ETS1 is a cellular homologue of the product of the viral ets oncogene of the E26 virus, and it functions as a tissue-specific transcription factor. It plays an important role in cell proliferation, differentiation, lymphoid cell development, transformation, angiogenesis, and apoptosis. ETS1 controls the expression of critical genes involved in these processes by binding to ets binding sites pre...

Interstitial retinol-binding protein (IRBP) is a soluble glycoprotein in the interphotoreceptor matrix of bovine, human, monkey, and rat eyes. It may transport retinol between the retinal pigment epithelium and the neural retina. In light-reared Royal College of Surgeons (RCS) and RCS retinal dystrophy gene (rdy)+ rats, the amount of IRBP in the interphotoreceptor matrix increased in correspond...

A Different Look at Lenin’s Legacy: Trust, Risk, Fairness and Cooperativeness in the Two Germanies What are the long-term effects of Communism on economically relevant notions such as social trust? To answer this question, we use the reunification of Germany as a natural experiment and study the post-reunification trajectory of convergence with regard to individuals’ trust and risk, as well as ...

OBJECTIVES Blood-based Interferon-Gamma Release Assays (IGRA) identify Mycobacterium tuberculosis (MTB) sensitisation with increased specificity, but sensitivity remains impaired in human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infected persons. The QuantiFERON-TB Gold In-Tube test contains peptide 38-55 of Rv2654c, based on data indicating differential recognition between tuberculosis patients and BCG va...

Emergence of drug-resistant viral strains is one of the major milestones and the main cause for the failure of antiretroviral therapy. Combination of different anti-HIV agents has become the standard clinical practice to keep the viral load at low or even undetectable levels and to prevent emergence of virus-drug resistance. Among the human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) reverse transcriptase (RT...

We use a difference-in-differences strategy that compares Communist with Western European countries to test the effect of the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe on the flow of book translations between countries. We find that translations of Western European titles into former non-Soviet Communist countries increased by a factor of eight with the fall of Communism and reached Western level...

We have analyzed 154 single amino acid replacement mutants within a 40 amino acid region (residues 164-203) of the reverse transcriptase (RT) from human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1). This region consists of two antiparallel beta-strands (strands 9 and 10) flanked by two alpha helices (E and F). The structure of this region of the 'palm' subdomain is conserved in a variety of DNA and RN...

We have analyzed the processing of the RNA primer for (+) strand DNA synthesis by reverse transcriptase of the human immunodeficiency virus 1. To test for specific RNA cleavage and primer usage, we constructed a 99-base pair RNA-DNA hybrid containing the viral polypurine tract and flanking viral sequences. Although the RNase H activity of reverse transcriptase cleaves the RNA strand into multip...

HIV-1 reverse transcriptase (RT), a critical enzyme of the HIV life cycle and an important drug target, undergoes complex and largely uncharacterized conformational rearrangements that underlie its asymmetric folding, dimerization and subunit-selective ribonuclease H domain (RH) proteolysis. In the present article we have used a combination of NMR spectroscopy, small angle X-ray scattering and ...

Neorickettsia helminthoeca, a type species of the genus Neorickettsia, is an endosymbiont of digenetic trematodes of veterinary importance. Upon ingestion of salmonid fish parasitized with infected trematodes, canids develop salmon poisoning disease (SPD), an acute febrile illness that is particularly severe and often fatal in dogs without adequate treatment. We determined and analysed the comp...