Therefore, tissue and/or isotype-specific effects of LXR action need to be established. The consequences of combinatorial drug approaches and the identification of the co-regulatory networks involved in the LXR-mediated control of particular genes may contribute to development of novel LXR agonists. Finally, pathway analyses of LXR actions provide tools to evaluate
and optimize the effectiveness of novel therapeutic strategies to prevent and/or treat metabolic diseases. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“Pro-social punishment, whereby cooperators punish defectors, is often suggested as a mechanism that maintains cooperation in large human groups. Importantly, models that support this idea have to date only allowed defectors to be the target of punishment. However,, selleckchem recent empirical work has demonstrated the existence of anti-social punishment in public goods games. That is, individuals that defect have been found to also punish cooperators. Some recent theoretical studies have found that such anti-social punishment can prevent the evolution of pro-social punishment and cooperation. However, the evolution of anti-social punishment in group-structured populations has not been formally addressed. Previous work has informally argued
that group-structure must favour pro-social punishment. Here we formally investigate how two demographic factors, group size and dispersal frequency, affect selection pressures
on pro- and anti-social punishment. Contrary to the suggestions of previous work, we find that anti-social punishment can prevent the evolution of Selleck Elafibranor pro-social punishment and cooperation under a range of group structures. Given that anti-social punishment has now been found in all studied extant LCL161 human cultures, the claims of previous models showing the co-evolution of pro-social punishment and cooperation in group-structured populations should be re-evaluated. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.”
“A number of genes have been implicated in the pathogenesis of migraine, a common neurological disorder also in China. However, data on association of genetic variations with migraine susceptibility among Chinese, which might be different from people of other ethnic background, are still scarce. We have therefore investigated the association of polymorphisms in four genes, MTHFR C677T, ACE I/D, MAOA T941G and TNF-beta G252A, which are considered to be with risk of migraine. A case-control study including a cohort of 151 migraine cases and 137 ethnically matched controls was conducted. The genotypes of each polymorphism followed the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium in the two groups. Genotypic distribution of MTHFR C677T was significantly different with higher frequency of allele T in the migraine cohort as compared with that in controls (OR = 1.686, 95%CI: 1.175-2.420, P=0.004).