Complete genome sequence of the model actinomycete Streptomyces coelicolor A3(2)

Streptomyces coelicolor is a representative of the group of soil-dwelling, filamentous bacteria responsible for producing most natural antibiotics used in human and veterinary medicine. Here we report the 8,667,507 base pair linear chromosome of this organism, containing the largest number of genes so far discovered in a bacterium. The 7,825 predicted genes include more than 20 clusters coding for known or predicted secondary metabolites. The genome contains an unprecedented proportion of regulatory genes, predominantly those likely to be involved in responses to external stimuli and stresses, and many duplicated gene sets that may represent 'tissue-specific' isoforms operating in different phases of colonial development, a unique situation for a bacterium. An ancient synteny was revealed between the central 'core' of the chromosome and the whole chromosome of pathogens Mycobacterium tuberculosis and Corynebacterium diphtheriae. The genome sequence will greatly increase our understanding of microbial life in the soil as well as aiding the generation of new drug candidates by genetic engineering.     

iASPP oncoprotein is a key inhibitor of p53 conserved from worm to human

We have previously shown that ASPP1 and ASPP2 are specific activators of p53; one mechanism by which wild-type p53 is tolerated in human breast carcinomas is through loss of ASPP activity. We have further shown that 53BP2, which corresponds to a C-terminal fragment of ASPP2, acts as a dominant negative inhibitor of p53 (ref. 1). Hence, an inhibitory form of ASPP resembling 53BP2 could allow cells to bypass the tumor-suppressor functions of p53 and the ASPP proteins. Here, we characterize such a protein, iASPP (inhibitory member of the ASPP family), encoded by PPP1R13L in humans and ape-1 in Caenorhabditis elegans. iASPP is an evolutionarily conserved inhibitor of p53; inhibition of iASPP by RNA-mediated interference or antisense RNA in C. elegans or human cells, respectively, induces p53-dependent apoptosis. Moreover, iASPP is an oncoprotein that cooperates with Ras, E1A and E7, but not mutant p53, to transform cells in vitro. Increased expression of iASPP also confers resistance to ultraviolet radiation and to cisplatin-induced apoptosis. iASPP expression is upregulated in human breast carcinomas expressing wild-type p53 and normal levels of ASPP. Inhibition of iASPP could provide an important new strategy for treating tumors expressing wild-type p53.     

Wavelet Transform and Image Processing

This paper presents systematically a method for image compression/decompression viawavelet transform.It consists of filter,quantization and Huffman coding etc..Different methodshave been compared.Finally,some suggestions for further studies are proposed.In fact,the paper isa summary of our recent research.     

Comparative analysis of the genome sequences of Bordetella pertussis,Bordetella parapertussis and Bordetella bronchiseptica

Bordetella pertussis, Bordetella parapertussis and Bordetella bronchiseptica are closely related Gram-negative beta-proteobacteria that colonize the respiratory tracts of mammals. B. pertussis is a strict human pathogen of recent evolutionary origin and is the primary etiologic agent of whooping cough. B. parapertussis can also cause whooping cough, and B. bronchiseptica causes chronic respiratory infections in a wide range of animals. We sequenced the genomes of B. bronchiseptica RB50 (5,338,400 bp; 5,007 predicted genes), B. parapertussis 12822 (4,773,551 bp; 4,404 genes) and B. pertussis Tohama I (4,086,186 bp; 3,816 genes). Our analysis indicates that B. parapertussis and B. pertussis are independent derivatives of B. bronchiseptica-like ancestors. During the evolution of these two host-restricted species there was large-scale gene loss and inactivation; host adaptation seems to be a consequence of loss, not gain, of function, and differences in virulence may be related to loss of regulatory or control functions.     

Isotopic evidence for dramatic climatic changes in East Africa during the Pleistocene

Rainfall decreased dramatically in the Lake Turkana region 1.8-2.0 Myr ago and in the Olduvai Gorge region 0.5-0.6 Myr ago. This is documented by a major increase in the delta18O values of pedogenic and groundwater carbonates at these times. The data suggest that meteoric water of the earlier, more humid climate was 2-4 per mil lower in 18O content than modern waters of these regions.     

Chromosomally unstable mouse tumours have genomic alterations similar to diverse human cancers

Highly rearranged and mutated cancer genomes present major challenges in the identification of pathogenetic events driving the neoplastic transformation process. Here we engineered lymphoma-prone mice with chromosomal instability to assess the usefulness of mouse models in cancer gene discovery and the extent of cross-species overlap in cancer-associated copy number aberrations. Along with targeted re-sequencing, our comparative oncogenomic studies identified FBXW7 and PTEN to be commonly deleted both in murine lymphomas and in human T-cell acute lymphoblastic leukaemia/lymphoma (T-ALL). The murine cancers acquire widespread recurrent amplifications and deletions targeting loci syntenic to those not only in human T-ALL but also in diverse human haematopoietic, mesenchymal and epithelial tumours. These results indicate that murine and human tumours experience common biological processes driven by orthologous genetic events in their malignant evolution. The highly concordant nature of genomic events encourages the use of genomically unstable murine cancer models in the discovery of biological driver events in the human oncogenome.     

Fast Implementation of Iterative Reconstruction with Exact Ray-Driven Projector on GPUs

Iterative methods are popular choices in image reconstruction fields due to their capability of recovering object information from incomplete acquisition data.However,the computation process involves frequent uses of forward and backward projections that are computationally expensive.Past research has proved that a forward projector that can produce high quality images is crucial to achieve a good convergence rate.In this paper a high performance iterative reconstruction framework is introduced,where two mo...     

The genome sequence of Schizosaccharomyces pombe

We have sequenced and annotated the genome of fission yeast (Schizosaccharomyces pombe), which contains the smallest number of protein-coding genes yet recorded for a eukaryote: 4,824. The centromeres are between 35 and 110 kilobases (kb) and contain related repeats including a highly conserved 1.8-kb element. Regions upstream of genes are longer than in budding yeast (Saccharomyces cerevisiae), possibly reflecting more-extended control regions. Some 43% of the genes contain introns, of which there are 4,730. Fifty genes have significant similarity with human disease genes; half of these are cancer related. We identify highly conserved genes important for eukaryotic cell organization including those required for the cytoskeleton, compartmentation, cell-cycle control, proteolysis, protein phosphorylation and RNA splicing. These genes may have originated with the appearance of eukaryotic life. Few similarly conserved genes that are important for multicellular organization were identified, suggesting that the transition from prokaryotes to eukaryotes required more new genes than did the transition from unicellular to multicellular organization.