Microorganisms as Biocatalysts and Enzyme Sources

Microbial-catalyzed biotransformations have considerable potential for the generation of an enormous variety of structurally diversified organic compounds, especially natural products with complex structures like triterpenoids, flavonoids, steroids, steroidal saponins, and sesquiterpenoids. They offer efficient and economical ways to produce semisynthetic analogues and novel lead molecules. Microorganisms such as bacteria and fungi could catalyze chemo-, regio-, and stereospecific hydroxylations of diverse substrates that are extremely difficult to produce by chemical routes. During recent years, considerable research has been performed on the microbial transformation of bioactive compounds, in order to obtain biologically active molecules with diverse structural features. In green chemistry, biotransformations are an important chemical methodology toward more sustainable industrial processes

The physiology of ex vitro pineapple ( Ananas comosus L. Merr. var MD-2) as CAM or C3 is regulated by environmental conditions: proteomic and transcriptomic profiles

Pineapple is one of the most important tropical crops worldwide. The use of Temporary Immersion Bioreactors (TIB) for the first stages of pineapple propagation enables precise control of plant growth, increases the rate of plant multiplication, decreases space, energy and labor requirements for pineapple plants in commercial micropropagation. Once the plantlets are ready to be taken from the reactors, they are carefully acclimatized to adapt to natural environmental conditions, and a facultative C3/CAM metabolism in the first two months of growth is characteristic of pineapple plants, depending on environmental conditions. We subjected two sets of micropropagated pineapple plants to C3 and CAM-inducing environmental conditions, determined by light intensity/relative humidity (respectively 40μmol.m-2s-1/85% and 260μmol.m-2.s-1/50%). Leaves of pineapple plants grown under CAM inducing conditions showed higher leaf thickness and more developed cuticles and hypodermic tissue. Proteomic profiles of several proteins, isoenzyme patterns and transcriptomic profiles were also measured. Five major spots were isolated and identified, two of them for the first time in Ananas comosus (OEE 1; OEE 2) and the other three corresponding to small fragments of the large subunit of Rubisco (LSU). PEPC and PEPCK were also detected by immunobloting of 2DE at the end of both ex vitro treatments (C3/CAM) during the dark period. Isoenzymes of SOD and CAT were identified by electrophoresis and the transcript levels of OEE 1 and CAT were associated with CAM metabolism in pineapple plants

The location of creative clusters in non-metropolitan areas: A methodological proposition

This article studies creative clusters outside metropolitan areas in Spain. Both the notion of cluster and that of creative activity tend to be associated by mainstream research with urban settings; thus, situating them in an non metropolitan or rural localities has required us to adapt the usual methodology to the scale and idiosyncrasies of a rural setting. Based on this new focus, we have been able to identify 761 municipalities that could host creative clusters within an initial area of study of 7367 non-metropolitan municipalities with fewer than 50,000 inhabitants. This methodology also has allowed us to measure intensity, internal composition, and localization, so that those of a more mature or advanced character, having a greater level of specialization and diversity, predominate in places close to metropolitan areas and the Mediterranean axis, whereas in the inner Spain, they are found in a lower proportion and in a more scattered and discontinuous manner. Activities belonging to the Functional Creations sector prevail over those from Communication and Patrimony in the configuration of the clusters, although there are differences in relative specialization according to their mature or advanced level. In addition, some of the most significant indicators of rural dynamism e population growth, human capital, unemployment, and economic activity e show much better behaviour in municipalities with creative clusters

Service-Oriented Multigranular Optical Network Architecture for Clouds

This paper presents a novel service-oriented network architecture to bridge the informational gap between user applications and optical networks providing technology-agnostic multigranular optical network services for clouds. A mediation layer (service plane) between user applications and network control is proposed to facilitate a mapping process between user application requests and the network services. At the network level, a multigranular optical network (MGON) is proposed and implemented to support dynamic wavelength and subwavelength granularities with different transport formats [optical burst switched (OBS), optical burst transport (OBT)], reservation protocols (one-way, two-way), and different quality-of-service (QoS) levels per service type. The service-oriented multigranular optical network has been designed, implemented, and demonstrated on an experimental testbed. The testbed consists of service and network resource provisioning, service abstraction, and network resource virtualization. The service-to-network interoperation is provided by means of a gateway that maps service requests to technology-specific parameters and a common signaling channel for both service and network resource provisioning

Vortices and domain walls in a Chern-Simons theory with magnetic moment interaction

We study the structure and properties of vortices in a recently proposed Abelian Maxwell-Chern-Simons model in $2 +1$ dimensions. The model which is described by gauge field interacting with a complex scalar field, includes two parity and time violating terms: the Chern-Simons and the anomalous magnetic terms. Self-dual relativistic vortices are discussed in detail. We also find one dimensional soliton solutions of the domain wall type. The vortices are correctly described by the domain wall solutions in the large flux limit.Comment: To be published in Phys RevD 23 pages, RevTex, 5 figure