Influence of several sources and amounts of iron on DNA, lipid and protein oxidative damage during anaemia recovery.

The study was designed to assess the effect of several Fe amounts and sources on haematological parameters, DNA, lipid and protein oxidative damage during the course of Fe-deficiency anaemia recovery. Peripheral DNA damage was assessed using an alkaline comet assay. The brain, liver, erythrocyte and duodenal mucosa lipid peroxidation and protein damage were assessed in control and anaemic rats after Fe repletion with three different sources (FeSO4, haem Fe, and FeSO4 + haem Fe) and amounts (45, 12, and 31 mg Fe/kg diet) of Fe: F diet, H diet or C diet, respectively.

The neural basis of non-native speech perception in bilingual children.

The goal of the present study is to reveal how the neural mechanisms underlying non-native speech perception change throughout childhood. In a pre-attentive listening fMRI task, English monolingual and Spanish-English bilingual children - divided into groups of younger (6-8yrs) and older children (9-10yrs) - were asked to watch a silent movie while several English syllable combinations played through a pair of headphones. Two additional groups of monolingual and bilingual adults were included in the analyses.

Brief report: eye-movement patterns during an embedded figures test in children with ASD.

The present study examined fixation frequency and duration during an Embedded Figures Test (EFT) in an effort to better understand the attentional and perceptual processes by which individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) achieve accelerated EFT performance. In particular, we aimed to elucidate differences in the patterns of eye-movement in ASD and typically developing (TD) children, thus providing evidence relevant to the competing theories of weak central coherence (WCC) and enhanced perceptual functioning. Consistent with prior EFT studies, we found accelerated response time (RT) in children with ASD.

New York-Structural GenomiX Research Consortium (NYSGXRC): a large scale center for the protein structure initiative.

Structural GenomiX, Inc. (SGX), four New York area institutions, and two University of California schools have formed the New York Structural GenomiX Research Consortium (NYSGXRC), an industrial/academic Research Consortium that exploits individual core competencies to support all aspects of the NIH-NIGMS funded Protein Structure Initiative (PSI), including protein family classification and target selection, generation of protein for biophysical analyses, sample preparation for structural studies, structure determination and analyses, and dissemination of results. At the end of the PSI Pilot Study Phase (PSI-1), the NYSGXRC will be capable of producing 100-200 experimentally determined protein structures annually.

A novel mode of Gleevec binding is revealed by the structure of spleen tyrosine kinase.

Spleen tyrosine kinase (Syk) is a non-receptor tyrosine kinase required for signaling from immunoreceptors in various hematopoietic cells. Phosphorylation of two tyrosine residues in the activation loop of the Syk kinase catalytic domain is necessary for signaling, a phenomenon typical of tyrosine kinase family members. Syk in vitro enzyme activity, however, does not depend on phosphorylation (activation loop tyrosine --> phenylalanine mutants retain catalytic activity).