BACKGROUND Dietary fibers contribute to health and physiology primarily via the fermentative actions of the host's gut microbiome. Physicochemical properties such as solubility, fermentability, viscosity, and gel-forming ability differ among fiber types and are known to affect metabolism. However, few studies have focused on how they influence the gut microbiome and how these interactions influ...

The specificity of anti-lymphocyte globulin (ALG) has been used to analyze an immune mechanism which is mediated by immunologically committed lymphoid cells to the apparent exclusion of humoral antibody. Rabbit antimouse lymphocyte globulin completely suppressed the immunity which can be passively transferred with Listeria-immune lymphoid cells from actively infected donors. When prospective do...

The formation of transport vesicles that bud from endoplasmic reticulum (ER) exit sites is dependent on the COPII coat made up of three components: the small GTPase Sar1, the Sec23/24 complex, and the Sec13/31 complex. Here, we provide evidence that apoptosis-linked gene 2 (ALG-2), a Ca(2+)-binding protein of unknown function, regulates the COPII function at ER exit sites in mammalian cells. AL...

The effect of antilymphocyte globulin (ALG) on adjuvant arthritis, an immunologically induced disease in the rat, was studied. ALG was prepared from the serum of rabbits immunized against rat lymphocytes. Adjuvant arthritis was induced in rats by a single intracutaneous injection of Freund's complete adjuvant; after 9 to 12 days, all control rats developed polyarthritis. Administration of antil...

The genes alg-1 and alg-2 (referred to as "alg-1/2") encode the Argonaute proteins affiliated to the microRNA (miRNA) pathway in C. elegans. Bound to miRNAs they form the effector complex that effects post-transcriptional gene silencing. In order to define biological features important to understand the mode of action of these Argonautes, we characterize aspects of these genes during developmen...

Breast cancer is the most prevalent cancer in women. Although it begins as local disease, breast cancer frequently metastasizes to the lymph nodes and distant organs. Therefore, novel therapeutic targets are needed for the management of this disease. Apoptosis-linked gene 2 (ALG-2) is a calcium-binding protein crucial for diverse physiological processes and has recently been implicated in cance...

The definition of a category of (T,V)-algebras, where V is a unital commutative quantale and T is a Set-monad, requires the existence of a certain lax extension of T. In this article, we present a general construction of such an extension. This leads to the formation of two categories of (T,V)-algebras: the category Alg(T,V) of canonical (T,V)-algebras, and the category Alg(T′,V) of op-canonica...

This report describes the case of a 54 year old woman with very severe aplastic anaemia who was treated with antilymphocyte globulin (ALG) and developed Guillain Barré syndrome (GBS). No antecedent infective aetiology was identified. Although there are numerous reports of autoimmune disease after treatment with ALG in aplastic anaemia, and GBS after immunosuppressive treatment, there are none r...

Coated vesicles mediate the traffic of secretory and membrane cargo proteins from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) to the Golgi apparatus. The coat protein complex (COPII) involved in vesicle budding is constituted by a GTPase, Sar1, the inner coat components of Sec23/Sec24 and the components of the outer coat Sec13/Sec31A. The Ca(2+)-binding protein ALG-2 was recently identified as a Sec31A bind...