Adult T cell leukemia͞lymphoma (ATLL) has been characterized as one of the most aggressive human neoplasias and its incidence is thought to be caused by both genetic and epigenetic alterations to the host cellular genes of T cells infected with human T cell leukemia virus type I (HTLV-I). A multilobulated nuclear appearance is an important diagnostic marker of ATLL, and we have now identified that the molecular mechanisms underlying these formations occur through microtubule rearrangement via phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI3-kinase) activation by AILIM͞ICOS signaling. We also show that PTEN and͞or SHIP-1, which are PIP3 inositol phosphatases that inhibit the activation of downstream effectors of the PI3-kinase cascade, are disrupted in both ATLL neoplasias and in multilobulated nuclei-forming Jurkat cells. This downregulation of PTEN was found to be essential for the formation of ATLL-type nuclear lobules. Furthermore, PI3-kinase and PTEN activities were observed to be closely associated with cellular proliferation. Thus, our results suggest that alteration of PI3-kinase signaling cascades, as a result of the down-regulation of inositol phosphatases, induces ATLL-type multilobulated nuclear formation and is also associated with the cellular proliferation of malignant T cell leukemias͞lymphomas.activation-inducible lymphocyte immunomediatory molecule͞inducible costimulator ͉ human T cell leukemia virus type I ͉ multilobulated nuclei ͉ PTEN ͉ SHIP

The goal of this paper is to develop a regrasp planning algorithm general enough to perform statistical analysis with thousands of experiments and arbitrary mesh models. We focus on pick-and-place regrasp which reorients an object from one placement to another by using a sequence of pickups and place-downs. We improve the pick-and-place regrasp approach developed in 1990s and analyze its performance in robotic assembly with different work surfaces in the workcell. Our algorithm will automatically compute the stable placements of an object, find several force-closure grasps, generate a graph of regrasp actions, and search for regrasp sequences. We demonstrate the advantages of our algorithm with various mesh models and use the algorithm to evaluate the completeness, the cost and the length of regrasp sequences with different mesh models and different assembly tasks in the presence of different work surfaces. Our results show that spare work surfaces are beneficial to assembly. Tilted work surfaces are only sometimes beneficial, depending on the objects.

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Lysophosphatidic acid (LPA), which interacts with G protein-coupled transmembrane LPA receptors exhibits several biological effects, such as cell proliferation, migration, and differentiation. Recently, it has been reported that alteration of LPA receptor genes occurs in several cancer cells. In this study, to assess the biological role of LPA receptor-3 (LPA3 ) in the pathogenesis of tumor cells, we generated the Lpar3-expressing cells (RHa3B12 and RHa3G8) from rat hepatoma RH7777 cells, and examined their abilities of cell migration and tumorigenicity, compared with the Lpar3-unexpressing cells. In cell motility and invasion assays, RHa3B12 and RHa3G8 cells showed significantly higher intrinsic activity without LPA treatment than control RH7777AB cells. LPA treatment further increased cell motility and invasion of these cells. The cell motility of RHa3B12 and RHa3G8 cells stimulated by LPA treatment was significantly suppressed by pretreatment with inhibitors of Gi or Gq proteins. In a soft agar assay, the large sized colonies were formed in RHa3B12 and RHa3G8 cells, but not in RH7777AB cells. The cell survival of RHa3G8 cells treated with cisplatin (CDDP) or doxorubicin (DOX) was higher than that of RH7777AB cells, correlating with the elevated expression levels of multidrug-resistance related genes, Mdr1a, Mdr1b, and Gstp1. These results suggest that LPA3 may be involved in progression and aggressiveness of rat hepatoma RH7777 cells.

We determined the bacterial community profile in non-axenic cultures of Chlorella (Chlorophyceae, Chlorophyta) isolated from soil. The bacterial composition at the phylum level was different from that of whole soil bacteria, but it was similar to that reported for non-axenic cultures of marine microalgae such as diatoms (Bacillariophyceae, Heterokontophyta). Expected novel bacteria, i.e. those which do not have close relatives among described species, were maintained in the cultures, and these bacteria were chiefly composed of members of the phylum Bacteroidetes. They may have been 'as-yet-uncultured' but in practice unintentionally been cultured in microalgal cultures. They could serve as good bioresources in various fields of biological and ecological studies.

In this study, the presence of the mcr-1 gene in Escherichia coli from retail meat in Japan was investigated. Nine E. coli isolates (eight from chickens and one from pork) carried the mcr-1 gene on the plasmid. In six isolates from domestic chickens, mcr-1 was located on the IncI2 plasmid, which is approximately 60 kb in size. In the remaining three isolates from imported chicken and pork, mcr-1 was located on the IncX4 plasmid (30 kb).

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