Congenital malformations of the heart and circulatory system are the most common type of human birth defect. Recent studies have implicated the Notch signaling pathway in human cardiac development by demonstrating abnormalities of the JAG1 gene as the basis for Alagille syndrome and some cases of isolated tetralogy of Fallot or pulmonic stenosis. How the Notch pathway acts in cardiac developmen...

SoxF family members have been linked to arterio-venous specification events and human pathological conditions, but in contrast to Sox17 and Sox18, a detailed in vivo analysis of a Sox7 mutant model is still lacking. In this studywe generated zebrafish sox7 mutants to understand the role of Sox7 during vascular development. By in vivo imaging of transgenic zebrafish lines we show that sox7 mutan...

Mechano-sensory hair cells (HCs), housed in the inner ear cochlea, are critical for the perception of sound. In the mammalian cochlea, differentiation of HCs occurs in a striking basal-to-apical and medial-to-lateral gradient, which is thought to ensure correct patterning and proper function of the auditory sensory epithelium. Recent studies have revealed that Hedgehog signaling opposes HC diff...

OBJECTIVE To determine the role of the cardiovascular-restricted, hairy-related bHLH transcription factor, CHF1/Hey2, in the biological response to vascular injury. METHODS AND RESULTS We investigated the response of CHF1/Hey2-deficient mice to vascular injury in vivo and the response of primary cultured vascular smooth muscle cells (VSMCs) from these mice to growth factors in vitro. Neointim...

We previously reported that mice lacking the hairy-related basic helix-loop-helix (bHLH) transcription factor CHF1/Hey2 develop a thin-walled left ventricle. To explore the basis for this phenotype, we examined regional gene expression patterns in the developing myocardium. We found that atrial natriuretic factor (ANF), which is normally expressed in the atria and trabeculae and is restricted f...

“Z” is a young sign language developing in family whose hearing members speak Tzotzil (Mayan). Three deaf siblings, together with an intervening sister and niece, formed the original cohort of signing adults. A son signer became first native second generation. Z provides evidence for classic grammaticalization chain linking requesting attention (HEY1) to pragmatic turn-initiating particle (HEY2...

BACKGROUND Development assistance for health (DAH) has grown substantially, totaling more than $31.3 billion in 2013. However, the degree that countries with high concentrations of armed conflict, ethnic violence, inequality, debt, and corruption have received this health aid and how that assistance might be different from the funding provided to other countries has not been assessed. METHODS...

This article investigates how parties affect legislative gridlock-the inability of government to enact significant proposals on the policy agenda. Conventional ccounts suggest that divided party control of government causes such stalemate. I offer an alternative partisan model of gridlock that incorporates party polarization, party seat division, and the interaction between these two factors. U...

Cardiac hypertrophy is a common response to hemodynamic stress in the heart and can progress to heart failure. To investigate whether the transcription factor cardiovascular basic helix-loop-helix factor 1/hairy/enhancer of split related with YRPW motif 2 (CHF1/Hey2) influences the development of cardiac hypertrophy and progression to heart failure under conditions of pressure overload, we perf...