Epithelial–mesenchymal transition (EMT) is a developmental program, which can be adopted by cancer cells to increase their migration and ability to form metastases. Transforming growth factor β (TGFβ) is a well-studied inducer of EMT. We demonstrate that TGFβ potently stimulates hyaluronan synthesis via upregulation of hyaluronan synthase 2 (HAS2) in NMuMG mammary epithelial cells. This stimulatory effect requires the kinase active type I TGFβ receptor and is dependent on Smad signaling and activation of the p38 mitogen-activated protein kinase. Knockdown of HAS2 inhibited the TGFβ-induced EMT by about 50%, as determined by the phase contrast microscopy and immunostaining using the EMT marker ZO-1. Furthermore, real-time PCR analysis of the EMT markers fibronectin, Snail1 and Zeb1 revealed decreased expressions upon HAS2 suppression, using specific small interfering RNA (siRNA) for HAS2. Removal of the extracellular hyaluronan by Streptomyces hyaluronidase or inhibiting the binding to its cell surface receptor CD44 by blocking antibodies, did not inhibit TGFβ-induced EMT. Interestingly, HAS2 suppression completely abolished the TGFβ-induced cell migration, whereas CD44 knockdown did not. These observations suggest that TGFβ-dependent HAS2 expression, but not extracellular hyaluronan, has an important regulatory role in TGFβ-induced EMT.

Cherry cultivation has a long tradition in Bosnia and Herzegovina mainly due to favorable climatic conditions for cherry growing in this region. However, current cherry production is insufficient because of prevailing old cultivars and rootstocks. Modern intensive production of sweet cherry (Prunus avium L.) requires planting of high quality cultivars on dwarfing rootstocks planted in high density orchards. Cherry rootstock breeding programs worldwide require data on tolerance and performance of their rootstocks in different climatic conditions. Therefore, the influence of two cherry rootstocks ('Gisela 5 and 'Santa Lucia 64') on phenological events (blooming), growth and pomological properties of two cherry cultivars ('Stella' and 'Burlat') planted in modern orchard (managed according to standard commercial practice for integrated fruit production), near Sarajevo was evaluated. The trees grafted on 'Gisela 5' rootstocks were planted in 2004 and on 'Santa Lucia 64' in 2005. All tress were trained in a spindle system and the analyzed parameters were monitored in 2010. Rootstocks greatly influenced blooming time, growth and fruit characteristics of both investigated cultivars. The weaker rootstock was 'Gisela 5', which stimulated earlier blooming and caused statistically significant better fruit characteristics (fruit size, % flesh of fruit as well as total soluble solids content in fruit). The results of the analysis showed that both cherry cultivars reached better fruit quality on 'Gisela 5'. 'Stella' had better fruit quality than 'Burlat'. 'Santa Lucia 64' proved a better rootstock for 'Burlat' than for 'Stella'.

In this paper we present parallel implementation of genetic algorithm using map/reduce programming paradigm. Hadoop implementation of map/reduce library is used for this purpose. We compare our implementation with implementation presented in [1]. These two implementations are compared in solving One Max (Bit counting) problem. The comparison criteria between implementations are fitness convergence, quality of final solution, algorithm scalability, and cloud resource utilization. Our model for parallelization of genetic algorithm shows better performances and fitness convergence than model presented in [1], but our model has lower quality of solution because of species problem.