-class gene PISTILLATA (PI) codes for a MADS-box transcription factor required for floral organ identity in angiosperms. Unlike Arabidopsis, it has been suggested that legume PI genes contribute to a variety of processes, such as the development of floral organs, floral common petal,stamen primordia, complex leaves and N-fixing root nodules. Another interesting feature of legume PI homologues is that some of them lack the highly conserved C-terminal PI motif suggested to be crucial for function. Therefore, legume PI genes are useful for addressing controversial questions on the evolution of B-class gene function, including how they may have diverged in both function and structure to affect different developmental processes. However, functional analysis of legume PI genes has been hampered because no mutation in any B-class gene has been identified in legumes. Here we fill this gap by studying the PI function in the model legume species Medicago truncatula using mutant and RNAi approaches. Like other legume species, M. truncatula has two PI homologues. The expression of the two genes, MtPI and MtNGL9, has strongly diverged, suggesting differences in function. Our analyses show that these genes are required for petal and stamen identity, where MtPI appears to play a predominant role. However, they appear not to be required for development of the nodule, the common primordia or the complex leaf. Moreover, both M. truncatula PI homologues lack the PI motif, which indicates that the C-terminal motif is not essential for PI activity. [source] TREM-1 expression in macrophages is regulated at transcriptional level by NF-,B and PU.1EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF IMMUNOLOGY, Issue 8 2007Heng Zeng Abstract Triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells (TREM)-1 is a recently identified immunoglobulin receptor that is expressed on neutrophils and monocytes where it amplifies the acute inflammatory response to bacteria. We examined the transcriptional regulation of TREM-1 in macrophages. Treatment of RAW cells with Escherichia coli LPS or Pseudomonas aeruginosa led to the induction of TREM-1 within 1,h with an expression lasting up to at least 24,h in vitro as detected by RT-PCR. Since the promoter of TREM-1 has multiple binding sites for NF-,B and PU.1 (one of the members of the ets family of transcription factors), we investigated the role of these transcription factors in the induction of TREM-1. Treatment of cells with NF-,B inhibitors abolished the expression of message of TREM-1 induced by LPS and P.,aeruginosa. In contrast, the expression of TREM-1 was increased after stimulation with LPS or P.,aeruginosa in cells that had gene of PU.1 silenced. Additionally, over-expression of PU.1 led to inhibition of TREM-1 induction in response to LPS and P.,aeruginosa. These data suggest that both these transcription factors are involved in the expression of TREM-1. NF-,B functions as a positive regulator whereas PU.1 is a negative regulator of the TREM-1 gene. [source] The S and G transformations for computing three-center nuclear attraction integralsINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUANTUM CHEMISTRY, Issue 8 2009Richard Mikael Slevinsky Abstract It is now well established that nonlinear transformations can be extremely useful in the case of oscillatory integrals. In previous work, we could show that the G transformation, which is not so well known among those interested in the numerical evaluation of highly oscillatory integrals, works very well for the extremely challenging integral called Twisted Tail. In this work, we demonstrate that these techniques also apply to three-center nuclear attraction integrals over exponential type functions. The accurate and rapid evaluation of these integrals is required in ab initio molecular structure calculations and density functional theory. Using a basis set of B functions and profiting from their relatively simple Fourier representation, these integrals are formulated as analytical expressions involving highly oscillatory spherical Bessel integral functions. In the present work, we implement two highly accurate algorithms for three-center nuclear attraction integrals. The first algorithm is based on the G transformation and the second is based on a combination of the S and G transformations. The application of these transformations is largely due to the properties of special functions that allow the computation of higher order derivatives of the integrands with exceptional simplicity. The numerical results illustrate the accuracy of these algorithms applied to three-center nuclear attraction integrals over exponential type functions with a miscellany of different parameters. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2009 [source] Gaussian approximation of exponential type orbitals based on B functionsINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUANTUM CHEMISTRY, Issue 2 2009Didier Pinchon Abstract This work gives new, highly accurate optimized gaussian series expansions for the B functions used in molecular quantum mechanics. These functions are generally chosen because of their compact Fourier transform, following Shavitt. The inverse Laplace transform in the square root of the variable is used for Gauss quadrature in this work. Two procedures for obtaining accurate gaussian expansions have been compared for the required extended precision arithmetic. The first is based on Gaussian quadratures and the second on direct optimization. Both use the Maple computer algebra system. Numerical results are tabulated and compared with previous work. Special cases are found to agree before pushing the optimization technique further. The optimal gaussian expansions of B functions obtained in this work are available for reference. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2009 [source] Extrapolation methods for improving convergence of spherical Bessel integrals for the two-center Coulomb integralsINTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF QUANTUM CHEMISTRY, Issue 11 2006Hassan Safouhi Abstract Multi-center two-electron Coulomb integrals over Slater-type functions are required for any accurate molecular electronic structure calculations. These integrals, which are numerous, are to be evaluated rapidly and accurately. Slater-type functions are expressed in terms of the so-called B functions, which are best suited to apply the Fourier transform method. The Fourier transform method allowed analytic expressions for these integrals to be developed. Unfortunately, the analytic expressions obtained turned out to be extremely difficult to evaluate accurately due to the presence of highly oscillatory spherical Bessel integrals. In this work, we used techniques based on nonlinear transformation and extrapolation methods for improving convergence of these oscillatory spherical Bessel integrals. These techniques, which led to highly efficient and rapid algorithms for the numerical evaluation of three- and four-center two-electron Coulomb and exchange integrals, are now shown to be applicable to the two-center two-electron Coulomb integrals. The numerical results obtained for the molecular integrals under consideration illustrate the efficiency of the algorithm described in the present work compared with algorithms using the epsilon (,) algorithm of Wynn and Levin's u transform. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Quantum Chem, 2006 [source] |