158 research outputs found
The involvement of CD14 in the activation of human monocytes by peptidoglycan monomers.
BACKGROUND: Cell-wall components of Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria induce the production of cytokines in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells. These cytokines are the main mediators of local or systemic inflammatory reaction that can contribute to the development of innate immunity. AIMS: This study was performed to analyze the involvement of CD14 molecule in the activation of human monocytes by peptidoglycan monomer (PGM) obtained by biosynthesis from culture fluid of penicillin-treated Brevibacterium divaricatum NRLL-2311. METHODS: Cytokine release of interleukin (IL)-1, IL-6 and tumor necrosis factor-alpha from human monocytes via soluble CD14 (sCD14) or membrane-associated (mCD14) receptor using anti-CD14 monoclonal antibody (MEM-18) or lipid A structure (compound 406) was measured in bioassays. RESULTS: The results demonstrated that PGM in the presence of human serum might induce the monokine release in a dose-dependent manner. The addition of sCD14 at physiologic concentrations enhanced the PGM-induced monokine release, while the monokine inducing capacity of PGM in the presence of sCD14 was inhibited by MEM-18. Effects of PGM were also blocked by glycolipid, compound 406, suggesting the involvement of binding structures similar to those for lipopolysaccharide. CONCLUSION: Activation of human monocytes by PGM involves both forms of CD14 molecule, sCD14 and mCD14
Regularity for eigenfunctions of Schr\"odinger operators
We prove a regularity result in weighted Sobolev spaces (or
Babuska--Kondratiev spaces) for the eigenfunctions of a Schr\"odinger operator.
More precisely, let K_{a}^{m}(\mathbb{R}^{3N}) be the weighted Sobolev space
obtained by blowing up the set of singular points of the Coulomb type potential
V(x) = \sum_{1 \le j \le N} \frac{b_j}{|x_j|} + \sum_{1 \le i < j \le N}
\frac{c_{ij}}{|x_i-x_j|}, x in \mathbb{R}^{3N}, b_j, c_{ij} in \mathbb{R}. If u
in L^2(\mathbb{R}^{3N}) satisfies (-\Delta + V) u = \lambda u in distribution
sense, then u belongs to K_{a}^{m} for all m \in \mathbb{Z}_+ and all a \le 0.
Our result extends to the case when b_j and c_{ij} are suitable bounded
functions on the blown-up space. In the single-electron, multi-nuclei case, we
obtain the same result for all a<3/2.Comment: to appear in Lett. Math. Phy
Simultaneous Metabarcoding and Quantification of Neocallimastigomycetes from Environmental Samples:Insights into Community Composition and Novel Lineages
Anaerobic fungi from the herbivore digestive tract (Neocallimastigomycetes) are primary lignocellulose modifiers and hold promise for biotechnological applications. Their molecular detection is currently difficult due to the non-specificity of published primer pairs, which impairs evolutionary and ecological research with environmental samples. We developed and validated a Neocallimastigomycetes-specific PCR primer pair targeting the D2 region of the ribosomal large subunit suitable for screening, quantifying, and sequencing. We evaluated this primer pair in silico on sequences from all known genera, in vitro with pure cultures covering 16 of the 20 known genera, and on environmental samples with highly diverse microbiomes. The amplified region allowed phylogenetic differentiation of all known genera and most species. The amplicon is about 350 bp long, suitable for short-read high-throughput sequencing as well as qPCR assays. Sequencing of herbivore fecal samples verified the specificity of the primer pair and recovered highly diverse and so far unknown anaerobic gut fungal taxa. As the chosen barcoding region can be easily aligned and is taxonomically informative, the sequences can be used for classification and phylogenetic inferences. Several new Neocallimastigomycetes clades were obtained, some of which represent putative novel lineages such as a clade from feces of the rodent Dolichotis patagonum (mara)
Simultaneous Metabarcoding and Quantification of Neocallimastigomycetes from Environmental Samples:Insights into Community Composition and Novel Lineages
Anaerobic fungi from the herbivore digestive tract (Neocallimastigomycetes) are primary lignocellulose modifiers and hold promise for biotechnological applications. Their molecular detection is currently difficult due to the non-specificity of published primer pairs, which impairs evolutionary and ecological research with environmental samples. We developed and validated a Neocallimastigomycetes-specific PCR primer pair targeting the D2 region of the ribosomal large subunit suitable for screening, quantifying, and sequencing. We evaluated this primer pair in silico on sequences from all known genera, in vitro with pure cultures covering 16 of the 20 known genera, and on environmental samples with highly diverse microbiomes. The amplified region allowed phylogenetic differentiation of all known genera and most species. The amplicon is about 350 bp long, suitable for short-read high-throughput sequencing as well as qPCR assays. Sequencing of herbivore fecal samples verified the specificity of the primer pair and recovered highly diverse and so far unknown anaerobic gut fungal taxa. As the chosen barcoding region can be easily aligned and is taxonomically informative, the sequences can be used for classification and phylogenetic inferences. Several new Neocallimastigomycetes clades were obtained, some of which represent putative novel lineages such as a clade from feces of the rodent Dolichotis patagonum (mara)
Construction of Modern Robust Nodal Discontinuous Galerkin Spectral Element Methods for the Compressible Navier-Stokes Equations
Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) methods have a long history in computational
physics and engineering to approximate solutions of partial differential
equations due to their high-order accuracy and geometric flexibility. However,
DG is not perfect and there remain some issues. Concerning robustness, DG has
undergone an extensive transformation over the past seven years into its modern
form that provides statements on solution boundedness for linear and nonlinear
problems.
This chapter takes a constructive approach to introduce a modern incarnation
of the DG spectral element method for the compressible Navier-Stokes equations
in a three-dimensional curvilinear context. The groundwork of the numerical
scheme comes from classic principles of spectral methods including polynomial
approximations and Gauss-type quadratures. We identify aliasing as one
underlying cause of the robustness issues for classical DG spectral methods.
Removing said aliasing errors requires a particular differentiation matrix and
careful discretization of the advective flux terms in the governing equations.Comment: 85 pages, 2 figures, book chapte
Ab initio studies of structures and properties of small potassium clusters
We have studied the structure and properties of potassium clusters containing
even number of atoms ranging from 2 to 20 at the ab initio level. The geometry
optimization calculations are performed using all-electron density functional
theory with gradient corrected exchange-correlation functional. Using these
optimized geometries we investigate the evolution of binding energy, ionization
potential, and static polarizability with the increasing size of the clusters.
The polarizabilities are calculated by employing Moller-Plesset perturbation
theory and time dependent density functional theory. The polarizabilities of
dimer and tetramer are also calculated by employing large basis set coupled
cluster theory with single and double excitations and perturbative triple
excitations. The time dependent density functional theory calculations of
polarizabilities are carried out with two different exchange-correlation
potentials: (i) an asymptotically correct model potential and (ii) within the
local density approximation. A systematic comparison with the other available
theoretical and experimental data for various properties of small potassium
clusters mentioned above has been performed. These comparisons reveal that both
the binding energy and the ionization potential obtained with gradient
corrected potential match quite well with the already published data.
Similarly, the polarizabilities obtained with Moller-Plesset perturbation
theory and with model potential are quite close to each other and also close to
experimental data.Comment: 33 pages including 10 figure
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