The CRISPR/Cas9 system has ushered in a new era of targeted genetic manipulations. Here, we report the use of CRISPR/Cas9 to induce double-stranded breaks in the genome of the sea squirtCiona intestinalis. We use electroporation to deliver CRISPR/Cas9 components for tissue-specific disruption of the Ebf (Collier/Olf/ EBF) gene in hundreds of synchronizedCiona embryos. Phenotyping of transfected...

Zfp423 is a 30 zinc finger transcription factor that forms regulatory complexes with EBF family members and factors targeted by canonical signaling pathways. Zfp423 mutations produce a range of developmental abnormalities in mice and humans related to the ciliopathies. Surprisingly, computational analysis of clustered Zfp423 and partner motifs in conserved genomic sequences predicts enrichment ...

OBJECTIVE To examine the relationship between family structure and the prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) in Nicaragua. MATERIAL AND METHODS A subset of the Nicaraguan Demographic and Health Survey conducted in 1998 was obtained by selecting all last-born infants less than 4 months old at the time of the survey. Weighted chi-squared and multivariate logistic regression analyses were ...

The use of the K-means algorithm and the K-nearest neighbor heuristic in estimating the radial basis function (RBF) parameters may produce sub-optimal performance when the input vectors contain correlated components. This paper proposes to overcome this problem by incorporating full covariance matrices into the RBF structure and to use the expectation-maximi-zation (EM) algorithm to estimate th...

An elliptical basis function (EBF) network is proposed in this study for the classification of remotely sensed images. Though similar in structure, the EBF network differs from the well-known radial basis function (RBF) network by incorporating full covariance matrices and uses the expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm to estimate the basis functions. Since remotely sensed data often take on ...

BACKGROUND Breastfeeding offers incredible health benefits to both child and mother. It is suggested by World Health Organization that an able mother should practice and maintain exclusive breastfeeding for first six months of her infant's life. The objective of this study was to determine the prevalence and factors associated with exclusive breastfeeding for first six months of an infant's lif...

Epstein-Barr virus nuclear antigen 2 (EBNA2) regulation of transcription through the cell transcription factor RBPJ is essential for resting B-lymphocyte (RBL) conversion to immortal lymphoblast cell lines (LCLs). ChIP-seq of EBNA2 and RBPJ sites in LCL DNA found EBNA2 at 5,151 and RBPJ at 10,529 sites. EBNA2 sites were enriched for RBPJ (78%), early B-cell factor (EBF, 39%), RUNX (43%), ETS (3...

BACKGROUND Despite the presence of high impact interventions to improve infant and young child feeding, only about 52% of mothers in Ethiopia exclusively breastfeed their child for the first six months after delivery. Although the decision to breastfeed a child is ultimately that of the mother, this decision could be influenced by a variety of factors including social-cognitive ones. OBJECTIV...

Background: Considering that adolescent mothers may be more vulnerable to discontinuing exclusive breastfeeding (EBF) before 6 months and that their mothers may exert a negative influence on this practice, this study was conducted with the objective of evaluating the efficacy of breastfeeding counselling for adolescent mothers and their mothers in increasing EBF duration. Methods: A clinical tr...