Buried within the genomes of many microorganisms are genetic elements that encode rare-cutting homing endonucleases that assist in the mobility of the elements that encode them, such as the self-splicing group I and II introns and in some cases inteins. There are several different families of homing endonucleases and their ability to initiate and target specific sequences for lateral transfers ...

Background/introduction Homing of iv-infused stem cells to diseased tissues may be critical for cell therapies and is frequently an obstacle to successful cell therapy. We have previously shown that molecular responses from the mechanotransduction effects of pulsed focused ultrasound (pFUS) in normal murine skeletal muscle generate a “molecular zip-code” consisting of local increases in chemoat...

When dogs and cats are not retained in a home, they are re-homed to somewhere, and while there is a collection of research around relinquishment to shelters, little is known about the general re-homing picture. A cross sectional random digit dial survey was conducted with an aim to learn more about who is re-homing, where they are re-homing and why they are re-homing owned dogs and cats in the ...

Efficient bone marrow (BM) homing is a prerequisite for successful engraftment of transplanted hematopoietic cells (HPCs). Contradictory conclusions about the contribution of SDF-1/CXCR4 have clouded our understanding of its role within the molecular pathway cooperation needed for BM homing, particularly with the well-defined hierarchic network of adhesion molecules. In the present study we sou...

Homing endonucleases recognize long DNA sequences and generate site-specific DNA double-stranded breaks. They can serve as a powerful genomic modification tool in various industrial and biomedical applications. Here, we describe a two-plasmid bacterial selection system for characterization and engineering of homing endonucleases. This selection system couples the DNA cleavage activity of a homi...

Although engineered LAGLIDADG homing endonucleases (LHEs) are finding increasing applications in biotechnology, their generation remains a challenging, industrial-scale process. As new single-chain LAGLIDADG nuclease scaffolds are identified, however, an alternative paradigm is emerging: identification of an LHE scaffold whose native cleavage site is a close match to a desired target sequence, ...

The extraordinary navigational ability of homing pigeons provides a unique spatial cognitive system to investigate how the brain is able to represent past experiences as memory. In this paper, we first summarize a large body of lesion data in an attempt to characterize the role of the avian hippocampal formation (HF) in homing. What emerges from this analysis is the critical importance of HF fo...

The reduced engraftment potential of hematopoietic stem/progenitor cells (HSPCs) after exposure to cytokines may be related to the impaired homing ability of actively cycling cells. We tested this hypothesis by quantifying the short-term homing of human adult CD34+ cells in nonobese diabetic/severe combined immunodeficient (NOD/SCID) animals. We show that the loss of engraftment ability of cyto...

The homing endonuclease gene (HEG) drive system, a promising genetic approach for controlling arthropod populations, utilises engineered nucleases to spread deleterious mutations that inactivate individual genes throughout a target population. Previous work with a naturally occurring LAGLIDADG homing endonuclease (I-SceI) demonstrated its feasibility in both Drosophila and Anopheles. Here we re...

This paper presents a novel approach to visual homing for robot navigation on the ground plane, using only the angles of landmark points. We focus on a robust approach, leading to successful homing even in real, dynamic environments where significant numbers of landmark points are wrong or missing. Three homing algorithms are presented, two are shown to be provably convergent, and the other sho...