Use of DNA profiles for investigation using a simulated national DNA database: Part I. Partial SGM Plus profiles.

In traditional criminal investigation, uncertainties are often dealt with using a combination of common sense, practical considerations and experience, but rarely with tailored statistical models. For example, in some countries, in order to search for a given profile in the national DNA database, it must have allelic information for six or more of the ten SGM Plus loci for a simple trace. If the profile does not have this amount of information then it cannot be searched in the national DNA database (NDNAD). This requirement (of a result at six or more loci) is not based on a statistical approach, but rather on the feeling that six or more would be sufficient. A statistical approach, however, could be more rigorous and objective and would take into consideration factors such as the probability of adventitious matches relative to the actual database size and/or investigator's requirements in a sensible way. Therefore, this research was undertaken to establish scientific foundations pertaining to the use of partial SGM Plus loci profiles (or similar) for investigation.

Small ubiquitin-like modifier conjugating enzyme with active site mutation acts as dominant negative inhibitor of SUMO conjugation in arabidopsis(F).

Small ubiquitin-like modifier (SUMO) conjugation affects a broad range of processes in plants, including growth, flower initiation, pathogen defense, and responses to abiotic stress. Here, we investigate in vivo and in vitro a SUMO conjugating enzyme with a Cys to Ser change in the active site, and show that it has a dominant negative effect. In planta expression significantly perturbs normal development, leading to growth retardation, early flowering and gene expression changes. We suggest that the mutant protein can serve as a probe to investigate sumoylation, also in plants for which poor genetic infrastructure precludes analysis via loss-of-function mutants.

The Acts of Paul and the Canonical Acts : A Phenomenon of Rereading

(Abstract only in french) Une approche littéraire de l'intertextualité, à l'aide des catégories posées par G. Genette, permet de renouveler l'approche du rapport entre Actes de Paul et Actes canoniques. A la différence de la critique littéraire classique, qui ne repère pas de dépendance littéraire hors de similitudes verbales ou narratives, l'« hypertextualité » désigne un phénomène de relecture dans lequel un texte-source est recomposé et réinterprété au sein d'un écrit second. Grâce à cette catégorie, cette contribution rend compte du jeu dialectique de parenté et de divergence que l'on observe entre les Actes de Paul et les Actes de Luc. La recomposition de la biographie de Paul dans les Actes de Paul a usé de créativité, elle a puisé dans l'imaginaire chrétien, mais elle s'est aussi servie de traditions préservées dans la suivance de l'apôtre.

Saul's Conversion (Acts 9-22-26) and the Multiplication of Narrative in Acts

(Résumé de l'ouvrage) The essays in this collection come from a research symposium involving the universities of Manchester and Lausanne. The essays cover a wide range of mutually-enriching approaches to the study of the Lukan writings. Aspects considered include Luke's use of the term 'Son of Man', his use of scripture, his literary achievements, and the issue of 'godfearers' in Acts.

The Enigma of the Silent Closing of Acts (28,16-31)

(Résumé de l'ouvrage) In the first volume of this long-anticipated collection by Moessner and Tiede, seventeen leading scholars of antiquity present an amazing "sea change" of opinion that Luke is indeed the interpreter of Israel. The book represents an unprecedented international consensus that the Hellenistic author Luke composed a carefully crafted narrative in two parts to claim Jesus of Nazareth as Israel's true heritage and enduring legacy to the world. Part One explores the nature of Luke's prologues and his intention to write a narrative of "events brought to fruition," using the narrative conventions and audience expectations of the Greco-Roman milieu. Part Two illuminates the relation of Luke's second "volume" to the first by inquiring about the consistency and coherence of his narrative-thematic strategies in retelling the story of Israel's legacy of "the Christ." Whether Luke completed Acts, the larger role of Paul and, most significantly, the meaning of Israel by the end of Acts are approached from new perspectives and charged with provocative insights. In addition to the volume editors, the contributors include L. Alexander, D. Schmidt, V. Robbins, C. Thornton, R. Pervo, W. Kurz, C. Holladay, G. Sterling, D. Balch, E. Plmacher, Charles H. Talbert, J.H. Hayes, D. Marguerat, M. Wolter, R. Tannehill, and I. H. Marshall.

IRF4 regulates IL-17A promoter activity and controls RORγt-dependent Th17 colitis in vivo.

Background: The transcription factor IRF4 is involved in several T-cell-dependent chronic inflammatory diseases. To elucidate the mechanisms for pathological cytokine production in colitis, we addressed the role of the IRF transcription factors in human inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and experimental colitis.Methods: IRF levels and cytokine production in IBD patients were studied as well as the effects of IRF4 deficiency in experimental colitis.Results: In contrast to IRF1, IRF5, and IRF8, IRF4 expression in IBD was augmented in the presence of active inflammation. Furthermore, IRF4 levels significantly correlated with IL-6 and IL-17 mRNA expression and to a lesser extent with IL-22 mRNA expression in IBD. To further explore the role of IRF4 under in vivo conditions, we studied IRF4-deficient and wildtype mice in experimental colitis. In contrast to DSS colitis, IRF4 deficiency was protective in T-cell-dependent transfer colitis associated with reduced ROR alpha/gamma t levels and impaired IL-6, IL-17a, and IL-22 production, suggesting that IRF4 acts as a master regulator of mucosal Th17 cell differentiation. Subsequent mechanistic studies using database analysis, chromatin immunoprecipitation, and electrophoretic mobility shift assays identified a novel IRF4 binding site in the IL-17 gene promoter. Overexpression of IRF4 using retroviral infection induced IL-17 production and IL-17 together with IL-6 induced ROR gamma t expression.Conclusions: IRF4 can directly bind to the IL-17 promotor and induces mucosal ROR gamma t levels and IL-17 gene expression thereby controlling Th17-dependent colitis. Targeting of this molecular mechanism may lead to novel therapeutic approaches in human IBD.

The eukaryotic promoter database (EPD).

The Eukaryotic Promoter Database (EPD) is an annotated non-redundant collection of eukaryotic POL II promoters for which the transcription start site has been determined experimentally. Access to promoter sequences is provided by pointers to positions in nucleotide sequence entries. The annotation part of an entry includes a description of the initiation site mapping data, exhaustive cross-references to the EMBL nucleotide sequence database, SWISS-PROT, TRANSFAC and other databases, as well as bibliographic references. EPD is structured in a way that facilitates dynamic extraction of biologically meaningful promoter subsets for comparative sequence analysis. WWW-based interfaces have been developed that enable the user to view EPD entries in different formats, to select and extract promoter sequences according to a variety of criteria, and to navigate to related databases exploiting different cross-references. The EPD web site also features yearly updated base frequency matrices for major eukaryotic promoter elements. EPD can be accessed at http://www.epd.isb-sib.ch

The God of the Book of Acts

(Résumé de l'ouvrage) Seventeen innovative studies are collected in this volume which has been produced under the aegis of the Centre for Biblical Studies, University of Manchester, and L'Institut des sciences bibliques, Université de Lausanne. The majority of the studies engage with narrative through providing insightful working examples. Building on the many contributions of recent narratological research, for the most part the studies in this collection avoid the technical language of narratology as they present fresh insights at many levels. Some essays focus more on the implied author, some on the implied reader or hearer, and some on the way particular messages are constructed; some of the studies consider how author, message and reader are all interconnected. There are several creative proposals for refining genre definition, from law and wisdom to gospel and apocryphal writings. Some studies highlight the way in which narratives can contain ethical, religious, and cultural messages. Sensitivity to narrative is also shown by some contributors to expose in intruing ways the redactional processes behind the final form of texts. Students of narrative in the ancient world will find much to consider in this book, and others engaged with literary studies more generally will discover that scholars of the worlds of the Bible and Late Antiquity have much to offer them.

The InterPro database, an integrated documentation resource for protein families, domains and functional sites.

Signature databases are vital tools for identifying distant relationships in novel sequences and hence for inferring protein function. InterPro is an integrated documentation resource for protein families, domains and functional sites, which amalgamates the efforts of the PROSITE, PRINTS, Pfam and ProDom database projects. Each InterPro entry includes a functional description, annotation, literature references and links back to the relevant member database(s). Release 2.0 of InterPro (October 2000) contains over 3000 entries, representing families, domains, repeats and sites of post-translational modification encoded by a total of 6804 different regular expressions, profiles, fingerprints and Hidden Markov Models. Each InterPro entry lists all the matches against SWISS-PROT and TrEMBL (more than 1,000,000 hits from 462,500 proteins in SWISS-PROT and TrEMBL). The database is accessible for text- and sequence-based searches at http://www.ebi.ac.uk/interpro/. Questions can be emailed to interhelp@ebi.ac.uk.

Prevalence at Birth of Cleft Lip With or Without Cleft Palate: Data From the International Perinatal Database of Typical Oral Clefts (IPDTOC).

As part of a collaborative project on the epidemiology of craniofacial anomalies, funded by the National Institutes for Dental and Craniofacial Research and channeled through the Human Genetics Programme of the World Health Organization, the International Perinatal Database of Typical Orofacial Clefts (IPDTOC) was established in 2003. IPDTOC is collecting case-by-case information on cleft lip with or without cleft palate and on cleft palate alone from birth defects registries contributing to at least one of three collaborative organizations: European Surveillance Systems of Congenital Anomalies (EUROCAT) in Europe, National Birth Defects Prevention Network (NBDPN) in the United States, and International Clearinghouse for Birth Defects Surveillance and Research (ICBDSR) worldwide. Analysis of the collected information is performed centrally at the ICBDSR Centre in Rome, Italy, to maximize the comparability of results. The present paper, the first of a series, reports data on the prevalence of cleft lip with or without cleft palate from 54 registries in 30 countries over at least 1 complete year during the period 2000 to 2005. Thus, the denominator comprises more than 7.5 million births. A total of 7704 cases of cleft lip with or without cleft palate (7141 livebirths, 237 stillbirths, 301 terminations of pregnancy, and 25 with pregnancy outcome unknown) were available. The overall prevalence of cleft lip with or without cleft palate was 9.92 per 10,000. The prevalence of cleft lip was 3.28 per 10,000, and that of cleft lip and palate was 6.64 per 10,000. There were 5918 cases (76.8%) that were isolated, 1224 (15.9%) had malformations in other systems, and 562 (7.3%) occurred as part of recognized syndromes. Cases with greater dysmorphological severity of cleft lip with or without cleft palate were more likely to include malformations of other systems.

SwissSidechain: a molecular and structural database of non-natural sidechains.

Amino acids form the building blocks of all proteins. Naturally occurring amino acids are restricted to a few tens of sidechains, even when considering post-translational modifications and rare amino acids such as selenocysteine and pyrrolysine. However, the potential chemical diversity of amino acid sidechains is nearly infinite. Exploiting this diversity by using non-natural sidechains to expand the building blocks of proteins and peptides has recently found widespread applications in biochemistry, protein engineering and drug design. Despite these applications, there is currently no unified online bioinformatics resource for non-natural sidechains. With the SwissSidechain database (http://www.swisssidechain.ch), we offer a central and curated platform about non-natural sidechains for researchers in biochemistry, medicinal chemistry, protein engineering and molecular modeling. SwissSidechain provides biophysical, structural and molecular data for hundreds of commercially available non-natural amino acid sidechains, both in l- and d-configurations. The database can be easily browsed by sidechain names, families or physico-chemical properties. We also provide plugins to seamlessly insert non-natural sidechains into peptides and proteins using molecular visualization software, as well as topologies and parameters compatible with molecular mechanics software.

The Irish Infancy Narratives and their Relationship with Latin Sources

(Résumé de l'ouvrage) In 1927 M. R. James published Latin Infancy Gospels, identified by him in two related but not identical manuscripts (one the British Library Arundel 404; the other from Hereford), together with a parallel text from the Irish manuscript known as the Leabhar Breac. Later researches brought to light more manuscripts of this Latin work, and also of the Irish text. James recognized that his apocryphal Latin Infancy text was compiled from a combination of the Protevangelium of James and a hitherto unknown text which he named "The Source". Recent research has identified a full Latin translation of the Protevangelium of James. A hitherto unrecognized Irish Infancy Narrative has also been identified in the Dublin manuscript known as the Liber Flavus Fergusiorum. A deep study of this related tradition was called for. This has been carried out over the past ten years by an Irish team in conjunction with Professor Daniel Kaestli and AELAC. The fruits of this labour are published in these two volumes. Volume 13 has a general introduction with a historical sketch of New Testament apocrypha in Ireland and a history of research on the subject. This is followed by a comparison of the Infancy Narratives in the Leabhar Breac and the Liber Flavus Fergusiorum. There are special introductions to these Infancy texts, followed by critical editions of the Irish texts, accompanied by English translations and rich annotation. Next there is similar treatment of the Irish versified Narrative (from ca. 700) of the Childhood Deeds of Jesus (commonly known as the Infancy Narrative (or Gospel) of Thomas. There is then (in volume 14, but with continuous pagination) the edition and translation of an Irish thirteenth-century poem with elements from Infancy Narratives, and both Latin and Irish texts on the wonders at Christ's birth, accompanied by translations and notes. The edition of the Irish material is followed by a critical edition of the full Arundel and Hereford forms of the Infancy Narrative (here referred to as the "J Compilation"), together with a detailed study of all the questions relating to this work. The volume concludes with a critical edition (by Rita Beyers) of the Latin text of the Protevangelium of James, accompanied by a detailed study of the work.. The work contains a detailed study of the Latin translations of the Protevangelium of James and the transmission of this work in the West. The "J Compilation" (a combination of the Protevangelium and texts of Pseudo-Matthew) can be traced back in manuscript transmission to ca. 800,and must have originated some time earlier. Behind it stands an earlier "I ("I" for Irish) Compilation" without influence from Pseudo-Matthew, the form found in the Irish witnesses. It is argued that M. R. James's "Source" may be of Judaeo-Christian origin and may really be the Gospel of the Nazoreans. Among the indexes there is a list of all the Irish words found in the texts. This edition of the Irish and related Latin texts is a major contribution to the study of the apocryphal Infancy Narratives. It should also be of particular interest to Celtic scholars, to students of Irish ecclesiastical learning, and in general to all medievalists.