UNLABELLED Most proteins contain compositionally biased segments (CBS) in which one or more amino acid types are significantly overrepresented. CBS that contain amino acids with similar chemical properties can have functional and structural importance. This article describes ProBias, a web-server that searches a protein sequence for CBS composed of user-specified amino acid types. ProBias utili...

Although hydrogen sulfide (H2S) is generally thought of in terms of a poisonous gas, it is endogenously produced in the brain. Physiological concentrations of H2S selectively enhance NMDA receptor-mediated responses and alter the induction of hippocampal long-term potentiation (LTP). Here we use cystathionine beta-synthase (CBS) knock-out mice to clearly show that CBS produces endogenous H2S in...

We determined the molecular basis of cystathionine beta-synthase (CBS) deficiency in three siblings with pyridoxine responsive homocystinuria using a significantly improved mutation screening method in bacteria. The phenotypic expression of the siblings differed even though their CBS genotypes were identical. The paternal allele contained a linked pair of mutations, C233G and G306C, correspondi...

Cystathionine beta synthase (CBS) is the rate-limiting enzyme responsible for the de novo synthesis of cysteine. Patients with CBS deficiency have greatly elevated plasma total homocysteine (tHcy), decreased levels of plasma total cysteine (tCys), and often a marfanoid appearance characterized by thinness and low body-mass index (BMI). Here, we characterize the growth and body mass characterist...

A Multi-Agent Path Finding (MAPF) problem is defined by a graph, G = (V,E) and a set of k agents labeled a1 . . . ak, where each agent ai has a start position si ∈ V and a goal position gi ∈ V . At each time step an agent can either move to an adjacent location or wait in its current location. The task is to plan a sequence of move/wait actions for each agent ai, moving it from si to gi such th...

OBJECTIVE To investigate the cognitive and neural correlates of discourse impairment in corticobasal syndrome (CBS). BACKGROUND Difficulty communicating is a frequent clinical manifestation in patients with CBS. However, the mechanisms underlying this disabling problem are not well understood. METHODS Twenty patients with CBS and 8 healthy seniors narrated a picture story. Narratives were a...

Kinase in Liver of Hyperhomocysteinemic Mice To the Editor: We read with great interest the article by Woo et al,1 reporting the involvement of cAMP-dependent protein kinase A (cAMP-PKA) signaling pathway in activation of the transcription factor cAMPresponse element binding protein (CREB) during hyperhomocysteinemia in the liver. Hyperhomocysteinemia, defined as elevated homocysteine (Hcy) lev...

This review surveys what is known about the structure and function of the subnuclear domains called Cajal bodies (CBs). The major focus is on CBs in mammalian cells but we provide an overview of homologous CB structures in other organisms. We discuss the protein and RNA components of CBs, including factors recently found to associate in a cell cycle-dependent fashion or under specific metabolic...

The first successful cord blood transplant (CBT) was performed about 30 years ago. Nowadays, worldwide public cord blood banks (CBBs) that store about 700,000 units of cord blood release 3,000–4,000 units of unrelated CBs annually for use in stem cell transplantation (SCT). Only 4–5% of stored CBs are used for SCT. Recent Korean and Japanese data revealed that the utilization rates of stored pu...

Interactions between Cajal bodies (CBs) and replication-dependent histone loci occur more frequently than for other mRNA-encoding genes, but such interactions are not seen with all alleles at a given time. Because CBs contain factors required for transcriptional regulation and 3' end processing of nonpolyadenylated replication-dependent histone transcripts, we investigated whether interaction w...