PURPOSE Axenfeld-Rieger syndrome (ARS) is an autosomal dominant disorder characterized by extraocular anomalies and developmental defects of the anterior segment. PITX2 (paired-like homeodomain transcription factor 2) is considered the major causative gene. In this study, we characterized the molecular defect in PITX2 in a Chinese family with ARS. METHODS Two generations of the family with AR...

Although it has been demonstrated that eukaryotic cellular origins of DNA replication may harbor stimulatory elements that bind transcription factors, how these factors stimulate origin function is unknown. In Saccharomyces cerevisiae , the transcription factor Abf1p stimulates origin function of ARS121 and ARS1 . In the results presented here, an analysis of Abf1p function has been carried out...

BACKGROUND Aortic valve calcification is a progressive process resembling ossification. Recent evidence indicates that the sympathetic nervous system plays an important role in regulating bone deposition and resorption through the beta2-adrenergic receptors (beta2-ARs). The aim of this study is to determine the level and pattern of expression of beta2-ARs in human valve interstitial cells (ICs)...

Filaments which form either between or around active regions (ARs) are called intermediate filaments. In spite of various theoretical studies, the origin of the chirality of filaments is still uncovered. We investigated how intermediate filaments are related to their associated ARs, especially from the point of view of magnetic helicity and the orientation of polarity inversion lines (PILs). Th...

Quantifying spatial and temporal patterns of prey searching is of primary importance for understanding animals' critical habitat and foraging specialization. In patchy environments, animals forage by exhibiting movement patterns consisting of area-restricted searching (ARS) at various scales. Here, we present a new method, the fractal landscape method, which describes the peaks and valleys of f...

Autonomous ridesharing systems (ARS) promise many societal and environmental benefits, including decreased accident rates, reduced energy consumption and pollutant emissions, and diminished land use for parking. To unleash ARS’ potential, stakeholders must understand how the degree of passenger participation influences the ridesharing systems’ efficiency. To date, however, a careful study that ...

The offside decision-making process of international and national assistant referees (ARs) was evaluated using video simulations. A Tobii T120 Eye Tracker was used to record the eye movements. Two hypotheses for explaining incorrect decisions were investigated, namely, the flash-lag effect and the shift of gaze. Performance differences between skill levels were also examined. First, results sho...

The adaptive rejection sampling (ARS) algorithm is a universal random generator for drawing samples efficiently from a univariate log-concave target probability density function (pdf). ARS generates independent samples from the target via rejection sampling with high acceptance rates. Indeed, ARS yields a sequence of proposal functions that converge toward the target pdf, so that the probabilit...

In the absence of sulfur, Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a unicellular green alga, increases its rate of sulfate import and synthesizes several periplasmic proteins, including an arylsulfatase (Ars). These changes appear to help cells acclimate to a sulfur-deficient environment. The elevated rate of sulfate import results from an increase in the capacity and affinity of the transport system for sul...

In Saccharomyces cerevisiae chromosomal DNA replication initiates at intervals of approximately 40 kb and depends upon the activity of autonomously replicating sequence (ARS) elements. The identification of ARS elements and analysis of their function as chromosomal replication origins requires the use of functional assays because they are not sufficiently similar to identify by DNA sequence ana...