14,353 research outputs found
Importance of adenosine-to-inosine editing adjacent to the anticodon in an Arabidopsis alanine tRNA under environmental stress
In all organisms, transfer RNAs (tRNAs) undergo extensive post-transcriptional modifications. Although base modifications in the anticodon are known to alter decoding specificity or improve decoding accuracy, much less is known about the functional relevance of modifications in other positions of tRNAs. Here, we report the identification of an A-to-I tRNA editing enzyme that modifies the tRNA-Ala(AGC) in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. The enzyme is homologous to Tad1p, a yeast tRNA-specific adenosine deaminase, and it selectively deaminates the adenosine in the position 3'-adjacent to the anticodon (A(37)) to inosine. We show that the AtTAD1 protein is exclusively localized in the nucleus. The tad1 loss-of-function mutants isolated in Arabidopsis show normal accumulation of the tRNA-Ala(AGC), suggesting that the loss of the I(37) modification does not affect tRNA stability. The tad1 knockout mutants display no discernible phenotype under standard growth conditions, but produce less biomass under environmental stress conditions. Our results provide the first evidence in support of a physiological relevance of the A(37)-to-I modification in eukaryotes
A Commensal Relationship Between a Foraminifer and a Bivalve Mollusk
During June, 1960, the M/V Hermes of the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory made several trawl hauls south of Horn Island, Mississippi. One haul was made June 27 at a depth of 20 m. on sandy mud botton at 30°04â30â N., 88â36â W., or about 10 nautical miles south of Horn Island. A considerable number of animals, including starfish, hermit crabs and tube worms, were caught in the trawl. Pieces of the parchment-like worm tube of Chaetopterus variopedatus (Renier) were caught in the meshes of the net and were also collected.
A small bivalve mollusk, Notocorbula operculata (Philippi 1848) was found to be attached to most of the Chaetopterus tubes. Microscopic examination showed that the bivalves were attached at the anterior ventral margin with a byssal thread. This little clam has been found under similar conditions at Dry Tortugas, Florida (Harvey R. Bullis, Jr., personal communication). It has been reported as abundant in 22-65 m. of water on mud bottom along the entire northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico (Parker 1960). It was also noticed that a single species of Foraminifera was attached to many of the clams. The attachment was not very strong, seeming to consist merely of a weak cement holding the ventral surface of the foraminifer to the bivalve shell, nor was it confined to a particular area on the bivalve, but occurred in any position on either valve
The Herschel Lensing Survey (HLS): Overview
The Herschel Lensing Survey (HLS) will conduct deep PACS and SPIRE imaging of âŒ40 massive clusters of galaxies. The strong gravitational lensing power of these clusters will enable us to penetrate through the confusion noise, which sets the ultimate limit on our ability to probe the
Universe with Herschel. Here we present an overview of our survey and a summary of the major results from our science demonstration phase (SDP) observations of the Bullet cluster (z = 0.297). The SDP data are rich and allow us to study not only the background high-redshift galaxies
(e.g., strongly lensed and distorted galaxies at z = 2.8 and 3.2) but also the properties of cluster-member galaxies. Our preliminary analysis shows a great diversity of far-infrared/submillimeter spectral energy distributions (SEDs), indicating that we have much to learn with Herschel about the properties of galaxy SEDs. We have also detected the Sunyaev-Zelâdovich (SZ) effect increment with the SPIRE data. The success of this SDP program demonstrates the great potential of the Herschel Lensing Survey to produce exciting results in a variety of science areas
The far-infrared/submillimeter properties of galaxies located behind the Bullet cluster
The Herschel Lensing Survey (HLS) takes advantage of gravitational lensing by massive galaxy clusters to sample a population of high-redshift galaxies which are too faint to be detected above the confusion limit of current far-infrared/submillimeter telescopes. Measurements from 100â500 ÎŒm bracket the peaks of the far-infrared spectral energy distributions of these galaxies, characterizing their infrared luminosities and star formation rates. We introduce initial results from our science demonstration phase observations, directed toward the Bullet cluster (1E0657-56). By combining our observations with LABOCA 870 ÎŒm and AzTEC 1.1 mm data we fully constrain the spectral energy distributions of 19 MIPS 24 ÎŒm-selected galaxies which are located behind the cluster. We find that their colors are best fit using templates based on local galaxies with systematically lower infrared luminosities. This suggests that our sources are not like local ultra-luminous infrared galaxies in which vigorous star formation is contained in a compact highly dust-obscured region. Instead, they appear to be scaled up versions of lower luminosity local galaxies with star formation occurring on larger physical scales
A Commensal Relationship Between a Foraminifer and a Bivalve Mollusk
During June, 1960, the M/V Hermes of the Gulf Coast Research Laboratory made several trawl hauls south of Horn Island, Mississippi. One haul was made June 27 at a depth of 20 m. on sandy mud botton at 30°04â30â N., 88â36â W., or about 10 nautical miles south of Horn Island. A considerable number of animals, including starfish, hermit crabs and tube worms, were caught in the trawl. Pieces of the parchment-like worm tube of Chaetopterus variopedatus (Renier) were caught in the meshes of the net and were also collected.
A small bivalve mollusk, Notocorbula operculata (Philippi 1848) was found to be attached to most of the Chaetopterus tubes. Microscopic examination showed that the bivalves were attached at the anterior ventral margin with a byssal thread. This little clam has been found under similar conditions at Dry Tortugas, Florida (Harvey R. Bullis, Jr., personal communication). It has been reported as abundant in 22-65 m. of water on mud bottom along the entire northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico (Parker 1960). It was also noticed that a single species of Foraminifera was attached to many of the clams. The attachment was not very strong, seeming to consist merely of a weak cement holding the ventral surface of the foraminifer to the bivalve shell, nor was it confined to a particular area on the bivalve, but occurred in any position on either valve
Deep Herschel view of obscured star formation in the Bullet cluster
We use deep, five band (100â500 ÎŒm) data from the Herschel Lensing Survey (HLS) to fully constrain the obscured star formation rate, SFR_(FIR), of galaxies in the Bullet cluster (z = 0.296), and a smaller background system (z = 0.35) in the same field. Herschel detects 23 Bullet cluster members with a total SFRFIR = 144±14 M_â yr^(-1). On average, the background system contains brighter far-infrared (FIR) galaxies, with ~50% higher SFRFIR (21 galaxies; 207 ± 9 M_â yr^(-1)). SFRs extrapolated from 24 ÎŒm flux via recent templates (SFR_(24 ”m)) agree well with SFRFIR for ~60% of the cluster galaxies. In the remaining ~40%, SFR24 ”m underestimates SFR_(FIR) due to a significant excess in observed S_(100)/S_(24) (rest frame S_(75)/S_(18)) compared to templates of the same FIR luminosity
An \emph{ab initio} method for locating characteristic potential energy minima of liquids
It is possible in principle to probe the many--atom potential surface using
density functional theory (DFT). This will allow us to apply DFT to the
Hamiltonian formulation of atomic motion in monatomic liquids [\textit{Phys.
Rev. E} {\bf 56}, 4179 (1997)]. For a monatomic system, analysis of the
potential surface is facilitated by the random and symmetric classification of
potential energy valleys. Since the random valleys are numerically dominant and
uniform in their macroscopic potential properties, only a few quenches are
necessary to establish these properties. Here we describe an efficient
technique for doing this. Quenches are done from easily generated "stochastic"
configurations, in which the nuclei are distributed uniformly within a
constraint limiting the closeness of approach. For metallic Na with atomic pair
potential interactions, it is shown that quenches from stochastic
configurations and quenches from equilibrium liquid Molecular Dynamics (MD)
configurations produce statistically identical distributions of the structural
potential energy. Again for metallic Na, it is shown that DFT quenches from
stochastic configurations provide the parameters which calibrate the
Hamiltonian. A statistical mechanical analysis shows how the underlying
potential properties can be extracted from the distributions found in quenches
from stochastic configurations
The efficacy of halofantrine in the treatment of acute malaria in nonimmune travelers
A multicenter prospective trial was performed to investigate the efficacy and the tolerability of halofantrine in nonimmune patients with malaria imported from areas with drug-resistant falciparum parasites (mainly Africa). Forty-five of the 74 subjects were treated with a one-day regimen (3 x 500 mg) of halofantrine, and the other 29 received the same regimen with an additional treatment on day 7. In the second group, a 100% efficacy rate was demonstrated, but in the group receiving the one-day regimen, four recrudescences were observed in patients with falciparum malaria. Only five mild adverse reactions were seen, which disappeared spontaneously after the end of the treatment. We conclude that halofantrine is highly effective in curing malaria in nonimmune subjects. The treatment scheme for such persons should include an additional treatment on day 7 for nonimmune individuals. This drug was well tolerated in our patients, indicating that halofantrine will be useful in the treatment of multidrug-resistant malaria in nonimmune persons
Optical Conductivity in a Two-Band Superconductor: Pb
We demonstrate the effect of bandstructure on the superconducting properties
of Pb by calculating the strong-coupling features in the optical conductivity,
, due to the electron-phonon interaction. The importance of
momentum dependence in the calculation of the properties of superconductors has
previously been raised for MgB. Pb resembles MgB in that it is a two
band superconductor in which the bands' contributions to the Fermi surface have
very different topologies. We calculate by calculating a
memory function which has been recently used to analyze of
BiSrCaCuO. In our calculations the two components of
the Fermi surface are described by parameterizations of de Haas--van Alphen
data. We use a phonon spectrum which is a fit to neutron scattering data. By
including the momentum dependence of the Fermi surface good agreement is found
with the experimentally determined strong-coupling features which can be
described by a broad peak at around 4.5 meV and a narrower higher peak around 8
meV of equal height. The calculated features are found to be dominated by
scattering between states within the third band. By contrast scattering between
states in the second band leads to strong-coupling features in which the height
of the high energy peak is reduced by compared to that of the low
energy peak. This result is similar to that in the conventional isotropic
(momentum independent) treatment of superconductivity. Our results show that it
is important to use realistic models of the bandstructure and phonons, and to
avoid using momentum averaged quantities, in calculations in order to get
quantitatively accurate results
- âŠ