The ceramides active in this system have the three configuration and a triple or trans double bond. Ceramides containing the naturally occurring erythro isomers of sphingosine (2) and those with a cis double bond or no double bond are much less active. Since UDP-gala&se appeared to be the most probable precursor of the gala&se portion of cerebrosides, it has been postulated that cerebrosides mi...

Natural killer T (NKT) cells provide an innate-type immune response upon T cell receptor interaction with CD1d-presented antigens. We demonstrate through equilibrium tetramer binding and antigen presentation assays with Valpha14i-positive NKT cell hybridomas that the Sphingomonas glycolipid alpha-galacturonosyl ceramide (GalA-GSL) is a NKT cell agonist that is significantly weaker than alpha-ga...

pH-Sensitive peptides and polymers have been employed as additives to enhance the cytosolic delivery of drugs and genes by facilitating their endosomal escape. However, little attention has been paid to the intracellular fate of these peptides and polymers. In this study, we explored the possibility of utilizing GALA, a pH-sensitive fusogenic peptide, as a cytosol-targeting vehicle. In combinat...

Inductive algorithms rely strongly on their representational biases, Constructive induction can mitigate representational inadequacies. This paper introduces the notion of a relative gain measure and describes a new constructive induction algorithm (GALA) which is independent of the learning algorithm. Unlike most previous research on constructive induction, our methods are designed as preproce...

The Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) is a science mission led by the European Space Agency, being developed for launch in 2023. Ganymede Laser Altimeter (GALA) an instrument onboard JUICE, whose main scientific goals are to understand ice tectonics based on topographic data, subsurface structure measuring tidal response, and small-scale roughness albedo of surface. In addition, from perspecti...

Soluble soybean polysaccharides (SSPS) extracted from soybean cotyledons are acidic polysaccharides, and exhibited a pectin-like structure. After digesting galacturonan with polygalacturonase, two novel galacturonan (GN) fragments, which were directly linked to xylosyl oligosaccharides, were obtained. One consisted of (beta-D-Xyl)7 branched at the C-3 site of 1,4-linked (alpha-D-GalA)4, and the...

Fabry disease (FD) is one of the X-linked lysosomal storage disorders caused by deficient functioning of the alpha-galactosidase A (α-GalA) enzyme. The α-GalA deficiency leads to multi-systemic clinical manifestations caused by the preferential accumulation of globotriaosylceramide in the endothelium and vascular smooth muscles. A hallmark symptom of FD patients is peripheral pain that appears ...

In the GALA trial (Dec 20, p 2132), all types of regional anaesthesia were grouped as one: “local anaesthesia”. Yet clinical and anatomical studies confi rm important diff erences between simple subcutaneous infi ltration, formal “superfi cial” cervical plexus block, and a deep block. The last two are clinically equally eff ective, anatomical investigations showing that the so-called deep cervi...

Glycoside hydrolases are organized into glycoside hydrolase families (GHFs) and within this larger group, the beta-galactosidases are members of four families: 1, 2, 35, and 42. Most genes encoding GHF 42 enzymes are from prokaryotes unlikely to encounter lactose, suggesting a different substrate for these enzymes. In search of this substrate, we analyzed genes neighboring GHF 42 genes in datab...