Since its deorphanization in 2003 (1,2), the fatty acid receptor GPR40 (FFAR1/FFA1) has drawn considerable attention as a potential therapeutic target for type 2 diabetes. Because fatty acids acutely amplify insulin secretion only in the presence of glucose, the discovery of a “drugable” cell surface receptor whose activation glucose-dependently enhances insulin release generated much interest ...

Activation of the p53 transcription factor in response to a variety of cellular stresses, including DNA damage and oncogene activation, initiates a program of gene expression that blocks the proliferative expansion of damaged cells. While the beneficial impact of the anticancer function of p53 is well established, several recent papers suggest that p53 activation may in some circumstances act i...

We introduce a new variant of the game of Cops and Robbers played on graphs, where the robber is invisible unless outside the neighbor set of a cop. The hyperopic cop number is the corresponding analogue of the cop number, and we investigate bounds and other properties of this parameter. We characterize the cop-win graphs for this variant, along with graphs with the largest possible hyperopic c...

We consider the game of Cops and Robber played with infinitely many cops on countable graphs. We give a sufficient condition— the strongly 1-e.c. property—for the cop number to be infinite. The cop density of a finite graph, defined as the ratio of the cop number and the number of vertices, is investigated. In the infinite case, the limits of the cop densities of chains of finite graphs are stu...

The cop-rep region of plasmid pE194 contains two tandem structural genes, cop and repF, as well as the plus and minus origins of replication. The two structural genes comprise an operon whose expression is repressed by the binding of Cop protein to a 28-bp inverted complementary repeat sequence that overlaps the cop-repF promoter. From its position relative to the promoter and the experimentall...

The yeast Dsl1p vesicle tethering complex, comprising the three subunits Dsl1p, Dsl3p, and Tip20p, is stably associated with three endoplasmic reticulum-localized Q-SNAREs and is believed to play a central role in the tethering and fusion of Golgi-derived COP-I transport vesicles. Dsl1p also interacts directly with COP-I subunits. We now show that binding of Dsl1p to COP-I subunits involves bin...

Extensive variations of colloid osmotic pressure (COP) measured in the priming as well as during infant cardiopulmonary bypass motivated us to audit clinical and laboratory data to identify the risk factors for low COP at the end of bypass. Data of 73 consecutive infant patients with body weight <10 kg, who underwent elective, first time open-heart surgery between March 2005 and December 2006 w...