Genetic Polymorphisms of the Coding Region (Exon 6) of Calpastatin in Indonesian Sheep

Calpastatin (CAST) is an indigenous inhibitor of calpain that involved in regulation of protein turn over and growth. The objective of this research was to identify genetic polymorphisms in the entire exon 6 of calpastatin gene in Indonesian local sheep. A PCR-SSCP method was carried out to identify genetic variation of CAST gene. In total 258 heads of local sheep from 8 populations were investigated, three groups of samples were Thin Tail Sheep (TTS) from Sukabumi, Jonggol, and Kissar. The rest samples were Priangan sheep (PS) from Margawati (Garut meat type) and Wanaraja (Garut fighting type) and Fat Tail Sheep (FTS) from Donggala, Sumbawa, and Rote islands. SSCP analysis revealed that three different SSCP patterns corresponded to three different alleles in the CAST locus (CAST-1, 2, and 3 allele) with five different genotypes. Genetic variation between local sheep populations were calculated based on genotypic and allelic frequencies. Most populations studied were polymorphic, with genotype frequencies of CAST-11, CAST-12, CAST-22, CAST-32, and CAST-33 were 0.286, 0.395, 0.263, 0.046, and 0.007 respectively. CAST-1 and 2 alleles were most commonly found in all populations with total frequency was 0.970, while CAST-3 was a rare allele 0.030 and only found in TTS population. Variation in the CAST gene could be used for the next research as genetic diversity study or to find any association between CAST polymorphism with birth weight, growth trait and carcass quality in Indonesian local sheep

The Doped Two Chain Hubbard Model

The properties of the two-chain Hubbard Model doped away from half-filling are investigated. The charge gap is found to vanish, but a finite spin gap exists over a range of interchain hopping strength $t_\perp$. In this range, there are modified $d_{x^2-y^2}$--like pairing correlations whose strength is correlated with the size of the spin gap. It is found that the pair field correlations are enhanced by the onsite Coulomb interaction U.Comment: 10 pages and 5 postscript figures, RevTeX 3.0, UCI-CMTHE-94-0

Coarse-grained Interaction Potentials for Anisotropic Molecules

We have proposed an efficient parameterization method for a recent variant of the Gay-Berne potential for dissimilar and biaxial particles and demonstrated it for a set of small organic molecules. Compared to the previously proposed coarse-grained models, the new potential exhibits a superior performance in close contact and large distant interactions. The repercussions of thermal vibrations and elasticity has been studied through a statistical method. The study justifies that the potential of mean force is representable with the same functional form, extending the application of this coarse-grained description to a broader range of molecules. Moreover, the advantage of employing coarse-grained models over truncated atomistic summations with large distance cutoffs has been briefly studied.Comment: 8 pages, 4 tables and 6 figures. To appear in J. Chem. Phy

Factorised steady states for multi-species mass transfer models

A general class of mass transport models with Q species of conserved mass is considered. The models are defined on a lattice with parallel discrete time update rules. For one-dimensional, totally asymmetric dynamics we derive necessary and sufficient conditions on the mass transfer dynamics under which the steady state factorises. We generalise the model to mass transfer on arbitrary lattices and present sufficient conditions for factorisation. In both cases, explicit results for random sequential update and continuous time limits are given.Comment: 11 page