National Health Service (NHS) 111 helpline was set up to improve access to urgent care in England, efficiency and cost-effectiveness of first-contact health services. Following trusted, authoritative advice is crucial for improved clinical outcomes. We examine patient and call-related characteristics associated with compliance with advice given in NHS 111 calls.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFShelf life is an important quality trait for many fruit, including tomatoes. We report that enrichment of anthocyanin, a natural pigment, in tomatoes can significantly extend shelf life. Processes late in ripening are suppressed by anthocyanin accumulation, and susceptibility to Botrytis cinerea, one of the most important postharvest pathogens, is reduced in purple tomato fruit.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Polyploidy often results in considerable changes in gene expression, both immediately and over evolutionary time. New phenotypes often arise with polyploid formation and may contribute to the fitness of polyploids in nature or their selection for use in agriculture. Oilseed rape (Brassica napus) is widely used to study the process of polyploidy both in artificially resynthesised and natural forms.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Natl Acad Sci U S A
May 2011
The RNA-binding proteins FCA and FPA were identified based on their repression of the flowering time regulator FLC but have since been shown to have widespread roles in the Arabidopsis thaliana genome. Here, we use whole-genome tiling arrays to show that a wide spectrum of genes and transposable elements are misexpressed in the fca-9 fpa-7 (fcafpa) double mutant at two stages of seedling development. There was a significant bias for misregulated genomic segments mapping to the 3' region of genes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTranscription in eukaryotic genomes generates an extensive array of non-protein-coding RNA, the functional significance of which is mostly unknown. We are investigating the link between non-coding RNA and chromatin regulation through analysis of FLC - a regulator of flowering time in Arabidopsis and a target of several chromatin pathways. Here we use an unbiased strategy to characterize non-coding transcripts of FLC and show that sense/antisense transcript levels correlate in a range of mutants and treatments, but change independently in cold-treated plants.
View Article and Find Full Text PDF* Blast disease (causal agent Magnaporthe oryzae) has presented as a new and serious field disease of wheat in South America. Here, we investigated the responses of wheat to both adapted and nonadapted isolates of the blast fungus Magnaporthe, examining cellular defence and transcriptional changes. * Resistance towards the nonadapted isolate was associated with the formation of appositions, here termed halos, beneath attempted Magnaporthe grisea penetration sites that wheat-adapted, M.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The Brassica species include an important group of crops and provide opportunities for studying the evolutionary consequences of polyploidy. They are related to Arabidopsis thaliana, for which the first complete plant genome sequence was obtained and their genomes show extensive, although imperfect, conserved synteny with that of A. thaliana.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe Arabidopsis gene COI1 is required for jasmonic acid (JA)-induced growth inhibition, resistance to insect herbivory, and resistance to pathogens. In addition, COI1 is also required for transcription of several genes induced by wounding or by JA. Here, we use microarray gene transcription profiling of wild type and coi1 mutant plants to examine the extent of the requirement of COI1 for JA-induced and wound-induced gene transcription.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWe present the combined application of clustering and composite pattern analysis to Saccharomyces cerevisiae gene expression and sequence data. The aim is to devise a system for the efficient investigation of the upstream regions associated with regulating the coordinated transcriptional response of genes via the location of cis-acting elements. The clustering algorithm presented allows clusters to overlap in light of the fact that many genes are regulated by multiple factors and/or are associated with multiple functions in the organism.
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