Formation of a developmentally arrested dispersal stage called the dauer larva is enhanced by a Caenorhabditis-specific pheromone and is inhibited by increasing amounts of food. Pheromone-induced dauer larva formation of three tested wild-type strains is temperature-dependent, so that an increased percentage of the population forms dauer larvae at 25 degrees C compared to lower temperatures. Da...

Among NK cell receptor-ligand partnerships, KIR3DL1 and HLA-Bw4 demonstrate the greatest diversity; permutations of their allelic combinations titrate NK reactivity. Balancing selection has maintained distinct subtypes of KIR3DL1 alleles in global populations, implying that each may provide unique fitness advantages and variably influence disease processes. Though approaches exist for determini...

Brown Norway rats (BN, BN/NHsdMcwi) are profoundly resistant to developing acute kidney injury (AKI) following ischemia reperfusion. To help define the genetic basis for this resistance, we used consomic rats, in which individual chromosomes from BN rats were placed into the genetic background of Dahl SS rats (SS, SS/JrHsdMcwi) to determine which chromosomes contain alleles contributing to prot...

Background: HLA-G is a non-classical human leukocyte antigen expressed primarily in fetal tissues at the maternal-fetal interface. The unique structure of HLA-G molecule permits a restricted peptide presentation and allows the modulation of the immune system. There is now general agreement that HLA-G is an important immunotolerant molecule with the capability of inhibiting immune cell functions...

The deleted in malignant brain tumors 1 (DMBT1) gene on 10q25-26 is a candidate tumor suppressor gene in malignant gliomas, but its role is controversial, e.g., some DMBT1 homozygous deletions reflect unmasking of constitutional deletion polymorphisms by 10q loss. To clarify the role of DMBT1 in gliomagenesis, we investigated three reported deletion hot spots. Homozygous deletions at DMBT1 repe...

IN 1992, the first alanine scanning mutagenesis was performed on the yeast actin gene ACT1 (Wertman et al. 1992). This collection of mutants has proven to be a very useful set of reagents for probing the structure/ function relationships in the actin cytoskeleton. Recently, we realized that several of the most devastating mutants have additional mutations that in several cases lead to complete ...

Variant D occurs frequently in Africans. However, considerably less RHD alleles have been described in this population compared with Europeans. We characterized 5 new RHD alleles, dubbed DAU-0 to DAU-4, that shared a T379M substitution and occurred in a cDe haplotype. DAU-1 to DAU-4 were detected in Africans with partial D phenotypes. They harbored one and 2 additional missense mutations, respe...