Jsowerbya, new genus of Muricidae (Mollusca: Gastropoda) from the Eocene of the Paris (France) and Hampshire (England) basins with a phylogenetic assessment of its Ocenebrine versus Ergalataxine affinities

Jsowerbya, nov. gen. (Gastropoda: Muricidae) includes three species from the Eocene of the Paris and Hampshire basins. It increases the number of extinct muricid genera, which curiously represent a very small fraction of the described genera. The species of Jsowerbya, often mistaken for the muricopsine genus Muricopsis, possess a unique combination of characters shared with the subfamilies Ocenebrinae and Ergalataxinae. A cladistic analysis, based on structural homologies of the spiral sculpture, however, suggests that Jsowerbya is closely related to the Ocenebrinae. Thus, Jsowerbya is here regarded as one the most basal Ocenebrinae.     

Synthesis by Enzymatic Catalysis VI—An Investigation of Chemical Modification of HRP by Fourier Transform Infra-Red Vibrational Spectroscopy

Horseradish peroxidase was chemically conjugated on its carbohydrate moieties with short aliphatic chains (C₈ and C₁₆). An analytical method using FT.IR spectroscopy was developed to analyze this alteration in enzyme structure. This method is non-destructive, and can be applied directly to samples of the reaction mixture. More general applications of this technique are described and discussed.     

Development and virtual screening of target libraries.

The concomitant development of in silico screening technologies and of three-dimensional information on therapeutically relevant macromolecular targets makes it possible to navigate in the structural proteome and to identify targets fulfilling user-defined queries. This review illustrates some in-house recent advances in the development of target libraries and how they can be browsed to unravel chemogenomic information.     

Expression of Shigella sonnei lipopolysaccharide in Vibrio cholerae

Making use of a newly designed mobilizable suicide vector, the genetic determinants encoding Shigella sonnei lipopolysaccharide (LPS) were stably integrated into the chromosome of the live attenuated Vibrio cholerae vaccine strain CVD103-HgR. Expression studies showed that the production of complete S. sonnei O-polysaccharide (O-PS)-bearing LPS was limited in bivalent recombinant strains that were also proficient in the synthesis of the host-encoded Inaba O-PS. Conversely, high amounts of LPS carrying S. sonnei O-PS are produced in monovalent Inaba-deficient derivatives, even in those strains which do not co-express the compatible R1 LPS core. Thus, the non-enterobacterial V. cholerae LPS core efficiently acts as a receptor for covalent binding of S. sonnei O-PS provided that competition with the host O-PS is avoided. Expression of the R1 core interferes with cell division in recombinant V. cholerae without affecting other physiological properties of vaccine strain CVD103-HgR. Both monovalent and bivalent strains stimulated high serum-antibody titres specific for their respective O-serotype(s) when administered to rabbits. The potential of V. cholerae as an expression carrier for heterologous O-serotypes is discussed.     

Axial Diffusivity of the Corona Radiata at 24 Hours Post-Stroke: A New Biomarker for Motor and Global Outcome

Fractional anisotropy (FA) is an effective marker of motor outcome at the chronic stage of stroke yet proves to be less efficient at early time points. This study aims to determine which diffusion metric in which location is the best marker of long-term stroke outcome after thrombolysis with diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) at 24 hours post-stroke. Twenty-eight thrombolyzed patients underwent DTI at 24 hours post-stroke onset. Ipsilesional and contralesional FA, mean (MD), axial (AD), and radial (RD) diffusivities values were calculated in different Regions-of-Interest (ROIs): (1) the white matter underlying the precentral gyrus (M1), (2) the corona radiata (CoRad), (3) the posterior limb of the internal capsule (PLIC) and (4) the cerebral peduncles (CP). NIHSS scores were acquired at admission, day 1, and day 7; modified Rankin Scores (mRS) at 3 months. Significant decreases were found in FA, MD, and AD of the ipsilesional CoRad and M1. MD and AD were also significantly lower in the PLIC. The ratio of ipsi and contralesional AD of the CoRad (CoRad-rAD) was the strongest diffusion parameter correlated with motor NIHSS scores on day 7 and with the mRS at 3 months. A Receiver-Operator Curve analysis yielded a model for the CoRad-rAD to predict good outcome based on upper limb NIHSS motor scores and mRS with high specificity and sensitivity. FA values were not correlated with clinical outcome. In conclusion, axial diffusivity of the CoRad from clinical DTI at 24 hours post-stroke is the most appropriate diffusion metric for quantifying stroke damage to predict outcome, suggesting the importance of early axonal damage.     

Primary structure of human nuclear ribonucleoprotein particle C proteins: conservation of sequence and domain structures in heterogeneous nuclear RNA, mRNA, and pre-rRNA-binding proteins.

In the eucaryotic nucleus, heterogeneous nuclear RNAs exist in a complex with a specific set of proteins to form heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein particles (hnRNPs). The C proteins, C1 and C2, are major constituents of hnRNPs and appear to play a role in RNA splicing as suggested by antibody inhibition and immunodepletion experiments. With the use of a previously described partial cDNA clone as a hybridization probe, full-length cDNAs for the human C proteins were isolated. All of the cDNAs isolated hybridized to two poly(A)+ RNAs of 1.9 and 1.4 kilobases (kb). DNA sequencing of a cDNA clone for the 1.9-kb mRNA (pHC12) revealed a single open reading frame of 290 amino acids coding for a protein of 31,931 daltons and two polyadenylation signals, AAUAAA, approximately 400 base pairs apart in the 3' untranslated region of the mRNA. DNA sequencing of a clone corresponding to the 1.4-kb mRNA (pHC5) indicated that the sequence of this mRNA is identical to that of the 1.9-kb mRNA up to the first polyadenylation signal which it uses. Both mRNAs therefore have the same coding capacity and are probably transcribed from a single gene. Translation in vitro of the 1.9-kb mRNA selected by hybridization with a 3'-end subfragment of pHC12 demonstrated that it by itself can direct the synthesis of both C1 and C2. The difference between the C1 and C2 proteins which results in their electrophoretic separation is not known, but most likely one of them is generated from the other posttranslationally. Since several hnRNP proteins appeared by sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis as multiple antigenically related polypeptides, this raises the possibility that some of these other groups of hnRNP proteins are also each produced from a single mRNA. The predicted amino acid sequence of the protein indicates that it is composed of two distinct domains: an amino terminus that contains what we have recently described as a RNP consensus sequence, which is the putative RNA-binding site, and a carboxy terminus that is very negatively charged, contains no aromatic amino acids or prolines, and contains a putative nucleoside triphosphate-binding fold, as well as a phosphorylation site for casein kinase type II. The RNP consensus sequence was also found in the yeast poly(A)-binding protein (PABP), the heterogeneous nuclear RNA-binding proteins A1 and A2, and the pre-rRNA binding protein C23. All of these proteins are also composed of at least two distinct domains: an amino terminus, which possesses one or more RNP consensus sequences, and a carboxy terminus, which is unique to each protein, being very acidic in the C proteins and rich in glycine in A1, and C23 and rich in proline in the poly(A)-binding protein. These findings suggest that the amino terminus of these proteins possesses a highly conserved RNA-binding domain, whereas the carboxy terminus contains a region essential to the unique function and interactions of each of the RNA-binding proteins.