The Complex of Cytochrome f and Plastocyanin from Nostoc sp. PCC 7119 is Highly Dynamic

9Biological and Molecular Physic

Acetylation and phosphorylation of human TFAM regulate TFAM-DNA interactions via contrasting mechanisms

Mitochondrial transcription factor A (TFAM) is essential for the maintenance, expression and transmission of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA). However, mechanisms for the post-translational regulation of TFAM are poorly understood. Here, we show that TFAM is lysine acetylated within its high-mobility-group box 1, a domain that can also be serine phosphorylated. Using bulk and single-molecule methods, we demonstrate that site-specific phosphoserine and acetyllysine mimics of human TFAM regulate its interaction with non-specific DNA through distinct kinetic pathways. We show that higher protein concentrations of both TFAM mimics are required to compact DNA to a similar extent as the wild-type. Compaction is thought to be crucial for regulating mtDNA segregation and expression. Moreover, we reveal that the reduced DNA binding affinity of the acetyl-lysine mimic arises from a lower on-rate, whereas the phosphoserine mimic displays both a decreased on-rate and an increased off-rate. Strikingly, the increased off-rate of the phosphoserine mimic is coupled to a significantly faster diffusion of TFAM on DNA. These findings indicate that acetylation and phosphorylation of TFAM can fine-tune TFAM-DNA binding affinity, to permit the discrete regulation of mtDNA dynamics. Furthermore, our results suggest that phosphorylation could additionally regulate transcription by altering the ability of TFAM to locate promoter sites

Electroexcitation of the Δ+(1232)\Delta^{+}(1232) at low momentum transfer

We report on new p$(e,e^\prime p)\pi^\circ$ measurements at the $\Delta^{+}(1232)$ resonance at the low momentum transfer region. The mesonic cloud dynamics is predicted to be dominant and rapidly changing in this kinematic region offering a test bed for chiral effective field theory calculations. The new data explore the low $Q^2$ dependence of the resonant quadrupole amplitudes while extending the measurements of the Coulomb quadrupole amplitude to the lowest momentum transfer ever reached. The results disagree with predictions of constituent quark models and are in reasonable agreement with dynamical calculations that include pion cloud effects, chiral effective field theory and lattice calculations. The reported measurements suggest that improvement is required to the theoretical calculations and provide valuable input that will allow their refinements

Search for three-nucleon short-range correlations in light nuclei

We present new data probing short-range correlations (SRCs) in nuclei through the measurement of electron scattering off high-momentum nucleons in nuclei. The inclusive ^{4}He/^{3}He cross section ratio is observed to be both x and Q^{2} independent for 1.52, our data support the hypothesis that a previous claim of three-nucleon correlation dominance was an artifact caused by the limited resolution of the measurement. While 3N-SRCs appear to have an important contribution, our data show that isolating 3N-SRCs is significantly more complicated than for 2N-SRCs.United States. Department of Energy (Contract DE-AC05-06OR23177)United States. Department of Energy (Contract DE-AC02-06CH11357)United States. Department of Energy (Contract DE-FG02-96ER40950

Probing the Repulsive Core of the Nucleon-Nucleon Interaction via the 4He(e,e'pN) Triple-Coincidence Reaction

We studied simultaneously the 4He(e,e'p), 4He(e,e'pp), and 4He(e,e'pn) reactions at Q^2=2 [GeV/c]2 and x_B>1, for a (e,e'p) missing-momentum range of 400 to 830 MeV/c. The knocked-out proton was detected in coincidence with a proton or neutron recoiling almost back to back to the missing momentum, leaving the residual A=2 system at low excitation energy. These data were used to identify two-nucleon short-range correlated pairs and to deduce their isospin structure as a function of missing momentum in a region where the nucleon-nucleon force is expected to change from predominantly tensor to repulsive. Neutron-proton pairs dominate the high-momentum tail of the nucleon momentum distributions, but their abundance is reduced as the nucleon momentum increases beyond ~500 MeV/c. The extracted fraction of proton-proton pairs is small and almost independent of the missing momentum in the range we studied. Our data are compared with ab-initio calculations of two-nucleon momentum distributions in 4He.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure

Interaction of the amyloid β peptide with sodium dodecyl sulfate as a membrane-mimicking detergent

The amyloid β (A β) peptide is important in the context of Alzheimer's disease, since it is one of the major components of the fibrils that constitute amyloid plaques. Agents that can influence fibril formation are important, and of those, membrane mimics are particularly relevant, because the hydrophobic part of A β suggests a possible membrane activity of the peptide. We employed spin-label EPR to investigate the aggregation process of A β1-40 in the presence of the sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) detergent as a membrane-mimicking agent. In this work, the effect of SDS on A β is studied using two positions of spin label, the N-terminus and position 26. By comparing the two label positions, the effect of local mobility of the spin label is eliminated, revealing A β aggregation in the SDS concentration regime below the critical micelle concentration (CMC). We demonstrate that, at low SDS concentrations, the N-terminus of A β participates in the solubilization, most likely by being located at the particle-water interface. At higher SDS concentrations, an SDS-solubilized state that is a precursor to the one A β/micelle state above the CMC of SDS prevails. We propose that A β is membrane active and that aggregates include SDS. This study reveals the unique potential of EPR in studying A β aggregation in the presence of detergent.</p