The Toll/interleukin 1 receptor (TIR) domain is a region found in the cytoplasmic tails of members of the Toll-like receptor/interleukin-1 receptor superfamily. The domain is essential for signaling and is also found in the adaptor proteins Mal (MyD88 adaptor-like) and MyD88, which function to couple activation of the receptor to downstream signaling components. Experimental structures of two T...

NS4B is one of the nonstructural proteins of classical swine fever virus (CSFV), the etiological agent of a severe, highly lethal disease of swine. Protein domain analysis of the predicted amino acid sequence of the NS4B protein of highly pathogenic CSFV strain Brescia (BICv) identified a putative Toll/interleukin-1 receptor (TIR)-like domain. This TIR-like motif harbors two conserved domains, ...

Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a major cause of blindness and visual impairment in the United States and worldwide. Using a murine model of keratitis in which abraded corneas are infected with P. aeruginosa parent and ΔfliC (aflagellar) strains 19660 and PAO1, we found that F4/80(+) macrophages were the predominant cell type in the cornea expressing TLR2, TLR4, and TLR5. Depletion of macrophages and...

Thermal infrared (TIR) pedestrian tracking is one of the most important components in numerous applications of computer vision, which has a major advantage: it can track the pedestrians in total darkness. How to evaluate the TIR pedestrian tracker fairly on a benchmark dataset is significant for the development of this field. However, there is no a benchmark dataset. In this paper, we develop a...

Enteropathogenic Escherichia coli (EPEC) disease depends on the transfer of effector proteins into epithelia lining the human small intestine. EPEC E2348/69 has at least 20 effector genes of which six are located with the effector-delivery system genes on the Locus of Enterocyte Effacement (LEE) Pathogenicity Island. Our previous work implied that non-LEE-encoded (Nle) effectors possess functio...

Upon infection of mammalian cells, enterohemorrhagic E. coli (EHEC) O157:H7 utilizes a type III secretion system to translocate the effectors Tir and EspF(U) (aka TccP) that trigger the formation of F-actin-rich 'pedestals' beneath bound bacteria. EspF(U) is localized to the plasma membrane by Tir and binds the nucleation-promoting factor N-WASP, which in turn activates the Arp2/3 actin assembl...

Sry, a single-copy gene on the Y-chromosome, triggers the fetal gonad to begin testis differentiation in mammals. On the other hand, mutation or absence of Sry results in ovary differentiation and the female phenotype. However, cases of XY sex reversal in the presence of wild-type Sry exist in mice and man. One such example is the B6-Y(TIR) mouse, whose autosomes and X-chromosome are from the C...

There is a dizzying array of fluorescent probes now commercially available to monitor cellular processes, and advances in molecular biology have highlighted the ease with which proteins can now be labelled with fluorophores without loss of functionality. This has led to an explosion in the popularity of fluorescence microscopy techniques. One such specialized technique, total internal reflectio...

Plant nucleotide binding site-leucine-rich repeat (NBS-LRR) proteins are similar to the nucleotide binding oligomerization domain (NOD) protein family in their domain structure. It has been suggested that most NOD proteins rely on ligand-mediated oligomerization for function, and we have tested this possibility with the N protein of tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum). The N gene for resistance to Toba...

We investigate the dependence of the total-infrared (TIR) to UV luminosity ratio method for calculating the UV dust attenuation A(UV ) from the age of the underlying stellar populations by using a library of spectral energy distributions for galaxies with different star formation histories. Our analysis confirms that the TIR/UV vs. A(UV ) relation varies significantly with the age of the underl...