Japan is one of the countries where the percentage of smokers is still notoriously high. The percentage of people smoking among those aged 20 years or over in 1995 was reported by the National Survey on Nutrition to be 52.7% in males and 10.6% in females (Health and Welfare Statistics Association, 1997). It has been estimated that considerable numbers of cigarettes are now being consumed by ado...

U. maydis is a fungal pathogen of corn with two forms: one is yeast-like and nonpathogenic; the other is filamentous and pathogenic. The b locus, with 25 different alleles, regulates this dimorphism: any combination of two different alleles triggers pathogenic development, whereas the presence of identical alleles results in the yeast-like form. We have cloned four b alleles (b1, b2, b3, and b4...

Two independent laboratories have generated Ahr "null" or "knockout" mice that share some common characteristics but also have distinct phenotypes. In this Commentary, we will discuss our view of the candidate variables that might account for these differences. More importantly, we hope that this discussion can identify important parameters to be assessed by investigators in the process of char...

Under 5 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175 6.9 5 to 9 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147 5.8 10 to 14 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172 6.8 15 to 19 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185 7.3 20 to 24 years . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ....

We describe the first genetic linkage map for Daphnia pulex using 185 microsatellite markers, including 115 new markers reported in this study. Our approach was to study the segregation of polymorphisms in 129 F2 progeny of one F1 hybrid obtained by crossing two genetically divergent lineages of Daphnia isolated from two Oregon populations. The map spanned 1206 Kosambi cM and had an average int...

BACKGROUND Specific HLA class II alleles are associated with systemic sclerosis (SSc) risk, clinical characteristics, and autoantibodies. HLA nomenclature initially developed with antibodies as typing reagents defining DRB1 allele groups. However, alleles from different DRB1 allele groups encode the same third hypervariable region (3rd HVR) sequence, the primary T-cell recognition site, and 3rd...

The Linguatula serrata is a toungue-shaped parasite that infections carnivores or insectivorous reptile as final host and herbivores as intermediate ones. The aim of this study was to evaluate the prevalence of nymphal stages of L. serrata in mesenteric and mediastinal lymph nodes of camels which slaughtered in Tabriz slaughterhouse, Northwest of Iran. In this study, a total of 185 camels (121 ...

185/333 genes and transcripts from the purple sea urchin, Strongylocentrotus purpuratus, predict high levels of amino acid diversity within the encoded proteins. Based on their expression patterns, 185/333 proteins appear to be involved in immune responses. In the present study, one- and two-dimensional Western blots show that 185/333 proteins exhibit high levels of molecular diversity within a...