Lumostatic operation controlled by the optimum light intensity per dry weight for the effective production of Chlorella zofingiensis in the high cell density continuous culture

To maximize the production rate of Chlorella zofingiensis, a lumostatic continuous culture was operated under light intensities of 250–1510 μE m− 2 s− 1. The cell density and volumetric biomass production rate were increased without photo inhibition and reached 13.5 g-dry weight (dw) L− 1 on day 21.5 and 2.41 g-dw L− 1 day− 1 on day 10.5, respectively. These maximum values were higher than any previous photoautotrophic culture study with C. zofingiensis. The specific growth rate was maintained at a high level > 0.5 day− 1 until the light intensity per dry weight decreased below 28 μE g-dw− 1 s− 1, which coincided with the value estimated in our previous study, verifying the reliability of this estimated value. There was a strong relationship between the photosynthetic efficiency and light intensity per dry weight for C. zofingiensis. This relationship may be useful for evaluating species-specific productivity to select productive species

Isothermal multiple displacement amplification of DNA templates in minimally buffered conditions using phi29 polymerase

The isothermal amplification of DNA in minimally buffered conditions allows to perform and monitor nucleic acid amplification with minimal technological and operative requirements. We show in this work how phi29 can operate multiple displacement amplification in minimally buffered conditions producing, as a readout, pH shifts attaining subunits of pH

SAN: Inducing Metrizability of GAN with Discriminative Normalized Linear Layer

Generative adversarial networks (GANs) learn a target probability distribution by optimizing a generator and a discriminator with minimax objectives. This paper addresses the question of whether such optimization actually provides the generator with gradients that make its distribution close to the target distribution. We derive metrizable conditions, sufficient conditions for the discriminator to serve as the distance between the distributions by connecting the GAN formulation with the concept of sliced optimal transport. Furthermore, by leveraging these theoretical results, we propose a novel GAN training scheme, called slicing adversarial network (SAN). With only simple modifications, a broad class of existing GANs can be converted to SANs. Experiments on synthetic and image datasets support our theoretical results and the SAN's effectiveness as compared to usual GANs. Furthermore, we also apply SAN to StyleGAN-XL, which leads to state-of-the-art FID score amongst GANs for class conditional generation on ImageNet 256$\times$256.Comment: 24 pages with 12 figure

Estimation of optimum specific light intensity per cell on a high-cell-density continuous culture of Chlorella zofingiensis not limited by nutrients or CO2

To determine the optimum light intensity per cell required for rapid growth regardless of cell density, continuous cultures of the microalga Chlorella zofingiensis were grown with a sufficient supply of nutrients and CO2 and were subjected to different light intensities in the range of 75–1000 μE m−2 s−1. The cell density of culture increased over time for all light conditions except for the early stage of the high light condition of 1000 μE m−2 s−1. The light intensity per cell required for the high specific growth rate of 0.5 day−1 was determined to be 28–45 μE g-ds−1 s−1. The specific growth rate was significantly correlated to light intensity (y = 0.721 × x/(66.98 + x), r2 = 0.85, p < 0.05). A high specific growth rate was maintained over a range of light intensities (250–1000 μE m−2 s−1). This range of light intensities suggested that effective production of C. zofingiensis can be maintained outdoors under strong light by using the optimum specific light intensity

Genome-wide identification and gene expression profiling of ubiquitin ligases for endoplasmic reticulum protein degradation

Endoplasmic reticulum (ER)-associated degradation (ERAD) is a mechanism by which unfolded proteins that accumulate in the ER are transported to the cytosol for ubiquitin–proteasome-mediated degradation. Ubiquitin ligases (E3s) are a group of enzymes responsible for substrate selectivity and ubiquitin chain formation. The purpose of this study was to identify novel E3s involved in ERAD. Thirty-seven candidate genes were selected by searches for proteins with RING-finger motifs and transmembrane regions, which are the major features of ERAD E3s. We performed gene expression profiling for the identified E3s in human and mouse tissues. Several genes were specifically or selectively expressed in both tissues; the expression of four genes (RNFT1, RNF185, CGRRF1 and RNF19B) was significantly upregulated by ER stress. To determine the involvement of the ER stress-responsive genes in ERAD, we investigated their ER localisation, in vitro autoubiquitination activity and ER stress resistance. All were partially localised to the ER, whereas CGRRF1 did not possess E3 activity. RNFT1 and RNF185, but not CGRRF1 and RNF19B, exhibited significant resistance to ER stressor in an E3 activity-dependent manner. Thus, these genes are possible candidates for ERAD E3s.This study was supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (KAKENHI) 15K21706, 26460099, 24300135, 22020032, 25251014, 15K15067, 15K20001, 15K18377 and 15K19516 from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan and also supported by the Takeda Science Foundation. We thank H. Hishigaki and Otsuka GEN Research Institute for bioinformatic analysis. We also thank M. Minami and T. Uehara for the helpful discussions. We are grateful to T. Yoshikawa, T. Ike, Y. Maeoka, Y. Wada and Z. Cao for their technical assistance. The authors would like to thank Enago (www.enago.jp) for the English language review

High intensity of light: a potential stimulus for maximizing biomass by inducing photosynthetic activity in marine microalga, Tetraselmis tetrathele

The current research aimed to increase biomass production by manipulating the light intensity between 300 and 2500 μmol m−2 s−1 into a semi-continuous culture system. The growth productivity, photosynthetic performance, pigments, lipids, and fatty acids compositions of Tetraselmis tetrathele were closely investigated. This microalga could tolerate high light intensity (1500 μmol m−2 s−1), where the light intensity per cell ranged 13 μmol m−2 s−1 g-dw−1 cell−1 produced 2.92–3.34 g-dw L−1 of dry-cell weight during steady-state growth condition, approximately 1.8 times higher than the condition at 300 μmol m−2 s−1. Interestingly, maximal electron transport rate of photosystem II (ETRmax) was induced to reflect the photoacclimation activity and accompanied with variations in pigments, lipids, and fatty acids profile to protect cells from photo-oxidative damage. The scavenging role of β-carotene as a vital photoprotective pigment was achieved upon exposure to excessive light, about 1.9-fold higher than 300 μmol m−2 s−1 light intensity

Mechanistic insights into intramembrane proteolysis by E. coli site-2 protease homolog RseP

細胞膜の中ではたらく特殊なタンパク質分解酵素の構造を解明 --細菌感染症の新たな治療法の開発へ期待--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2022-08-25.Site-2 proteases are a conserved family of intramembrane proteases that cleave transmembrane substrates to regulate signal transduction and maintain proteostasis. Here, we elucidated crystal structures of inhibitor-bound forms of bacterial site-2 proteases including Escherichia coli RseP. Structure-based chemical modification and cross-linking experiments indicated that the RseP domains surrounding the active center undergo conformational changes to expose the substrate-binding site, suggesting that RseP has a gating mechanism to regulate substrate entry. Furthermore, mutational analysis suggests that a conserved electrostatic linkage between the transmembrane and peripheral membrane-associated domains mediates the conformational changes. In vivo cleavage assays also support that the substrate transmembrane helix is unwound by strand addition to the intramembrane β sheet of RseP and is clamped by a conserved asparagine residue at the active center for efficient cleavage. This mechanism underlying the substrate binding, i.e., unwinding and clamping, appears common across distinct families of intramembrane proteases that cleave transmembrane segments

Genomic determinants impacting the clinical outcome of mogamulizumab treatment for adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma

In order to identify genomic biomarkers for the outcome of mogamulizumab-containing treatment, an integrated molecular analysis of adult T-cell leukemia/lymphoma (ATL) was conducted on 64 mogamulizumab-naïve patients. Among driver genes, CCR4 and CCR7 alterations were observed in 22% and 11% of the patients, respectively, both consisting of single nucleotide variants (SNV)/insertion-deletions (indels) in the C-terminus. Patients with CCR4 alterations or without CCR7 alterations exhibited a more favorable clinical response (complete response [CR] rate 93%, 13/14; P=0.024, and CR rate 71%, 40/56; P=0.036, respectively). Additionally, TP53, CD28, and CD274 alterations were identified in 35%, 16%, and 10% of the patients, respectively. TP53 alterations included SNV/indels or copy number variations (CNV) such as homozygous deletion; CD28 alterations included SNV, CNV such as amplification, or fusion; CD274 alterations included CNV such as amplification, or structural variants. Univariate analysis revealed that TP53, CD28 or CD274 alterations were associated with worse overall survival (OS) (hazard ratio [HR]: 2.330, 95% confidence interval [CI]: 1.183-4.589; HR: 3.191, 95% CI: 1.287- 7.911; HR: 3.301, 95% CI: 1.130-9.641, respectively) but that CCR4 alterations were associated with better OS (HR: 0.286, 95% CI: 0.087-0.933). Multivariate analysis indicated that in addition to performance status, TP53, CCR4 or CD274 alterations (HR: 2.467, 95% CI: 1.197-5.085; HR: 0.155, 95% CI: 0.031-0.778; HR: 14.393, 95% CI: 2.437-85.005, respectively) were independently and significantly associated with OS. The present study contributes to the establishment of precision medicine using mogamulizumab in ATL patients

An Extension of Reversible Image Enhancement Processing for Saturation and Brightness Contrast

This paper proposes a reversible image processing method for color images that can independently improve saturation and enhance brightness contrast. Image processing techniques have been popularly used to obtain desired images. The existing techniques generally do not consider reversibility. Recently, many reversible image processing methods have been widely researched. Most of the previous studies have investigated reversible contrast enhancement for grayscale images based on data hiding techniques. When these techniques are simply applied to color images, hue distortion occurs. Several efficient methods have been studied for color images, but they could not guarantee complete reversibility. We previously proposed a new method that reversibly controls not only the brightness contrast, but also saturation. However, this method cannot fully control them independently. To tackle this issue, we extend our previous work without losing its advantages. The proposed method uses the HSV cone model, while our previous method uses the HSV cylinder model. The experimental results demonstrate that our method flexibly controls saturation and brightness contrast reversibly and independently

Reversible Image Processing for Color Images with Flexible Control

In this paper, we propose an image processing method for color images to reversibly achieve flexible functions. Most previous research has focused on reversible contrast enhancement (CE) for grayscale images. When we directly apply these methods to color images, hue distortion is caused. Several previous methods have been proposed for color images. These methods, however, only have a CE function. We previously proposed a reversible method for color images that enhances the brightness contrast and improves the saturation. Without losing the advantages of our previous method, we propose a new method to expand the ability of image processing. The proposed method reversibly achieves not only CE and saturation improvement but also sharpening or smoothing and brightness increases or decreases. It ensures full reversibility and thus perfectly reconstructs raw images in any case. The experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in terms of image quality and reversibility