Arginase from kiwifruit: properties and seasonal variation

The in vitro activity of arginase (EC 3.5.3.1) was investigated in youngest-mature leaves and roots (1-3 mm diameter) of kiwifruit vines (Actinidia deliciosa var. deliciosa) during an annual growth cycle, and enzyme from root material partially purified. No seasonal trend in the specific activity of arginase was observed in roots. Measurements in leaves, however, rose gradually during early growth and plateaued c. 17 weeks after budbreak. Changes in arginase activity were not correlated with changes in the concentration of arginine (substrate) or glutamine (likely end-product of arginine catabolism) in either tissue during the growth cycle. Purification was by (NH4)2SO4 precipitation and DEAE-cellulose chromatography. The kinetic properties of the enzyme, purified 60-fold over that in crude extracts, indicated a pH optimum of 8.8, and a Km (L-arginine) of 7.85 mM. Partially-purified enzyme was deactivated by dialysis against EDTA, and reactivated in the presence of Mn²⁺, Co²⁺, and Ni²⁺

Learning to Extract Motion from Videos in Convolutional Neural Networks

This paper shows how to extract dense optical flow from videos with a convolutional neural network (CNN). The proposed model constitutes a potential building block for deeper architectures to allow using motion without resorting to an external algorithm, \eg for recognition in videos. We derive our network architecture from signal processing principles to provide desired invariances to image contrast, phase and texture. We constrain weights within the network to enforce strict rotation invariance and substantially reduce the number of parameters to learn. We demonstrate end-to-end training on only 8 sequences of the Middlebury dataset, orders of magnitude less than competing CNN-based motion estimation methods, and obtain comparable performance to classical methods on the Middlebury benchmark. Importantly, our method outputs a distributed representation of motion that allows representing multiple, transparent motions, and dynamic textures. Our contributions on network design and rotation invariance offer insights nonspecific to motion estimation

Protection from ultraviolet damage and photocarcinogenesis by vitamin d compounds

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020. Exposure of skin cells to UV radiation results in DNA damage, which if inadequately repaired, may cause mutations. UV-induced DNA damage and reactive oxygen and nitrogen species also cause local and systemic suppression of the adaptive immune system. Together, these changes underpin the development of skin tumours. The hormone derived from vitamin D, calcitriol (1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D3) and other related compounds, working via the vitamin D receptor and at least in part through endoplasmic reticulum protein 57 (ERp57), reduce cyclobutane pyrimidine dimers and oxidative DNA damage in keratinocytes and other skin cell types after UV. Calcitriol and related compounds enhance DNA repair in keratinocytes, in part through decreased reactive oxygen species, increased p53 expression and/or activation, increased repair proteins and increased energy availability in the cell when calcitriol is present after UV exposure. There is mitochondrial damage in keratinocytes after UV. In the presence of calcitriol, but not vehicle, glycolysis is increased after UV, along with increased energy-conserving autophagy and changes consistent with enhanced mitophagy. Reduced DNA damage and reduced ROS/RNS should help reduce UV-induced immune suppression. Reduced UV immune suppression is observed after topical treatment with calcitriol and related compounds in hairless mice. These protective effects of calcitriol and related compounds presumably contribute to the observed reduction in skin tumour formation in mice after chronic exposure to UV followed by topical post-irradiation treatment with calcitriol and some, though not all, related compounds

An approach to the generation of simple analogues of the antitumour agent spicamycin.

The one-step glycosylation of arylamines in acidic medium is extended to adenine derivatives for the first time, providing a considerable improvement over existing reactions. This method is used to prepare some rhamnospicamycin analogues containing different base moieties. Results suggest that this novel approach will be applicable to a wide range of carbohydrates and arylamines, possibly leading to a combinatorial library of analogues of spicamycin for the better understanding of the modes of action of this antitumour antibiotic family

Oxetanes from the ring contraction of alpha-triflates of gamma-lactones: oxetane nucleosides and oxetane amino acids.

Alpha-Triflates of gamma-lactones with potassium carbonate in methanol give efficient contraction of the ring to oxetane-1-carboxylates in which the oxygen substituent at C(3) of the oxetane is predominantly trans to the carboxylate at C(2), regardless of the stereochemistry of the starting triflate. The limitations of the procedure are discussed and compared with analogous reactions for the preparation of THF carboxylates. The potential of the contraction in the preparation of oxetane nucleosides (such as oxetanocin) and oxetane sugar amino acids (analogues of oxetin) as peptidomimetics with predisposition to form secondary structural motifs is illustrated

The antibody binding site. Labelling of a specific antibody against the photo-precursor of an aryl nitrene.

The isolation of specific rabbit antibodies for the haptenic group 4-azido-2-nitrophenyl, is described. These antibodies bind 1.8-2.0mol of hapten [in-(4-azido-2-nitrophenyl)-l-lysine]/mol with an association constant of nearly 10(7)m(-1) at 4 degrees C. On photolysis of the antibody-hapten complex, resulting in the formation of an aryl nitrene at the binding site, hapten was covalently bound to the antibody, and the antibody binding site was blocked. The ratio of labelling of heavy- and light-chains was 2.5:1. Two small peptides were isolated from digests of labelled heavy-chain, indicating that some 13% of the label in the antibody was attached to cysteine-92 and to alanine-93. These residues are adjacent to the major hypervariable region in rabbit heavy-chain (residues 95-105)

Cyclic oligomers of oxetane-based dipeptide isosteres derived from L-rhamnose.

Two new cyclic oligomers, cyclo-tetra-[2,4-anhydro-3-O-tert-butyldimethylsilyl-5-deoxy-L-rhamnonamido-(N-->5)] and the corresponding 6-deoxy-D-gulonate cyclic "tetramer", have been synthesised from linear tetrameric oligomers, using TBTU- and pentafluorophenyl ester-based methodologies, respectively. These two compounds constitute a novel class of cyclic oligomers derived from oxetane-based sugar amino acids