Showing 441 - 450 of 733 Items

The cell wall-associated kinases, WAKs, as pectin receptors

Date: 2012-05-08

Creator: Bruce D. Kohorn, Susan L. Kohorn

Access: Open access

The wall-associated kinases, WAKs, are encoded by five highly similar genes clustered in a 30-kb locus in Arabidopsis. These receptor-like proteins contain a cytoplasmic serine threonine kinase, a transmembrane domain, and a less conserved region that is bound to the cell wall and contains a series of epidermal growth factor repeats. Evidence is emerging that WAKs serve as pectin receptors, for both short oligogalacturonic acid fragments generated during pathogen exposure or wounding, and for longer pectins resident in native cell walls. This ability to bind and respond to several types of pectins correlates with a demonstrated role for WAKs in both the pathogen response and cell expansion during plant development. © 2012 Kohorn and Kohorn.


A cascading N = 1 Sp(2N + 2M) × Sp(2N) gauge theory

Date: 2002-08-26

Creator: Stephen G. Naculich, Howard J. Schnitzer, Niclas Wyllard

Access: Open access

We study the N=1 Sp(2N + 2M) × Sp(2N) cascading gauge theory on a stack of N physical and M fractional (half) D3-branes at the singularity of an orientifolded conifold. In addition to the D3-branes and an O7-plane, the background contains eight D7-branes, which give rise to matter in the fundamental representation of the gauge group. The moduli space of the gauge theory is analyzed and its structure is related to the brane configurations in the dual type IIB theory and in type IIA/M-theory. © 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.


The large-scale geometry of some metabelian groups

Date: 2003-01-01

Creator: Jennifer Taback, Kevin Whyte

Access: Open access



One-instanton predictions of Seiberg-Witten curves for product groups

Date: 1999-01-01

Creator: Isabel P. Ennes, Stephen G. Naculich, Henric Rhedin, Howard J. Schnitzer

Access: Open access

One-instanton predictions for the prepotential are obtained from the Seiberg-Witten curve for the Coulomb branch of script N sign = 2 supersymmetric gauge theory for the product group IIn=1m SU(Nn) with a massless matter hypermultiplet in the bifundamental representation (Nn,N̄n+1) of SU(Nn) × SU(Nn+1) for n = 1 to m - 1, together with N0 and Nm+1 matter hypermultiplets in the fundamental representations of SU(N1) and SU(Nm) respectively. The derivation uses a generalization of the systematic perturbation expansion about a hyperelliptic curve developed by us in earlier work. © 1999 Published by Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.


Tame combing and almost convexity conditions

Date: 2011-12-01

Creator: Sean Cleary, Susan Hermiller, Melanie Stein, Jennifer Taback

Access: Open access

We give the first examples of groups which admit a tame combing with linear radial tameness function with respect to any choice of finite presentation, but which are not minimally almost convex on a standard generating set. Namely, we explicitly construct such combings for Thompson's group F and the Baumslag-Solitar groups BS(1, p) with p ≥ 3. In order to make this construction for Thompson's group F, we significantly expand the understanding of the Cayley complex of this group with respect to the standard finite presentation. In particular we describe a quasigeodesic set of normal forms and combinatorially classify the arrangements of 2-cells adjacent to edges that do not lie on normal form paths. © 2010 Springer-Verlag.


Mutations in a signal sequence for the thylakoid membrane identify multiple protein transport pathways and nuclear suppressors

Date: 1994-07-01

Creator: Tracy A. Smith, Bruce D. Kohorn

Access: Open access

The apparatus that permits protein translocation across the internal thylakoid membranes of chloroplasts is completely unknown, even though these membranes have been the subject of extensive biochemical analysis. We have used a genetic approach to characterize the translocation of Chlamydomonas cytochrome f, a chloroplast-encoded protein that spans the thylakoid once. Mutations in the hydrophobic core of the cytochrome f signal sequence inhibit the accumulation of cytochrome f, lead to an accumulation of precursor, and impair the ability of Chlamydomonas cells to grow photosynthetically. One hydrophobic core mutant also reduces the accumulation of other thylakoid membrane proteins, but not those that translocate completely across the membrane. These results suggest that the signal sequence of cytochrome f is required and is involved in one of multiple insertion pathways. Suppressors of two signal peptide mutations describe at least two nuclear genes whose products likely describe the translocation apparatus, and selected second- site chloroplast suppressors further define regions of the cytochrome f signal peptide.


Direct selection for sequences encoding proteases of known specificity

Date: 1991-06-15

Creator: Tracy A. Smith, Bruce D. Kohorn

Access: Open access

We have developed a simple genetic selection that could be used to isolate eukaryotic cDNAs encoding proteases that cleave within a defined amino acid sequence. The selection was developed by using the transcription factor GAL4 from Saccharomyces cerevisiae as a selectable marker, a cloned protease from tobacco etch virus (TEV), and an 18-amino acid TEV protease target sequence. In yeast, TEV protease cleaves its target even when the target is fused to internal regions of the GAL4 protein. This cleavage separates the DNA binding domain from the transcription activation domain of GAL4, rendering it transcriptionally inactive. The proteolytic cleavage can be detected phenotypically by the inability of cells to metabolize galactose. Cells expressing the TEV protease can also be selected on the suicide substrate 2-deoxygalactose. DNA binding studies show that the TEV protease decreases the activity of the GAL4/target fusion protein. Because another protease target sequence of 55 amino acids can be inserted into GAL4 without any loss of transcriptional activity, this assay offers the opportunity to use high-efficiency cDNA cloning and expression vectors to select coding sequences of other proteases from various species. The assay could also be used to help define both target specificities and functional domains of proteases.


Two antisymmetric hypermultiplets in N = 2 SU(N) gauge theory: Seiberg-Witten curve and M-theory interpretation

Date: 1999-10-04

Creator: Isabel P. Ennes, Stephen G. Naculich, Henric Rhedin, Howard J. Schnitzer

Access: Open access

The one-instanton contribution to the prepotential for N = 2 supersymmetric gauge theories with classical groups exhibits a universality of form. We extrapolate the observed regularity to SU (N) gauge theory with two antisymmetric hypermultiplets and Nf ≤ 3 hypermultiplets in the defining representation. Using methods developed for the instanton expansion of non-hyperelliptic curves, we construct an effective quartic Seiberg-Witten curve that generates this one-instanton prepotential. We then interpret this curve in terms of an M-theoretic picture involving NS 5-branes, D4-branes, D6-branes, and orientifold sixplanes, and show that for consistency, an infinite chain of 5-branes and orientifold sixplanes is required, corresponding to a curve of infinite order. © 1999 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.


Comparing enhancer action in cis and in trans

Date: 2012-08-01

Creator: Jack R. Bateman, Justine E. Johnson, Melissa N. Locke

Access: Open access

Studies from diverse systems have shown that distinct interchromosomal interactions are a central component of nuclear organization. In some cases, these interactions allow an enhancer to act in trans, modulating the expression of a gene encoded on a separate chromosome held in close proximity. Despite recent advances in uncovering such phenomena, our understanding of how a regulatory element acts on another chromosome remains incomplete. Here, we describe a transgenic approach to better understand enhancer action in trans in Drosophila melanogaster. Using phiC31-based recombinase-mediated cassette exchange (RMCE), we placed transgenes carrying combinations of the simple enhancer GMR, a minimal promoter, and different fluorescent reporters at equivalent positions on homologous chromosomes so that they would pair via the endogenous somatic pairing machinery of Drosophila. Our data demonstrate that the enhancer GMR is capable of activating a promoter in trans and does so in a variegated pattern, suggesting stochastic interactions between the enhancer and the promoter when they are carried on separate chromosomes. Furthermore, we quantitatively assessed the impact of two concurrent promoter targets in cis and in trans to GMR, demonstrating that each promoter is capable of competing for the enhancer's activity, with the presence of one negatively affecting expression from the other. Finally, the single-cell resolution afforded by our approach allowed us to show that promoters in cis and in trans to GMR can both be activated in the same nucleus, implying that a single enhancer can share its activity between multiple promoter targets carried on separate chromosomes. © 2012 by the Genetics Society of America.


Wall-associated kinase 1 (WAK1) is crosslinked in endomembranes, and transport to the cell surface requires correct cell-wall synthesis

Date: 2006-06-01

Creator: Bruce D. Kohorn, Masaru Kobayashi, Sue Johansen, Henry Perry Friedman, Andy, Fischer, Nicole Byers

Access: Open access

The Arabidopsis thaliana wall-associated kinases (WAKs) bind to pectin with an extracellular domain and also contain a cytoplasmic protein kinase domain. WAKs are required for cell elongation and modulate sugar metabolism. This work shows that in leaf protoplasts a WAK1-GFP fusion protein accumulates in a cytoplasmic compartment that contains pectin. The WAK compartment contains markers for the Golgi, the site of pectin synthesis. The migration of WAK1-GFP to the cell surface is far slower than that of a cell surface receptor not associated with the cell wall, is influenced by the presence of fucose side chains on one or more unidentified molecules that might include pectin, and is dependent upon cellulose synthesis on the plasma membrane. WAK is crosslinked into a detergent-insoluble complex within the cytoplasmic compartment before it appears on the cell surface, and this is independent of fucose modification or cellulose synthesis. Thus, the assembly and crosslinking of WAKs may begin at an early stage within a cytoplasmic compartment rather than in the cell wall itself, and is coordinated with synthesis of surface cellulose.