The SUPT16H gene known as FACTP140 is required for the transcription of other genes. For transcription, genes need to be complexed with accessory factors, including transcription factors and RNA polymerase II. One such factor, FACT, interacts with histones H2A/H2B for nucleosome disassembly and transcription elongation. The SUPT16H gene has a transcript and many expressed sequence tags (ESTs). ...

The involvement of growth factors (GFs) in the pathogenesis of lumbar intervertebral disc (ID) herniation and the spontaneous resorption of herniated ID fragments remains only partially elucidated. A simultaneous assessment of the transcript levels of numerous GFs and their association with clinical and epidemiological profiles of human ID herniation would provide valuable insight into the biol...

List of Figures ii List of Tables ii 1. Sequencing experiment 1 2. Mapping fragments to the genome 1 2.1. Discovering splice junctions 2 2.2. Resolving multiple alignments for fragments 2 3. Transcript abundance estimation 4 3.1. Definitions 4 3.2. A statistical model for RNA-Seq 4 3.3. Estimation of parameters 8 3.4. Assessment of abundance estimation 12 4. Transcript assembly 15 4.1. Overview...

Stable isotope analysis (SIA) of highly migratory marine pelagic animals can improve understanding of their migratory patterns and trophic ecology. However, accurate interpretation of isotopic analyses relies on knowledge of isotope turnover rates and tissue-diet isotope discrimination factors. Laboratory-derived turnover rates and discrimination factors have been difficult to obtain due to the...

Purine-rich sequences within exons are proposed to promote proper splicing as splicing enhancers. In order to test this supposition in the dystrophin gene, which is characterized by the large size of its introns, purine-rich sequences from three exons (exons 43, 46 and 53) were examined for their splicing enhancer activity by using a Drosophila doublesex pre-mRNA. The most powerful activating e...

The symptoms of viral infections of fungi range from cryptic to severe, but there is little knowledge of the factors involved in this transition of fungal/viral interactions. Brown cap mushroom disease of the cultivated Agaricus bisporus is economically important and represents a model system to describe this transition. Differentially expressed transcript fragments between mushrooms showing th...

Tropical dry forests (TDFs) represent one of the most diverse and, at same time, threatened ecosystems on earth. Restoration TDFs is thus crucial but hindered by a limited understanding functional diversity (FD) original communities. We examine FD based wood (vessel diameter and density) bark traits (total, inner, outer thicknesses) measured ~500 species from 24 plant communities compare this w...