Comparison of rat, mouse, guinea-pig and human slow reacting substance of anaphylaxis (SRS-A).

Slow reacting substance of anaphylaxis obtained from rat, mouse, guinea-pig and human tissues have exhibited similar biological activity and have reacted in the same way to chemical and enzymatic treatments. It is concluded that they appear to be the same substance or a similar class of compounds.     

新形势下《单片微型计算机原理与接口技术》课堂教学改革

针对《单片微型计算机原理与接口技术》课程的重要性和金融危机的大环境,采用与实际应用相结合的方法、与前期课程纵向交叉的方法以及与学生就业形式相联系的方法,介绍了如何培养学生学习该课程的兴趣。对课程的教学内容和教学方式方法的改革提出了若干建议。     

Molecular characterization of Ph1 as a major chromosome pairing locus in polyploid wheat

The foundation of western civilization owes much to the high fertility of bread wheat, which results from the stability of its polyploid genome. Despite possessing multiple sets of related chromosomes, hexaploid (bread) and tetraploid (pasta) wheat both behave as diploids at meiosis. Correct pairing of homologous chromosomes is controlled by the Ph1 locus. In wheat hybrids, Ph1 prevents pairing between related chromosomes. Lack of Ph1 activity in diploid relatives of wheat suggests that Ph1 arose on polyploidization. Absence of phenotypic variation, apart from dosage effects, and the failure of ethylmethane sulphonate treatment to yield mutants, indicates that Ph1 has a complex structure. Here we have localized Ph1 to a 2.5-megabase interstitial region of wheat chromosome 5B containing a structure consisting of a segment of subtelomeric heterochromatin that inserted into a cluster of cdc2-related genes after polyploidization. The correlation of the presence of this structure with Ph1 activity in related species, and the involvement of heterochromatin with Ph1 (ref. 6) and cdc2 genes with meiosis, makes the structure a good candidate for the Ph1 locus.     

The role of periostin in lung fibrosis and airway remodeling

Periostin is a protein that plays a key role in development and repair within the biological matrix of the lung. As a matricellular protein that does not contribute to extracellular matrix structure, periostin interacts with other extracellular matrix proteins to regulate the composition of the matrix in the lung and other organs. In this review, we discuss the studies exploring the role of periostin to date in chronic respiratory diseases, namely asthma and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis. Asthma is a major health problem globally affecting millions of people worldwide with significant associated morbidity and mortality. Periostin is highly expressed in the lungs of asthmatic patients, contributes to mucus secretion, airway fibrosis and remodeling and is recognized as a biomarker of Th2 high inflammation. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis is a fatal interstitial lung disease characterized by progressive aberrant fibrosis of the lung matrix and respiratory failure. It predominantly affects adults over 50 years of age and its incidence is increasing worldwide. Periostin is also highly expressed in the lungs of idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis patients. Serum levels of periostin may predict clinical progression in this disease and periostin promotes myofibroblast differentiation and type 1 collagen production to contribute to aberrant lung fibrosis. Studies to date suggest that periostin is a key player in several pathogenic mechanisms within the lung and may provide us with a useful biomarker of clinical progression in both asthma and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.     

A primitive Y chromosome in papaya marks incipient sex chromosome evolution

Many diverse systems for sex determination have evolved in plants and animals. One involves physically distinct (heteromorphic) sex chromosomes (X and Y, or Z and W) that are homozygous in one sex (usually female) and heterozygous in the other (usually male). Sex chromosome evolution is thought to involve suppression of recombination around the sex determination genes, rendering permanently heterozygous a chromosomal region that may then accumulate deleterious recessive mutations by Muller's ratchet, and fix deleterious mutations by hitchhiking as nearby favourable mutations are selected on the Y chromosome. Over time, these processes may cause the Y chromosome to degenerate and to diverge from the X chromosome over much of its length; for example, only 5% of the human Y chromosome still shows X-Y recombination. Here we show that papaya contains a primitive Y chromosome, with a male-specific region that accounts for only about 10% of the chromosome but has undergone severe recombination suppression and DNA sequence degeneration. This finding provides direct evidence for the origin of sex chromosomes from autosomes.     

太原市二氧化硫污染状况及评价

通过对太原市不同季节、不同监测位点大气二氧化硫(SO2)浓度的监测，分析了太原市SO2污染状况，指出在太原市对SO2排放企业的治理和管理工作势在必行。     

C. elegans ORFeome version 1.1: experimental verification of the genome annotation and resource for proteome-scale protein expression

To verify the genome annotation and to create a resource to functionally characterize the proteome, we attempted to Gateway-clone all predicted protein-encoding open reading frames (ORFs), or the 'ORFeome,' of Caenorhabditis elegans. We successfully cloned approximately 12,000 ORFs (ORFeome 1.1), of which roughly 4,000 correspond to genes that are untouched by any cDNA or expressed-sequence tag (EST). More than 50% of predicted genes needed corrections in their intron-exon structures. Notably, approximately 11,000 C. elegans proteins can now be expressed under many conditions and characterized using various high-throughput strategies, including large-scale interactome mapping. We suggest that similar ORFeome projects will be valuable for other organisms, including humans.