Establishing crop cultivars with strong tolerance to P and N deprivation, high salinity, and drought is an effective way to improve crop yield and promote sustainable agriculture worldwide. A vacuolar H+-pyrophosphatase (V-H+-PPase) gene in wheat (TaVP) was functionally characterized in this study. TaVP cDNA is 2586-bp long and encodes a 775-amino-acid polypeptide that contains 10 conserved mem...

In this study, we performed the molecular and biochemical characterization of an ecto-enzyme present in Trypanosoma rangeli that is involved with the hydrolysis of extracellular inorganic pyrophosphate. PCR analysis identified a putative proton-pyrophosphatase (H(+)-PPase) in the epimastigote forms of T. rangeli. This protein was recognized with Western blot and flow cytometry analysis using an...

Phosphoinositides (PIs), the seven metabolites resulting from the phosphorylation of phosphatidylinositol at the 3, 4, and 5 position of the inositol ring, are key regulatory phospholipids localized on the cytosolic leaflets of cellular membranes. Via interactions with proteins mediated by their differentially phos­ phorylated headgroups, they control various aspects of cell phys­ iology includ...

Plants acquire phosphorus (P) from the soil in order to reach the intracellular concentrations necessary for growth and reproduction. To prevent P starvation, both monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous plants have evolved well-regulated systems for inorganic phosphate (Pi) scavenging, acquisition, and recycling. Phosphate starvation responses (PSR) in plants include release of organic acids and h...

Prostate imaging and interpretation is based on prostate imaging reporting and data system version 2 (PI-RADS™ v2) providing clinical guidelines for multiparametric magnetic resonance imaging (mpMRI) of the prostate. PI-RADS™ v2 aims to promote global standardisation, to diminish variation in the acquisition, interpretation and reporting of prostate mpMRI examinations and to improve detection, ...

One of the main challenges in the field of embodied artificial intelligence is the open-ended autonomous learning of complex behaviors. Our approach is to use task-independent, information-driven intrinsic motivation(s) to support task-dependent learning. The work presented here is a preliminary step in which we investigate the predictive information (the mutual information of the past and futu...

Geometric distortions and poor image resolution are well known shortcomings of single-shot echo-planar imaging (ss-EPI). Yet, due to the motion immunity of ss-EPI, it remains the most common sequence for diffusion-weighted imaging (DWI). Moreover, both navigated DW interleaved EPI (iEPI) and parallel imaging (PI) methods, such as sensitivity encoding (SENSE) and generalized autocalibrating para...

Phosphatidylinositol phosphate kinase type 1γ (PIPKIγ) is a key enzyme in the generation of phosphatidylinositol 4,5-bisphosphate [PI(4,5)P(2)] and is expressed at high levels in the nervous system. Homozygous knockout mice lacking this enzyme die postnatally within 24 h, whereas PIPKIγ(+/-) siblings breed normally and have no reported phenotype. Here we show that adult PIPKIγ(+/-) mice have dr...