Centennial-scale climate-ecosystem feedbacks are a major source of predictive uncertainty for land-atmosphere fluxes of energy, carbon, and water. Accurate representations of plant functional type (PFT) distributions through time and space are required for modeling centennial-scale feedbacks within Earth system models (ESMs). We tested the ability of ESMs from the Coupled Model Intercomparison ...

The small-molecule compound pifithrin-alpha (PFT-alpha) has been reported to inhibit p53 function and protect against a variety of genotoxic agents. We show here that PFT-alpha is unstable in tissue culture medium and is rapidly converted to its condensation product PFT-beta. Both compounds showed limited solubility with PFT-alpha precipitating out of tissue culture medium at concentrations >30...

Plexiform fibrohistiocytic tumor (PFT) is a rare, low-grade soft tissue tumor that occurrs primarily in children and young adults. The most common location of PFT is the upper extremity, and there are very few reports of PFT in the neck. We report here on a case of PFT presenting as a painless subcutaneous nodule in the neck of a 46-year-old woman. Histologically, this subcutaneous tumor was co...

A total of 60 nulliparous crossbred rabbit females were, a posteriori, divided into 2 experimental groups according to their natural “decision” to conceive or not at day 11 post first parturition (L: solelylactating or LP: lactating-pregnant). This design allowed us to study the evolution of body reserves around first parturition and its influence on the future reproductive success of rabbit fe...

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES The aim of this study was to compare the performance of various image-based metrics computed from thoracic high-resolution computed tomography (HRCT) with data from pulmonary function testing (PFT) in characterizing interstitial lung disease (ILD) and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). MATERIALS AND METHODS Fourteen patients with ILD and 11 with COPD had un...

Autophagy is an evolutionarily conserved intracellular system that maintains cellular homeostasis by degrading and recycling damaged cellular components. The transcription factor HLH-30/TFEB-mediated autophagy has been reported to regulate tolerance to bacterial infection, but less is known about the bona fide bacterial effector that activates HLH-30 and autophagy. Here, we reveal that bacteria...

The post-translational farnesylation of proteins serves to anchor a subset of intracellular proteins to membranes in eukaryotic organisms and also promotes protein-protein interactions. Inhibition of protein farnesyltransferase (PFT) is lethal to the pathogenic protozoa Plasmodium falciparum. Parasites were isolated that were resistant to BMS-388891, a tetrahydroquinoline (THQ) PFT inhibitor. R...

Heat shock protein (HSP) 70 is aberrantly expressed in different malignancies and has emerged as a promising new target for anticancer therapy. Here, we analyzed the in vitro antileukemic effects of pifithrin-μ (PFT-μ), an inhibitor of inducible HSP70, in acute myeloid leukemia (AML) and acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) cell lines, as well as in primary AML blasts. PFT-μ significantly inhibit...

STUDY OBJECTIVES To compare the accuracy of virtual bronchoscopy (VB) with fiberoptic bronchoscopy (FOB) and pulmonary function testing (PFT) for the assessment of tracheal stenosis and bronchial anastomotic stenosis. DESIGN Prospective case series. SETTING Pulmonary institute of major tertiary university-affiliated center. PATIENTS The study group included 10 lung transplant recipients a...

Attachment of the prenyl groups farnesyl and geranylgeranyl to specific eukaryotic cell proteins by protein prenyltransferases is required for the functioning of a number of cellular processes including signal transduction. In this study it was found that previously reported inhibitors of mammalian protein farnesyltransferase (PFT) [those that mimic the substrate farnesyl pyrophosphate and thos...