An adynamic bone disorder (ABD) is an important complication of chronic kidney disease (CKD) of unknown etiology for which there is no adequate treatment. Reported is an animal model of ablative CKD complicated by an ABD characterized by the absence of secondary hyperparathyroidism and its successful treatment with a skeletal anabolic factor, bone morphogenetic protein-7 (BMP-7). Adult mice wer...

A fundamental question in biology is how complex structures are maintained after their initial specification. We address this question by reviewing the role of the Hox gene Abd-B in Drosophila testis organogenesis, which proceeds through embryonic, larval and pupal stages to reach maturation in adult stages. The data presented in this review highlight a cell- and stage-specific function of Abd-...

We present the SC-ABD algorithm that implements sequentially consistent distributed shared memory (DSM). The algorithm tolerates that less than half of the processes are faulty (crash-stop). Compared to the multi-writer ABD algorithm, SC-ABD requires one instead of two round-trips of communication to perform a write operation, and an equal number of round-trips (two) to perform a read operation...

Plectin is a major component of the cytoskeleton and links the intermediate filament system to hemidesmosomes by binding to the integrin beta4 subunit. Previously, a binding site for beta4 was mapped on the actin-binding domain (ABD) of plectin and binding of beta4 and F-actin to plectin was shown to be mutually exclusive. Here we show that only the ABDs of plectin and dystonin bind to beta4, w...

Assurance Based Development (ABD) is a novel approach to the synergistic construction of critical software systems and their assurance arguments. In ABD, the need for assurance drives a unique process synthesis mechanism that results in a detailed operational process for building both software and an argument demonstrating its fitness for use in given operating contexts. In this paper, we intro...

W model a situation in which two retailers consider launching an “Advance Booking Discount” (ABD) program. In this program, customers are enticed to precommit their orders at a discount price prior to the regular selling season. However, these precommitted orders are filled during the selling season. While the ABD program enables the retailers to lock in a portion of the customer demand and use...

The Drosophila larval cardiac tube is composed of 104 cardiomyocytes that exhibit genetic and functional diversity. The tube is divided into the aorta and the heart proper that encompass the anterior and posterior parts of the tube, respectively. Differentiation into aorta and heart cardiomyocytes takes place during embryogenesis. We have observed living embryos to correlate morphological chang...

Many important processes in eukaryotic cells involve changes in the quantity, location and the organization of actin filaments [1] [2] [3]. We have been able to visualize these changes in live cells using a fusion protein (GFP-ABD) comprising the green fluorescent protein (GFP) of Aequorea victoria and the 25 kDa highly conserved actin-binding domain (ABD) from the amino terminus of the actin c...

BACKGROUND In Drosophila, the gonads are composed of two cell populations: the germ line, derived from the pole cells, and a somatic component, derived from the mesoderm of abdominal segments 5-8. Formation of the gonad requires the function of a specific homeotic gene, abdominal-A (abd-A). Other genes of the bithorax complex, Ultrabithorax (Ubx) or Abdominal-B (Abd-B), cannot substitute for th...

The Abdominal-B (Abd-B) gene of the bithorax complex (BX-C) of Drosophila controls the identities of the fifth through seventh abdominal segments and segments in the genitalia (more precisely, parasegments 10-14). Here we focus on iab-5, iab-6 and iab-7, regulatory regions of Abd-B that control expression in the fifth, sixth and seventh abdominal segments (parasegments 10-12). By analysis of pa...