Reaction of chromium(VI) with glutathione or with hydrogen peroxide: identification of reactive intermediates and their role in chromium(VI)-induced DNA damage.

The types of reactive intermediates generated upon reduction of chromium(VI) by glutathione or hydrogen peroxide and the resulting DNA damage have been determined. In vitro, reaction of chromium(VI) with glutathione led to formation of two chromium(V) complexes and the glutathione thiyl radical. When chromium(VI) was reacted with DNA in the presence of glutathione, chromium-DNA adducts were obtained, with no DNA strand breakage. The level of chromium-DNA adduct formation correlated with chromium(V) formation. Reaction of chromium(VI) with hydrogen peroxide led to formation of hydroxyl radical. No chromium(V) was detectable at 24 degrees C (297 K); however, low levels of the tetraperoxochromium(V) complex were detected at 77 K. Reaction of chromium(VI) with DNA in the presence of hydrogen peroxide produced significant DNA strand breakage and the 8-hydroxydeoxyguanosine adduct, whose formation correlated with hydroxyl radical production. No significant chromium-DNA adduct formation was detected. Thus, the nature of chromium(VI)-induced DNA damage appears to be dependent on the reactive intermediates, i.e. chromium(V) or hydroxyl radical, produced during the reduction of chromium(VI)

Growth in some stomatopods

This article does not have an abstract

On some squilla larvae from the Madras plankton

This article does not have an abstract

Different patterns of labour market integration by migration motivation in Europe: the role of host country human capital

We study whether individual decisions to invest in the host country, namely obtaining equivalent qualifications, improving language skills, or naturalisation explain differences in labour market integration between migrants depending on their initial motivation. We use cross-national European data from the 2008 ad-hoc module of the Labour Force Survey to analyse migrant gaps in labour market participation, employment, occupational status and precarious employment. We find that different rates of and returns to host country human capital explain a substantial part of the improvements in labour market outcomes with years of residence, particularly for non-economic migrants who experience faster growth on average

Middle-Income Transitions: Trap or Myth?

During the last few years, the newly coined term middle-income trap has been widely used by policymakers to refer to the middle-income economies that seem to be stuck in the middle-income range. However, there is no accepted definition of the term in the literature. In this paper, we study historical transitions across income groups to see whether there is any evidence that supports the claim that economies do not advance. Overall, the data rejects this proposition. Instead, we argue that what distinguishes economies in their transition from middle to high income is fast versus slow transitions. We find that, historically, it has taken a "typical" economy 55 years to graduate from lower-middle income ($2,000 in 1990 purchasing power parity [PPP]$) to upper-middle income ($7,250 in 1990 PPP$). Likewise, we find that, historically, it has taken 15 years for an economy to graduate from upper-middle income to high income (above $11,750 in 1990 PPP$). Our analysis implies that as of 2013, there were 10 (out of 39) lower-middle-income economies and that 4 (out of 15) upper-middle-income economies that were experiencing slow transitions (i.e., above 55 and 15 years, respectively). The historical evidence presented in this paper indicates that economies move up across income groups. Analyzing a large sample of economies over many decades, indicates that experiences are wide, including many economies that today are high income that spent many decades traversing the middle-income segment

Topology of the pore-region of a K+ channel revealed by the NMR-derived structures of scorpion toxins

AbstractThe architecture of the pore-region of a voltage-gated K+ channel, Kv1.3, was probed using four high affinity scorpion toxins as molecular calipers. We established the structural relatedness of these toxins by solving the structures of kaliotoxin and margatoxin and comparing them with the published structure of charybdotoxin; a homology model of noxiustoxin was then developed. Complementary mutagenesis of Kv1.3 and these toxins, combined with electrostatic compliance and thermodynamic mutant cycle analyses, allowed us to identify multiple toxin-challel interactions. Our analyses reveals the existence of a shallow vestibule at the external entrance to the pore. This vestibule is ∼28−32A˚wide at its outer margin, ∼28−34A˚wide at its base, and ∼4−8A˚deep. The pore is 9–14A˚wide at its external entrance and tapers to a width of 4–5A˚at a depth of ∼5−7A˚from the vestibule. This structural information should directly aid in developing topological models of the pores of related ion channels and facilitate therapeutic drug design

A privacy-preserving solution for compressed storage and selective retrieval of genomic data

In clinical genomics, the continuous evolution of bioinformatic algorithms and sequencing platforms makes it beneficial to store patients' complete aligned genomic data in addition to variant calls relative to a reference sequence. Due to the large size of human genome sequence data files (varying from 30 GB to 200 GB depending on coverage), two major challenges facing genomics laboratories are the costs of storage and the efficiency of the initial data processing. In addition, privacy of genomic data is becoming an increasingly serious concern, yet no standard data storage solutions exist that enable compression, encryption, and selective retrieval. Here we present a privacy-preserving solution named SECRAM (Selective retrieval on Encrypted and Compressed Reference-oriented Alignment Map) for the secure storage of compressed aligned genomic data. Our solution enables selective retrieval of encrypted data and improves the efficiency of downstream analysis (e.g., variant calling). Compared withBAM, thede factostandard for storing aligned genomic data, SECRAM uses 18%less storage. Compared with CRAM, one of the most compressed nonencrypted formats (using 34% less storage than BAM), SECRAM maintains efficient compression and downstream data processing, while allowing for unprecedented levels of security in genomic data storage. Compared with previous work, the distinguishing features of SECRAM are that (1) it is position-based insteadofread-based,and(2)itallowsrandomqueryingofasubregionfromaBAM-likefileinanencryptedform.Ourmethod thus offers a space-saving, privacy-preserving, and effective solution for the storage of clinical genomic data. © 2016 Szalaj et al