Yersinia pestis is the etiologic agent of bubonic and pneumonic plagues. It is speculated that Y. pestis hijacks antigen-presenting cells (APCs), such as dendritic cells (DCs) and alveolar macrophages, in order to be delivered to lymph nodes. However, how APCs initially capture the bacterium remains uncharacterized. It is well known that HIV-1 uses human DC-specific intercellular adhesion molec...

The human Y chromosome exhibits surprisingly low levels of genetic diversity. This could result from neutral processes if the effective population size of males is reduced relative to females due to a higher variance in the number of offspring from males than from females. Alternatively, selection acting on new mutations, and affecting linked neutral sites, could reduce variability on the Y chr...

As an extension of our first observation in which the peripheral blood lymphocytes of an aplastic amaemia patient with a transplant were able to show HLA-restricted H-Y killing in a cell-mediated lympholysis assay, we report here a second case showing exactly the same phenomenon. Α multitransfused woman suffering from aplastic anaemia was shown to have in vitro killing after priming her lymphoc...

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is an important multi-drug resistant (MDR) opportunistic bacterium. 102 strains of Pseudomonas aeruginosa equally isolated from human and cow milk were subjected to Multiplex-PCR for detection of ESBLs and exoenzymes of U, T, S, OprI, and OprL, Integrons class A encoding genes and genotyping by the ERIC-PCR and PFGE methods. The disc diffusion and E-test based on CLSI (Cl...

Nuclear transcription factor Y (NF-Y) is an example of a transcriptional regulation factor in eukaryotes consisting of three different subunits, NF-YA, NF-YB and NF-YC, which are all necessary for formation of NF-Y complexes and binding to CCAAT boxes in promoters of its target genes. Highly conserved between human and Drosophila, NF-Y regulates transcription of various genes related to the cel...

We have used Y-specific cosmid clones in a random fingerprinting approach to build contigs on the human Y chromosome. Clones derived from two libraries have been analyzed. The construction of one library is described here, the second was the Y chromosome-specific library LLOYNCO3 "M" (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory). To date, we have fingerprinted 4430 cosmids: 377 contigs have been con...

DNA methylation plays an important role for mammalian development. However, it is unclear whether the DNA methylation pattern is evolutionarily conserved. The Y chromosome serves as a powerful tool for the study of human evolution because it is transferred between males. In this study, based on deep-rooted pedigrees and the latest Y chromosome phylogenetic tree, we performed epigenetic pattern ...

BACKGROUND As the high throughput sequencing efforts generate more biological information, scientists from different disciplines are interpreting the polymorphisms that make us unique. In addition, there is an increasing trend in general public to research their own genealogy, find distant relatives and to know more about their biological background. Commercial vendors are providing analyses of...

Histone H3.Y is a primate-specific, distant H3 variant. It is evolutionarily derived from H3.3, and may function in transcription regulation. However, the mechanism by which H3.Y regulates transcription has not been elucidated. In the present study, we determined the crystal structure of the H3.Y nucleosome, and found that many H3.Y-specific residues are located on the entry/exit sites of the n...

Any assessment of DarwIn's Origin oj Species must take into account evidence from the whole world of biology, and that will necessarily come mainly from non-human sources. Nevertheless, we are all human and at some stage inevitably comes the query: "bow does this affect me? Darwin's (11359) modest hint that" Light will be shed the origin of man and l1is history" set pattern from the outset. How...