Bacteroides fragilis causes the majority of Gram-negative anaerobic infections in the humans. The presence of a short, 6-kb, pathogenicity island in the genome is linked to enterotoxigenic B. fragilis (ETBF). The role of the enterotoxin in B. fragilis virulence, however, remains to be determined, as the majority of clinical isolates lack ETBF genes and healthy individuals carry enterotoxin-posi...

Moving-target search, where a hunter has to catch a moving target, is an important problem for video game developers. In our case, the hunter repeatedly moves towards the target and thus has to solve similar search problems repeatedly. We develop Incremental ARA* (I-ARA*) for this purpose, the first incremental anytime search algorithm for movingtarget search in known terrain. We provide an err...

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive clinical subtype accounting for up to 20% of all breast cancers, but its malignant determinants remain largely undefined. Here, we show that in TNBC the overexpression of Fra-1, a component of the transcription factor AP-1, offers prognostic potential. Fra-1 depletion or its heterodimeric partner c-Jun inhibits the proliferative and invasive...

Lipids that are synthesized de novo in the epidermis, including fatty acids, oxysterols, 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D(3), and farnesol, can regulate the differentiation of normal human keratinocytes (NHK). Cholesterol sulfate (CS), an epidermal lipid that is produced in the upper nucleated layers of the epidermis coincident with terminal differentiation, has been shown to play a role in the regulati...

PURPOSE This study aims to identify differentially expressed genes in esophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) through the use of a membrane-based cDNA array. EXPERIMENTAL DESIGN Two newly established human ESCC cell lines (HKESC-1 and HKESC-2) and one corresponding to a morphologically normal, esophageal epithelium tissue specimen, prospectively collected from the HKESC-2-related patient, w...

Matrix metalloproteinase-9 is implicated in airway inflammation and airway remodeling in asthma. We have previously confirmed that human rhinovirus-16 (HRV-16) infection increases MMP-9 expression both in vivo and in vitro. However, the role of the AP-1 sites within the MMP-9 promoter and the effect of commonly used asthma pharmacotherapies in modulating human rhinovirus (HRV)-induced MMP-9 pro...

In mobile environments, a personal communication service (PCS) network must keep track of the location of each mobile user in order to correctly deliver calls. A basic scheme used in the standard IS-41 and GSM protocols is to always update the location of a mobile user whenever the mobile user moves to a new location. The problem with this approach is that the cost of location update operations...

Triple-negative breast cancer (TNBC) is an aggressive clinical subtype accounting for up to 20% of all breast cancers, but its malignant determinants remain largely undefined. Here, we show that in TNBC the overexpression of Fra-1, a component of the transcription factor AP-1, offers prognostic potential. Fra-1 depletion or its heterodimeric partner c-Jun inhibits the proliferative and invasive...

Prognostic classifiers conceivably comprise biomarker genes that functionally contribute to the oncogenic and metastatic properties of cancer, but this has not been investigated systematically. The transcription factor Fra-1 not only has an essential role in breast cancer, but also drives the expression of a highly prognostic gene set. Here, we systematically perturbed the function of 31 indivi...

Surface coal mining in Appalachia has caused extensive replacement of forest with non-forested land cover, much of which is unmanaged and unproductive. Although forested ecosystems are valued by society for both marketable products and ecosystem services, forests have not been restored on most Appalachian mined lands because traditional reclamation practices, encouraged by regulatory policies, ...