Genome-Scale Metabolic Modelling of Lifestyle Changes in Rhizobium leguminosarum

Rhizobia are soil bacteria that induce nodule formation on plant roots and differentiate into nitrogen-fixing bacteroids. A detailed understanding of this complex symbiosis is essential for advancing ongoing efforts to engineer novel symbioses with cereal crops for sustainable agriculture.

Psychophysiological Transcendentalism in Friedrich Albert Lange’s Social and Political Philosophy

In recent literature, it has been suggested that Lange’s social and political philosophy is separate from his neo-Kantian program. Prima facie, this interpretation makes sense given that Lange argues for an account of social norms that builds on Darwin and Smith rather than on Kant. Still, this paper argues that elements of psychophysiological transcendentalism can be found in Lange’s social and political philosophy. A detailed examination of the second edition of the History of Materialism, Schiller’s Poems, and the second edition of The Worker’s Question reveals that Lange sought to develop a systematic foundation of psychophysiological transcendentalism that is presupposed in his social and political philosophy. This allows for a more detailed understanding of Lange’s practical philosophy and assures him a position in the tradition of neo-Kantian socialism.

Role of Non-Coding RNA of Human Platelet in Cardiovascular Disease

Cardiovascular diseases (CVD) are the major cause of death in the world. Numerous genetic studies involving transcriptomic approaches aimed at the detailed understanding of the disease and the development of new therapeutic strategies have been conducted over recent years. There has been an increase in research on platelets, which are implicated in CVD due to their capacity to release regulatory molecules that affect various pathways. Platelets secrete over 500 various kinds of molecules to plasma including large amounts of non-coding (nc) RNA (miRNA, lncRNA or circRNA). These ncRNA correspond to 98% of transcripts that are not translated into proteins as they are important regulators in physiology and disease. Thus, miRNAs can direct protein complexes to mRNAs through base-pairing interactions, thus causing translation blockage or/and transcript degradation. The lncRNAs act via different mechanisms by binding to transcription factors. Finally, circRNAs act as regulators of miRNAs, interfering with their action. Alteration in the repertoire and/or the amount of the platelet-secreted ncRNA can trigger CVD as well as other diseases. NcRNAs can serve as effective biomarkers for the disease or as therapeutic targets due to their disease involvement. In this review, we will focus on the most important ncRNAs that are secreted by platelets (9 miRNA, 9 lncRNA and 5 circRNA), their association with CVD, and the contribution of these ncRNA to CVD risk to better understand the relation between ncRNA of human platelet and CVD.

Traduction des connotations autonymiques dans trois romans de Michel Houellebecq

This paper deals with the autonyms or the widespread, orthographically indeterminate use of italics and quotation marks in Slovene translations of three of Houellebecq’s novels, which have been elaborated by three different Slovene translators. Autonyms are divided into three main categories according to whether they convey the words of definite or indefinite individuals, the language of the narrator himself or the concepts and values of the whole society. Within the framework of a style often qualified as “white”, the extended use of italics and quotation marks with function of autonymic connotation allows the author to transmit to the reader very fine semantic nuances and contributes to the richness of his work. Like metaphorical networks, stylems such as the recurrent and extended use of italics and quotation marks require from the translator a preliminary work of interpretation and the development of a coherent strategy making it possible to preserve intact the function of these elements in the narrative. Although the three translations analysed can be considered as globally faithful to Houellebecq’s texts and made possible the notoriety of the French writer in Slovenia, none of them is distinguished by a rigorous and coherent treatment of autonymic connotations indicated by non-normative use of italics and quotation marks. The most frequent and damaging anomalies are the maintenance of these visual signs where the expressions indicated in French do not have to be in Slovenian or, on the contrary, their elimination where it is perfectly possible and appropriate to maintain them for the detailed understanding of the text. The author draws attention to possible solutions and opts for the elaboration of a consistent translation strategy for the treatment of the analysed elements.

Proposal for Need Analysis in an Exam Preparation Course: A Descriptive Study

Need analysis is an essential element in the process of designing any language course as it seeks to cater for what learners need in their lessons. This study proposes a framework to analyse learners’ needs for exam preparation courses. The proposed framework adopts the works of Macalister, Nation, and Brindley to address different linguistic and non-linguistic needs. To the best of the researcher’s knowledge, no framework has ever been provided for teachers to carry out need analysis in the context of preparing for international exams. In this study, therefore, the framework was applied to find learners’ needs in an exam preparation course for an A2 English level international exam. The participants were 10 learners aged 10-12 enrolled on a course in a private language centre. The data were collected through a combination of quantitative and qualitative tools, that is to say, by questionnaires, tests, and classroom observations. Results revealed that the framework herein proposed gives a detailed understanding of the learners’ needs prior to the course showing that learners from this study have difficulties in the skills of reading, writing, and listening. Findings also revealed learners’ preference for a variety of classroom activities, online games, and art-crafts. 

Photoaffinity capture compounds to profile the Magic Spot Nucleotide interactomes

Magic Spot Nucleotides (MSN) regulate the stringent response, a highly conserved bacterial stress adaptation mechanism, enabling survival when confronted with adverse external challenges. In times of antibiotic crisis, a detailed understanding of the stringent response is of critical importance, as potentially new targets for pharmacological intervention could be identified. In this study, we delineate the MSN interactome in Escherichia coli and Salmonella typhimurium cell lysates applying a family of trifunctional photoaffinity capture compounds. We introduce different MSN probes covering diverse phosphorylation patterns, such as pppGpp, ppGpp, and pGpp. Our chemical proteomics approach provides datasets of diverse putative MSN receptors both from cytosolic and membrane fractions that, upon validation, unveil new MSN targets. We find, for example, that the dinucleoside polyphosphate hydrolase activity of the non-Nudix hydrolase ApaH is potently inhibited by pppGpp, which itself is converted to pGpp by ApaH. The photoaffinity capture compounds described herein will be useful to identify MSN interactomes under varying conditions and across bacterial species.

Platform economy: (dis-) embeddedness processes in urban spaces

Digital platforms, understood as multi-sided matchmakers, have amassed huge power, reimagining the role of consumers, producers, and even ownership. They increasingly dictate the way the economy and urban life is organized. Yet, despite their influential and far-reaching role in shaping our economic as well as sociocultural world, our understanding of their embeddedness, namely how their activities are embedded in systems of social and societal relationships and how they conceptualize their main functions and actions in relation to their wider setting, remains rudimentary. Consequently, the purpose of this frontier paper is threefold. Firstly, it reveals the need to discuss and evaluate (dis-)embedding processes in platform urbanism in order to understand the underlying dynamics of platform power and urban transformation. Secondly, it aims to reveal the main reasons in regard to the difficulties in pinpointing digital platforms embeddedness. Thirdly, it seeks to propose future research unravelling the (dis-)embeddedness of the platform economy.This paper argues for three main reasons namely unawareness, unaccountability and non-transparency of digital platforms that drive the lack of embeddedness and reaffirms platform power. This is mainly based on the configuration of new commodities, platforms’ strategic avoidance of labour protections and other regulatory frameworks as well as platforms’ secrecy in which they operate. This frontier paper argues that transferring the concept of embeddedness to the platform economy might serve as a valuable tool to understand and pinpoint essential dynamics and relationships at play, therefore proposing embeddedness as a basis for future research on the platform economy. It strongly argues that a more detailed understanding is urgently needed, in order to be able to understand, accompany and actively influence the development of the platform economy in regulatory terms.

A panel of CSF proteins separates genetic frontotemporal dementia from presymptomatic mutation carriers: a GENFI study

Background A detailed understanding of the pathological processes involved in genetic frontotemporal dementia is critical in order to provide the patients with an optimal future treatment. Protein levels in CSF have the potential to reflect different pathophysiological processes in the brain. We aimed to identify and evaluate panels of CSF proteins with potential to separate symptomatic individuals from individuals without clinical symptoms (unaffected), as well as presymptomatic individuals from mutation non-carriers. Methods A multiplexed antibody-based suspension bead array was used to analyse levels of 111 proteins in CSF samples from 221 individuals from families with genetic frontotemporal dementia. The data was explored using LASSO and Random forest. Results When comparing affected individuals with unaffected individuals, 14 proteins were identified as potentially important for the separation. Among these, four were identified as most important, namely neurofilament medium polypeptide (NEFM), neuronal pentraxin 2 (NPTX2), neurosecretory protein VGF (VGF) and aquaporin 4 (AQP4). The combined profile of these four proteins successfully separated the two groups, with higher levels of NEFM and AQP4 and lower levels of NPTX2 in affected compared to unaffected individuals. VGF contributed to the models, but the levels were not significantly lower in affected individuals. Next, when comparing presymptomatic GRN and C9orf72 mutation carriers in proximity to symptom onset with mutation non-carriers, six proteins were identified with a potential to contribute to a separation, including progranulin (GRN). Conclusion In conclusion, we have identified several proteins with the combined potential to separate affected individuals from unaffected individuals, as well as proteins with potential to contribute to the separation between presymptomatic individuals and mutation non-carriers. Further studies are needed to continue the investigation of these proteins and their potential association to the pathophysiological mechanisms in genetic FTD.

Application of neural ordinary differential equations to the prediction of multi-agent systems

Dynamic systems are usually described by differential equations, but formulating these equations requires a high level of expertise and a detailed understanding of the observed system to be modelled. In this work, we present a data-driven approach, which tries to find a parameterization of neural differential equations system to describe the underlying dynamic of the observed data. The presented method is applied to a multi-agent system with thousand agents.