Consultant Report Securing Australia’s Future STEM : Country Comparisons

STEM Country Comparisons: JapanSecuring Australia’s Future Project 2. Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA)This report can be found at www.acola.org.a

Organellar Glue: A Molecular Tool to Artificially Control Chloroplast–Chloroplast Interactions

細胞小器官を接着する新技術「オルガネラグルー」を開発 --オルガネラ間コミュニケーションの操作に期待--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2022-09-30.Organelles can physically interact to facilitate various cellular processes such as metabolite exchange. Artificially regulating these interactions represents a promising approach for synthetic biology. Here, we artificially controlled chloroplast–chloroplast interactions in living plant cells with our organelle glue (ORGL) technique, which is based on reconstitution of a split fluorescent protein. We simultaneously targeted N-terminal and C-terminal fragments of a fluorescent protein to the chloroplast outer envelope membrane or cytosol, respectively, which induced chloroplast–chloroplast interactions. The cytosolic C-terminal fragment likely functions as a bridge between two N-terminal fragments, thereby bringing the chloroplasts in close proximity to interact. We modulated the frequency of chloroplast–chloroplast interactions by altering the ratio of N- and C-terminal fragments. We conclude that the ORGL technique can successfully control chloroplast–chloroplast interactions in plants, providing a proof of concept for the artificial regulation of organelle interactions in living cells

Fluid Data Compression and ROI Detection Using Run Length Method

AbstractIt is difficult to carry out visualization of the large-scale time-varying data directly, even with the supercomputers. Data compression and ROI (Region of Interest) detection are often used to improve efficiency of the visualization of numerical data. It is well known that the Run Length encoding is a good technique to compress the data where the same sequence appeared repeatedly, such as an image with little change, or a set of smooth fluid data. Another advantage of Run Length encoding is that it can be applied to every dimension of data separately. Therefore, the Run Length method can be implemented easily as a parallel processing algorithm. We proposed two different Run Length based methods. When using the Run Length method to compress a data set, its size may increase after the compression if the data does not contain many repeated parts. We only apply the compression for the case that the data can be compressed effectively. By checking the compression ratio, we can detect ROI. The effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed methods are demonstrated through comparing with several existing compression methods using different sets of fluid data

Experimental and simulation study of undesirable short-period deformation in piezoelectric deformable x-ray mirrors

To construct adaptive x-ray focusing optics whose optical parameters can be varied while performing wavefront correction, ultraprecise piezoelectric deformable mirrors have been developed. We computationally and experimentally investigated undesirable short-period deformation caused by piezoelectric actuators adhered to the substrate during mirror deformation. Based on the results of finite element method analysis, shape measurements, and the observation of x-ray reflection images, a guideline is developed for designing deformable mirrors that do not have short-period deformation errors. © 2012 American Institute of Physics.Hiroki Nakamori, Satoshi Matsuyama, Shota Imai, Takashi Kimura, Yasuhisa Sano, Yoshiki Kohmura, Kenji Tamasaku, Makina Yabashi, Tetsuya Ishikawa, and Kazuto Yamauchi, "Experimental and simulation study of undesirable short-period deformation in piezoelectric deformable x-ray mirrors", Review of Scientific Instruments 83(5), 053701 (2012) https://doi.org/10.1063/1.4709499

Photocatalytic CO2 Reduction Using Various Heteroleptic Diimine-Diphosphine Cu(I) Complexes as Photosensitizers

The development of efficient redox-photosensitizers based on the earth-abundant metal ions as an alternative toward noble- and/or rare-metal based photosensitizers is very desirable. In recent years, heteroleptic diimine-diphosphine Cu(I) complexes have been well investigated as one of the most remarkable candidates because of their great potentials as efficient photosensitizers. Here, we investigated the effects of the structure of the diphosphine ligands on the photosensitizing abilities using a series of Cu(I) complexes bearing 2,9-dimethyl-4,7-diphenyl-1,10-phenanthroline (dmpp) and various diphosphine ligands in order to explore the suitable structure for the photosensitizing reactions. The number of methylene chains between the two phosphorous atoms in the diphosphine ligands was systematically changed from two to four, and the relationship between the length of the carbon chains and the photosensitizing abilities were investigated by conducting photocatalytic CO2 reduction with the Cu(I) complexes as photosensitizers. Turnover frequencies of the CO2 reduction drastically increased with increasing the length of the carbon chains. The systematic study herein reported suggests that the large P-Cu-P angles should be one of the most important factors for enhancing the photosensitizing abilities

Saliva and Plasma Reflect Metabolism Altered by Diabetes and Periodontitis

Periodontitis is an inflammatory disorder caused by disintegration of the balance between the periodontal microbiome and host response. While growing evidence suggests links between periodontitis and various metabolic disorders including type 2 diabetes (T2D), non-alcoholic liver disease, and cardiovascular disease (CVD), which often coexist in individuals with abdominal obesity, factors linking periodontal inflammation to common metabolic alterations remain to be fully elucidated. More detailed characterization of metabolomic profiles associated with multiple oral and cardiometabolic traits may provide better understanding of the complexity of oral-systemic crosstalk and its underlying mechanism. We performed comprehensive profiling of plasma and salivary metabolomes using untargeted gas chromatography/mass spectrometry to investigate multivariate covariation with clinical markers of oral and systemic health in 31 T2D patients with metabolic comorbidities and 30 control subjects. Orthogonal partial least squares (OPLS) results enabled more accurate characterization of associations among 11 oral and 25 systemic clinical outcomes, and 143 salivary and 78 plasma metabolites. In particular, metabolites that reflect cardiometabolic changes were identified in both plasma and saliva, with plasma and salivary ratios of (mannose + allose):1,5-anhydroglucitol achieving areas under the curve of 0.99 and 0.92, respectively, for T2D diagnosis. Additionally, OPLS analysis of periodontal inflamed surface area (PISA) as the numerical response variable revealed shared and unique responses of metabolomic and clinical markers to PISA between healthy and T2D groups. When combined with linear regression models, we found a significant correlation between PISA and multiple metabolites in both groups, including threonate, cadaverine and hydrocinnamate in saliva, as well as lactate and pentadecanoic acid in plasma, of which plasma lactate showed a predominant trend in the healthy group. Unique metabolites associated with PISA in the T2D group included plasma phosphate and salivary malate, while those in the healthy group included plasma gluconate and salivary adenosine. Remarkably, higher PISA was correlated with altered hepatic lipid metabolism in both groups, including higher levels of triglycerides, aspartate aminotransferase and alanine aminotransferase, leading to increased risk of cardiometabolic disease based on a score summarizing levels of CVD-related biomarkers. These findings revealed the potential utility of saliva for evaluating the risk of metabolic disorders without need for a blood test, and provide evidence that disrupted liver lipid metabolism may underlie the link between periodontitis and cardiometabolic disease.Sakanaka A., Kuboniwa M., Katakami N., et al. Saliva and Plasma Reflect Metabolism Altered by Diabetes and Periodontitis. Frontiers in Molecular Biosciences, 8, , 742002. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.3389/fmolb.2021.742002

Salivary metabolic signatures of carotid atherosclerosis in patients with type 2 diabetes hospitalized for treatment

Atherosclerosis is a life-threatening disease associated with morbidity and mortality in patients with type 2 diabetes (T2D). This study aimed to characterize a salivary signature of atherosclerosis based on evaluation of carotid intima-media thickness (IMT) to develop a non-invasive predictive tool for diagnosis and disease follow-up. Metabolites in saliva and plasma samples collected at admission and after treatment from 25 T2D patients hospitalized for 2 weeks to undergo medical treatment for diabetes were comprehensively profiled using metabolomic profiling with gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Orthogonal partial least squares analysis, used to explore the relationships of IMT with clinical markers and plasma and salivary metabolites, showed that the top predictors for IMT included salivary allantoin and 1,5-anhydroglucitol (1,5-AG) at both the baseline examination at admission and after treatment. Furthermore, though treatment induced alterations in salivary levels of allantoin and 1,5-AG, it did not modify the association between IMT and these metabolites (pinteraction > 0.05), and models with these metabolites combined yielded satisfactory diagnostic accuracy for the high IMT group even after treatment (area under curve = 0.819). Collectively, this salivary metabolite combination may be useful for non-invasive identification of T2D patients with a higher atherosclerotic burden in clinical settings.Sakanaka A, Katakami N, Furuno M, Nishizawa H, Omori K, Taya N, Ishikawa A, Mayumi S, Inoue M, Tanaka Isomura E, Amano A, Shimomura I, Fukusaki E and Kuboniwa M (2022) Salivary metabolic signatures of carotid atherosclerosis in patients with type 2 diabetes hospitalized for treatment. Front. Mol. Biosci. 9:1074285. doi: 10.3389/fmolb.2022.107428

Wavefield characterization of nearly diffraction-limited focused hard x-ray beam with size less than 10 nm

In situ wavefront compensation is a promising method to realize a focus size of only a few nanometers for x-ray beams. However, precise compensation requires evaluation of the wavefront with an accuracy much shorter than the wavelength. Here, we characterized a one-dimensionally focused beam with a width of 7 nm at 20 keV using a multilayer mirror. We demonstrate that the wavefront can be determined precisely from multiple intensity profiles measured around the beamwaist. We compare the phase profiles recovered from intensity profiles measured under the same mirror condition but with three different aperture sizes and find that the accuracy of phase retrieval is as small as 12. © 2010 American Institute of Physics.Takashi Kimura, Hidekazu Mimura, Soichiro Handa, Hirokatsu Yumoto, Hikaru Yokoyama, Shota Imai, Satoshi Matsuyama, Yasuhisa Sano, Kenji Tamasaku, Yoshiki Komura, Yoshinori Nishino, Makina Yabashi, Tetsuya Ishikawa, and Kazuto Yamauchi , "Wavefield characterization of nearly diffraction-limited focused hard x-ray beam with size less than 10 nm", Review of Scientific Instruments 81(12), 123704 (2010) https://doi.org/10.1063/1.3509384