Thermal stability of β-lactoglobulins A and B: Effect of SDS, urea, cysteine and N-ethylmaleimide

Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) were used to monitor changes in the secondary structure and thermal stability of β-lactoglobulin A and B in the presence of sodium dodecyl sulphate (SDS), N-ethylmaleimide (NEM), urea and cysteine. An increase in the thermal stabilities of both proteins was noted in the presence of 10 mM-SDS. In the presence of 50 mM-SDS, there was extensive denaturation of both variants. In general, the β-strand/β-sheet regions in the secondary structure of both variants were very susceptible to denaturation by SDS and cysteine, suggesting that these regions may be held by hydrophobic and disulphide bonds. At ambient temperature and physiological pH, a notable difference was observed in the 1636 and 1627 cm -1 regions of the FTIR spectra of the two β-Ig variants. The results suggest possible differences in the nature of the β-sheet/β-strand distribution/content of the two proteins. Urea and NEM at a concentration of 50 mM, had little effect on the secondary structure and denaturation of both variants. New findings are presented which further indicate that although the β-Ig B variant showed greater thermal stability than the A variant in all the cases studied, its denaturation temperature and secondary structure were affected to a greater extent by the protein perturbants than ß-Ig A.published_or_final_versio

COVID-19, Camping, and Construal Level Theory

This study explores the impact of COVID-19 on travelers’ future recreational vehicle, cabin, and tent camping decisions extending the Construal Level Theory. Findings suggest that camping consideration due to COVID-19 is significantly related to understanding about time and distance of travel and dependent on pandemic scale

A critical review on the contributions of chemical and physical factors toward the nucleation and growth of large-area graphene

Since the first isolation of graphene over a decade ago, research into graphene has exponentially increased due to its excellent electrical, optical, mechanical and chemical properties. Graphene has been shown to enhance the performance of various electronic devices. In addition, graphene can be simply produced through chemical vapor deposition (CVD). Although the synthesis of graphene has been widely researched, especially the CVD growth method, the lack of understanding of various synthetic parameters still limits the fabrication of large-area and defect-free graphene films. This report critically reviews various parameters affecting the quality of CVD grown graphene to understand the relationship between these parameters and thechoice of metal substrates and to provide a point of reference for future studies of large-area, CVD-grown graphene

Camping, weather, and disasters: Extending the Construal Level Theory

Camping is an outdoor accommodation and type of recreation that is susceptible to weather and climate change. Camping—in addition to the relationships camping shares with weather— remains understudied despite the subsectors’ salient economic impact and high participation rate. The observable effects of non-meteorological/climatological (e.g., pandemic) is also a topic that has received limited attention. Accordingly, we introduce the Camping-Weather-Disaster (CWD) framework to examine the concurrent impact of weather and the COVID-19 disaster on post-disaster camping trip plans among leisure travelers in the 48 contiguous United States (n=2,442). Extending the Construal Level Theory, the CWD framework considers traveler construal (i.e., understanding) of a disaster and psychological distance (i.e., mental frame of reference) from a disaster alongside empirically observable state-level weather and COVID-19 cases. Results demonstrate that (1) concrete construal about timing and distance of travel is positively related to post-disaster camping trip plans; (2) weather is a significant predictor of post-disaster camping trip plans where there are regionally fewer COVID-19 cases; and (3) state-level COVID-19 cases are the most salient predictor of post-disaster camping trip plans where there are regionally more COVID-19 cases. Although the study context is camping, the CWD framework can be applied to other subsectors of tourism to build understanding and adaptive capacity to future natural conditions and disasters

In vitro performances of hypocotyl and cotyledon explants of tomato cultivars under sodium chloride stress

A plant tissue culture technique is a good method for the evaluation and screening of plant genotypes for salt tolerance. In vitro evaluations of sodium chloride (NaCl) effects on two tomato cultivars (Pearl and Beril) were investigated with four NaCl levels (0, 25, 50 and 75 mM) using hypocotyl and cotyledon explants. The explants were cultured in MS media having 2.0 mg/l BAP along with different concentrations of NaCl. Sodium chloride stress negatively affected the growth traits and chlorophyll content. Significant differences were noticed between the cultivars followed by different NaCl levels, where the Beril responded superior than that of Pearl. The type of explant showed a difference in their response to shoots regeneration under NaCl stress, where the cotyledon explants achieved best results than hypocotyl explants.Key words: Cotyledons, hypocotyls, In vitro, salt stress, tomato

Isolation and purification of membrane-bound cytochrome c from Proteus mirabilis

In the present studies, respiratory chain pathogenic bacterium, Proteus mirabilis, was investigated. In the first phase, growth profile study was performed to optimize the P. mirabilis growth. Maximum bacterial growth could be obtained between 10 – 12 h of culturing time. Down-stream processing was performed by using sonication, ultracentrifugation and detergent solubilization techniques. Partially purified respiratory contents were analyzed spectrophotometrically. Pyridine-ferrochrome and redoxspectra showed the presence of heme-c

Kajian Penerapan Aturan Klasifikasi pada Laminasi Struktur Konstruksi Lambung Kapal Ikan Fiberglass 3 GT

Material fiberglass masih menjadi alternatif dalam pembuatan kapal di Indonesia, hal ini terlihat dari banyaknya kapal ikan berbahan fiberglass pesanan KKP pada tahun 2016. Penelitian ini bertujuan untuk melakukan tinjaun sejauh mana penerapan aturan klasisfikasi pada proses produksi pembangunan kapal ikan 3 GT dengan melakukan pengujian kuat tarik dan kuat tekuk terhadap spesimen laminasi kapal ikan FRP 3 GT yang diambil dari dua galangan yang sedang membangun kapal ikan pesanan Kementrian Kelautan dan Perikanan (KKP) tahun 2016, dimana proses pembangunannya mengacu pada persyaratan pengujian dalam Biro Klasikasi Indonesia (BKI) tahun 2015, yang memakai International Standard (ISO) 527-4 (1997) untuk uji tarik, dan ISO 14125 (1998) untuk uji bending. Spesimen yang akan di uji masing-masing diambil dari bagian lunas (keel), alas (bottom) dan sisi (side). Secara keseluruhan hasil yang diperoleh dalam penelitian ini adalah mengevaluasi dari laminasi struktur konstruksi yang pada penerapanya tidak memenuhi dari aturan klasifiaksi dan juga memeberikan alterbatif susunan laminasi optimal untuk diterapkan dalam pembangunan kapal ikan 3 GT berbahan fiberglass. Penelitian ini juga nantinya dapat berkonstribusi dalam penyususnan standarisasi untuk kapal-kapal fiber berukuran kecil

Physiology of seed yield in soybean: Growth and dry matter production

A field study was conducted to assess the growth parameters controlling the dry matter and seed yield of soybean. The result shows that growth rate was slow during vegetative phase in all genotypes. A relatively smaller portion of total dry mass (TDM) was produced before flower initiation and the bulk of it after anthesis. Maximum absolute growth rate (AGR) was observed during pod filling stage in all genotypes due to maximum leaf area (LA) development and leaf area index (LAI) at this stage. Plant characters like LAI and AGR contributed to higher TDM production. Results indicate that a high yielding soybean genotype should possess larger LAI, higher TDM production ability and higher AGR at all growth stages.Keywords: Soybean seed yield, total dry mass (TDM), leaf area index (LAI), absolute growth rate (AGR), relative growth rate (RGR

Integrating Embeddings from Multiple Protein Language Models to Improve Protein O-GlcNAc Site Prediction

O-linked β-N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) is a distinct monosaccharide modification of serine (S) or threonine (T) residues of nucleocytoplasmic and mitochondrial proteins. O-GlcNAc modification (i.e., O-GlcNAcylation) is involved in the regulation of diverse cellular processes, including transcription, epigenetic modifications, and cell signaling. Despite the great progress in experimentally mapping O-GlcNAc sites, there is an unmet need to develop robust prediction tools that can effectively locate the presence of O-GlcNAc sites in protein sequences of interest. In this work, we performed a comprehensive evaluation of a framework for prediction of protein O-GlcNAc sites using embeddings from pre-trained protein language models. In particular, we compared the performance of three protein sequence-based large protein language models (pLMs), Ankh, ESM-2, and ProtT5, for prediction of O-GlcNAc sites and also evaluated various ensemble strategies to integrate embeddings from these protein language models. Upon investigation, the decision-level fusion approach that integrates the decisions of the three embedding models, which we call LM-OGlcNAc-Site, outperformed the models trained on these individual language models as well as other fusion approaches and other existing predictors in almost all of the parameters evaluated. The precise prediction of O-GlcNAc sites will facilitate the probing of O-GlcNAc site-specific functions of proteins in physiology and diseases. Moreover, these findings also indicate the effectiveness of combined uses of multiple protein language models in post-translational modification prediction and open exciting avenues for further research and exploration in other protein downstream tasks. LM-OGlcNAc-Site’s web server and source code are publicly available to the community