The relation between nitrogen percent and dry weight of inoculated legumes

Summary Results of numerous tests of tropical and temperate legume hosts and Rhizobium strains accumulated between 1952 and 1966 were examined for a relation between N percent (y) and dry weight per plant (x). The data fitted the equation y=A–be^–cx. The most effective Rhizobium strains can be selected on the basis of dry matter yields of whole plants or plant tops only, without the need for N analyses, using statistical analyses. A previously proposed method which employs the linear relation between N-yield and dry matter yield was shown to apply only when data for strains which are not fully effective are excluded.It is postulated that symbiotically fixed N forms a different compound from that resulting from applied mineral N and that this compound cannot be remobilised before flowering.deceased     

Characterization of the human epidermal profilaggrin gene. Genomic organization and identification of an S-100-like calcium binding domain at the amino terminus.

Filaggrin is an intermediate filament-associated protein which functions to aggregate keratin intermediate filaments in the stratum corneum of mammalian epidermis. It is synthesized as a large precursor protein, profilaggrin, that consists of multiple filaggrin units and is localized in keratohyalin granules. In this report, we describe the characterization of cosmid genomic clones containing the human profilaggrin gene coding for 11 complete filaggrin repeats of 324 amino acids each. At the amino- and carboxyl-terminal ends of human profilaggrin are leader and tail peptide sequences of 293 and 157 amino acids, respectively, which differ from filaggrin. The leader peptide is composed of two distinct domains: an 81-residue segment which shows significant homology to the S-100 family of EF hand-containing calcium-binding proteins, and a hydrophilic second domain of 212 residues. The gene is divided into three exons, with one intron (approximately 9.6 kilobase pairs) in the 5' noncoding region and a second one of 570 base pairs between the EF hands. The position of intron 2 is identical to that of other members of the S-100-like family. The presence of an S-100-like domain suggests that profilaggrin binds calcium and that the calcium binding domain is functionally significant in the formation of keratohyalin and/or the subsequent processing of profilaggrin to filaggrin, both of which may be calcium-dependent events.     

Comparative analysis of DNA polymorphisms and phylogenetic relationships among Syzygium cumini Skeels based on phenotypic characters and RAPD technique

The Indian black berry (Syzygium cumini Skeels) has a great nutraceutical and medicinal properties. As in other fruit crops, the fruit characteristics are important attributes for differentiation were also determined for different accessions of S. cumini. The fruit weight, length, breadth, length: breadth ratio, pulp weight, pulp content, seed weight and pulp: seed ratio significantly varied in different accessions. Molecular characterization was carried out using PCR based RAPD technique. Out of 80 RAPD primers, only 18 primers produced stable polymorphisms that were used to examine the phylogenetic relationship. A sum of 207 loci were generated out of which 201 loci found polymorphic. The average genetic dissimilarity was 97 per cent among jamun accessions. The phylogenetic relationship was also determined by principal coordinates analysis (PCoA) that explained 46.95 per cent cumulative variance. The two-dimensional PCoA analysis showed grouping of the different accessions that were plotted into four sub-plots, representing clustering of accessions. The UPGMA (r = 0.967) and NJ (r = 0.987) dendrogram constructed based on the dissimilarity matrix revealed a good degree of fit with the cophenetic correlation value. The dendrogram grouped the accessions into three main clusters according to their eco-geographical regions which given useful insight into their phylogenetic relationships.     

L<Subscript>2</Subscript>-norm multiple kernel learning and its application to biomedical data fusion

Background  

This paper introduces the notion of optimizing different norms in the dual problem of support vector machines with multiple kernels. The selection of norms yields different extensions of multiple kernel learning (MKL) such as L _∞, L ₁, and L ₂ MKL. In particular, L ₂ MKL is a novel method that leads to non-sparse optimal kernel coefficients, which is different from the sparse kernel coefficients optimized by the existing L _∞ MKL method. In real biomedical applications, L ₂ MKL may have more advantages over sparse integration method for thoroughly combining complementary information in heterogeneous data sources.     

The repetitive structure of the profilaggrin gene as demonstrated using epidermal profilaggrin cDNA

Filaggrin is the histidine-rich basic protein that aggregates keratin filaments in fully differentiated cells of the epidermis. Filaggrin is synthesized in the granular cell layer as a high molecular weight precursor protein (profilaggrin) that consists of multiple repeated copies of filaggrin. cDNA clones for rat and mouse epidermal profilaggrin have been constructed from sucrose gradient-enriched RNA in order to study the repetitive structure of profilaggrin. These clones hybridize to high molecular weight epidermal mRNA (23 kilobase pairs, rat and 19 kilobase pairs, mouse) and exhibit limited cross-hybridization between species. Several rat clones direct the synthesis of a portion of rat profilaggrin in bacteria. One of these, rat profilaggrin cDNA clone R4D6, is 2400 base pairs in length. The R4D6 cDNA is shown to contain repetitive sequence by restriction mapping and southern hybridization analysis of restriction digests of this plasmid, using subfragments of the plasmid as hybridization probes. Southern hybridization analysis of rat genomic DNA, digested to completion with several restriction enzymes, reveals a simple hybridization pattern of fragments equal in size to those of the cDNA. Partial digestion of rat genomic DNA results in a ladder of bands based on a 1200-base pair repeat, equal to the size of the repeating unit of the cDNA clone, and consistent with the expected repeating size of profilaggrin. Together, these results show that the profilaggrin mRNA and gene have repetitive structure and that the gene apparently lacks introns in the coding region.