Bulge

BACKGROUND: Gap junctions form communication compartments between cells. These channels assemble from connexin subunits.
OBJECTIVE: To investigate the immunoexpression of connexin 43 (Cx43) in adult human hair follicles.
METHODS: Cases were retrospectively obtained from our archives.
RESULTS: We identified immunoexpression of Cx43 in the matrix, the papilla, the outer root sheath, the bulge, the medulla, the cortex, the shaft and the secretory part of the sebaceous gland. There was very low expression (VLE) of Cx43 in the perifollicular sheath, the mantle and the arrector pili muscle. The internal root sheath showed high-density expression in the bulb. Such expression abruptly decreased at different points in each of its layers at the point of keratinization. The isthmus showed Cx43-positive staining in the middle layers and all along, whereas there was VLE in the two outermost layers. The infundibulum showed expression all along the middle layers, whereas it showed VLE in the 2 outermost layers and in the 2 or 3 innermost layers.
CONCLUSIONS: The bulge contains Cx43. Our results suggest that keratinization in the hair follicle is closely related to the decrease in Cx43 expression.

Electron-positron annihilation radiation from the Galactic Center region has been detected since the seventies, but its astrophysical origin is still a topic of a scientific debate. We have analyzed data of the gamma-ray imager IBIS/ISGRI onboard of ESA's INTEGRAL platform in the e − e + line. During the first year of the missions Galactic Center Deep Exposure no evidence for point sources at 511 keV has been found in the ISGRI data; the 2σ upper limit for resolved single point sources is estimated to be 1.6 × 10 −4 ph cm −2 s −1 .

Root hair is considered to play important roles in water and nutrient uptake and anchoring the plant to the soil. To gain further knowledge of root hair morphogenesis in rice, we isolated root hairless 2 (rth2) mutant from the mutant panel of Nipponbare. Positional cloning and complementation test revealed that the causal gene of rth2 was Cellulose Synthase-Like D1 (OsCSLD1). rth2 has a premature stop codon in exon 1 as a result of two consecutive nucleotide substitutions and is predicted to produce truncated proteins lacking the D, D, D, QxxRW motif and 8 transmembrane domains. In rth2, bulges were normally initiated from asymmetric divisions of root epidermal cells, but bulges did not elongate. Therefore, rth2 shows completely roothairless phenotype. qRT-PCR analysis revealed that OsCSLD1 was expressed not only in root but also in shoot. In situ hybridization showed that OsCSLD1 was expressed not only in root hairs but also in epidermal and cortex cell walls except for stele. Agronomic character evaluation in pot experiments showed that rth2 did not differ significantly from Nipponbare in all characters examined except for root dry weight, which showed a significant increase in rth2. In paddy field experiment, rth2 was significantly inferior compared with Nipponbare in agronomic performance.

Slipped frameshift intermediates can occur when DNA polymerase slows or stalls at sites of DNA lesions. However, this phenomenon is much less common when unmodified DNA is replicated. In order to study the effect of templating bases on the alignment of primer– ...

The DENIS/ISOGAL near/mid-IR survey of the Milky Way for the first time probes stellar populations in the innermost obscured regions of our galaxy. Ages, metallicities and extinction-corrected luminosities are derived for these stars individually. An old metal-rich population dominates in the inner galactic Bulge, but there are also indications for the presence of a younger population. The inner Bulge has a tri-axial shape, as traced by depth effects on the observed luminosity distributions.