Elevated Southern Hemisphere moisture availability during glacial periods.

Late Pleistocene ice-age climates are routinely characterized as having imposed moisture stress on low- to mid-latitude ecosystems. This idea is largely based on fossil pollen evidence for widespread, low-biomass glacial vegetation, interpreted as indicating climatic dryness. However, woody plant growth is inhibited under low atmospheric CO (refs.

Collagen Binding Proteins of Gram-Positive Pathogens.

Collagens are the primary structural components of mammalian extracellular matrices. In addition, collagens regulate tissue development, regeneration and host defense through interaction with specific cellular receptors. Their unique triple helix structure, which requires a glycine residue every third amino acid, is the defining structural feature of collagens.

Use of chimeric type IV secretion systems to define contributions of outer membrane subassemblies for contact-dependent translocation.

Recent studies have shown that conjugation systems of Gram-negative bacteria are composed of distinct inner and outer membrane core complexes (IMCs and OMCCs, respectively). Here, we characterized the OMCC by focusing first on a cap domain that forms a channel across the outer membrane. Strikingly, the OMCC caps of the Escherichia coli pKM101 Tra and Agrobacterium tumefaciens VirB/VirD4 systems are completely dispensable for substrate transfer, but required for formation of conjugative pili.

Chimeric Coupling Proteins Mediate Transfer of Heterologous Type IV Effectors through the Escherichia coli pKM101-Encoded Conjugation Machine.

Unlabelled: Bacterial type IV secretion systems (T4SSs) are composed of two major subfamilies, conjugation machines dedicated to DNA transfer and effector translocators for protein transfer. We show here that the Escherichia coli pKM101-encoded conjugation system, coupled with chimeric substrate receptors, can be repurposed for transfer of heterologous effector proteins. The chimeric receptors were composed of the N-terminal transmembrane domain of pKM101-encoded TraJ fused to soluble domains of VirD4 homologs functioning in Agrobacterium tumefaciens, Anaplasma phagocytophilum, or Wolbachia pipientis A chimeric receptor assembled from A.

The Agrobacterium Ti Plasmids.

Agrobacterium tumefaciens is a plant pathogen with the capacity to deliver a segment of oncogenic DNA carried on a large plasmid called the tumor-inducing or Ti plasmid to susceptible plant cells. A. tumefaciens belongs to the class Alphaproteobacteria, whose members include other plant pathogens (Agrobacterium rhizogenes), plant and insect symbionts (Rhizobium spp.

Reconcilable differences: mending payer-provider relationships.

The advent of real-time, web-based technologies is having a surprisingly positive impact on health plans and providers. By being "connected" to health plans, providers have the information they need to operate their practices, and they can do away with the time-consuming back-and-forth of paper pushing with multiple health plans.

Development of the IM147: an alternative inspection/maintenance mass-emission transient test to address vehicle preconditioning concerns.

A series of studies was performed to develop an alternative to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's gold standard IM240 mass-based emission test.

Evaluation of a low-cost transient mass measurement system in vehicle inspection and maintenance testing: results of a Gordon-Darby Study.

A study was performed at a Gordon-Darby centralized inspection and maintenance (I/M) test lane in Phoenix, AZ, in December 1999 for the purpose of evaluating the accuracy of production Vehicle Mass Analysis System (VMAS) equipment relative to standard IM240 equipment. Simultaneous transient mass measurements were made on random vehicles using VMAS and IM240 systems on two test lanes during regular I/M testing. Cumulative mass emissions for 846 valid tests were correlated using least-squares regression analysis.