Turdus rufiventris and Turdus albicollis, two songbirds belonging to the family Turdidae (Aves, Passeriformes) were studied by C-banding, 18S rDNA, as well as the use of whole chromosome probes derived from Gallus gallus (GGA) and Leucopternis albicollis (LAL). They showed very similar karyotypes, with 2n = 78 and the same pattern of distribution of heterochromatic blocks and hybridization patt...

In this paper we present an implementation of the modified Becke–Johnson meta-GGA functional (TB09) in the PWSCF program of Quantum ESPRESSO package via the Libxc library. Using the functionals of TB09 we calculated the band gaps of some semiconductors and compared the resultswith previous calculations and experiments. We showed that combining GGA pseudo-potential with TB09 functionals would im...

Mycoplasma gallisepticum (MG), one of the most pathogenic Mycoplasma, has caused tremendous economic loss in the poultry industry. Recently, increasing evidence has suggested that micro ribonucleic acids (miRNAs) are involved in microbial pathogenesis. However, little is known about potential roles of miRNAs in MG infection of chicken. In the present study, using miRNA Solexa sequencing we have...

Meta-generalized gradient approximation (meta-GGA) exchange-correlation density functionals depend on the Kohn-Sham (KS) orbitals through the kinetic energy density. The KS orbitals in turn depend functionally on the electron density. However, the functional dependence of the KS orbitals is indirect, i.e., not given by an explicit expression, and the computation of analytic functional derivativ...

Approximations to the exact density functional for the exchange-correlation energy of a many-electron ground state can be constructed by satisfying constraints that are universal, i.e., valid for all electron densities. Gedanken densities are designed for the purpose of this construction, but need not be realistic. The uniform electron gas is an old gedanken density. Here, we propose a spherica...

BACKGROUND An arg120gly (R120G) missense mutation in HSPB5 (alpha-beta-crystallin ), which belongs to the small heat shock protein (HSP) family, causes desmin-related cardiomyopathy (DRM), a muscle disease that is characterized by the formation of inclusion bodies, which can contain pre-amyloid oligomer intermediates (amyloid oligomer). While we have shown that small HSPs can directly interrupt...

The density functional definition of exchange and correlation differs from the traditional one. In order to calculate the density functional theory ~DFT!, quantities accurately, molecular Kohn–Sham ~KS! solutions have been obtained from ab initio wave functions for the homonuclear diatomic molecules Li2, N2, F2. These afford the construction of the KS determinant Cs and the calculation of its t...

We compare the performance of generalized gradient approximations ~GGA’s! and the local-density approximation ~LDA! in density-functional calculations of the cohesive properties of cubic AlN, GaN, and InN. Employing the widely adopted pseudopotential approach, the calculated data are found to depend significantly on the treatment of the core states of the group-III ions, hampering a conclusive ...

Newly synthesized glucose transporter 4 (GLUT4) enters into the insulin-responsive storage compartment in a process that is Golgi-localized !-earcontaining Arf-binding protein (GGA) dependent, whereas insulin-stimulated translocation is regulated by Akt substrate of 160 kDa (AS160). In the present study, using a variety of GLUT4/GLUT1 chimeras, we have analyzed the specific motifs of GLUT4 that...

OBJECTIVE Despite an increasing number of investigations into the pathophysiology of necrotic enteritis (NE) disease, etiology of NE-associated diseases, and gene expression profiling of NE-affected tissues, the microRNA (miRNA) profiles of NE-affected poultry have been poorly studied. The aim of this study was to induce NE disease in the genetically disparate Fayoumi chicken lines, and to perf...