Rchimerism: An R Package for Automated Chimerism Data Analysis.

A quantitative chimerism test monitors engraftment of donor hematopoietic stem cells or relapse of leukemias or lymphomas in hematopoietic stem cell transplantation patients. The most common method used for chimerism testing is PCR amplification of short tandem repeat loci, followed by capillary gel electrophoresis. Manual data analysis is tedious and time consuming, as it involves the selection of informative loci and the repetition of quantifying chimerism percentage for multiple loci from multiple cell types.

Riboswitches as hormone receptors: hypothetical cytokinin-binding riboswitches in Arabidopsis thaliana.

Background: Riboswitches are mRNA elements that change conformation when bound to small molecules. They are known to be key regulators of biosynthetic pathways in both prokaryotes and eukaryotes.

Presentation Of The Hypothesis: The hypothesis presented here is that riboswitches function as receptors in hormone perception.

Rho-kinase-mediated Ca2+-independent contraction in rat embryo fibroblasts.

Thus far, determining the relative contribution of Ca2+/calmodulin-dependent myosin light chain kinase (MLCK) and Ca2+-independent Rho-kinase pathways to myosin II activation and contraction has been difficult. In this study, we characterize the role of Rho-kinase in a rat embryo fibroblast cell line (REF-52), which contains no detectable MLCK. No endogenous MLCK could be detected in REF-52 cells by either Western or Northern blot analysis.