Serge Haddad was professor at Université Paris-Dauphine when I obtained a position of professor there in september 2004. We did some research work together from this time on, and this cooperation went on after our respective position changes : in Ecole Normale Supérieure de Cachan (feb. 2008) for S. Haddad and in Université Pierre et Marie Curie (sept. 2008) for me. More precisely, a first step...

BACKGROUND Clinical and preclinical observations indicate that Lactobacillus plantarum has anti-inflammatory activity and may regulate the immune responses of its hosts when ingested. Recently, modification of teichoic acids (TAs) produced by L. plantarum was reported as a key to regulating the systemic immune response in mice. However, data linking TA-related genetic determinants and the immun...

Toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems are prevalent in bacteria and archaea. However, related studies in the ecologically and bioelectrochemically important strain Shewanella oneidensis are limited. Here, we show that SO_3166, a member of the higher eukaryotes and prokaryotes nucleotide-binding (HEPN) superfamily, strongly inhibited cell growth in S. oneidensis and Escherichia coli. SO_3165, a putative ...

INTRODUCTION Extracorporeal circulation induces hemostatic alterations that lead to inflammatory response (IR) and postoperative bleeding. Tranexamic acid (TA) reduces fibrinolysis and blood loss after cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB). However, its effects on IR and vasoplegic shock (VS) are not well known and elucidating these effects was the main objective of this study. METHODS A case control ...

The reactions in the Si/TaC/Cu and Si/Ta2N/Cu metallisation systems were investigated by x-ray diffraction, Rutherford backscattering, scanning electron microscope and the transmission electron microscopy. The results were then combined with the assessed ternary SiTa-C, Ta-C-Cu, Si-Ta-N and Ta-N-Cu phase diagrams. It was found that both barriers ultimately failed due to diffusion of Cu through ...

BACKGROUND Operative risk scoring algorithms identify patients with severe AS for transcatheter valve implantation in whom the anticipated operative mortality for conventional surgery would be considered prohibitive. We compared the three risk scores EuroScore 1 (LES), society of thoracic surgeons' (STS) score and ACEF (age-creatinine-ejection fraction score) to the readjusted EuroScore 2 recen...

The purpose of this study was to examine the physicochemical properties of TA ointments and conduct a human sensory test to assess the properties of those ointments. Physicochemical assessment was done via near-infrared (NIR) absorption spectroscopy, measurement of water content, microscopy, and measurement of viscoelasticity. The human sensory test examined 5 aspects (texture, cohesiveness, sp...

In the previous issue of Interacting with Computers, I offered a critique of Task Analysis (TA) arguing that, in general, task analysis techniques had failed to appreciate the significance of the shift in emphasis towards logical modelling of the system and away from physical modelling which had taken place during the early 1980s in information systems. As a result TA (if used on its own) would...

The widespread prokaryotic toxin-antitoxin (TA) systems involve conditional interaction between two TA proteins. The interaction between the Epsilon and Zeta proteins, constituting the TA system of plasmid pSM19035 from Streptococcus pyogenes, was detected in vivo using a yeast two-hybrid system. As we showed using Saccharomyces cerevisiae, the Zeta toxin hybrid gene also exerts its toxic effec...

In plants, particular micro-RNAs (miRNAs) induce the production of a class of small interfering RNAs (siRNA) called trans-acting siRNA (ta-siRNA) that lead to gene silencing. A single miRNA target is sufficient for the production of ta-siRNAs, which target can be incorporated into a vector to induce the production of siRNAs, and ultimately gene silencing. The term miRNA-induced gene silencing (...