Over the last two decades, the number of gene/protein sequences gleaned from sequencing projects of individual genomes and environmental DNA has grown exponentially. Only a tiny fraction of these predicted proteins has been experimentally characterized, and the function of most proteins remains hypothetical or only predicted based on sequence similarity. Despite the development of postgenomic methods, such as transcriptomics, proteomics, and metabolomics, the assignment of function to protein sequences remains one of the main challenges in modern biology. As in all classes of proteins, the growing number of predicted carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) has not been accompanied by a systematic and accurate attribution of function. Taking advantage of the CAZy database, which groups CAZymes into families and subfamilies based on amino acid similarities, we recombinantly produced 564 proteins selected from subfamilies without any biochemically characterized representatives, from distant relatives of characterized enzymes and from nonclassified proteins that show little similarity with known CAZymes. Screening these proteins for activity on a wide collection of carbohydrate substrates led to the discovery of 13 CAZyme families (two of which were also discovered by others during the course of our work), revealed three previously unknown substrate specificities, and assigned a function to 25 subfamilies.

Canada has two parental leave benefit programs for the care of a newborn or adopted child: a federal program, and, since 2006, a provincial program in Québec. Informed by a social reproduction framework, this article compares access to parental leave benefits between Québec and the rest of Canada by family income and by its two different programs. Our analysis of quantitative data reveals that maternal access to leave benefits has improved dramatically over the past decade in the province of Québec, especially for low-income households. By contrast, on average 38% of mothers in the rest of Canada are consistently excluded from maternity or parental benefits under the federal program. We argue that one key explanation for the gap in rates of access to benefits between the two programs and between families by income is difference in eligibility criteria. In Canada, parental leaves paid for by all employers and employees are unevenly supporting the social reproduction of higher earners. Our article draws attention to the need for greater public and scholarly scrutiny of social class inequality effects of parental leave policy.

This study shows that an increase in If current density contributes to the acceleration of sinoatrial node automaticity and explains, in part, the higher HR observed in pregnancy.