Carbon formation promoted by hydrogen peroxide in supercritical water

ArticleCARBON. 46(13):1804-1808 (2008)journal articl

Inter-collisional cutting of multi-walled carbon nanotubes by high-speed agitation

ArticleJOURNAL OF PHYSICS AND CHEMISTRY OF SOLIDS. 69(10): 2481-2486 (2008)journal articl

Obesity-induced DNA hypermethylation of the adiponectin gene mediates insulin resistance

Adiponectin plays a key role in the regulation of the whole-body energy homeostasis by modulating glucose and lipid metabolism. Although obesity-induced reduction of adiponectin expression is primarily ascribed to a transcriptional regulation failure, the underlying mechanisms are largely undefined. Here we show that DNA hypermethylation of a particular region of the adiponectin promoter suppresses adiponectin expression through epigenetic control and, in turn, exacerbates metabolic diseases in obesity. Obesity-induced, pro-inflammatory cytokines promote DNMT1 expression and its enzymatic activity. Activated DNMT1 selectively methylates and stimulates compact chromatin structure in the adiponectin promoter, impeding adiponectin expression. Suppressing DNMT1 activity with a DNMT inhibitor resulted in the amelioration of obesity-induced glucose intolerance and insulin resistance in an adiponectin-dependent manner. These findings suggest a critical role of adiponectin gene epigenetic control by DNMT1 in governing energy homeostasis, implying that modulating DNMT1 activity represents a new strategy for the treatment of obesity-related diseases.published_or_final_versio

Postoperative irradiation after implant placement: A pilot study for prosthetic reconstruction

published_or_final_versio

Rhythmic interaction between Period1 mRNA and HnRNP Q leads to circadian time-dependent translation

The mouse PERIOD1 (mPER1) protein, along with other clock proteins, plays a crucial role in the maintenance of circadian rhythms. mPER1 also provides an important link between the circadian system and the cell cycle system. Here we show that the circadian expression of mPER1 is regulated by rhythmic translational control of mPer1 mRNA together with transcriptional modulation. This time-dependent translation was controlled by an internal ribosomal entry site (IRES) element in the 5' untranslated region (5'-UTR) of mPer1 mRNA along with the trans-acting factor mouse heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein Q (mhnRNP Q). Knockdown of mhnRNP Q caused a decrease in mPER1 levels and a slight delay in mPER1 expression without changing mRNA levels. The rate of IRES-mediated translation exhibits phase-dependent characteristics through rhythmic interactions between mPer1 mRNA and mhnRNP Q. Here, we demonstrate 5'-UTR-mediated rhythmic mPer1 translation and provide evidence for posttranscriptional regulation of the circadian rhythmicity of core clock genes.X112932sciescopu

Preparation and characterization of bamboo-based activated carbons as electrode materials for electric double layer capacitors

ArticleCarbon. 44(8):1592-1595 (2006)journal articl

'Unite and conquer': enhanced prediction of protein subcellular localization by integrating multiple specialized tools

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Knowing the subcellular location of proteins provides clues to their function as well as the interconnectivity of biological processes. Dozens of tools are available for predicting protein location in the eukaryotic cell. Each tool performs well on certain data sets, but their predictions often disagree for a given protein. Since the individual tools each have particular strengths, we set out to integrate them in a way that optimally exploits their potential. The method we present here is applicable to various subcellular locations, but tailored for predicting whether or not a protein is localized in mitochondria. Knowledge of the mitochondrial proteome is relevant to understanding the role of this organelle in global cellular processes.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In order to develop a method for enhanced prediction of subcellular localization, we integrated the outputs of available localization prediction tools by several strategies, and tested the performance of each strategy with known mitochondrial proteins. The accuracy obtained (up to 92%) surpasses by far the individual tools. The method of integration proved crucial to the performance. For the prediction of mitochondrion-located proteins, integration via a two-layer decision tree clearly outperforms simpler methods, as it allows emphasis of biologically relevant features such as the mitochondrial targeting peptide and transmembrane domains.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We developed an approach that enhances the prediction accuracy of mitochondrial proteins by uniting the strength of specialized tools. The combination of machine-learning based integration with biological expert knowledge leads to improved performance. This approach also alleviates the conundrum of how to choose between conflicting predictions. Our approach is easy to implement, and applicable to predicting subcellular locations other than mitochondria, as well as other biological features. For a trial of our approach, we provide a webservice for mitochondrial protein prediction (named YimLOC), which can be accessed through the AnaBench suite at http://anabench.bcm.umontreal.ca/anabench/. The source code is provided in the Additional File <supplr sid="S2">2</supplr>.</p> <suppl id="S2"> <title> <p>Additional file 2</p> </title> <text> <p>This file contains scripts for the online server YimLOC. Please note that there scripts only codes for the ready-to-use STACK-mem-DT described in the main text. The scripts do not provide the training process.</p> </text> <file name="1471-2105-8-420-S2.pdf"> <p>Click here for file</p> </file> </suppl

High energy-density capacitor based on ammonium salt type ionic liquids and their mixing effect by propylene carbonate

© The Electrochemical Society, Inc. 2005. All rights reserved. Except as provided under U.S. copyright law, this work may not be reproducted, resold, distributed, or modified without the express permission of The Electrochemical Society (ECS). The archival version of this work was published in JOURNAL OF THE ELECTROCHEMICAL SOCIETY 152 (4): A710-A715 2005.ArticleJournal of the Electrochemical Society. 152(4):A710-A715 (2005)journal articl

A method to improve protein subcellular localization prediction by integrating various biological data sources

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Protein subcellular localization is crucial information to elucidate protein functions. Owing to the need for large-scale genome analysis, computational method for efficiently predicting protein subcellular localization is highly required. Although many previous works have been done for this task, the problem is still challenging due to several reasons: the number of subcellular locations in practice is large; distribution of protein in locations is imbalanced, that is the number of protein in each location remarkably different; and there are many proteins located in multiple locations. Thus it is necessary to explore new features and appropriate classification methods to improve the prediction performance.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In this paper we propose a new predicting method which combines two key ideas: 1) Information of neighbour proteins in a probabilistic gene network is integrated to enrich the prediction features. 2) Fuzzy k-NN, a classification method based on fuzzy set theory is applied to predict protein locating in multiple sites. Experiment was conducted on a dataset consisting of 22 locations from Budding yeast proteins and significant improvement was observed.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Our results suggest that the neighbourhood information from functional gene networks is predictive to subcellular localization. The proposed method thus can be integrated and complementary to other available prediction methods.</p

Carrier-envelope phase effects on the strong-field photoemission of electrons from metallic nanostructures

Sharp metallic nanotapers irradiated with few-cycle laser pulses are emerging as a source of highly confined coherent electron wavepackets with attosecond duration and strong directivity. The possibility to steer, control or switch such electron wavepackets by light is expected to pave the way towards direct visualization of nanoplasmonic field dynamics and real-time probing of electron motion in solid state nanostructures. Such pulses can be generated by strong-field induced tunneling and acceleration of electrons in the near-field of sharp gold tapers within one half-cycle of the driving laser field. Here, we show the effect of the carrier-envelope phase of the laser field on the generation and motion of strong-field emitted electrons from such tips. This is a step forward towards controlling the coherent electron motion in and around metallic nanostructures on ultrashort length and time scales