Rio Grande Rise (RGR) and Walvis Ridge (WR) are South Atlantic large igneous provinces (LIPs), formed on the American African plates, respectively, mainly by volcanism from a hot spot erupting at Mid-Atlantic (MAR) during Late Cretaceous. Both display morphologic complexities that imply their tectonic evolution is incompletely understood. We studied bathymetry, gravity, vertical gravity gradien...

Background The presence of comorbidities in people with lung cancer is common. Despite this, large-scale contemporary reports describing patterns and trends are limited. Design methods Population-based analysis using Office for National Statistics Mortality Data. Our cohort included all adults who died from (ICD-10 codes C33–C34) England between 2001 2017. We describe decedents 0, 1 or ≥2 explo...

The identification of the determinants of sensitivity and resistance to broadly neutralizing antibodies is a high priority for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) research. An analysis of the swarm of closely related envelope protein variants in an HIV-infected individual revealed a mutation that markedly affected sensitivity to neutralization by antibodies and antiviral entry inhibitors targeti...

The cuticle covers the aerial portions of land plants. It consists of amorphous intracuticular wax embedded in cutin polymer, and epicuticular wax crystalloids that coat the outer plant surface and impart a whitish appearance. Cuticular wax is mainly composed of long-chain aliphatic compounds derived from very long chain fatty acids. Wax biosynthesis begins with fatty acid synthesis in the plas...

Peptides derived from N-terminal heptad repeat (NHR) of the HIV-1 gp41 are generally poor inhibitors of HIV-1 entry because these peptides tend to aggregate and do not form a trimeric coiled coil. In this study, we have fused portions of gp41 NHR, e.g., N36 or N28, to the T4 fibritin trimerization domain, Foldon (Fd), thus constructing novel NHR-trimers, designated N36Fd or N28Fd, which could b...

Most archaea and bacteria use a modified C in the anticodon wobble position of isoleucine tRNA to base pair with A but not with G of the mRNA. This allows the tRNA to read the isoleucine codon AUA without also reading the methionine codon AUG. To understand why a modified C, and not U or modified U, is used to base pair with A, we mutated the C34 in the anticodon of Haloarcula marismortui isole...

To help understand the dynamic nature of membrane fusion induced by the human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) envelope protein, we developed a new cell-based real-time assay system employing a pair of novel reporter proteins. The reporter proteins consist of a pair of split Renilla luciferase (spRL) fused to split green fluorescent protein (spGFP). The spGFP modules were chosen not only to com...