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Why write a popular article?
Published in John Measey, How to Publish in Biological Sciences, 2023
What's the hook? Your popular article will not be the same as your paper. You should plan to have a single fact or message that you want the public to walk away with after reading your article. This is likely to be the same as the main result in your paper.
Bacteria
Published in Julius P. Kreier, Infection, Resistance, and Immunity, 2022
Flagella are structures that produce locomotion or motility in those cells which possess them. Not all motile bacteria have flagella. There are other mechanisms of locomotion (e.g., gliding) in some organisms. Flagella are long hollow tubes composed of intertwined fibers of an alpha-helical form of the protein flagelin. These appendages emanate from the cytoplasmic membrane and are anchored by a specialized “hook” embedded in a basal body in the cell envelope. Some bacteria have a single flagellum (monotrichous, Figure 15.8); others have several flagella in a tuft at one location on the cell (lophotrichous); and others have flagella distributed about the entire cell (peritrichous). The arrangement is characteristic of the species and genus. Motility conferred by flagella is a result of their rotary motion; thereby giving directional propulsion to the cell, often in response to chemotactic stimuli.
Schinzel−Giedion Syndrome
Published in Dongyou Liu, Handbook of Tumor Syndromes, 2020
Three putative bipartite NLS motifs are thought to assist the signal-dependent nuclear transport of SETBP1 across the nuclear pore. The AT-hook motifs increase the DNA-binding capacity of SETBP1 and thus enhance its potential in transcriptional regulation.
Mechanistic insights into the rational design of masked antibodies
Published in mAbs, 2022
Carolina T. Orozco, Manuela Bersellini, Lorraine M. Irving, Wesley W. Howard, David Hargreaves, Paul W. A. Devine, Elise Siouve, Gareth J. Browne, Nicholas J. Bond, Jonathan J. Phillips, Peter Ravn, Sophie E. Jackson
Some hook effect was observed at high concentrations (full raw data is presented in Figure S14). This can be caused by excessively high concentrations of the primary antibody simultaneously saturating both HER2 and the secondary antibodies. The high-dose hook effect occurs mostly (but not exclusively) in one-step immunometric (sandwich) assays, giving a decrease in signal at very high concentration of primary antibody.44,45,46 Therefore, the signal obtained is probably caused by insufficient washes between the incubation of the primary and secondary antibodies. The higher concentration points were therefore excluded from the fitting as they are not representative of the actual binding to HER2 and are artifacts of the protocol followed. The other data points were fitted to an agonist versus response fit using GraphPad Prism 9 and Equation 1:
Targeting the intrinsically disordered architectural High Mobility Group A (HMGA) oncoproteins in breast cancer: learning from the past to design future strategies
Published in Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Targets, 2020
Silvia Pegoraro, Gloria Ros, Michela Sgubin, Sara Petrosino, Alberto Zambelli, Riccardo Sgarra, Guidalberto Manfioletti
HMGA genes are paralogues, and the resulting proteins have approximately 50% identity, sharing similar domains and molecular functions, allowing the regulation of a common set of genes [13,14]. Nevertheless, each member of the HMGA family has unique regulatory and structural features. First, the expression of HMGA1 and HMGA2 is regulated mainly at different levels. Indeed, while HMGA1 expression is principally controlled by TFs acting at the promoter/enhancer level, HMGA2 expression regulation occurs mainly at the post-transcriptional level [reviewed within [15,16]]. HMGA2 expression is in fact strictly regulated by miRNA, in particular let-7, and disruption or loss of the 3ʹUTR of HMGA2 causes its overexpression [17]. Second, although all the HMGA proteins have highly conserved AT-hooks, they display strong differences in terms of amino acid sequence and AT-hook spacing, and these features support the ability of each factor to bind to different nucleotide stretches [18] and proteins [reviewed within [19]]. Indeed, HMGA1a and HMGA1b are structurally different from HMGA2, in particular at the N-terminal and at the C-terminal acidic tail. Moreover, the HMGA2 protein includes a short peptide of 12 amino acid residues after the third AT-hook [5] that is not present in HMGA1a/HMGA1b. In addition, HMGA1 and HMGA2 proteins are heavily post-translationally modified, showing a very distinct pattern of post-translational modifications (PTMs) [20,21] that supports a different modulation of their functions.
Data-driven quality assurance to prevent erroneous test results
Published in Critical Reviews in Clinical Laboratory Sciences, 2020
Bridgit O. Crews, Julia C. Drees, Dina N. Greene
Analytes with the physiologic capacity to span a large dynamic range have the potential to cause what is known as a hook effect, resulting in falsely low results when the analyte is present in high concentrations [23]. This can occur for some assays when the analyte present in a sample exceeds the number of binding sites available on the solid phase and/or detection antibodies, thereby minimizing the potential for each of the antibodies to bind the same analyte molecule. Susceptibility to the hook effect depends on assay design: homogenous assays are most prone to hook effect whereas heterogeneous assays are less likely to suffer from the hook effect since they often include a wash step to remove excess antigen prior to the introduction of the signal antibody. The mechanisms resulting in the hook effect have been extensively reviewed [23–25]. Methods for evaluating the hook effect do not require sophisticated data analysis, but do require a sample with a very high concentration of the analyte to evaluate. Specimens affected by the hook effect are often identified when the ordering provider contacts the laboratory with concerns over the result. Serial dilution of a specimen leading to an apparent increase in the concentration of analyte confirms the hook effect.