STUDY OBJECTIVE The aim was to investigate the effect on respiratory health of male middle tar smokers changing the tar and nicotine levels of the cigarettes they smoke for a six month period. DESIGN This was a randomised controlled trial. Middle tar smokers were randomly allocated to smoke one of three different types of cigarette (low tar, middle nicotine; middle tar, middle nicotine; and l...

the growing interest in using natural fibers as reinforcing agents of polymer-based composites is mainly due to their advantages such as lower cost, lower density, ease of preparation, lower energy requirements for processing, biodegradability, wide availability and relative non-abrasiveness over traditional reinforcing fibers such as glass and carbon. in this study, wood-plastic composite (wpc...

The messenger RNAs of human immunodeficiency virus-1 (HIV-1) have an RNA hairpin structure, TAR, at their 5' ends that contains a six-nucleotide loop and a three-nucleotide bulge. The conformations of TAR RNA and of TAR with an arginine analog specifically bound at the binding site for the viral protein, Tat, were characterized by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy. Upon arginine bin...

We present here a new set of aminoglycoside-arginine conjugates (AACs) that are either site-specific or per-arginine conjugates of paromomycin, neamine, and neomycin B as well as their structure-activity relationships. Their binding constants (KD) for TAR and RRE RNAs, measured by fluorescence anisotropy, revealed dependence on the number and location of arginines in the different aminoglycosid...

A novel series of compounds, derived from [1,2,3]triazolo[4,5-d]pyrimidines with a guanidyl group or amino group-terminated side chain was designed and synthesized as HIV-1 trans-activator of transcription–trans-activation responsive region (Tat–TAR) inter action inhibitors. Their ability to inhibit Tat–TAR RNA interaction was determined by a Tatdependent HIV-1 long terminal repeat (LTR)-driven...

Bacterial chemoreceptors associate with the histidine kinase CheA and coupling protein CheW to form extended membrane arrays that receive and transduce environmental signals. A receptor trimers-of-dimers resides at each vertex of the hexagonal protein lattice. CheA is fully activated and regulated when it is integrated into the receptor assembly. To mimic these states in solution, we have engin...

The transactivator responsive region (TAR) present in the 5'-NTR of the HIV-1 genome represents a potential target for antiretroviral intervention and a model system for the development of specific inhibitors of RNA-protein interaction. Earlier, we have shown that an anti-TAR polyamide nucleotide analog (PNA(TAR)) conjugated to a membrane transducing (MTD) peptide, transportan, is efficiently t...

The taxa-area relationship (TAR) and the distance-decay relationship (DDR) both describe spatial turnover of taxa and are central patterns of biodiversity. Here, we compared TAR and DDR of bacterial communities across different marine realms and ecosystems at the global scale. To obtain reliable global estimates for both relationships, we quantified the poorly assessed effects of sequencing dep...

The TAR element extending from -17 to +80 in the human immunodeficiency virus long terminal repeat (HIV LTR) is required for activation of gene expression by the tat trans-activator protein. TAR RNA forms a stable stem-loop structure, and mutagenesis studies indicate that the stem structure, the primary sequence of the loop, and the bulge element are the major determinants for tat activation. R...

1. Experimental methods 2. Strains and plasmids used in this study (Table S1) 3. Deduced functions and sequence comparison of the tar genes (Table S2) 4. Schematic diagram of the tar gene cluster direct cloning (Figure S1) 5. Restriction mapping of pCAP01-tar and its derivatives (Figure S2). 6. Results of heterologous expression of the tar gene cluster in S. coelicolor M1146 (Figure S3) 7. Resu...