Valuation--what you need to know

The basics of determining valuation will help you to understand what criteria matter most for investors.     

What many transgender activists don't want you to know: and why you should know it anyway

Currently the predominant cultural understanding of male-to-female transsexualism is that all male-to-female (MtF) transsexuals are, essentially, women trapped in men's bodies. This understanding has little scientific basis, however, and is inconsistent with clinical observations. Ray Blanchard has shown that there are two distinct subtypes of MtF transsexuals. Members of one subtype, homosexual transsexuals, are best understood as a type of homosexual male. The other subtype, autogynephilic transsexuals, are motivated by the erotic desire to become women. The persistence of the predominant cultural understanding, while explicable, is damaging to science and to many transsexuals.     

Neuropilin,you gotta let me know

Neuropilins are highly conserved single pass transmembrane proteins specific to vertebrates. They were originally identified as adhesion molecules in the nervous system, but were subsequently rediscovered as the ligand binding subunit of the class 3 semaphorin receptor in neurons and then as blood vessel receptors for the vascular endothelial growth factor VEGF. More recently they have also been implicated as mediators of the T-cell immune response and as key prognostic markers in several types of cancer. Because neuropilins bind multiple ligands and associate with several different types of co-receptors, they variably promote cell adhesion, repulsion or attraction. Which response they ultimately invoke is decided by the cellular and even subcellular context the neuropilins find themselves in. Here, we review how the developmental functions of the neuropilins are influenced by such different contexts.     

All you wanted to know about SELEX

In vitro selection, or SELEX, is a technique that allows the simultaneous screening of highly diverse pools of different RNA or DNA (dsDNA or ssDNA) molecules for a particular feature. Different examples from a great variety of applications ofin vitro selection experiments are described and a detailed overview of the method and its variations will be given. Some especially conclusivein vitro selection experiments are discussed in detail to illustrate the potential power and diversity of this method. Potential restrictions of the methods and possible ways to overcome them are pointed out.     

All you need to know about p53

A novel protein-based approach has been developed to import a cell-permeable form of the site-specific recombinase Cre into undifferentiated and terminally differentiated mammalian cells     

The immunological synapse: the more you look the less you know..

Before T cells of the immune system can recognize pathogens, antigen presenting cells (APCs) must process pathogen-derived peptides and present them together with major histocompatibility complex molecules (MHC) to T lymphocytes. T lymphocytes then scan the surface of APCs and antigen-specific activation of the T cell will happen after interaction of T cell antigen receptor (TCR) with MHC-peptide complexes expressed at the membrane of APCs. This interaction takes place in a nanometer scale gap between the two cells, referred to as an immunological synapse. Recent three-dimensional fluorescence analysis of this synapse revealed a dynamic spatial organization of membrane receptors, cytoskeleton and intracellular signaling complexes on the T cell side showing specific patterns, which depend on the nature of the T cell:APC pair. Although it is obvious that establishment of an intimate contact between T cells and APCs will facilitate cell:cell communication it is not clear what is the role, if any, of this receptors patterning. This molecular reorganization has long been thought to enhance and/or sustain TCR signaling and thus T cell activation, but this is now a matter of controversy. Moreover, mechanisms controlling immunological synapse formation are still unraveled. Segregation of proteins may occur spontaneously as proposed by mathematical modeling taking into account membrane fluidity, protein size and receptor/ligand affinity. Alternatively patterning of the molecules at the cell:cell interface could be driven by active processes involving T cell signaling and/or specific features of the APC. These different questions will be discussed herein.