Bactericidal/permeability increasing protein: A multifaceted protein with functions beyond LPS neutralization

Bactericidal permeability increasing protein (BPI), a 55-60kDa protein, first reported in 1975, has gone a long way as a protein with multifunctional roles. Its classical role in neutralizing endotoxin (LPS) raised high hopes among septic shock patients. Today, BPI is not just a LPS-neutralizing protein, but a protein with diverse functions. These functions can be as varied as inhibition of endothelial cell growth and inhibition of dendritic cell maturation, or as an anti-angiogenic, chemoattractant or opsonization agent. Though the literature available is extremely limited, it is fascinating to look into how BPI is gaining major importance as a signalling molecule. In this review, we briefly summarize the recent research focused on the multiple roles of BPI and its use as a therapeutic.

Splicing Functions and Global Dependency on Fission Yeast Slu7 Reveal Diversity in Spliceosome Assembly

The multiple short introns in Schizosaccharomyces pombe genes with degenerate cis sequences and atypically positioned polypyrimidine tracts make an interesting model to investigate canonical and alternative roles for conserved splicing factors. Here we report functions and interactions of the S. pombe slu7(+) (spslu7(+)) gene product, known from Saccharomyces cerevisiae and human in vitro reactions to assemble into spliceosomes after the first catalytic reaction and to dictate 3' splice site choice during the second reaction. By using a missense mutant of this essential S. pombe factor, we detected a range of global splicing derangements that were validated in assays for the splicing status of diverse candidate introns. We ascribe widespread, intron-specific SpSlu7 functions and have deduced several features, including the branch nucleotide-to-3' splice site distance, intron length, and the impact of its A/U content at the 5' end on the intron's dependence on SpSlu7. The data imply dynamic substrate-splicing factor relationships in multiintron transcripts. Interestingly, the unexpected early splicing arrest in spslu7-2 revealed a role before catalysis. We detected a salt-stable association with U5 snRNP and observed genetic interactions with spprp1(+), a homolog of human U5-102k factor. These observations together point to an altered recruitment and dependence on SpSlu7, suggesting its role in facilitating transitions that promote catalysis, and highlight the diversity in spliceosome assembly.

Spiral-Wave Dynamics in a Mathematical Model of Human Ventricular Tissue with Myocytes and Fibroblasts

Cardiac fibroblasts, when coupled functionally with myocytes, can modulate the electrophysiological properties of cardiac tissue. We present systematic numerical studies of such modulation of electrophysiological properties in mathematical models for (a) single myocyte-fibroblast (MF) units and (b) two-dimensional (2D) arrays of such units; our models build on earlier ones and allow for zero-, one-, and two-sided MF couplings. Our studies of MF units elucidate the dependence of the action-potential (AP) morphology on parameters such as E-f, the fibroblast resting-membrane potential, the fibroblast conductance G(f), and the MF gap-junctional coupling G(gap). Furthermore, we find that our MF composite can show autorhythmic and oscillatory behaviors in addition to an excitable response. Our 2D studies use (a) both homogeneous and inhomogeneous distributions of fibroblasts, (b) various ranges for parameters such as G(gap), G(f), and E-f, and (c) intercellular couplings that can be zero-sided, one-sided, and two-sided connections of fibroblasts with myocytes. We show, in particular, that the plane-wave conduction velocity CV decreases as a function of G(gap), for zero-sided and one-sided couplings; however, for two-sided coupling, CV decreases initially and then increases as a function of G(gap), and, eventually, we observe that conduction failure occurs for low values of G(gap). In our homogeneous studies, we find that the rotation speed and stability of a spiral wave can be controlled either by controlling G(gap) or E-f. Our studies with fibroblast inhomogeneities show that a spiral wave can get anchored to a local fibroblast inhomogeneity. We also study the efficacy of a low-amplitude control scheme, which has been suggested for the control of spiral-wave turbulence in mathematical models for cardiac tissue, in our MF model both with and without heterogeneities.

REPRODUCING KERNEL FOR A CLASS OF WEIGHTED BERGMAN SPACES ON THE SYMMETRIZED POLYDISC

A natural class of weighted Bergman spaces on the symmetrized polydisc is isometrically embedded as a subspace in the corresponding weighted Bergman space on the polydisc. We find an orthonormal basis for this subspace. It enables us to compute the kernel function for the weighted Bergman spaces on the symmetrized polydisc using the explicit nature of our embedding. This family of kernel functions includes the Szego and the Bergman kernel on the symmetrized polydisc.

Third order trace formula

In J. Funct. Anal. 257 (2009) 1092-1132, Dykema and Skripka showed the existence of higher order spectral shift functions when the unperturbed self-adjoint operator is bounded and the perturbation is Hilbert-Schmidt. In this article, we give a different proof for the existence of spectral shift function for the third order when the unperturbed operator is self-adjoint (bounded or unbounded, but bounded below).

Formulation of a mathematical approach to regional frequency analysis

Estimation of design quantiles of hydrometeorological variables at critical locations in river basins is necessary for hydrological applications. To arrive at reliable estimates for locations (sites) where no or limited records are available, various regional frequency analysis (RFA) procedures have been developed over the past five decades. The most widely used procedure is based on index-flood approach and L-moments. It assumes that values of scale and shape parameters of frequency distribution are identical across all the sites in a homogeneous region. In real-world scenario, this assumption may not be valid even if a region is statistically homogeneous. To address this issue, a novel mathematical approach is proposed. It involves (i) identification of an appropriate frequency distribution to fit the random variable being analyzed for homogeneous region, (ii) use of a proposed transformation mechanism to map observations of the variable from original space to a dimensionless space where the form of distribution does not change, and variation in values of its parameters is minimal across sites, (iii) construction of a growth curve in the dimensionless space, and (iv) mapping the curve to the original space for the target site by applying inverse transformation to arrive at required quantile(s) for the site. Effectiveness of the proposed approach (PA) in predicting quantiles for ungauged sites is demonstrated through Monte Carlo simulation experiments considering five frequency distributions that are widely used in RFA, and by case study on watersheds in conterminous United States. Results indicate that the PA outperforms methods based on index-flood approach.

CFT(4) partition functions and the heat kernel on AdS(5)

We consider four-dimensional CFTs which admit a large-N expansion, and whose spectrum contains states whose conformal dimensions do not scale with N. We explicitly reorganise the partition function obtained by exponentiating the one-particle partition function of these states into a heat kernel form for the dual string spectrum on AdS(5). On very general grounds, the heat kernel answer can be expressed in terms of a convolution of the one-particle partition function of the light states in the four-dimensional CFT. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Asymptotics of Harish-Chandra expansions, bounded hypergeometric functions associated with root systems, and applications

A series expansion for Heckman-Opdam hypergeometric functions phi(lambda) is obtained for all lambda is an element of alpha(C)*. As a consequence, estimates for phi(lambda) away from the walls of a Weyl chamber are established. We also characterize the bounded hypergeometric functions and thus prove an analogue of the celebrated theorem of Helgason and Johnson on the bounded spherical functions on a Riemannian symmetric space of the noncompact type. The L-P-theory for the hypergeometric Fourier transform is developed for 0 < p < 2. In particular, an inversion formula is proved when 1 <= p < 2. (C) 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Effect of choice of basis functions in neural network for capturing unknown function for dynamic inversion control

The basic requirement for an autopilot is fast response and minimum steady state error for better guidance performance. The highly nonlinear nature of the missile dynamics due to the severe kinematic and inertial coupling of the missile airframe as well as the aerodynamics has been a challenge for an autopilot that is required to have satisfactory performance for all flight conditions in probable engagements. Dynamic inversion is very popular nonlinear controller for this kind of scenario. But the drawback of this controller is that it is sensitive to parameter perturbation. To overcome this problem, neural network has been used to capture the parameter uncertainty on line. The choice of basis function plays the major role in capturing the unknown dynamics. Here in this paper, many basis function has been studied for approximation of unknown dynamics. Cosine basis function has yield the best response compared to any other basis function for capturing the unknown dynamics. Neural network with Cosine basis function has improved the autopilot performance as well as robustness compared to Dynamic inversion without Neural network.

The relationship between classification of multi-domain proteins using an alignment-free approach and their functions: a case study with immunoglobulins

Establishing functional relationships between multi-domain protein sequences is a non-trivial task. Traditionally, delineating functional assignment and relationships of proteins requires domain assignments as a prerequisite. This process is sensitive to alignment quality and domain definitions. In multi-domain proteins due to multiple reasons, the quality of alignments is poor. We report the correspondence between the classification of proteins represented as full-length gene products and their functions. Our approach differs fundamentally from traditional methods in not performing the classification at the level of domains. Our method is based on an alignment free local matching scores (LMS) computation at the amino-acid sequence level followed by hierarchical clustering. As there are no gold standards for full-length protein sequence classification, we resorted to Gene Ontology and domain-architecture based similarity measures to assess our classification. The final clusters obtained using LMS show high functional and domain architectural similarities. Comparison of the current method with alignment based approaches at both domain and full-length protein showed superiority of the LMS scores. Using this method we have recreated objective relationships among different protein kinase sub-families and also classified immunoglobulin containing proteins where sub-family definitions do not exist currently. This method can be applied to any set of protein sequences and hence will be instrumental in analysis of large numbers of full-length protein sequences.

End point estimates for Radon transform of radial functions on non-Euclidean spaces

We prove end point estimate for Radon transform of radial functions on affine Grasamannian and real hyperbolic space. We also discuss analogs of these results on the sphere.

The Ginibre Ensemble and Gaussian Analytic Functions

We show that as n changes, the characteristic polynomial of the n x n random matrix with i.i.d. complex Gaussian entries can be described recursively through a process analogous to Polya's urn scheme. As a result, we get a random analytic function in the limit, which is given by a mixture of Gaussian analytic functions. This suggests another reason why the zeros of Gaussian analytic functions and the Ginibre ensemble exhibit similar local repulsion, but different global behavior. Our approach gives new explicit formulas for the limiting analytic function.

Nodal domains of the equilateral triangle billiard

We characterize the eigenfunctions of an equilateral triangle billiard in terms of its nodal domains. The number of nodal domains has a quadratic form in terms of the quantum numbers, with a non-trivial number-theoretic factor. The patterns of the eigenfunctions follow a group-theoretic connection in a way that makes them predictable as one goes from one state to another. Extensive numerical investigations bring out the distribution functions of the mode number and signed areas. The statistics of the boundary intersections is also treated analytically. Finally, the distribution functions of the nodal loop count and the nodal counting function are shown to contain information about the classical periodic orbits using the semiclassical trace formula. We believe that the results belong generically to non-separable systems, thus extending the previous works which are concentrated on separable and chaotic systems.