Development and validation of a framework for the assessment of school curricula on the presence of evolutionary concepts (FACE).

Evolution is a key concept of biology, fundamental to understand the world and address important societal problems, but research studies show that it is still not widely understood and accepted. Several factors are known to influence evolution acceptance and understanding, but little information is available regarding the impacts of the curriculum on these aspects. Very few curricula have been examined to assess the coverage of biological evolution.

The N-terminal RASSF family: a new group of Ras-association-domain-containing proteins, with emerging links to cancer formation.

The RASSF (Ras-association domain family) has recently gained several new members and now contains ten proteins (RASSF1-10), several of which are potential tumour suppressors. The family can be split into two groups, the classical RASSF proteins (RASSF1-6) and the four recently added N-terminal RASSF proteins (RASSF7-10). The N-terminal RASSF proteins have a number of differences from the classical RASSF members and represent a newly defined set of potential Ras effectors.

Discovery of the catalytic function of a putative 2-oxoacid dehydrogenase multienzyme complex in the thermophilic archaeon Thermoplasma acidophilum.

Those aerobic archaea whose genomes have been sequenced possess a single 4-gene operon that, by sequence comparisons with Bacteria and Eukarya, appears to encode the three component enzymes of a 2-oxoacid dehydrogenase multienzyme complex. However, no catalytic activity of any such complex has ever been detected in the Archaea. In the current paper, we have cloned and expressed the first two genes of this operon from the thermophilic archaeon, Thermoplasma acidophilum.

Genome analysis and strain comparison of correia repeats and correia repeat-enclosed elements in pathogenic Neisseria.

Whole genome sequences of Neisseria meningitidis strains Z2491 and MC58 and Neisseria gonorrhoeae FA1090 were analyzed for Correia repeats (CR) and CR-enclosed elements (CREE). A total of 533, 516, and 256 copies of CR and 270, 261, and 102 copies of CREE were found in these three genomes, respectively. The lengths of CREE range from 28 to 348 bp, and the lengths of multicopy CREE appear mainly in the ranges of 154 to 156 bp and 105 to 107 bp.