Clusters in Low-Concentrated Al-Mg Alloy

The state above the solubility temperature of GP zones of Al-3mass % Mg alloy, which has a tendency for precipitation and preprecipitation at low temperature, was studied by resistivity measurement. Homogenization treatment at high temperature reduced Mg atoms in the surface layer. After quenching from 623K, the specimen was annealed sequentially at various temperatures above the GP zone solvus. The stationary resistivity obtained in annealing at a temperature was the same irrespective of the starting state and increased with decreasing annealing temperature. No precipitation was observed in the annealing. The results are not in favor of the segregation of Mg atoms to the dislocation loops but of the short range clustering

Aminoadipate reductase gene: a new fungal-specific gene for comparative evolutionary analyses

BACKGROUND: In fungi, aminoadipate reductase converts 2-aminoadipate to 2-aminoadipate 6-semialdehyde. However, other organisms have no homologue to the aminoadipate reductase gene and this pathway appears to be restricted to fungi. In this study, we designed degenerate primers for polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of a large fragment of the aminoadipate reductase gene for divergent fungi. RESULTS: Using these primers, we amplified DNA fragments from the archiascomycetous yeast Saitoella complicata and the black-koji mold Aspergillus awamori. Based on an alignment of the deduced amino acid sequences, we constructed phylogenetic trees. These trees are consistent with current ascomycete systematics and demonstrate the potential utility of the aminoadipete reductase gene for phylogenetic analyses of fungi. CONCLUSIONS: We believe that the comparison of aminoadipate reductase among species will be useful for molecular ecological and evolutionary studies of fungi, because this enzyme-encoding gene is a fungal-specific gene and generally appears to be single copy

The Complexity of Embedding of Acyclic Graphs into Grids with Minimum Congestion

It is known that the problem of determining, given a planar graph G and integers m and n, whether there exists a congestion-1 embedding of G into a two dimensional mn-grid is NP-complete. In this paper, we show that the problem is still NP-complete if G is restricted to an acyclic graph

Molecular evolution of adenylating domain of aminoadipate reductase

BACKGROUND: Aminoadipate reductase (Lys2) is a fungal-specific protein. This enzyme contains an adenylating domain. A similar primary structure can be found in some bacterial antibiotic/peptide synthetases. In this study, we aimed to determine which bacterial adenylating domain is most closely related to Lys2. In addition, we analyzed the substitution rate of the adenylating domain-encoding region. RESULTS: Some bacterial proteins contain more than two similar sequences to that of the adenylating domain of Lys2. We compared 67 amino acid sequences from 37 bacterial and 10 fungal proteins. Phylogenetic trees revealed that the lys2 genes are monophyletic; on the other hand, bacterial antibiotic/peptide synthase genes were not found to be monophyletic. Comparative phylogenetic studies among closely related fungal lys2 genes showed that the rate of insertion/deletion in these genes was lower and the nucleotide substitution rate was higher than that in the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) regions. CONCLUSIONS: The lys2 gene is one of the most useful tools for revealing the phylogenetic relationships among fungi, due to its low insertion/deletion rate and its high substitution rate. Lys2 is most closely related to certain bacterial antibiotic/peptide synthetases, but a common ancestor of Lys2 and these synthetases evolutionarily branched off in the distant past

ワカヤマケン ニ ブンプスル チュウシンセイ ギョウカイガン ノ キュウガイ ニ ハッタツスル タフォニ ノ ブンプ ト ケイジョウ

Morphological features of tafoni on Miocene tuff cliffs have been studied in the Kozagawa area, Wakayama, Japan. Distribution of tafoni tends to develop on steep slopes characterized by massive fine-grained acidic tuff. Concave roof of tafoni has been formed with high decreasing rate of rock strength under high humid condition. This supports that concave roofs have been formed due to high rate of salt weathering. Piling up of rock blocks on the foot of such cliffs indicates that evolution of tafoni is closely related to rock fall from the cliffs. Development of tafoni makes a sort of canopies overhanging on steep cliff, and such unstable portions fall down as rock fall. In addition to development of tafoni, cracks within acidic tuff are also one of causes of rock fall. Such cracks occurred due to rotational moment of overhanging portion. Consequently, weathering rates of rocks due to salt weathering and spacing of these cracks are control the frequency of rock fall in these cliffs

High-Throughput Identification and Screening of Novel Methylobacterium Species Using Whole-Cell MALDI-TOF/MS Analysis

Methylobacterium species are ubiquitous α-proteobacteria that reside in the phyllosphere and are fed by methanol that is emitted from plants. In this study, we applied whole-cell matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry analysis (WC-MS) to evaluate the diversity of Methylobacterium species collected from a variety of plants. The WC-MS spectrum was reproducible through two weeks of cultivation on different media. WC-MS spectrum peaks of M. extorquens strain AM1 cells were attributed to ribosomal proteins, but those were not were also found. We developed a simple method for rapid identification based on spectra similarity. Using all available type strains of Methylobacterium species, the method provided a certain threshold similarity value for species-level discrimination, although the genus contains some type strains that could not be easily discriminated solely by 16S rRNA gene sequence similarity. Next, we evaluated the WC-MS data of approximately 200 methylotrophs isolated from various plants with MALDI Biotyper software (Bruker Daltonics). Isolates representing each cluster were further identified by 16S rRNA gene sequencing. In most cases, the identification by WC-MS matched that by sequencing, and isolates with unique spectra represented possible novel species. The strains belonging to M. extorquens, M. adhaesivum, M. marchantiae, M. komagatae, M. brachiatum, M. radiotolerans, and novel lineages close to M. adhaesivum, many of which were isolated from bryophytes, were found to be the most frequent phyllospheric colonizers. The WC-MS technique provides emerging high-throughputness in the identification of known/novel species of bacteria, enabling the selection of novel species in a library and identification without 16S rRNA gene sequencing