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Full-Text Articles in Life Sciences

Functional Diversity Of Small And Large Trees Along Secondary Succession In A Tropical Dry Forest, Lucía Sanaphre-Villanueva, Juan Manuel Dupuy, José Luis Andrade, Casandra Reyes-García, Horacio Paz, Paula C. Jackson Jul 2016

Functional Diversity Of Small And Large Trees Along Secondary Succession In A Tropical Dry Forest, Lucía Sanaphre-Villanueva, Juan Manuel Dupuy, José Luis Andrade, Casandra Reyes-García, Horacio Paz, Paula C. Jackson

Faculty and Research Publications

Functional Diversity is considered an important driver of community assembly in environmental and successional gradients. To understand tree assembly processes in a semideciduous tropical forest, we analyzed the variation of Functional Richness (FRic), Functional Divergence (FDiv), and Functional Evenness (FEve) of small vs. large trees in relation to fallow age after slash-and-burn agriculture and topographical position (flat sites vs. hills). FRic of small trees was lower than null model predicted values across the successional gradient, and decreased unexpectedly in older successional ages. FRic of large trees was higher than null model predictions early in succession and lower in late-successional stands …


Novel Cell Penetrating Peptide-Adaptors Effect Intracellular Delivery And Endosomal Escape Of Protein Cargos, John C. Salerno, Verra M. Ngwa, Scott J. Nowak, Carol A. Chrestensen, Allison N. Healey, Jonathan L. Mcmurry Jan 2016

Novel Cell Penetrating Peptide-Adaptors Effect Intracellular Delivery And Endosomal Escape Of Protein Cargos, John C. Salerno, Verra M. Ngwa, Scott J. Nowak, Carol A. Chrestensen, Allison N. Healey, Jonathan L. Mcmurry

Faculty and Research Publications

The use of cell penetrating peptides (CPPs) as biomolecular delivery vehicles holds great promise for therapeutic and other applications, but development has been stymied by poor delivery and lack of endosomal escape. We have developed a CPP-adaptor system capable of efficient intracellular delivery and endosomal escape of user-defined protein cargos. The cell penetrating sequence of HIV transactivator of transcription was fused to calmodulin, which binds with subnanomolar affinity to proteins containing a calmodulin binding site. Our strategy has tremendous advantage over prior CPP technologies because it utilizes high affinity noncovalent, but reversible coupling between CPP and cargo. Three different cargo …