Aiyar S (1983) Southeast Asian J Trop Med Public Health "Attempts to infect experimentally immunosuppressed iris monkeys (Macaca iris) with Brugia malayi."

Aiyar S

[Southeast Asian J Trop Med Public Health, 1983]

Iris monkeys resistant to repeated infections with B. malayi were subjected to immunosuppression by treatment with cortisone. Degree of immunosuppression was measured by: (a) blood counts, (b) lymphocyte transformation to mitogens and (c) immunofluorescent antibody to microfilarial antigens. Attempts were made to infect such immunosuppressed animals with B. malayi. No microfilariae were detected in the blood of any of the Iris monkeys during the 6 months of study. There was a sharp drop in the percentages of lymphocytes, but a rise in neutrophil counts during the first week of cortisone administration. Treatment with cortisone did not alter the antibody titres. The significance of this line of approach in the understanding of filarial resistance is discussed.

Friedman JS et al. (2001) Genomics "Isolation of a ubiquitin-like (UBL5) gene from a screen identifying highly expressed and conserved iris genes."

Walter MA, Raymond V, Friedman JS, Koop BF

[Genomics, 2001]

We have screened a human adult iris cDNA library to identify genes that are highly expressed and conserved between humans and pigs. We identified human iris cDNAs that hybridized at high stringency to a porcine choroidal ring cDNA probe. Of 1568 human iris cDNAs examined, 176 were found to have high expression in porcine choroidal rings. One of the 176 clones was identified as a previously uncharacterized cDNA that we have named the Ubiquitin-like 5 gene (UBL5). The UBL5 gene is located on chromosome 19p13.2, and its genomic structure has been examined. There is a UBL5 pseudogene on chromosome 17p11.2. We have also found homologues to the UBL5 gene in Arabidopsis thaliana, Caenorhabditis elegans, Schizosaccharomyces pombe, and Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Northern blot analysis of the Ubiquitin-like gene 5 revealed expression in every tissue tested, with the highest levels of RNA expression in heart, skeletal muscle, kidney, liver, iris, and lymphoblasts. Intracellular localization experiments in COS-7 cells showed that the recombinant UBL5 protein is cytoplasmic. Western analysis demonstrated that the recombinant UBL5 protein is approximately 9 kDa, as predicted from the cDNA. A comparison between UBL5 and its homologues with other Ubiquitin-like proteins and Ubiquitin, using the PROTDIST program, suggests that the UBL5 genes are a separate class of Ubiquitin-like genes. Further characterization of the UBL5 gene will determine the function of the encoded protein and whether it is a candidate for ocular disease. Copyright 2001 Academic Press.

Granell C et al. (2011) Chaos "Mesoscopic analysis of networks: applications to exploratory analysis and data clustering."

Granell C, Arenas A, Gomez S

[Chaos, 2011]

We investigate the adaptation and performance of modularity-based algorithms, designed in the scope of complex networks, to analyze the mesoscopic structure of correlation matrices. Using a multiresolution analysis, we are able to describe the structure of the data in terms of clusters at different topological levels. We demonstrate the applicability of our findings in two different scenarios: to analyze the neural connectivity of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans and to automatically classify a typical benchmark of unsupervised clustering, the Iris dataset, with considerable success.