Disruption of the normal pattern of parental origin-specific gene expression is referred to as loss of imprinting (LOI), which is common in various cancers. To investigate a possible role of LOI in the early stage of human cell transformation, we studied LOI in 18 human fibroblast cell lines immortalized spontaneously, by viral oncogenes, by chemical or physical carcinogens, or by infection wit...

BACKGROUND Loss of imprinting (LOI) of the insulin-like growth factor-II (IGF2) gene, an epigenetic alteration associated with expression of the normally silent maternal allele, was observed first in Wilms tumor. Although LOI has subsequently been detected in most adult tumors, the biologic role of LOI in cancer remains obscure. We analyzed the imprinting status of Wilms tumors with respect to ...

Soil sequesters large amounts of carbon derived from organic and inorganic sources. Soil organic carbon (SOC) has to be measured periodically for the study of climate change. Many methods are used to estimate SOC and those methods are relatively time consuming and costly, with carbon in soil samples converted to carbon dioxide which is then measured directly or indirectly by different methods. ...

The intrinsic shape of galaxy clusters can be obtained through a combination of X-ray and SunyaevZeldovich effect observations once cosmological parameters are assumed to be known. In this paper we discuss the feasibility of modelling galaxy clusters as either prolate or oblate ellipsoids. We analyze the intra-cluster medium distribution for a sample of 25 X-ray selected clusters, with measured...

We propose land use dynamics models corresponding to parcels located on the edge of the forest corridor, Madagascar. We use semi-Markov chain to infer the land-use dynamics. In addition to the empirical and maximum likelihood methods, we estimate the semi-Markov kernel by a Bayesian approach. In the latter case, we use Jeffreys’ non-informative prior and we approximate the posterior distributio...

Aberrant imprinting of the insulin-like growth factor II (IGF2) gene is a molecular hallmark of many tumors. Reactivation of the normally suppressed maternal allele leads to upregulation of the growth factor that promotes tumor growth. However, the mechanisms underlying the loss of imprinting (LOI) remain poorly defined. We examined the epigenotypes at the gene promoters that control IGF2 allel...