A transient protein expression system in COS-1 cells was used to study the role of hepatitis C virus (HCV)-encoded NS4A protein on HCV nonstructural polyprotein processing. By analyzing the protein expression and processing of a deletion mutant polypeptide, NS delta 4A, which encodes the entire putative HCV nonstructural polyprotein except the region encoding NS4A, the versatile functions of NS...

OBJECTIVE Our aim is to compare mammographic, demographic and clinicopathological characteristics of patients whose mammographies were classified as subgroups of BI-RADS 4 category (Breast Imaging - Reporting and Data System). METHODS In total, 103 patients with mammography (Senographe 600t Senix HF; General Electric, Moulineaux, France) results classified as BI-RADS 4 were included in the st...

Total syntheses of alkaloid 251F (1), a natural product detected from the skin extracts of the dendrobatid frog species Minyobates bombetes, and its racemic 3-desmethyl derivative (2) are reported. A Diels-Alder reaction initiated both syntheses and established four consecutive stereogenic centers. Important to the synthesis of 2 was a first-generation ozonolysis/olefination/aldol strategy to c...

Consensus is a fundamental and difficult problem in fault tolerant distributed computing, and numerous consensus algorithms have been published. The paper proposes a generic consensus algorithm that highlights, through well chosen parameters, the core mechanisms of a number of well-known consensus algorithms including Paxos, OneThirdRule, PBFT, FaB Paxos. Interestingly, the generic algorithm al...

Cell surface heparan sulfate proteoglycan (HSPG) from metastatic mouse melanoma cells initiates cell adhesion to the synthetic peptide FN-C/H II, a heparin-binding peptide from the 33-kD A chain-derived fragment of fibronectin. Mouse melanoma cell adhesion to FN-C/H II was sensitive to soluble heparin and pretreatment of mouse melanoma cells with heparitinase. In contrast, cell adhesion to the ...

The present Zika virus (ZIKV) pandemic is being associated with increased incidence of microcephaly in newborns. However, a molecular basis for such pathogenesis is distinctly lacking. Comparative nucleic acid sequence analysis showed similarity between regions of nonstructural protein 4B (ns4b) gene of ZIKV and human astrotactin2 (astn2) gene. Based on these findings, a molecular target of Zik...

Proteoglycans in mineralized (0.5 M-EDTA/4 M-guanidinium chloride-extractable) and non-mineralized (4 M-guanidinium chloride-extractable) matrices synthesized by a mouse osteoblastic-cell line MC3T3-E1 were characterized at different phases of mineralization in vitro. Cell cultures were labelled with [35S]sulphate and either [3H]glucosamine or 3H-labelled amino acids. At the mineralization phas...