For 150 years or more, specimens were routinely collected and deposited in natural history collections without preserving fresh tissue samples for genetic analysis. In the case of most herpetological specimens (i.e. amphibians and reptiles), attempts to extract and sequence DNA from formalin-fixed, ethanol-preserved specimens-particularly for use in phylogenetic analyses-has been laborious and ...

Field data is an invaluable source of information for testers and developers because it witnesses how software systems operate in real environments, capturing scenarios and configurations relevant to end-users. Unfortunately, collecting traces might be resource-consuming and can significantly affect the user experience, for instance causing annoying slowdowns. Existing monitoring techniques can...

RAD51, a multifunctional protein, plays a central role in DNA replication and homologous recombination repair, and is known to be involved in cancer development. We identified a novel role for RAD51 in innate immune response signaling. Defects in RAD51 lead to the accumulation of self-DNA in the cytoplasm, triggering a STING-mediated innate immune response after replication stress and DNA damag...

Research into and identification of Mycobacterium tuberculosis can take on a number of facets, many of which involve the use of DNA at one stage or another. The quality and quantity of DNA required will depend on the end-use requirement. For example, good yields of pure, high-molecular-weight DNA uncontaminated by DNA from other sources (i.e., homogeneous) are optimal for the generation of cosm...

The World Trade Center (WTC) victim identification effort highlights taphonomic influences on the degradation of DNA from victims of mass fatality incidents. This study uses a subset of the WTC-Human Remains Database to evaluate differential preservation of DNA by skeletal element. Recovery location, sex, and victim type (civilian, firefighter, or plane passenger) do not appear to influence DNA...

Unrepaired double-strand breaks (DSB) in the sugarphosphate backbone of the DNA molecule resulting from exposure of cells to ionising radiation are believed to be critical lesions that can lead to cell killing, mutation and carcinogenesis. Moreover, the pattern of DNA fragmentation is directly related to radiation track structure and, in the case of high-LET radiation, becomes determined by the...

Several methods for massively parallel pyrosequencing have recently been commercialized. As an example, consider the use of the 454 Life Sciences pyrosequencing method for metagenomic analysis of woolly mammoth DNA [1,2]. DNA from a mammoth carcass was purified and fragmented, and DNA linkers were ligated to the free ends. DNAs were then denatured and strands annealed to beads conjugated with o...

Signal transduction in response to several growth factors that regulate oligodendrocyte development and survival involves the activation of phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase, which we detect in oligodendrocytes and their precursors. To investigate the role of this enzyme activity, we analyzed cell survival in cultures of oligodendrocytes treated with wortmannin or LY294002, two potent inhibitors of...