Giovanni Emmanuele

Autosomal recessive hypercholesterolemia in a Sicilian kindred harboring the 432insA mutation of the ARH gene

We describe a Sicilian family presenting a recessive form of hypercholesterolemia harboring a mutation of the autosomal recessive hypercholesterolemia (ARH) gene. In two of the three sibs, a 26-year-old male and a 22-year-old female, a severe hypercholesterolemia was diagnosed with very high levels of plasma cholesterol (15.9 and 12.2 mmol/l, respectively); tendon xanthomatas and xanthelasms were present and in the male proband was documented a diffuse coronary atherosclerotic disease with a rapid and fatal progression. Both the parents had normal or slightly increased levels of plasma cholesterol. All causes of secondary hypercholesterolemia were ruled out as well as an involvement of the LDL receptor or apoB genes. Beta-Sitosterol plasma levels were in the normal range. Cultured fibroblasts from skin biopsy from parents and the two probands displayed a normal ability to bind and degrade 125I-LDL. Direct sequencing of ARH gene demonstrated the presence of a 432insA mutation in homozygosis in the two probands; parents were heterozygotes for the same mutation. This mutation is the first report of a mutation of the ARH gene responsible for recessive forms of hypercholesterolemia in Sicily.

Banach spaces in which Dunford-Pettis sets are relatively compact

Introduction. Let E be a Banach space and X a bounded subset of E. X is called a Dunford-Pettis set if for any weak null sequence (x*) c E* one has lim sup ix* (x)] = 0. n X This note is devoted to a study of the family of Banach spaces with the property that their Dunford-Pettis subsets are relatively compact; we shall say that such a space has the (DPrcP). Our interest in this class of Banach spaces is motivated by the following fact: in the paper [4] we proved that a dual Banach space with the Weak Radon-Nikodym Property ([8], in short (WRNP)) has the (DPrcP); since any Banach space with the (DPrcP) has the so called Compact Range Property ([8], in short (CRP)), it turns out that the result from [4] can be reversed, so obtaining a new characterization of the (WRNP) in dual spaces; this result makes the (WRNP) in dual spaces easier to be handled: for instance, we are able to answer a question by Ruess, [12], when defining a research program concerning projective tensor products of Banach spaces. There is another reason that could as well motivate our study: we state that dominated operators from special C(K, E) spaces taking values in a Banach space with the (DPrcP) are Dunford-Pettis; if E is finite dimensional it is well-known that this is always verified, but when the dimension of E is infinite the above result is no longer true. When looking for hypotheses on E and F making dominated operators Dunford-Pettis we realize that this happens if E has the Dunford-Pettis property ([2]) and F the (DPrcP); and these are in a sense the best hypotheses one can consider. All of these facts are contained in Section 1. Section 2 contains some more examples of Banach spaces with the (DPrcP) as well as some permanence results.

The C(-260)>T gene polymorphism in the promoter of the CD14 monocyte receptor gene is not associated with acute myocardial infarction.

Abstract.CD surface molecules mediates cell activation and signaling. In particular, CD14 on blood monocytes mediate monocyte/macrophage activation by lipopolysaccharide.Lipopolysaccharide and its receptor, CD14, have been implicated in atherogenesis. It has been recently shown that a C(-260)T polymorphism in the promoter of the CD14 receptor may be a risk factor for coronary artery disease. Recently this association has been questioned because no increased risk was found with the T allele, even in the homozygous state. In the present study we investigated a possible association between the C(-260)T polymorphism in the CD14 promoter and acute myocardial infarction. Two hundred and thrteen patients with and acute myocardial infarction 213 healthy controls were included in the study. Genotype frequencies of the C(-260)T polymorphism in the CD14 promoter were determined by polimerase chain reaction and the amplified product was cleaved with HaeIII. The frequency of the T allele was not significantly different in patients compared with controls. In this study we were not able to detect differences of frequency of the allele T (-260) in the promoter of the CD14 receptor gene in survivors of myocardial infarction and controls.

Uncomplementability of spaces of compact operators in larger spaces of operators

In the first part of the paper we prove some new result improving all those already known about the equivalence of the nonexistence of a projection (of any norm) onto the space of compact operators and the containment of c0 in the same space of compact operators. Then we show several results implying that the space of compact operators is uncomplemented by norm one projections in larger spaces of operators. The paper ends with a list of questions naturally rising from old results and the results in the paper.

Remarks on the Uncomplemented Subspace W(E, F) *

Abstract We give some theorems showing that W ( E , F ) is uncomplemented in L ( E , F ). All of them (but Theorem 5) are proved by producing a complemented copy of c 0 inside of W ( E , F ) and showing that this contradicts a possible complementation of W ( E , F ) in L ( E , F ).

On the reciprocal Dunford-Pettis property in projective tensor products

We prove the following result: if a Banach space E does not contain l 1 and F has the (RDPP), then E ⊗ n F has the same property, provided that L(E, F *) = K(E, F *). Hence we prove that if E ⊗ n F has the (RDPP) then at least one of the spaces E and F must not contain l 1 . Some corollaries are then presented as well as results concerning the necessity of the hypothesis L ( E, F *) = K ( E, F *).

Anticlustal: multiple sequence alignment by antipole clustering and linear approximate 1-median computation

In this paper we present a new multiple sequence alignment (MSA) algorithm called AntiClustAl. The method makes use of the commonly used idea of aligning homologous sequences belonging to classes generated by some clustering algorithm, and then continue the alignment process in a bottom-up way along a suitable tree structure. The final result is then read at the root of the tree. Multiple sequence alignment in each cluster makes use of the progressive alignment with the 1-median (center) of the cluster. The 1-median of set S of sequences is the element of S which minimizes the average distance from any other sequence in S. Its exact computation requires quadratic time. The basic idea of our proposed algorithm is to make use of a simple and natural algorithmic technique based on randomised tournaments which has been successfully applied to large size search problems in general metric spaces. In particular a clustering algorithm called antipole tree and an approximate linear 1-median computation are used. Our algorithm compared with Clustal W, a widely used tool to MSA, shows a better running time results with fully comparable alignment quality. A successful biological application showing high amino acid conservation during evolution of Xenopus laevis SOD2 is also cited.

On Banach spaces with the Gelfand-Phillips property. II

We present some result of lifting of the Gelfand Phillips property from Banach spacesE andF to Banach spaces of compact operators and of Bochner integrable functions. Moreover we studyC(K) spaces possessing the same property. In the last section we prove some result concerning the so called three space problem for the Gelfand Phillips property too.

Two Italian kindreds carrying the Arg136-->Ser mutation of the Apo E gene: development of premature and severe atherosclerosis in the presence of epsilon 2 as second allele

BACKGROUND AND AIMS Type III hyperlipoproteinemia, or dysbetalipoproteinemia, is commonly associated with apolipoprotein E2 homozygosity (Cys112, Cys158). Apo E2-Christchurch (Arg136-->Ser), a rare mutation of the Apo E gene, located in the receptor-binding domain of the protein, has been found to be associated in the vast majority of cases of dysbetalipoproteinemia. METHODS AND RESULTS This is the first report of two Italian kindreds carrying the Arg136-->Ser mutation. One family is a four-generation kindred from Genoa (Liguria, Italy) with a high rate of mortality due to coronary artery disease: the proband was a 51-year-old woman with previous myocardial infarction and residual angina, severe carotid atherosclerosis, peripheral arterial vascular disease and arterial hypertension. The other family was identified in Palermo (Sicily, Italy): the proband was an overweight 62-year-old man with a mixed form of hyperlipidemia. The mutation, which was identified by means of Apo E genotyping followed by direct sequencing, co-segregated with the same haplotype in the two families. CONCLUSIONS The family histories and clinical examinations of these subjects clearly show that the Apo E Arg136-->Ser variant fully expresses a type III phenotype in association with a second allele coding for Apo E2, and only partially in association with a second allele coding for Apo E4.

Another proof of a result of N. J. Kalton, E. Saab and P. Saab on the Dieudonné property in C(K, E)

Let K be a compact Hausdorff topological space and E be a Banach space not containing l 1 . Recently N. J. Kalton, E. Saab and P. Saab ([ 5 ]) obtained the results that under the above assumptions the usual space C(K, E) has the Dieudonne property; i.e. each weakly completely continuous operator on C(K, E) is weakly compact. They use topological results concerning multivalued mappings in their proof. In this short note we furnish a new and simpler proof of that result without using topological results but only well known theorems of Bourgain ([ 2 ]) and Talagrand ([ 8 ]) on weak compactness of sets of Bochner integrable functions; i.e. results in vector measure theory. At the end of the paper we present some applications of the result to Banach spaces of compact operators.