Studies of the purine analog associated modulation of human erythrocyte acid phosphatase activity

The activity of the human erythrocyte acid phosphatase is modulated by a series of structural analogs of purine. The unsubstituted purine base does not affect the enzyme activity. Addition of a substituent at the number six position usually generates an analog which activates the enzyme while similar substitutions at the two position usually generate an inhibitor. Pyrimidines are generally ineffective as modulators while several modifications of the imidazole ring of the purine analogs do not abolish the modulator activity of the purine analog. The level of response to all active analogs is isozyme specific. Differences in apparent relative affinities among the modulators are noted. The modulators with a positive effect on enzyme activity, are effective in the presence of methanol which is more effective than H 2 0 as a phosphate acceptor. These analogs act by enhancing the rate of transfer of phosphate to H 2 O, while decreasing the rate of transfer to methanol. The results suggest that the purine analogs may act by altering the rate of hydrolysis of the phosphoenzyme intermediate by H 2 0 or may change the rate-limiting step in the catalytic mechanism.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45350/1/11010_2004_Article_BF00220780.pd

Characterization of a series of electrophoretic and enzyme activity variants of human glucose-phosphate isomerase

A total of 3438 cord blood samples were screened for variants of erythrocyte glucose-phosphate isomerase. The five different electrophoretic, three activity/deficiency, and one thermostability variants distributed among 27 unrelated Caucasian families of that population, plus two electrophoretic variants previously described from three Amerindian tribes were subsequently examined for cryptic variation using activity and thermostability criteria. Although thermostability differences were observed between electrophoretic variants, no microheterogeneity within any one class of variant was detected.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/47616/1/439_2004_Article_BF00273834.pd

Near-Threshold Production of omega Mesons in the pp -> pp omega Reaction

The total cross section for omega production in the pp -> pp omega reaction has been measured at five c.m. excess energies from 3.8 to 30 MeV. The energy dependence is easily understood in terms of a strong proton-proton final state interaction combined with a smearing over the width of the state. The ratio of near-threshold phi and omega production is consistent with the predictions of a one-pion-exchange model and the degree of violation of the OZI rule is similar to that found in the pi-p -> n omega/phi reactions.Comment: Report in LaTeX2e. 12 pages with 2 eps figure

Polarisation of the omega meson in the pd-->3He+omega reaction at 1360 and 1450 MeV

The tensor polarisation of omega mesons produced in the pd-->3He+omega reaction has been studied at two energies near threshold. The 3He nuclei were detected in coincidence with the pi0pi+pi- or pi0gamma decay products of the omega. In contrast to the case of phi meson production, the omega mesons are found to be unpolarised. This brings into question the applicability of the Okubo-Zweig-Iizuka rule when comparing the production of vector mesons in low energy hadronic reactions.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure

The pd --> ^3He eta pi0 reaction at T_p = 1450 MeV

The cross section for the pd --> ^3He eta pi0 reaction has been measured at a beam energy of 1450 MeV using the WASA detector at the CELSIUS storage ring and detecting one ^3He and four photons from the decays of the two photons. The data indicate that the production mechanism involves the formation of the Delta(1232) isobar. Although the beam energy does not allow the full peak of this resonance to be seen, the invariant masses of all three pairs of final state particles are well reproduced by a phase space Monte Carlo simulation weighted with the p-wave factor of the square of the pi^0 momentum in the ^3Hepi^0 system.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

Exclusive Measurements of pd→3Heππpd\to ^3He \pi\pi : the ABCABC Effect Revisited

Exclusive measurements of the reactions $pd\to$ $^3He \pi^+ \pi^-$ and $pd\to$ $^3He \pi^0\pi^0$ have been carried out at $T_p=0.895$ GeV at the CELSIUS storage ring using the WASA detector. The $\pi^+\pi^-$ channel evidences a pronounced enhancement at low invariant $\pi\pi$ masses - as anticipated from previous inclusive measurements of the ABC effect. This enhancement is seen to be even much larger in the isoscalar $\pi^0\pi^0$ channel. The differential distributions prove this enhancement to be of scalar-isoscalar nature. $\Delta\Delta$ calculations give a good description of the data, if a boundstate condition is imposed for the intermediate $\Delta\Delta$ system.Comment: extended version, 8 pages, 7 figures, theoretical model calculations adde

Near-threshold ω\omega and ϕ\phi meson productions in pppp collisions

Using a relativistic effective Lagrangian at the hadronic level, near-threshold $\omega$ and $\phi$ meson productions in proton proton ($pp$) collisions, $p p \to p p \omega/\phi$, are studied within the distorted wave Born approximation. Both initial and final state $pp$ interactions are included. In addition to total cross section data, both $\omega$ and $\phi$ angular distribution data are used to constrain further the model parameters. For the $p p \to p p \omega$ reaction we consider two different possibilities: with and without the inclusion of nucleon resonances. The nucleon resonances are included in a way to be consistent with the $\pi^- p \to \omega n$ reaction. It is shown that the inclusion of nucleon resonances can describe the data better overall than without their inclusion. However, the SATURNE data in the range of excess energies $Q < 31$ MeV are still underestimated by about a factor of two. As for the $p p \to p p \phi$ reaction it is found that the presently limited available data from DISTO can be reproduced by four sets of values for the vector and tensor $\phi NN$ coupling constants. Further measurements of the energy dependence of the total cross section near threshold energies should help to constrain better the $\phi NN$ coupling constant.Comment: Latex, 37 pages, 13 figures (14 EPS-figure files), text modified, version to appear in Phys. ReV.

η′\eta^{\prime} production in proton-proton scattering close to threshold}

The $pp \to pp \eta^{\prime}$ (958) reaction has been measured at COSY using the internal beam and the COSY-11 facility. The total cross sections at the four different excess energies \mbox{$Q = ~1.5 ~MeV, ~1.7 ~MeV, ~2.9 ~MeV,$ and $~4.1 MeV$} have been evaluated to be \mbox{$\sigma = 2.5 \pm 0.5~nb$, $~~~ 2.9 \pm 1.1~nb$, $~~~ 12.7 \pm 3.2~nb$, ~ and $~~~ 25.2 \pm 3.6 ~nb$}, respectively. In this region of excess energy the $\eta^{\prime}$ (958) cross sections are much lower compared to those of the $\pi ^0$ and $\eta$ production.Comment: 11 pages, 3 figure

Differential Expression of miRNAs in Response to Topping in Flue-Cured Tobacco (Nicotiana tabacum) Roots

Topping is an important cultivating measure for flue-cured tobacco, and many genes had been found to be differentially expressed in response to topping. But it is still unclear how these genes are regulated. MiRNAs play a critical role in post-transcriptional gene regulation, so we sequenced two sRNA libraries from tobacco roots before and after topping, with a view to exploring transcriptional differences in miRNAs.Two sRNA libraries were generated from tobacco roots before and after topping. Solexa high-throughput sequencing of tobacco small RNAs revealed a total of 12,104,207 and 11,292,018 reads representing 3,633,398 and 3,084,102 distinct sequences before and after topping. The expressions of 136 conserved miRNAs (belonging to 32 families) and 126 new miRNAs (belonging to 77 families) were determined. There were three major conserved miRNAs families (nta-miR156, nta-miR172 and nta-miR171) and two major new miRNAs families (nta-miRn2 and nta-miRn26). All of these identified miRNAs can be folded into characteristic miRNA stem-loop secondary hairpin structures, and qRT-PCR was adopted to validate and measure the expression of miRNAs. Putative targets were identified for 133 out of 136 conserved miRNAs and 126 new miRNAs. Of these miRNAs whose targets had been identified, the miRNAs which change markedly (>2 folds) belong to 53 families and their targets have different biological functions including development, response to stress, response to hormone, N metabolism, C metabolism, signal transduction, nucleic acid metabolism and other metabolism. Some interesting targets for miRNAs had been determined.The differential expression profiles of miRNAs were shown in flue-cured tobacco roots before and after topping, which can be expected to regulate transcripts distinctly involved in response to topping. Further identification of these differentially expressed miRNAs and their targets would allow better understanding of the regulatory mechanisms for flue-cured tobacco response to topping