Insect wings are great resources for studying morphological diversities in nature as well as in fossil records. Among them, variation in wing venation is one of the most characteristic features of insect species. Venation is therefore, undeniably a key factor of species-specific functional traits of the wings; however, the mechanism underlying wing vein formation among insects largely remains u...

Brinker (Brk), a novel protein with features of a transcriptional repressor, regulates the graded response to Decapentaplegic (Dpp) in appendage primordia of Drosophila. Here, we show that in the embryo brk also has differential effects on Dpp target genes, depending on the level of Dpp activity required for their activation. Low-level target genes, like dpp itself, tolloid and early zerknüllt,...

Dipeptidyl-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors are oral antidiabetic agents recently introduced to Malaysia. Thus, limited data is available on their utilization patterns and factors associated with their use. This study aims to analyse the utilization patterns of DPP-4 inhibitors, factors that influenced the choice of agent, and the rationale for treatment with DPP-4 inhibitors in patients with type 2 diabet...

Our laboratory has contributed to the development of a genetic system based upon the hobo transposable element in Drosophila melanogaster. We recently reported that hobo, like the better-known P element, is capable of local transposition. In that study, we mobilized a hobo enhancer trap vector and generated two unique alleles of decapentaplegic (dpp), a transforming growth factor-beta family me...

Objective We investigated the efficacy, safety, and patient satisfaction of once-weekly DPP-4 inhibitors (DPP-4Is). Methods Either of two once-weekly DPP-4Is, trelagliptin or omarigliptin, was administered alone or in combination with other antidiabetic drugs in 80 outpatients with type 2 diabetes mellitus for 3 months. The HbA1c, glycoalbumin (GA), body weight, and the Diabetes Treatment Satis...

We investigated the tissue distribution of teneligliptin, a dipeptidyl peptidase (DPP)-4 inhibitor, in rats, and compared it with tissue distributions previously reported for other DPP-4 inhibitors. Following the oral administration of [14 C]teneligliptin to Sprague-Dawley rats, it was predominantly distributed to the kidney and liver, followed by the lung, spleen, and pituitary gland. The elim...

Decapentaplegic (Dpp) is a Drosophila member of the Transforming Growth Factor-β (TGF-β)/Bone Morphogenetic Protein (BMP) superfamily of growth factors. Dpp serves as a classical morphogen, where concentration gradients of this secreted factor control patterning over many cell dimensions. Regulating the level of Dpp signaling is therefore critical to its function during development. One type of...

Decapentaplegic (Dpp), a member of the TGF-beta family of cytokines, has been implicated in many patterning processes in Drosophila, including the initial steps of pattern formation in the developing eye. We show that the Mothers against dpp (Mad) gene is required for dpp signaling during eye development. Clonal analysis demonstrates a cell-autonomous function for Mad and genetic interactions i...

In this paper, we consider the problem of planning in the infinite-horizon discountedreward Markov decision problems. We propose a novel iterative method, called dynamic policy programming (DPP), which updates the parametrized policy by a Bellmanlike iteration. For discrete state-action case, we establish L∞-norm loss bounds for the performance of the policy induced by DPP and prove that it asy...

Inspired by the recent Democratic National Primary, we consider settings in which the members of a distributed population must balance their individual preferences over candidates with a requirement to quickly achieve collective unity. We formalize such settings as the “Democratic Primary Problem” (DPP) over an undirected graph, whose local structure models the social influences acting on