ELMO (protein)

ELMO (Engulfment and Cell Motility) is a family of related proteins (~82 kDa) involved in intracellular signalling networks. These proteins have no intrinsic catalytic activity and instead function as adaptors which can regulate the activity of other proteins through their ability to mediate protein-protein interactions.

This family contains three paralogous isoforms:

Structure and function

The ELMO family are evolutionarily conserved orthologs of the C. elegans protein CED-12. All isoforms contain a series of armadillo repeats, which begin at the N-terminus and extend around two thirds of the way along the protein, as well as a C-terminal proline-rich motif and a central PH domain. They function as part of a protein complex with Dock180-related proteins to form a bipartite guanine nucleotide exchange factor for Rac (a member of the Rho family of small G proteins). The Dock180-ELMO interaction requires the ELMO PH domain and also involves binding of the ELMO proline-rich motif to the Dock180 SH3 domain.

Elmo

Elmo is a Muppet character on the children's television show Sesame Street. He is a furry red monster with a falsetto voice, who hosts the last full fifteen-minute segment on Sesame Street, "Elmo's World", which is aimed at toddlers. He was most often puppeteered by Kevin Clash. Following Clash's resignation in late 2012, he has been puppeteered by Ryan Dillon.

History

Elmo is self-described as three-and-a-half years old and his birthday is on February 3. Elmo characteristically avoids pronouns, referring to himself in the third person (e.g. "Elmo wants this" instead of, "I want this"). Sesame Street staff writer Nancy Sans once described Elmo's origins: "There was this extra red puppet lying around and the cast would pick him up sometimes and try to create a personality, but nothing seemed to materialize."

The puppet, originally known as "Baby Monster", was performed by Caroll Spinney and Jerry Nelson in the background of episodes from the early 1970s, Brian Muehl from 1979 to 1981, and Richard Hunt from 1981 to 1984. Sans continues that "...one day [in 1984], Kevin Clash, a talented puppeteer, raised him up and brought energy and life into Elmo and from that day forward we would all write for Elmo. Kevin's performance inspired the writers to develop Elmo's character".John Tartaglia, Matt Vogel, and Jim Martin have all been secondary performers for the character, providing movement for Elmo's arms and legs, particularly in green-screen shots.

Elmo (disambiguation)

Elmo is a Muppet character on the children's television show Sesame Street.

Elmo may also refer to:

Given name

Entertainment

Places

Science and technology

Middle-earth

Middle-earth is the setting of much of J. R. R. Tolkien's legendarium. The term is equivalent to the term Midgard of Norse mythology, describing the human-inhabited world, i.e. the central continent of world of Tolkien's imagined mythological past. Tolkien's most widely read works, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings take place entirely in Middle-earth, and Middle-earth has also become a short-hand to refer to the legendarium or its "fictional-universe".

Within his stories, Tolkien translated the name "Middle-earth" as Endor (or sometimes Endórë) and Ennor in the Elvish languages Quenya and Sindarin respectively, sometimes referring only to the continent that the stories take place on, with another southern continent called the Dark Land.

Middle-earth is the central continent of Earth (Arda) in an imaginary period of the Earth's past (Tolkien placed the end of the Third Age at about 6,000 years before his own time), in the sense of a "secondary or sub-creational reality". Its general position is reminiscent of Europe, with the environs of the Shire intended to be reminiscent of England (more specifically, the West Midlands, with Hobbiton set at the same latitude as Oxford).