Kinetic analysis of N-alkylaryl carboxamide hexitol nucleotides as substrates for evolved polymerases

Six 1′,5′-anhydrohexitol uridine triphosphates were synthesized with aromatic substitutions appended via a carboxamide linker to the 5-position of their bases. An improved method for obtaining such 5-substituted hexitol nucleosides and nucleotides is described. The incorporation profile of the nucleotide analogues into a DNA duplex overhang using recently evolved XNA polymerases is compared. Long, mixed HNA sequences featuring the base modifications are generated. The apparent binding affinity of four of the nucleotides to the enzyme, the rate of the chemical step and of product release, plus the specificity constant for the incorporation of these modified nucleotides into a DNA duplex overhang using the HNA polymerase T6G12_I521L are determined via pre-steady-state kinetics. HNA polymers displaying aromatic functional groups could have significant impact on the isolation of stable and high-affinity binders and catalysts, or on the design of nanomaterials

Recursive least squares semi-blind beamforming for MIMO using decision directed adaptation and constant modulus criterion

A new semi-blind adaptive beamforming scheme is proposed for multi-input multi-output (MIMO) induced and space- division multiple-access based wireless systems that employ high order phase shift keying signaling. A minimum number of training symbols, very close to the number of receiver antenna elements, are used to provide a rough initial least squares estimate of the beamformer0s weight vector. A novel cost function combining the constant modulus criterion with decision-directed adaptation is adopted to adapt the beamformer weight vector. This cost function can be approximated as a quadratic form with a closed-form solution, based on which we then derive the recursive least squares (RLS) semi-blind adaptive beamforming algorithm. This semi-blind adaptive beamforming scheme is capable of converging fast to the minimum mean-square-error beamforming solution, as demonstrated in our simulation study. Our proposed semi-blind RLS beamforming algorithm therefore provides an e±cient detection scheme for the future generation of MIMO aided mobile communication systems

Exploring the suitability of RanBP2-type Zinc Fingers for RNA-binding protein design.

Transcriptomes consist of several classes of RNA that have wide-ranging but often poorly described functions and the deregulation of which leads to numerous diseases. Engineering of functionalized RNA-binding proteins (RBPs) could therefore have many applications. Our previous studies suggested that the RanBP2-type Zinc Finger (ZF) domain is a suitable scaffold to investigate the design of single-stranded RBPs. In the present work, we have analyzed the natural sequence specificity of various members of the RanBP2-type ZF family and characterized the interaction with their target RNA. Surprisingly, our data showed that natural RanBP2-type ZFs with different RNA-binding residues exhibit a similar sequence specificity and therefore no simple recognition code can be established. Despite this finding, different discriminative abilities were observed within the family. In addition, in order to target a long RNA sequence and therefore gain in specificity, we generated a 6-ZF array by combining ZFs from the RanBP2-type family but also from different families, in an effort to achieve a wider target sequence repertoire. We showed that this chimeric protein recognizes its target sequence (20 nucleotides), both in vitro and in living cells. Altogether, our results indicate that the use of ZFs in RBP design remains attractive even though engineering of specificity changes is challenging

Spatial analysis of poverty and prosperity in the U.S. counties

Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on October 22, 2010).The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file.Dissertation advisor: Dr. Kenneth E. Pigg.Vita.Ph. D. University of Missouri--Columbia 2010.[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] Prosperity is often associated with income. This study goes beyond the economic determinant of prosperity and develops a prosperity index by using indicators of education, employment, housing occupancy, and poverty status for all contiguous U.S. counties and non-metro counties. A spatial approach has been used to analyze the data as the data was spatially distributed. Using OLS, spatial lag, and spatial error methods, three models were developed and compared. Spatial error model explained higher percent of variation among three models. Labor markets variables were found to be important predictors of prosperity in all-counties and non-metro counties. The results showed that high prosperous counties had higher economic opportunities, higher urban influence, higher social capital, lower income inequality, lower percent of minority population, higher percent of employed female population, higher civic agricultural activities, lower percent of people working in low paying service sectors, and more jobs in manufacturing sectors. A major contribution of this study to sociology is that spatial effect should be taken into consideration while dealing with spatially correlated data.Includes bibliographical reference

Interference-free SDMA for FBMC-OQAM

Filter-bank multi-carrier (FBMC) modulations have recently been considered for the emerging wireless communication systems as a means to improve the utilization of the physical resources and the robustness to channel time variations. FBMC divides the overall frequency channel in a set of subchannels of bandwidth proportionally decreasing with the number of subchannels. If the number of subchannels is high enough, the bandwidth of each subchannel is small enough to assume that it is approximately flat. On the other hand, space-division multiple access (SDMA) is a recognized technique to support multiple access in the downlink of a multi-user system. The user signals are precoded at the base station equipped with multiple antennas to separate the users in the spatial domain. The application of SDMA to FBMC is unfortunately difficult when the channel is too frequency selective (or when the number of subchannels to too small) to assume flat subchannels. In that case, the system suffers from inter-symbol and inter-subchannel interference, besides the multi-user interference inherent to SDMA. State-of-the art solutions simply neglect the inter-symbol/subchannel interference. This article proposes a new SDMA precoder for FBMC capable of mitigating the three sources of interference. It is constructed per subchannel in order to keep an acceptable complexity and has the structure of a filter applied on each subchannel and its neighbors at twice the symbol rate. Numerical results demonstrate that the precoder can get rid of all the interference present in the system and benefit therefore from the diversity and power gains achievable with multiple antenna systems.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishe