Chemical and biological studies on nucleic acids and derivatives. Progress report, October 1, 1974--April 30, 1975

Ultraviolet irradiation of N-hydroxyxanthines in the solid state induces a radical that was assigned as an acyl amidogen radical in which the unpaired electron density is partially delocalized throughout the $pi$-cloud of the purine ring. The radical is reduced in the presence of water. In the presence of methanol this process is also accompanied by some 8-substitution. Photochemical deoxygenation in solution was found to proceed from either the nonionized N- hydroxyl tautomer or the conjugate anion of N-hydroxypurines. Reduction is the sole photoreaction of the former, while intramolecular migration of the oxygen is the main photoprocess of the latter with photoreduction a minor result. The comparison of the photochemistry of the N-hydroxypurine anion to that of the corresponding purine N-oxide was documented with a study of suitable model purine 1-oxides. A unique photorearrangement of 1-hydroxyxanthine to the oncogenic 3- isomer was examined and is deduced to be a two step process. (auth

Softly Broken A_4 Symmetry for Nearly Degenerate Neutrino Masses

The leptonic Higgs doublet model of neutrino masses is implemented with an A_4 discrete symmetry (the even permutation of 4 objects or equivalently the symmetry of the tetrahedron) which has 4 irreducible representations: 1, 1', 1'', and 3. The resulting spontaneous and soft breaking of A_4 provides a realistic model of charged-lepton masses as well as a nearly degenerate neutrino mass matrix. Phenomenological consequences at and below the TeV scale are discussed.Comment: 11 pages, no figur

Basking African striped mice choose warmer locations to heat up: evidence from a field study

International audienc

Extracting longitudinal shower development information from crystal calorimetry plus tracking

We present an approach to derive longitudinal shower development information from the longitudinally unsegmented BABAR electromagnetic calorimeter by using tracking information. Our algorithm takes advantage of the good three-dimensional tracking resolution of BABAR, which provides an independent geometric constraint on the shower as measured in the BABAR crystal calorimeter. We show that adding the derived longitudinal shower development information to standard particle identification algorithms significantly improves the low-momentum separation of pions from electrons and muons. We also verify that the energy dependence of the electromagnetic shower development we measure is consistent with the prediction of a standard electromagnetic shower model

The trans-activation domain of the sporulation response regulator Spo0A revealed by X-ray crystallography

Sporulation in Bacillus involves the induction of scores of genes in a temporally and spatially co-ordinated programme of cell development. Its initiation is under the control of an expanded two-component signal transduction system termed a phosphorelay. The master control element in the decision to sporulate is the response regulator, Spo0A, which comprises a receiver or phosphoacceptor domain and an effector or transcription activation domain. The receiver domain of Spo0A shares sequence similarity with numerous response regulators, and its structure has been determined in phosphorylated and unphosphorylated forms. However, the effector domain (C-Spo0A) has no detectable sequence similarity to any other protein, and this lack of structural information is an obstacle to understanding how DNA binding and transcription activation are controlled by phosphorylation in Spo0A. Here, we report the crystal structure of C-Spo0A from Bacillus stearothermophilus revealing a single alpha -helical domain comprising six alpha -helices in an unprecedented fold. The structure contains a helix-turn-helix as part of a three alpha -helical bundle reminiscent of the catabolite gene activator protein (CAP), suggesting a mechanism for DNA binding. The residues implicated in forming the sigma (A)-activating region clearly cluster in a flexible segment of the polypeptide on the opposite side of the structure from that predicted to interact with DNA. The structural results are discussed in the context of the rich array of existing mutational data

On the alpha activity of natural tungsten isotopes

The indication for the alpha decay of 180-W with a half-life T1/2=1.1+0.8-0.4(stat)+-0.3(syst)x10^18 yr has been observed for the first time with the help of the super-low background 116-CdWO_4 crystal scintillators. In conservative approach the lower limit on half-life of 180-W has been established as T1/2>0.7x10^18 yr at 90% C.L. Besides, new T1/2 bounds were set for alpha decay of 182-W, 183-W, 184-W and 186-W at the level of 10^20 yr.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures, accepted in Phys. Rev.