Birds andmammals, phylogenetically close amniotes with similar postgastrula development, exhibit little conservation in their post-fertilization cleavage patterns. Data from the mouse suggest that cellular morphogenesis and molecular signaling at the cleavage stage play important roles in lineage specification at later (blastula and gastrula) stages. Very little is known, however, about cleavag...

Recognition of the role of hepatic drug transporters in elimination of xenobiotics continues to grow. Hepatic uptake transporters, such as hepatic isoforms of the organic anion-transporting polypeptide (Oatp) family as well as the bile acid transporter Na-taurocholate cotransporting polypeptide (Ntcp) have been studied extensively both at the mRNA and protein expression levels in adults. Howeve...

Michael Lindner,* Sarah Rudorf,* Robert Birg, Armin Falk, Bernd Weber, and Klaus Fliessbach Center for Economics and Neuroscience, University of Bonn, Nachtigallenweg 86, 53127 Bonn, Germany, School of Psychology and Clinical Language Sciences, University of Reading, Reading RG6 7BE, United Kingdom, Department of Epileptology, University Hospital Bonn, SigmundFreud-Str. 25, 53105 Bonn, Germany,...

T cell activation in vivo occurs in a lymphoid milieu that presents chemotactic and T cell receptor signals concurrently. Here we demonstrate that T cell zone chemokines such as CCL21 are bound to the surface of lymph node dendritic cells. Contact with antigen-presenting cells bearing chemokines costimulated T cells by a previously unknown two-step contact mechanism. T cells initially formed an...

Little is known about the molecular mechanisms that induce gamete fusion during mammalian fertilization. After initial contact, adhesion between gametes only leads to fusion in the presence of three membrane proteins that are necessary, but insufficient, for fusion: Izumo1 on sperm, its receptor Juno on egg and Cd9 on egg. What happens during this adhesion phase is a crucial issue. Here, we dem...

We have grown high quality magnetite microcrystals free from antiphase boundaries on Ru(0001) by reactive molecular beam epitaxy, conserving bulk magnetic properties below 20 nm thickness. Magnetization vector maps are obtained by X-ray spectromicroscopy and compared with micromagnetic simulations. The observed domain configurations are dictated purely by shape anisotropy, overcoming the possib...

The effects of alleles in many genes are believed to contribute to common complex diseases such as hypertension. Whether risk alleles comprise a small number of common variants or many rare independent mutations at trait loci is largely unknown. We screened members of the Framingham Heart Study (FHS) for variation in three genes—SLC12A3 (NCCT), SLC12A1 (NKCC2) and KCNJ1 (ROMK)—causing rare rece...

Consider a simply connected region S of the two-dimensional Cartesian lattice (e.g. a 2n× 2n chessboard). A tiling of S is a covering of all its squares by non-overlapping dominoes, each of which occupies two adjacent squares of the lattice. We want to generate u.a.r. a tiling of S. Such problems arise in statistical physics, where the tilings correspond to configurations of a so-called dimer s...

Human walking is remarkably adaptable on short and long timescales. We can immediately transition between directions and gait patterns, and we can adaptively learn accurate calibrations for different walking contexts. Here we studied the degree to which different motor patterns can adapt independently. We used a split-belt treadmill to adapt the right and left legs to different speeds and in di...