Fragile States Fragile States T UNU-WIDER PROJECT ON “FRAGILITY AND development’’ began with the premise that dealing simultaneously with household vulnerability and state fragility is probably one of the most urgent development challenges of our time. Consequently, the project explored the dimensions of household vulnerability and state fragility in development. This research brief is about th...

We previously reported the isolation of a gene (FMR-1) expressed in brain at the fragile X locus. One exon of this gene lies within an EcoRI fragment that exhibits length variation in fragile X patients. This exon also contains the CGG repeat within the CpG island hypermethylated in fragile X patients. To study the involvement of the FMR-1 gene in the fragile X syndrome, its expression was stud...

BACKGROUND Development assistance for health (DAH) has grown substantially, totaling more than $31.3 billion in 2013. However, the degree that countries with high concentrations of armed conflict, ethnic violence, inequality, debt, and corruption have received this health aid and how that assistance might be different from the funding provided to other countries has not been assessed. METHODS...

The fragile X syndrome is a mutation-driven developmental disorder caused by a repetition over 200 times of the CGG trinucleotide situated in the 5'-untranslated region of the fragile X mental retardation 1 gene (FMR1). The interval between 55 and 199 CGG repeats, which is over the normal range but below full mutation, is named fragile X premutation. Recent studies have focused on the asymptoma...

Fragile sites are specific loci within the genome that exhibit increased tendencies for chromosome breakage. They are conserved among mammals and are also found in lower eukaryotes including yeast and fly. Many conditions, including mutations and exogenous factors, contribute to fragile site expression, but the nature of interaction among them remains elusive. Here, we investigated this by exam...

Semi-fragile image authentication based on watermarking has drawn extensive attention. However, conventional watermarking techniques introduce irreversible distortions to the host signals and thus may not be allowable in some applications such as medical and military imaging. Though some reversible fragile authentication algorithms had been developed, reversible semi-fragile authentication pres...

Over the last several years, evidence has accumulated that the GABAA receptor is compromised in animal models for fragile X syndrome (FXS), a common hereditary form of intellectual disability. In mouse and fly models, agonists of the GABAA receptor were able to rescue specific consequences of the fragile X mutation. Here, we imaged and quantified GABAA receptors in vivo in brain of fragile X pa...

Fragile X syndrome (FXS) is characterized by synaptic immaturity, cognitive impairment, and behavioral changes. The disorder is caused by transcriptional shutdown in neurons of thefragile X mental retardation 1gene product, fragile X mental retardation protein. Fragile X mental retardation protein is a repressor of dendritic mRNA translation and its silencing leads to dysregulation of synaptica...

It has been proposed that common aphidicolin-inducible fragile sites, in general, predispose to specific chromosomal breakage associated with deletion, amplification, and/or translocation in certain forms of cancer. Although this appears to be the case for the fragile site FRA3B and may be the case for FRA7G, it is not yet clear whether this association is a general property of this class of fr...

Conditions that partially inhibit DNA replication induce expression of common fragile sites. These sites form gaps and breaks on metaphase chromosomes and are deleted and rearranged in many tumors. Yet, the mechanism of fragile site expression has been elusive. We demonstrate that the replication checkpoint kinase ATR, but not ATM, is critical for maintenance of fragile site stability. ATR defi...