Search

Mixed-species flocks (MSFs) are an important form of social organisation in forest bird communities worldwide. MSFs provide participants with the benefits of reduced predation risk and/or enhanced foraging efficiency. Recent work has shown that participation in MSFs confers long-term survival benefits in the face of anthropogenic change. However, our understanding of MSFs mainly comes from studies that examine species-level networks, where each node is a unique species and the edges or connections between nodes are associations/interactions between species. While valuable, such approaches might not allow us to understand and investigate the mechanisms that drive MSF formation and structure because social interactions and their effects occur at the individual-level. Empirical studies on multi-species, individual-level MSF social networks have seldom been undertaken due to the various complexities and logistical challenges involved. In this study, we use mist-netting and colour-ringing followed by a standardised observation protocol to construct individual-level social networks in MSFs at 2000m ASL in Eaglenest Wildlife Sanctuary, Arunachal Pradesh, Eastern Himalaya, India. First, we found two separate flocktypes at our study site, comprised of two distinct sets of understorey species. The mechanisms contributing to individual-level co-occurences are likely to differ between these flocktypes, and with MSFs in the Neotropics. The Yellow-throated Fulvetta (a nuclear species of one flocktype) shows low modularity and large spatial overlap in its MSF networks, which is likely driven by non-individual-specific benefits such as predation risk dilution. Meanwhile, the Rusty-fronted Barwing (the nuclear species of the other flocktype) shows high modularity and spatially disjunct territories for each flock. Further, the addition of associating species to the social networks has opposite impacts on the two networks. Territorial Rufous-capped Babblers and Grey-cheeked Warblers increase the modularity of the fulvetta network, while the addition of Coral-billed Scimitar Babblers to the barwing networks greatly reduces the modularity because the associating individuals bridge two modules of barwings (both spatially and in the social network). Our study provides novel insights into flock formation mechanisms in the Eastern Himalaya, likely applicable to other multi-species flock systems in the Old World.

The Barcelona Tissue Bank was established from the merge of two previous multi-tissue banks. Potential donors are screened by Donor Center staff and multi-tissue retrieval is performed by specialized own teams. Tissue processing and preservation is performed in clean room facilities by specialised personnel. After quality control of both donor and all tissues results, the heart valves and vascular segments are stored until medical request. The aim of this report is to present the cardiovascular tissue activity and retrospectively evaluate the outcomes of the changes performed in last 20 years. Cardiovascular tissue from 4088 donors was received, specifically 3115 hearts and 2095 vascular segments were processed and evaluated. A total of 48% of the aortic valves, 68% of the pulmonary valves and 75% of the vascular segments were suitable for transplant. The main reason for discarding tissue was macroscopic morphology followed by microbiological results, for both valves and arteries. Altogether, 4360 tissues were distributed for transplantation: 2032 (47%) vascular segments, 1545 (35%) pulmonary valves and 781 (18%) aortic valves. The most common indication for aortic valve surgery was the treatment of endocarditis, while for pulmonary valves, it was congenital malformation reconstruction. Vascular segments were mainly used for reconstruction after ischemia. During this period, a number of changes were made with the goal of enhancing tissue quality, safety and efficacy. These improvements were achieved through the use of a new antibiotic cocktail, increasing of donor age criteria and changing the microbiological control strategy.

Pentraxins (PTXs) are a superfamily of conserved proteins which are components of the humoral arm of innate immunity. They are considered to be functional ancestors of antibodies and are classified into short and long types. In this study, we show that a pentraxin-like component (Ptx-like) with a C-terminal PTX domain, highly homologous to the short PTX of H. sapiens CRP, and a long N-terminal domain typical of long PTXs, is involved in the inflammatory response of Ciona robusta under LPS exposure in vivo. Analyses of protein domains as well as 3D modelling and phylogenetic tree supported the close relationship of Ptx-like with mammalian CRP, suggesting that C. robusta Ptx-like shares a common ancestor in the chordate lineages. qRT-PCR analysis showed that Ptx-like was transcriptionally upregulated during the inflammatory process induced by LPS inoculation and that it is involved in the initial phase as well as the secondary phase of the inflammatory response in which matrix remodelling and the achievement of homeostasis occur. In situ hybridisation assays revealed that gene transcription was upregulated in the pharynx post-LPS challenge in vivo, and that Ptx-like was expressed by clusters of haemocytes, mainly granulocytes, inside the pharynx vessels. We also found transcript-expressing granulocytes flowing in the musculature and in the lacunae of the circulatory system. These data supported that Ptx-like is a potential molecule of the acute-phase response in C. robusta immune defence systems against bacterial infection.

To date, drugs released into the aquatic environment are a real problem, and among antibiotics, sulfamethoxazole is the one most widely found in wastewater; thus, the evaluation of its toxicity on marine organisms is very important. This study, for the first time, investigates the in vitro effects of 4 concentrations of sulfamethoxazole (0.05 mg/L, 0.5 mg/L, 5 mg/L, 50 mg/L) on the fertilization and development of the sea urchin

Islam is a da’wah religoin that assigns its people to broadcast its teachings to all mankind as rahmatan lil’alamin. Islam guarantees the realization of happiness and prosperty when its teachings become a way og life and implement it consistently and consistently. Today we are faced with the rapid development of the times. The influence og globalization makes the islamic generation drift away in an instant which results in a slow decline so that the Islamic identity and character of Muslims is lost. This makes a Muslim weak and powerless. The author conducted this study aimed at: Knowing the SSG Training program, Knowing the da’wah method used by the SSG Training Program, and knowing yhe supporting and inhibiting factors of the SSG Training Program. This research is a qialitative research with a case study approach. Data collection techniques in the form of interview text, observation, documentation. The object of this research is the Ready-to-Use Santri Training Program which has the aim of creating students with Good and Strong characters and can play a role in the mindst of state and religious problems as agents of change. In building good and strong characters, there are three stages of the program, namely the self destruct stage program, the self building stage of the program, and the team building stage program. The results of the research are the Ready to Use Santri Training program using the Bil Lisan, Bil Hikmah, Bil Al-Mau’izhah Al-Hasanah, and Bil Al-Mujlah Bi-al-Lati Hiya Ahsan da’wah methods. Supporting factors: discipline, da’wah methods, individual students. Inhibiting factors: individual student, environmental factors, and ineffective communication. Abstrak. Islam adalah agama dakwah yang menugaskan umatnya untuk menyiarkan ajarannya kepada seluruh umat manusia sebagai rahmatan lil’alamin. Islam menjamin terwujudnya kebahagiaan dan kesejahteraan manakala ajarannya menjadi pedoman hidup dan melaksanakan secara konsisten serta konsekuen. Dewasa ini kita dihadapkan dengan perkembangan zaman yang cepat. Pengaruh globalisasi menjadikan generasi Islam ikut hanyut dalam keinstanan yang mengakibatkan kemunduran dengan perlahan sehingga hilanglah jati diri dan akhlak Islami muslim. Hal ini menjadikan seorang muslim lemah dan tidak memiliki kekuatan. Penulis melakukan penelitian ini bertujuan untuk: Mengetahui program Diklat SSG, Mengetahui Metode dakwah yang digunakan Program Diklat SSG, dan mengetahui faktor pendukung dan penghambat Program Diklat SSG. Penelitian ini merupakan penelitian kualitiatif dengan pendekatan studi kasus. Teknik pengumpulan data berupa teks wawancara, observasi, dokumentasi. Objek penelitian ini adalah Program Diklat Santri Siap Guna yang memiliki tujuan terciptanya santri berkarakter Baik dan Kuat dan dapat berperan di tengah-tengah permasalahan negara dan agama sebagai agen perubahan. Dalam pembinaan karakter baik dan kuat memiliki tiga tahapan program yaitu program tahap dobrak diri, program tahap bangun diri, dan program tahap bangun tim. Hasil dari penelitian yaitu program Diklat Santri Siap Guna menggunakan metode dakwah Bil Lisan, Bil Hikmah, Bil Al-Mau’izhah Al-Hasanah, dan Bil Al-Mujadalah Bi-al-Lati Hiya Ahsan. Faktor pendukung: Tata tertib, metode dakwah, individu santri. Faktor penghambat: Individu santri, faktor lingkungan, dan komunikasi tidak efektif.

Film is an important medium’s of da’wah, because it is an audio-visual media that can be enjoyed anywhere and anytime. The animated film Nussa and Rarra episode Nussa can tell the story of Nussa's desire to participate in a football match despite her physical limitations. The purpose of this research is to find out the message of aqidah, shari'ah and morals da'wah contained in the film. This study uses a qualitative type with semiotic analysis method Roland Barthes model by examining the signs and markers in the film. The results of the study showed several da'wah messages including: aqidah; Allah does not look at the physical but the heart, accepts everything sincerely. Shari'ah; obligation to wear hijab, start activities with basmallah. Morals; kissing parents' hands, caring for sick parents, knocking on doors before entering, speaking kind words to parents. Abstrak. Film adalah media dakwah yang penting, sebab ia merupakan media audio-visual yang dapat dinikmati dimana saja dan kapan saja. Film animasi Nussa dan Rarra episode Nussa bisa mengisahkan tentang keinginan Nussa untuk mengikuti pertandingan sepak bola walapun dengan keterbatasan fisik yang dimilikinya. Tujuan dari penelitian ini untuk mengetahui pesan dakwah aqidah, syari’ah dan akhlak yang terkandung dalam film tersebut. Penelitian ini menggunakan jenis kualitatif dengan metode anlisis semiotika model Roland Barthes dengan mengkaji tanda dan petanda dalam film tersebut. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan beberapa pesan dakwah diantaranya: aqidah; Allah tidak memandang fisik melainkan hati, menerima segala sesuatu dengan ikhlas. Syari’ah; kewajiban berhijab, memulai aktifitas dengan basmallah. Akhlak; mencium tangan orangtua, merawat orangtua yang sakit, mengetuk pintu sebelum memasukinya, bertutur kata baik kepada orangtua.

Aqueous extracts from Posidonia oceanica’s green and brown (beached) leaves and rhizomes were prepared, submitted to phenolic compound and proteomic analysis, and examined for their potential cytotoxic effect on HepG2 liver cancer cells in culture. The chosen endpoints related to survival and death were cell viability and locomotory behavior, cell-cycle analysis, apoptosis and autophagy, mitochondrial membrane polarization, and cell redox state. Here, we show that 24 h exposure to both green-leaf- and rhizome-derived extracts decreased tumor cell number in a dose–response manner, with a mean half maximal inhibitory concentration (IC50) estimated at 83 and 11.5 μg of dry extract/mL, respectively. Exposure to the IC50 of the extracts appeared to inhibit cell motility and long-term cell replicating capacity, with a more pronounced effect exerted by the rhizome-derived preparation. The underlying death-promoting mechanisms identified involved the down-regulation of autophagy, the onset of apoptosis, the decrease in the generation of reactive oxygen species, and the dissipation of mitochondrial transmembrane potential, although, at the molecular level, the two extracts appeared to elicit partially differentiating effects, conceivably due to their diverse composition. In conclusion, P. oceanica extracts merit further investigation to develop novel promising prevention and/or treatment agents, as well as beneficial supplements for the formulation of functional foods and food-packaging material with antioxidant and anticancer properties.

Innate immune responses face infectious microorganisms by inducing inflammatory responses. Multiple genes within distinct functional categories are coordinately and temporally regulated by transcriptional 'on' and 'off' switches that account for the specificity of gene expression in response to external stimuli. Mechanisms that control transcriptional and post-transcriptional regulation are important in coordinating the initiation and resolution of inflammation. Macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) is an important cytokine that, in Ciona robusta, is related to inflammatory response. It is well known that in C. robusta, formerly known as Ciona intestinalis, the pharynx is involved in the inflammatory reaction induced by lipopolysaccharide (LPS) injection in the body wall. Using this biological system, we describe the identification of two C. robusta MIFs (CrMIF1 and CrMIF2). The phylogenetic tree and modeling support a close relationship with vertebrate MIF family members. CrMIF1 and CrMIF2 possess two evolutionally conserved catalytic sites: a tautomerase and an oxidoreductase site with a conserved CXXC motif. Real-time PCR analysis shows a prompt expression induced by LPS inoculation in CrMIF1 and a late upregulation of CrMIF2 and in silico analyses of 3'UTR show a cis-acting GAIT element and a CPE element in 3'-UTR, which are not present in the 3'-UTR of CrMIF1, suggesting that different transcriptional and post-transcriptional control mechanisms are involved in the regulation of gene expression of MIF during inflammatory response in C. robusta.

Background Dermal scaffolds for tissue regeneration are nowadays an effective alternative in not only wound healing surgeries but also breast reconstruction, abdominal wall reconstruction and tendon reinforcement. The present study describes the development of a decellularization protocol applied to human split-thickness skin from cadaveric donors to obtain dermal matrix using an easy and quick procedure. Methods Complete split-thickness donor was decellularized through the combination of hypertonic and enzymatic methods. To evaluate the absence of epidermis and dermal cells, and ensure the integrity of the extracellular matrix (ECM) structure, histological analysis was performed. Residual genetic content and ECM biomolecules (collagen, elastin, and glycosaminoglycan) were quantified and tensile strength was tested to measure the effect of the decellularization technique on the mechanical properties of the tissue. Results Biomolecules quantification, residual genetic content (below 50 ng/mg dry tissue) and histological structure assessment showed the efficacy of the decellularization process and the preservation of the ECM. The biomechanical tests confirmed the preservation of native properties in the acellular tissue. Conclusions The acellular dermal matrix obtained from whole split-thickness skin donor with the newly developed decellualrization protocol, maintains the desired biomechanical and structural properties and represents a viable treatment option for patients.

Neural models for text generation are often designed in an end-to-end fashion, typically with zero control over intermediate computations, limiting their practical usability in downstream applications. In this work, we incorporate explicit means into neural models to ensure topical continuity, informativeness and content diversity of generated radiology reports. For the purpose we propose a method to compute image representations specific to each sentential context and eliminate redundant content by exploiting diverse sentence states. We conduct experiments to generate radiology reports from medical images of chest x-rays using MIMIC-CXR. Our model outperforms baselines by up to 18% and 29% respective in the evaluation for informativeness and content ordering respectively, relative on objective metrics and 16% on human evaluation.

This review paper summarizes and critically discusses the morphology and structure formation of carbon fibers (CFs) from polymer precursor systems. Throughout this review, we focus on the key mutual interactions between the polymeric precursor systems, their physically determined processability into filaments, the thermally initiated crystal conversion mechanisms, as well as the morphological and physical properties of the resulting CFs and graphite fibers (GFs). Understanding the behavior of crystal conversion mechanisms from a polymeric semi-crystalline structure into a turbostratic, glass-like or even a graphite-like carbonaceous crystalline structure is essential to carbon and graphite fiber formation. The nature of the crystal conversion and thermal processing largely determine the recovery degree and behavior of the carbonaceous crystal orientation. Over the last three decades, CFs and GFs have earned a significant reputation as lightweight fibrous reinforcement materials, and considerable advances have been achieved in understanding the structure of CFs and GFs and in tailoring their performance towards specific applications. The utilization of CFs and GFs in different thermoplastics and thermosets, as well as in concrete as reinforcements, is well known thanks to the abundant number of reports and reviews available. Nevertheless, large-scale utilization of CFs in high-technology sectors, such as the aerospace industry, is mainly driven by the required performance of the CFs. For civilian applications such as general engineering and the automotive industry, however, the large-scale production of CFs is immensely limited by production costs. Numerous reports and reviews are available in the field of CFs and its precursors. Therefore, we focus on reviewing the less-discussed structure–property relationship and the influence of the different manufacturing processes on this relationship. Throughout this review, we identify areas that require future research and development regarding the morphology and structure formation of CFs from emerging precursor systems, e.g., lignin.

Riboprobes (in situ hybridization) and antibodies (immunohistochemistry), previously used to show the upregulation of Ciona intestinalis (Type A) galectins (CiLgals-a, CiLgals-b) and phenoloxidase (CinPO2) immune-related genes, were tested on histological sections of the ovary. The ovarian follicles are composed of oocytes encased by follicular cells (FCs) and test cells (TCs). Results show the transcription upregulation of both CiLgals and CinPO2 genes in the vitellogenic FCs, conversely distinct cytolocalization of the proteins are shown. At vitellogenic stage, the CiLgals are localized in the FCs, in the oocyte cytoplasm, and close to the germinal vesicle (GV), whereas the CinPO2 was never identified in the FCs. In a presumptive advanced phase and at the post-vitellogenic stage the TCs appear to be labelled by the CinPO2 riboprobe, and the protein identified by the antibody suggesting an mRNA transcytosis process from FCs. At post-vitellogenic stage the CiLgals mainly enrich the GV nucleoplasm, whereas the CinPO2 is contained in TCs and in the ooplasm but never found in the GV. This finding sheds new light on a former paper in which TCs were reported to be the only CinPO2-producing cells in the ovarian follicle. Finally, CiLgals and CinPO2 genes transcription and proteins production seem to be associated with accessory cells during their differentiation from vitellogenic to post-vitellogenic stage. The present findings promote further research on the early upregulation of immune-related genes, and the potential multifunctional role of the produced proteins. In addition further insight on the accessory cells involvement in ascidian oogenesis are reported.

Mineralocorticoid receptor (MR) activation plays an essential role in promoting inflammation, fibrosis, and target organ damage. Currently, no studies are investigating MR antagonism in patients with type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) with chronic kidney disease, at high risk for cardiovascular complications, who are otherwise not candidates for MR antagonism by virtue of heart failure. Further, there is limited information on candidate therapies that may demonstrate differential benefit from this therapy. We hypothesized that MR antagonism may provide additional protection from atherosclerosis progression in higher‐risk patients who otherwise may not be candidates for such a therapeutic approach. In this double‐blind, randomized, placebo‐controlled trial, subjects with T2DM with chronic kidney disease (≥ stage 3) will be randomized in a 1:1 manner to placebo or spironolactone (12.5 mg with eventual escalation to 25 mg daily over a 4‐week period). The co‐primary efficacy endpoint will be percentage change in total atheroma volume in thoracic aorta and left ventricular mass at 52 weeks in patients treated with spironolactone vs placebo. Secondary outcomes include 24‐hour mean systolic blood pressure, central aortic blood pressure, and insulin resistance (HOMA‐IR) at 6 weeks. A novel measure in the study will be changes in candidate miRNAs that regulate expression of NR3C2 (MR gene) as well as measuring monocyte/macrophage polarization in response to therapy with spironolactone. We envision that our strategy of simultaneously probing the effects of a drug combined with analysis of mechanisms of action and predictive response will likely provide key information with which to design event‐based trials.

While neural approaches have achieved significant improvement in machine comprehension tasks, models often work as a black-box, resulting in lower interpretability, which requires special attention in domains such as healthcare or education. Quantifying uncertainty helps pave the way towards more interpretable neural networks. In classification and regression tasks, Bayesian neural networks have been effective in estimating model uncertainty. However, inference time increases linearly due to the required sampling process in Bayesian neural networks. Thus speed becomes a bottleneck in tasks with high system complexity such as question-answering or dialogue generation. In this work, we propose a hybrid neural architecture to quantify model uncertainty using Bayesian weight approximation but boosts up the inference speed by 80% relative at test time, and apply it for a clinical dialogue comprehension task. The proposed approach is also used to enable active learning so that an updated model can be trained more optimally with new incoming data by selecting samples that are not well-represented in the current training scheme.

The 5' and 3' RACE is a method to obtain full-length 5' and 3' ends of cDNA using known cDNA sequences from expressed sequence tags (ESTs), subtracted cDNA, differential display, or library screening. Here is described the identification of full-length 5' and 3' ends of Ciona robusta Mif1 and Mif2 cDNA by using 5' and 3' RACE method.

There has been ever raising concern in last few decades about the utilization of biomass for different commercial applications such as filler materials in rubber composites. In this context, an interesting pathway has been proposed to develop such composites by introducing waste lignin as a reinforcing constituent in high cis-polybutadiene rubber (BR). With a judicious selection of rubber curing ingredients and, simultaneously, adopting suitable solid-state mixing protocols, particularly, a relatively high-temperature multi-steps melt-mixing process (above the glass transition temperature of lignin), rubber composites with an outstanding mechanical performance were prepared. The reinforced rubber composites with 50 (weight) parts lignin loading per hundred parts of rubber (phr) offer ∼10 MPa tensile strength (TS), ∼276% elongation at break (EB), and ∼3.51 MPa tensile stress at 100% elongation (so-called rubber modulus M100). These values are superior when compared with the composites comprised with standard reinforcing carbon black (∼8.5 TS, ∼224% EB, ∼2.79 M100) and even with a silica-silane system (∼7.34 TS, ∼229% EB, ∼2.44 M100) with same filler loading. The unique combination of the curing packages and four-stage mixing process allowed us to establish a homogeneous and fine dispersion of lignin. Furthermore, this is the first time that available models of rubber reinforcement are applied to the description of the reinforcement mechanisms of lignin in a soft elastomer involving various aspects like filler-filler interaction, rubber-filler interactions, critical strains for destroying the filler-filler network, effective filler volume fractions, shape factor, etc. The developed compounding methods for BR and their characterization and modeling can be easily applied to other commercial rubbers facilitating a real breakthrough in developing cheap and bio-based high-performance rubber composites.

Although the Tumor necrosis factor gene superfamily seems to be very conserved in vertebrates, phylogeny, tissue expression, genomic and gene organization, protein domains and polymorphism analyses showed that a strong change has happened mostly in invertebrates in which protochordates were a constraint during the immune-molecules history and evolution. RT PCR was used to investigate differential gene expression in different tissues. The expression shown was greater in the pharynx. Single-nucleotide polymorphism has been investigated in Ciona intestinalis Tumor necrosis factor alpha (CiTNFα) mRNA isolated from the pharynx of 30 ascidians collected from Licata, Sicily (Italy), by denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE). For this analysis, CiTNFα nucleotide sequence was separated into two fragments, TNF-1 and -2, respectively, of 630 and 540 bp. We defined 23 individual DGGE patterns (named 1 to 10 for TNF-1 and 1 to 13 for TNF-2). Five patterns for TNF-1 accounted for 20% of the individuals. All the patterns were verified by direct sequencing. Single base-pair mutations were observed mainly within COOH-terminus, leading to 30 nucleotide sequence variants and 30 different coding sequences segregating in two main different clusters. Although most of the base mutations were silent, four propeptide variants were detected and six amino acid replacements occurred within COOH-terminus. Statistical tests for neutrality indicated negative selection pressure on signal and mature peptide domains, but possible positive selection pressure on COOH-terminus domain. Lastly we displayed the in silico 3D structure analysis including the CiTNFα variable region.

The diversification of cellular functions is one of the major characteristics of multicellular organisms which allow cells to modulate their gene expression, leading to the formation of transcripts and proteins with different functions and concentrations in response to different stimuli. CAP genes represent a widespread family of proteins belonging to the cysteine-rich secretory protein, antigen 5 and pathogenesis-related 1 superfamily which, it has been proposed, play key roles in the infection process and the modulation of immune responses in host animals. The ascidian Ciona intestinalis represents a group of proto-chordates with an exclusively innate immune system that has been widely studied in the field of comparative and developmental immunology. Using this biological system, we describe the identification of a novel APA mechanism by which an intronic polyadenylation signal is activated by LPS injection, leading to the formation of a shorter CAP mRNA capable of expressing the first CAP exon plus 19 amino acid residues whose sequence is contained within the first intron of the annotated gene. Furthermore, such an APA event causes the expression of a translational controlling cis-acting GAIT element which is not present in the previously isolated CAP isoform and identified in the 3'-UTR of other immune-related genes, suggesting an intriguing scenario in which both transcriptional and post-transcriptional control mechanisms are involved in the activation of the CAP gene during inflammatory response in C. intestinalis.

Introduction:Public health (PH) and nursing students are an underutilized demographic in disaster response. Knowledge of the disaster response phase may enhance student understanding of preparedness, and provide response capabilities.Aim:A single four-hour simulation-based training session, with toxicologists as instructors, can effectively improve PH and nursing student knowledge and skills in chemical and radiation response, despite minimal prior experience.Methods:A convenience sample was used to test PH and nursing students in a response training program. An introductory lecture and simulation training reviewed: mass casualty care, triage, personal protective equipment, decontamination, and chemical and radiation exposure toxidromes. An examination was administered pre-training, and then post-training, to evaluate relevant training, knowledge, risk perception, and comfort in response capabilities to chemical and radiation incidents.Results:Forty-two students attended the course; 39 were included in the study. Seventy-two percent (n=28) of participants had no prior disaster training. Overall, there were significant differences between the pre-test and post-test scores for all students [95% CI: 5.4 (4.7-6.1); pDiscussion:Improvement of knowledge and comfort was demonstrated, irrespective of previous experience. Simulation-based training of chemical and radiation disaster preparedness, led by medical toxicologists, is an effective means of educating PH and nursing students, with minimal prior fluency.

Two distinct Ciona intestinalis phenoloxidases (CinPO1, 2) had previously been cloned and sequenced. The CinPO2 is involved in innate immunity and is expressed by inflammatory hemocytes that populate the tunic and pharynx vessels as a response to LPS inoculation. In situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry assays on histological section, showed that the expression of this gene and the produced protein are shared with oogenesis, embryogenesis and larval morphogenesis. Intriguingly, upregulation of gene transcription was found in the test cell layer that envelopes the ovary follicle, ovulated egg, and gastrula, as well as it was modulated in the zygotic nucleus of outer balstomers of 32-cell embryo, neurula presumptive epidermis tissue and larval mesenchyme. The anti-CinPO2 antibodies, specific for adult inflammatory cells, recognize epitopes in the cytoplasm of ovarian oocytes, ovulated eggs, development stages and larval mesenchyme. The overall findings disclose the precocious activation of the CinPO2 immunity-related gene, and show a developmentally programmed expression of this phenoloxidase. Furthermore, these findings support the multifunctional roles of immunity-related genes and allows us to explore new perspectives on ascidian development and immunity. J. Exp. Zool. (Mol. Dev. Evol.) 324B: 141–151, 2015. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Customized translation need pay spe-cial attention to the target domain ter-minology especially the named-entities for the domain. Adding linguistic features to neural machine translation (NMT) has been shown to benefit translation in many studies. In this paper, we further demonstrate that adding named-entity (NE) feature with named-entity recognition (NER) into the source language produces better translation with NMT. Our experiments show that by just including the different NE classes and boundary tags, we can increase the BLEU score by around 1 to 2 points using the standard test sets from WMT2017. We also show that adding NE tags using NER and applying in-domain adaptation can be combined to further improve customized machine translation.

Analysis of essential oils obtained from the seeds (SEO) and leaves (LEO) of Foeniculum vulgare Mill cultivated in southeast of Morocco revealed that trans-anethole was the major constituent (54.67% of seed oil and 50.60% in leaf oil), followed by estragol (35.33% in seed oil and 30.15% in leaf oil). Other components present in leaf oil included fenchone, linalool and α-pinene, while seed oil contained fenchone, limonene and γ-terpinen. Besides, minor constituents like camphene, camphor, myrcene, pahllandrene, fenchyl acetate and β-bisabolene were obtained from seeds and leaves. The essential oils of the seeds and leaves of Foeniculum vulgare were assayed for their antifungal activity by poison food (PF) technique and the volatile activity assay (VA) against five agricultural pathogenic fungi. The results indicated that the essential oil of Foeniculum vulgare inhibited the mycelial growth of all fungal strains tested. VA assay of essential oil was consistently found to be more effective than PF technique. The mycelium growth was completely inhibited by LEO on Alternaria sp., Fusarium oxysporum f. sp. albedinis and Aspergillus brasiliensis at 0.25 µl mL-1 air. Rhizopus stolonifera was the most sensitive with a minimal inhibitory concentration (MIC) = 0.25 µl mL-1 air.

In this work, we propose a context-based bilingual word embedding framework that leverages the information of large amount of parallel sentence pairs which share the same semantic meaning. Such information is abundantly available but has not been fully utilized in previous work of context-based bilingual word embedding models, which only exploit local contextual information through a short window sequence at the word level. To incorporate such information, we define a sentence similarity matching objective which is enforced as a constraint into the original bilingual word embedding objective. They are jointly optimized to better learn the bilingual word embedding. Experimental results show that the proposed model is superior to previous methods on machine translation quality.

Speech translation is usually the pipeline task of automatic speech recognition (ASR), translation unit segmentation and machine translation (MT). Segmenting the ASR output to translation units poses a challenge of balancing the translation quality and efficiency for real-time speech translation. In this paper, we firstly propose a parser-based semantic boundary detection method to detect all semantic boundaries based on our definition. To realize the translation of the semantic units, a word-boundary language model is secondly proposed to improve the translation quality. Experiments on English to Chinese and Chinese to English speech translation have shown that the proposed method yields improved translation quality and lower latency, when compared to the conventional punctuated methods.

Granulomatosis with polyangiitis (GPA) is a rare vasculitis that can have multisystem involvement, though cardiac involvement is very rare. The case is described of a 53-year-old woman who presented with acute aortic and mitral valve regurgitation requiring surgical intervention. Pathology from the excised aortic valve showed geographic necrosis concerning for GPA. Subsequent rheumatologic testing was positive for anti-serine proteinase 3 (PR3) antibody, consistent with GPA. A year after the valve surgery the patient was found to have a vegetation of the mitral valve and elevated PR3 antibody levels, and was successfully treated with an intensification of immunosuppression. The cardiac involvement of GPA is discussed and big data analyzed to identify the epidemiology of valvular involvement. In conclusion, GPA can have multiple different valvular manifestations with a high recurrence rate. GPA should be considered in patients who present with acute valvular disease without any clear precipitant.

Peroxinectins function as hemoperoxidase and cell adhesion factor involved in invertebrate immune reaction. In this study, the ascidian (Ciona intestinalis) peroxinectin gene (CiPxt) and its expression during the inflammatory response have been examined. CiPxt is a new member of the peroxidase-cyclooxygenase gene superfamily that contains both the peroxidase domain and the integrin KGD (Lys-Gly-Asp) binding motif. A phylogenetic tree showed that CiPxt is very close to the chordate group and appears to be the outgroup of mammalian MPO, EPO and TPO clades. The CiPxt molecular structure model resulted superimposable to the human myeloperoxidase. The CiPxt mRNA expression is upregulated by LPS inoculation suggesting it is involved in C. intestinalis inflammatory response. The CiPxt was expressed in hemocytes (compartment/morula cells), vessel epithelium, and unilocular refractile granulocytes populating the inflamed tunic matrix and in the zones 7, 8 and 9 of the endostyle, a special pharynx organs homolog to the vertebrate thyroid gland.

The transcription of two Ciona intestinalis galectin genes (CiLgals-a and CiLgalseb) is uparegulated by LPS in the pharynxis (hemocytes, vessel epithelium, endostilar zones) which is retained the main organ of the immunity. In this ascidian, for the first time we show, by immunohistochemistry and in situ hybridization methods, that these two immune-related genes are expressed in the gastric epithelium of naïve ascidians, whereas the galectins appear to be only contained in the intestine columnar epithelium. In addition, according to previous results on the pharynx, the genes are also expressed and galectins produced by hemocytes scattered in the connective tissue surrounding the gut. The genes expression and galectin localization in several tissues, including the previous findings on the transcription upregulation, the constitutive expression of these genes by endostylar zones and by the gastric epithelium suggest a potential multifunctional role of these galectins. In this respect, it is of interest to define where the CiLgals are normally found as related to the tissue functions. Such an approach should be a starting point for further investigations.

The recently described fucose-binding agglutinin from the European eel revealed a novel lectin fold (the ‘F-type’ fold) that is shared with other carbohydrate-binding proteins and proteins from prokaryotes to vertebrates clustered under the newly established F-type lectin (FTL) family. We previously reported the purification and biochemical characterization of a fucose-binding protein (FBP) isolated from serum of the gilt head bream (Sparus aurata, SauFBP). In the present article, the complete coding sequence of SauFBP revealed that it is a member of the FTL family, consisting of two tandem carbohydrate recognition domains (CRD) that display the F-type sequence motif. In vitro opsonization assays showed that the isolated SauFBP binds to formalin-killed Escherichia coli and enhances their phagocytosis by peritoneal macrophages.

Linguistic knowledge plays an important role in phrase movement in statistical machine translation. To efficiently incorporate linguistic knowledge into phrase reordering, we propose a new approach: Linguistically Annotated Reordering (LAR). In LAR, we build hard hierarchical skeletons and inject soft linguistic knowledge from source parse trees to nodes of hard skeletons during translation. The experimental results on large-scale training data show that LAR is comparable to boundary word-based reordering (BWR) (Xiong, Liu, and Lin 2006), which is a very competitive lexicalized reordering approach. When combined with BWR, LAR provides complementary information for phrase reordering, which collectively improves the BLEU score significantly. To further understand the contribution of linguistic knowledge in LAR to phrase reordering, we introduce a syntax-based analysis method to automatically detect constituent movement in both reference and system translations, and summarize syntactic reordering patterns that are captured by reordering models. With the proposed analysis method, we conduct a comparative analysis that not only provides the insight into how linguistic knowledge affects phrase movement but also reveals new challenges in phrase reordering.

Collectins are a family of calcium-dependent lectins that are characterized by their collagen-like domains. Considerable interest has been focused on this class of proteins because of their ability to interact with components of the complement system activating a cascade of events responsible for the activation of the innate immune system. A differential screening between LPS-challenged and naïve Ciona intestinalis has been performed allowing the isolation of a full length cDNA encoding for a 221 AA protein. In silico analysis has shown that this polypeptide displays protein domains with similarities to mannose-binding lectins. A phylogenetic analysis suggested that C. intestinalis MBL has evolved early as a prototype of vertebrate MBL. Real-time PCR assay demonstrated that this gene is strongly activated after LPS injection in the tunica. In situ hybridization performed in LPS-induced animals has shown that this gene is expressed in granular amoebocytes and large granules hemocytes in the inflamed body wall tissue. Finally, an antimicrobial activity of the C. intestinalis MBL has been demonstrated.

Spoken Language Translation (SLT) is the research area that focuses on the translation of speech or text between two spoken languages. Phrase-based and syntax-based methods represent the state-of-the-art for statistical machine translation (SMT). The phrase-based method specializes in modeling local reorderings and translations of multiword expressions. The syntax-based method is enhanced by using syntactic knowledge, which can better model long word reorderings, discontinuous phrases, and syntactic structure. In this article, we leverage on the strength of these two methods and propose a strategy based on multiple hypotheses generation in a two-stage framework for spoken language translation. The hypotheses are generated in two stages, namely, decoding and regeneration. In the decoding stage, we apply state-of-the-art, phrase-based, and syntax-based methods to generate basic translation hypotheses. Then in the regeneration stage, much more hypotheses that cannot be captured by the decoding algorithms are produced from the basic hypotheses. We study three regeneration methods: redecoding, n-gram expansion, and confusion network in the second stage. Finally, an additional reranking pass is introduced to select the translation outputs by a linear combination of rescoring models. Experimental results on the Chinese-to-English IWSLT-2006 challenge task of translating the transcription of spontaneous speech show that the proposed mechanism achieves significant improvements over the baseline of about 2.80 BLEU-score.

As a kind of Shallow Semantic Parsing, Semantic Role Labeling (SRL) is gaining more attention as it benefits a wide range of natural language processing applications. Given a sentence, the task of SRL is to recognize semantic arguments (roles) for each predicate (target verb or noun). Feature-based methods have achieved much success in SRL and are regarded as the state-of-the-art methods for SRL. However, these methods are less effective in modeling structured features. As an extension of feature-based methods, kernel-based methods are able to capture structured features more efficiently in a much higher dimension. Application of kernel methods to SRL has been achieved by selecting the tree portion of a predicate and one of its arguments as feature space, which is named as predicate-argument feature (PAF) kernel. The PAF kernel captures the syntactic tree structure features using convolution tree kernel, however, it does not distinguish between the path structure and the constituent structure. In this article, a hybrid convolution tree kernel is proposed to model different linguistic objects. The hybrid convolution tree kernel consists of two individual convolution tree kernels. They are a Path kernel, which captures predicate-argument link features, and a Constituent Structure kernel, which captures the syntactic structure features of arguments. Evaluations on the data sets of the CoNLL-2005 SRL shared task and the Chinese PropBank (CPB) show that our proposed hybrid convolution tree kernel statistically significantly outperforms the previous tree kernels. Moreover, in order to maximize the system performance, we present a composite kernel through combining our hybrid convolution tree kernel method with a feature-based method extended by the polynomial kernel. The experimental results show that the composite kernel achieves better performance than each of the individual methods and outperforms the best reported system on the CoNLL-2005 corpus when only one syntactic parser is used and on the CPB corpus when automated syntactic parse results and correct syntactic parse results are used respectively.

Convolution tree kernel has shown promising results in semantic role labeling (SRL). However, this kernel does not consider much linguistic knowledge in kernel design and only performs hard matching between subtrees. To overcome these constraints, this paper proposes a grammar-driven convolution tree kernel for SRL by introducing more linguistic knowledge. Compared with the standard convolution tree kernel, the proposed grammar-driven kernel has two advantages: 1) grammar-driven approximate substructure matching, and 2) grammar-driven approximate tree node matching. The two approximate matching mechanisms enable the proposed kernel to better explore linguistically motivated structured knowledge. Experiments on the CoNLL-2005 SRL shared task and the PropBank I corpus show that the proposed kernel outperforms the standard convolution tree kernel significantly. Moreover, we present a composite kernel to integrate a feature-based polynomial kernel and the proposed grammar-driven convolution tree kernel for SRL. Experimental results show that our composite kernel-based method significantly outperforms the previously best-reported ones.

Phenoloxidase (PO) activity was examined in the tunic tissue of Ciona intestinalis following lipopolysaccharide (LPS) intratunic injection. Tunic homogenate supernatant (THS), assayed with the Dopa-MBTH reaction, displayed Ca(2+)-independent PO activity that was raised by LPS and further enhanced by proteases. Specific inhibitors (tropolone, phenylthiourea, diethylthiocarbamate) supported the specificity of the reaction. Assay with soybean trypsin inhibitor showed that, in the tunic, PO activation with trypsin was not significantly inhibited suggesting that proteases diverse from serine proteases were involved. In vivo experiments were carried out by injecting isosmotic medium or LPS, and THS was assayed for its PO activity. Analysis of variance of the time-course profiles showed that LPS was more effective in activating proPO. To disclose the PO response at the injured site, an assay with Dopa-MBTH was performed in vitro. Quinones were mainly contained in the tunic matrix enriched with inflammatory cells around the injection site. Microscopic observations and immunohistochemistry with anti-CinPO-2 antibodies showed granulocytes and unilocular refractile granulocytes containing PO, whereas few morula cells were stained. In THS zymograms (SDS-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis), PO activity linked to 90-kDa and 120-kDa bands was observed as an effect of LPS injection, whereas the density of 170-kDa PO was weak. A third presumptive PO enzyme (CinPO-3) containing the CinPO-2 peptide was identified in the recent Ciona genome version. Presumably, LPS stimulated the production and dimerization (120 kDa) of CinPO-3 (66 kDa). Thus, the activated proPO system includes several POs that are distinguishable by size and that are contained and presumably released by tunic inflammatory cells and hemocytes of the pharynx bars.

Since glucocorticoids have a role in maintaining the homeostatic status in fish, in the present paper mRNA expression (in situ hybridization) and tissue immunohistochemical localization of a glucocorticoid receptor (DlGR1) in several Dicentrarchus labrax organs are reported. Riboprobe and specific antibodies were prepared by using the DlGR1 that has been previously cloned and sequenced from peritoneal cavity leukocytes. Both mRNA and receptor were identified in head kidney, spleen, gills, intestine, heart and liver tissues. The functional roles of DlGR1 localization are discussed.

Extracting semantic relationships between entities from text documents is challenging in information extraction and important for deep information processing and management. This paper proposes to use the convolution kernel over parse trees together with support vector machines to model syntactic structured information for relation extraction. Compared with linear kernels, tree kernels can effectively explore implicitly huge syntactic structured features embedded in a parse tree. Our study reveals that the syntactic structured features embedded in a parse tree are very effective in relation extraction and can be well captured by the convolution tree kernel. Evaluation on the ACE benchmark corpora shows that using the convolution tree kernel only can achieve comparable performance with previous best-reported feature-based methods. It also shows that our method significantly outperforms previous two dependency tree kernels for relation extraction. Moreover, this paper proposes a composite kernel for relation extraction by combining the convolution tree kernel with a simple linear kernel. Our study reveals that the composite kernel can effectively capture both flat and structured features without extensive feature engineering, and easily scale to include more features. Evaluation on the ACE benchmark corpora shows that the composite kernel outperforms previous best-reported methods in relation extraction.

Based on previous cloning and sequencing study, real-time PCR and in situ hybridization assays of the inflamed body wall of LPS-injected Ciona intestinalis showed the enhanced gene expression of a collagen with FACIT structural features (Ci-type IX-Col 1alpha-chain). By using specific antibodies raised against an opportunely chosen Ci-type IX-Col synthetic peptide, the fibroblast property of hemocytes challenged in vitro with LPS (at 4h) was displayed by flow cytometry, while immunocytochemistry identified hemocytes with large granules (morula cells) as collagen-producing cells. Hemocyte lysate supernatant analyzed in immunoblotting contained a 60 kDa band identifiable as 1alpha-chain-Ci-type IX-Col. Observations of body wall sections (immunohistochemistry method) supported the role of hemocytes and showed that epidermis expressed Ci-type IX-Col 1alpha-chain in the time course of the inflammatory reaction (within 24h). Transcript and protein were mainly found in the epidermis that outlined the proximal side of the tunic matrix (at 24h after LPS injection), in cells associated with the epidermis at 4 and 192 h. In conclusion, the C. intestinalis inflammatory response to LPS challenge appeared to be composed of a complex reaction set, and for the first time we showed in ascidians a granulation tissue with FACIT-collagen production that could participate in inflammation and wound healing. Like in vertebrates, C. intestinalis acute inflammatory reactions result in a regulated pattern of tissue repair with collagen expression during remodelling. Ci-type IX-Col could be involved in a network of non-fibril-forming collagens that participates in the organization of extracellular matrix and defense responses.

The Ciona intestinalis inflammatory response to several irritants appears to be composed of a complex reaction set. The cellular reactions in the tunic involve hemocyte infiltration, hemocyte and epidermis activities, vacuolization, and cell disruption, while cell products can contribute to form capsule components and/or cause a tunic wound. In this response, the involvement of the pharynx, as the main immune-competent organ, has been disclosed by a lipopolysaccharide challenge that upregulates innate immunity genes and transcription activation genes. The pharynx responds through hemocyte recruitment into the pharynx vessels, enhancement of galectin-like lectins in the serum hemolymph, an alternative complement pathway, and phenoloxidase system activity. Upregulation involves genes for C-type lectins (CiCD94, CiMBL), galectins, cytokines (CiTNFα, IL17-like), phenoloxidase, FACIT-type IX-like collagen, and a transcription activator gene (CiCAP). The encoded proteins are components of distinct molecular families that support the evolution of several mechanisms, which generate sequence diversity in genes with immune functions. Clusters of similar genes or exons strengthen the concept that inflammatory factors are part of large molecular families originated by a process of divergent evolution from a common ancestor and in some cases of gene co-option during evolution.

In this work, we propose to jointly perform Chinese word segmentation (CWS) and punctuation prediction (PU) in a unified framework using deep recurrent neural network (DRNN). We further perform a comparative study among the joint frameworks, the isolated prediction and the pipeline methods that link the two tasks sequentially, on a social media corpus. Our experimental results show that joint models improve performance of CWS and affect PU marginally. We also study the effects of CWS and PU on Chinese-to-English machine translation (MT) quality by evaluating on a parallel social media corpus. It is shown that joint models are superior to the isolated prediction and the pipeline approaches.

Transforming growth factor (TGF-β) is a well-known component of a regulatory cytokines superfamily that has pleiotropic functions in a broad range of cell types and is involved, in vertebrates, in numerous physiological and pathological processes. In the current study, we report on Ciona intestinalis molecular characterisation and expression of a transforming growth factor β homologue (CiTGF-β). The gene organisation, phylogenetic tree and modelling supported the close relationship with the mammalian TGF suggesting that the C. intestinalis TGF-β gene shares a common ancestor in the chordate lineages. Functionally, real-time PCR analysis showed that CiTGF-β was transcriptionally upregulated in the inflammatory process induced by LPS inoculation, suggesting that is involved in the first phase and significant in the secondary phase of the inflammatory response in which cell differentiation occurs. In situ hybridisation assays revealed that the genes transcription was upregulated in the pharynx, the main organ of the ascidian immune system, and expressed by cluster of hemocytes inside the pharynx vessels. These data supported the view that CiTGF-β is a potential molecule in immune defence systems against bacterial infection.

Two distinct Ciona intestinalis phenoloxidases (CinPO1, 2) had previously been cloned and sequenced. The CinPO2 is involved in innate immunity and is expressed by inflammatory hemocytes that populate the tunic and pharynx vessels as a response to LPS inoculation. In situ hybridization and immunohistochemistry assays on histological section, showed that the expression of this gene and the produced protein are shared with oogenesis, embryogenesis and larval morphogenesis. Intriguingly, upregulation of gene transcription was found in the test cell layer that envelopes the ovary follicle, ovulated egg, and gastrula, as well as it was modulated in the zygotic nucleus of outer balstomers of 32-cell embryo, neurula presumptive epidermis tissue and larval mesenchyme. The anti-CinPO2 antibodies, specific for adult inflammatory cells, recognize epitopes in the cytoplasm of ovarian oocytes, ovulated eggs, development stages and larval mesenchyme. The overall findings disclose the precocious activation of the CinPO2 immunity-related gene, and show a developmentally programmed expression of this phenoloxidase. Furthermore, these findings support the multifunctional roles of immunity-related genes and allows us to explore new perspectives on ascidian development and immunity.

Few studies have evaluated risk factors among stroke patients in our population. This study is aimed at exploring risk factors among black stroke patients. A total of 524 stroke patients seen at University of Maiduguri Teaching Hospital between January 2005 and June 2011 were evaluated to ascertain risk factors. Prestroke risk factors were obtained from patient’s medical history and hospital records. Risk factors such as hypertension were gotten from case history, with hypertension defined as blood pressure (BP) of ≥ 140/90 mmHg or features of long standing hypertension. History of smoking, alcohol intake, transient ischaemic attack (TIA) were also noted. Hypertension was the commonest risk factor, found in 87% of patients, followed by hypercholesterolaemia 15.1%, past history of stroke 11.5%, diabetes 10.1%, alcohol 8.8%, smoking 6.8%, TIA 5.3%, heart failure 2.4% and preeclampsia-eclampsia 2.0%, while 19.7% had more than one risk factor. About 53% had no prior knowledge of being hypertensive, and only about 10% had treatment for hypertension prior to having a stroke. Males had higher systolic BP. Alcohol consumption and smoking were commoner in males and the young. The younger patients were more likely to acquire basic education, nephrotic syndrome and HIV infection. Hypertension and hypercholesterolaemia were common among the middle age group, while past history of stroke and multiple risk factors were commoner among the elderly. Thirty-day fatality was 17.7% and higher in older patients. Hypertension was found to be the most important risk factor for stroke among our study population. Public enlightenment on the importance of early detection of hypertension and adherence to antihypertensive medications will go a long way in reducing the morbidity and mortality associated with stroke in our environment. Key words: Risk factors, hypertension, stroke, blacks, Nigerians.

Interest is increasing in biological scaffolds for tissue regeneration such as extracellular matrix membranes, developed through soft tissue decellularization. Extracellular matrix membranes were developed to heal different tendon and soft tissue lesions that are very frequent in the general population with high health-care costs and patient morbidity. The aim of this research was to evaluate a human dermal matrix (HDM) decellularized by a chemico-physical method. A primary culture of rat tenocytes was performed: tenocytes were seeded on HDM samples and on polystyrene wells as controls (CTR). Cell viability and synthetic activity were evaluated at 3 and 7 days. An in vitro microwound model was used to evaluate HDM bioactivity: after tenocyte expansion, artificial wounds were created, HDM extracts were added, and closure time and decorin synthesis were monitored histomorphometrically at 1, 4, 24, and 72 hr. A significant higher amount of collagen I was observed when cells were cultured on HDM in comparison with that on CTR (3 days: p < 0.0001; 7 days: p < 0.05). In HDM group, fibronectin synthesis was significantly higher at both experimental times (p < 0.0001). At 3 days, proteoglycans and transforming growth factor-β1 releases were significantly higher on HDM (p < 0.0001 and p < 0.005, respectively). The artificial microwound closure time and decorin expression were significantly enhanced by the addition of 50% HDM extract (p < 0.05). In vitro data showed that the decellularization technique enabled the development of a matrix with adequate biological and biomechanical properties.

The CAP superfamily is a group of proteins that have been linked to several biological functions such as reproduction, cancer, and immune defense. A differential screening between lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-challenged and naive Ciona intestinalis has been performed to identify LPS-induced genes. This strategy has allowed the isolation of a full-length 1471-bp cDNA encoding for a 413-amino-acid protein (CiCAP). In silico analysis has shown that this polypeptide displays a modular structure with similarities to vertebrate CAP-superfamily proteins and to a collagen-binding adhesin of Streptococcus mutans. Domain organization analysis and alignment of CiCAP to other vertebrate CAP proteins have revealed a novel structure suggesting that this protein originated from a common ancestor gene that gave rise to many subfamilies of mosaic proteins with novel functions. Quantitative mRNA expression performed by real-time polymerase chain reaction analysis has demonstrated that this gene is rapidly activated in the pharynx of C. intestinalis a few hours after LPS injection. Moreover, in situ hybridization has shown that CiCAP mRNA is highly expressed by hemocytes with large granules contained inside the pharynx vessels. Thus, CiCAP represents a protein with novel structural domains involved in ascidian immune responses.