Potential role of estrogen receptor alpha (ERalpha) phosphorylated at Serine118 in human breast cancer in vivo.

Post-translational modifications of proteins are known to be important in protein activity and ERalpha is known to be phosphorylated at multiple sites within the protein. The exact function of site-specific phosphorylation in ERalpha is unknown, although several hypotheses have been developed using site-directed mutagenesis and cell culture models. Targeting the ERalpha at the level of such post-translational modification pathways would be a new and exciting approach to endocrine therapy in breast cancer, but adequate knowledge is lacking with regard to the relevance of site-specific phosphorylation in ERalpha in human breast cancer in vivo. Recently, antibodies to P-Serine(118)-ERalpha and P-Serine(167)-ERalpha, two major sites of phosphorylation in ERalpha, have become available and some in vivo data are now available to complement studies in cells in culture. However, the in vivo data are somewhat contradictory and limited by the small cohorts used and the lack of standard well-characterized reagents and protocols.

Response to Gierut, Elbert, & Dinnsen (1987).

Further analysis of the data presented by Gierut et al. showed that some similar patterns of change for untreated sounds were characteristic of subjects in both groups. These similarities make the performances of the two groups less different than Gierut et al. indicated. The patterns of change observed in subjects from both groups may involve maturation, relationships among cognates, or some general effect of treatment. Furthermore, the present analysis supported the conclusion of Gierut et al. that the performance of subjects from the two groups did differ in some respects. However, these differences may be related to other factors not identified by Gierut et al.: (a) subject variables, or (b) the number of opportunities subjects had to make changes in cognates of targets and to make changes in cognates of untreated sounds that were associated with high pretreatment knowledge. As Gierut et al. were careful to point out, further studies of the effect of target choice on changes in the phonological system are needed. Future research should attempt to rule out the potentially confounding factors identified here.

Children's categorization of consonants by manner and place characteristics.

Ten normal-speaking 5-year-olds and 10 normal-speaking 7-year-olds were required to categorize consonants as "dripping" (stop) or "flowing" (fricative) and as "tongue" (lingual place of articulation) or "lip" (labial place of articulation). Both groups of children performed more accurately than would be expected on the basis of chance alone. However, 5-year-olds performed more poorly than did 7-year-olds, primarily because 5-year-olds were significantly less accurate than 7-year-olds in categorizing according to manner. Children's ability to categorize was evaluated as an indicator of their awareness of feature characteristics of consonants. Their performance does not unambiguously reflect feature awareness but may be related to other variables such as their use of response strategies or the nature of the task.