Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Life Sciences Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 7 of 7

Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Dormant Pathogenic Cd4(+) T Cells Are Prevalent In The Peripheral Repertoire Of Healthy Mice, Anna Cebula, Michal Kuczma, Edyta Szurek, Maciej Pietrzak, Natasha Savage, Wessam R. Elhefnawy, Grzegorz Rempala, Piotr Kraj, Leszek Ignatowicz Oct 2019

Dormant Pathogenic Cd4(+) T Cells Are Prevalent In The Peripheral Repertoire Of Healthy Mice, Anna Cebula, Michal Kuczma, Edyta Szurek, Maciej Pietrzak, Natasha Savage, Wessam R. Elhefnawy, Grzegorz Rempala, Piotr Kraj, Leszek Ignatowicz

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Thymic central tolerance eliminates most immature T cells with autoreactive T cell receptors (TCR) that recognize self MHC/peptide complexes. Regardless, an unknown number of autoreactive CD4+Foxp3 T cells escape negative selection and in the periphery require continuous suppression by CD4+Foxp3+ regulatory cells (Tregs). Here, we compare immune repertoires of Treg-deficient and Treg-sufficient mice to find Tregs continuously constraining one-third of mature CD4+Foxp3 cells from converting to pathogenic effectors in healthy mice. These dormant pathogenic clones frequently express TCRs activatable by ubiquitous autoantigens presented by class II MHCs on conventional dendritic cells, including selfpeptides that select …


Quantification Of Twist From The Central Lines Of Β-Strands, Tunazzina Islam, Michael Poteat, Jing He Jan 2018

Quantification Of Twist From The Central Lines Of Β-Strands, Tunazzina Islam, Michael Poteat, Jing He

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Since the discovery of right-handed twist of a β-strand, many studies have been conducted to understand the twist. Given the atomic structure of a protein, twist angles have been defined using atomic positions of the backbone. However, limited study is available to characterize twist when the atomic positions are not available, but the central lines of β-strands are. Recent studies in cryoelectron microscopy show that it is possible to predict the central lines of β-strands from a medium-resolution density map. Accurate measurement of twist angles is important in identification of β-strands from such density maps. We propose an effective method …


Rcd+: Fast Loop Modeling Server, José R. López-Blanco, Alejandro J. Canosa-Valis, Yaohang Li, Pablo Chacón Jan 2016

Rcd+: Fast Loop Modeling Server, José R. López-Blanco, Alejandro J. Canosa-Valis, Yaohang Li, Pablo Chacón

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Modeling loops is a critical and challenging step in protein modeling and prediction. We have developed a quick online service (http://rcd.chaconlab.org) for ab initio loop modeling combining a coarse-grained conformational search with a full-atom refinement. Our original Random Coordinate Descent (RCD) loop closure algorithm has been greatly improved to enrich the sampling distribution towards near-native conformations. These improvements include a new workflow optimization, MPI-parallelization and fast backbone angle sampling based on neighbor-dependent Ramachandran probability distributions. The server starts by efficiently searching the vast conformational space from only the loop sequence information and the environment atomic coordinates. The generated closed loop …


Flexc: Protein Flexibility Prediction Using Context-Based Statistics, Predicted Structural Features, And Sequence Information, Ashraf Yaseen, Mais Nijim, Brandon Williams, Lei Qian, Min Li, Jianxin Wang, Yaohang Li Jan 2016

Flexc: Protein Flexibility Prediction Using Context-Based Statistics, Predicted Structural Features, And Sequence Information, Ashraf Yaseen, Mais Nijim, Brandon Williams, Lei Qian, Min Li, Jianxin Wang, Yaohang Li

Computer Science Faculty Publications

The fluctuation of atoms around their average positions in protein structures provides important information regarding protein dynamics. This flexibility of protein structures is associated with various biological processes. Predicting flexibility of residues from protein sequences is significant for analyzing the dynamic properties of proteins which will be helpful in predicting their functions.


A Mesh Generation And Machine Learning Framework For Drosophila Gene Expression Pattern Image Analysis, Wenlu Zhang, Daming Feng, Rongjian Li, Andrey Chernikov, Nikos Chrisochoides, Christopher Osgood, Charlotte Konikoff, Stuart Newfeld, Sudhir Kumar, Shuiwang Ji Jan 2013

A Mesh Generation And Machine Learning Framework For Drosophila Gene Expression Pattern Image Analysis, Wenlu Zhang, Daming Feng, Rongjian Li, Andrey Chernikov, Nikos Chrisochoides, Christopher Osgood, Charlotte Konikoff, Stuart Newfeld, Sudhir Kumar, Shuiwang Ji

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Background: Multicellular organisms consist of cells of many different types that are established during development. Each type of cell is characterized by the unique combination of expressed gene products as a result of spatiotemporal gene regulation. Currently, a fundamental challenge in regulatory biology is to elucidate the gene expression controls that generate the complex body plans during development. Recent advances in high-throughput biotechnologies have generated spatiotemporal expression patterns for thousands of genes in the model organism fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. Existing qualitative methods enhanced by a quantitative analysis based on computational tools we present in this paper would provide …


Computational Genetic Neuroanatomy Of The Developing Mouse Brain: Dimensionality Reduction, Visualization, And Clustering, Shuiwang Ji Jan 2013

Computational Genetic Neuroanatomy Of The Developing Mouse Brain: Dimensionality Reduction, Visualization, And Clustering, Shuiwang Ji

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Background: The structured organization of cells in the brain plays a key role in its functional efficiency. This delicate organization is the consequence of unique molecular identity of each cell gradually established by precise spatiotemporal gene expression control during development. Currently, studies on the molecular-structural association are beginning to reveal how the spatiotemporal gene expression patterns are related to cellular differentiation and structural development.

Results: In this article, we aim at a global, data-driven study of the relationship between gene expressions and neuroanatomy in the developing mouse brain. To enable visual explorations of the high-dimensional data, we map the in …


Image-Level And Group-Level Models For Drosophila Gene Expression Pattern Annotation, Quian Sun, Sherin Muckatira, Lei Yuan, Shuiwang Ji, Stuart Newfeld, Sudhir Kumar, Jieping Ye Jan 2013

Image-Level And Group-Level Models For Drosophila Gene Expression Pattern Annotation, Quian Sun, Sherin Muckatira, Lei Yuan, Shuiwang Ji, Stuart Newfeld, Sudhir Kumar, Jieping Ye

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Background: Drosophila melanogaster has been established as a model organism for investigating the developmental gene interactions. The spatio-temporal gene expression patterns of Drosophila melanogaster can be visualized by in situ hybridization and documented as digital images. Automated and efficient tools for analyzing these expression images will provide biological insights into the gene functions, interactions, and networks. To facilitate pattern recognition and comparison, many web-based resources have been created to conduct comparative analysis based on the body part keywords and the associated images. With the fast accumulation of images from high-throughput techniques, manual inspection of images will impose a serious impediment …