Engineering of halohydrin hydrogen-halide-lyase (H-lyase) for efficient L-carnitine production

L-carnitine is a beta-hydroxy carboxylic acid known as a dietary supplement with the effect of fat-burning or anti-fatigue. Although several production processes of L-carnitine are proposed including fermentation, chiral resolution or asymmetric synthesis, there are disadvantages with each from the point of view of yield, side-reactions or productivity. We have engaged in technology development of efficient enzymatic production of various chemicals for years, represented with the world’s first industrialized bioprocess for acrylamide. Leveraging our specialty including proprietary nitrile-related enzymes and associated technologies, we attempted to develop a further efficient production process of L-carnitine (Figure 1). Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Modeling of the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant Derived Radioactive Cesium Dynamics in Grazing Grassland

The damage to the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant incurred following the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami on March 11, 2011 resulted in serious radioactive pollution of Eastern Japan. In some grasslands of this area, radioactive cesium (Cs) content of grasses exceeded the provisional safety standard for use as feed for dairy and beef cattle of 100 Bq kg–1 fresh weight, and the livestock industry has been seriously affected in numerous ways: needing to dispose of polluted forage, grazing prohibitions, declines in beef prices, suspensions of shipping beef to market, and blanket testing of beef cattle (Manabe et al., 2013). The spatial distribution of radioactive Cs in grasslands was complex in various scales (Tsuiki and Maeda, 2012a; 2012b). So it is difficult to estimate actual pollution level in grassland ecosystems. The transfer of radioactive Cs from soil to plant is affected by soil soluble potassium (K) concentration, pH, clay and organic matter contents (Absalom et al., 2001; Tsuiki et al., 2013). The radioactive Cs dynamics in soil-plantanimal system is complex and modeling is necessary to clarify the relationships. In this study, a model of radioactive Cs dynamics in Zoysia japonica Steud. dominated grazing grassland was developed to predict radioactive Cs concentration of grass and grazing cattle

Down-Sizing in Galaxy Formation at z~1 in the Subaru/XMM-Newton Deep Survey (SXDS)

We use the deep wide-field optical imaging data of the Subaru/XMM-Newton Deep Survey (SXDS) to discuss the luminosity (mass) dependent galaxy colours down to z'=25.0 (5 x 10^9 h_{70}^{-2} Msun) for z~1 galaxies in colour-selected high density regions. We find an apparent absence of galaxies on the red colour-magnitude sequence below z'~24.2, corresponding to ~M*+2 (~10^{10} Msun) with respect to passively evolving galaxies at z~1. Galaxies brighter than M*-0.5 (8 x 10^{10} Msun), however, are predominantly red passively evolving systems, with few blue star forming galaxies at these magnitudes. This apparent age gradient, where massive galaxies are dominated by old stellar populations while less massive galaxies have more extended star formation histories, supports the `down-sizing' idea where the mass of galaxies hosting star formation decreases as the Universe ages. Combined with the lack of evolution in the shape of the stellar mass function for massive galaxies since at least z~1, it appears that galaxy formation processes (both star formation and mass assembly) should have occurred in an accelerated way in massive systems in high density regions, while these processes should have been slower in smaller systems. This result provides an interesting challenge for modern CDM-based galaxy formation theories which predict later formation epochs of massive systems, commonly referred to as ``bottom-up''.Comment: proof corrected version (MNRAS in press), 10 pages, 12 figures (of which 3 are in jpg format

An EWS-FLI1-Induced Osteosarcoma Model Unveiled a Crucial Role of Impaired Osteogenic Differentiation on Osteosarcoma Development.

iPS細胞を用いた新たな腫瘍モデルにより、肉腫形成メカニズムの一端を解明. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2016-03-18.EWS-FLI1, a multi-functional fusion oncogene, is exclusively detected in Ewing sarcomas. However, previous studies reported that rare varieties of osteosarcomas also harbor EWS-ETS family fusion. Here, using the doxycycline-inducible EWS-FLI1 system, we established an EWS-FLI1-dependent osteosarcoma model from murine bone marrow stromal cells. We revealed that the withdrawal of EWS-FLI1 expression enhances the osteogenic differentiation of sarcoma cells, leading to mature bone formation. Taking advantage of induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) technology, we also show that sarcoma-derived iPSCs with cancer-related genetic abnormalities exhibited an impaired differentiation program of osteogenic lineage irrespective of the EWS-FLI1 expression. Finally, we demonstrate that EWS-FLI1 contributed to secondary sarcoma development from the sarcoma iPSCs after osteogenic differentiation. These findings demonstrate that modulating cellular differentiation is a fundamental principle of EWS-FLI1-induced osteosarcoma development. This in vitro cancer model using sarcoma iPSCs should provide a unique platform for dissecting relationships between the cancer genome and cellular differentiation

Pair-breaking effects induced by 3-MeV proton irradiation in Ba1−xKxFe2As2

Pair-breaking effects induced by 3-MeV proton irradiations are examined in underdoped, optimally doped, and overdoped Ba 1−x K x Fe 2 As 2 single crystals in terms of suppression of the superconducting critical temperature T c . The small residual resistivity (RR) in as-grown crystals shows the presence of negligible intrinsic scatterings, which makes this material a model system for studying the effect of artificially introduced scatterings. The RR and T c change linearly with the proton dose. As in the case of proton irradiation in Co-doped BaFe 2 As 2 , we do not detect any low-temperature upturns in resistivity attributable to magnetic scattering or localization. Regardless of K doping levels, the critical value of the normalized scattering rate is much higher than that expected in s ± -wave superconductors