The evolution of the eutrophication of the Palić Lake (Serbia)

Eutrophication is a world-wide environmental issue. The Palic Lake is a shallow lake typical for the Pannonian plain. The Lake itself was in a very bad condition during the late sixties of the last century; polluted and hypertrophic. Due to inadequate water quality, it was dried out in 1971 and re-established in 1977 and since then its trophicity has been worsening. The lake has recreational purposes but it is also a collector for treated municipal waste waters coming from the lagoons for active sludge water treatment. The sewage discharges from rapidly developing towns in the watershed and the growing use of fertilizers in agriculture increased the nutrient load to the Lake in the last decades. A steady increase of phosphorus loading is the most important factor of the lake  eutrophication. The result of the accelerated eutrophication is the enormous amount of sediment at the bottom of the Palic Lake. Therefore, in the lake that covers an area of 565 ha and volume of 10 million m3, there was 1.900.160 m3 of sediment. The sediment thickness varied from 0.3 to 1.2 m. In summer 2010, the recreational part of the lake (sector IV) was 1.311.356 m3 of sediment, characterized with concentrations of total phosphorus (TP) of 2885 mg/kg, 4300 mg/kg total nitrogen (TN) and 39000 mg/kg total organic carbon TOC. The sediment of the Palic Lake was not loaded with high concentrations of heavy metals. Everything mentioned supports the fact that the restoration of this aquatic system is necessary and applied measures have to be grounded on the principles of ecoremediation technologies.Key words: Eutrophication, Palic Lake, sediment, total N, total P

Mangan-superoksid-dismutaza (MnSOD) katalizuje NO-zavisno nitrovanje ostatka tirozina

The peroxynitrite-induced nitration of manganese superoxide dismutase (MnSOD) tyrosine residue, which causes enzyme inactivation, is well established, This led to suggestions that MnSOD nitration and inactivation in vivo, detected in various diseases associated with oxidative stress and overproduction of nitric monoxide (NO), conditions which favor peroxynitrite formation, is also caused by peroxynitrite. However, our previous ill vitro study demonstrated that exposure of MnSOD to NO led to NO conversion into nitrosonium (NO+) and nitroxyl (NO-) species, which caused enzyme modifications and inactivation. Here it is reported that MnSOD is tyrosine nitrated upon exposure to NO, as well as that MnSOD nitration contributes to inactivation of the enzyme. Collectively, these observations provide a compelling argument supporting the generation of nitrating species in MnSOD exposed to NO and shed a new light on MnSOD tyrosine nitration and inactivation ill vivo. This may represent a novel mechanism by which MnSOD protects cell from deleterious effects associated with overproduction of NO. However, extensive MnSOD modification and inactivation associated with prolonged exposure to NO will amplify the toxic effects caused by increased cell superoxide and NO levels.Dobro je poznato da peroksinitrit izaziva nitrovanje ostataka tirozina u mangan-superoksid- dismutazi (MnSOD) što dovodi do inaktivacije enzima. Pokazano je da nitrovanje i inaktivacija MnSOD-a nastaje u raznim bolestima za koje je karakteristič an oksidativni stres i povećana produkcija azot-monoksida (NO). Pošto se pri ovim uslovima očekuje nastajanje peroksinitrita predloženo je da peroksinitrit izaziva nitrovanje i inaktivaciju MnSOD in vivo. U našem prethodnom radu pokazali smo da MnSOD katalizuje transformaciju NO u nitrozonijum (NO+) i nitroksil (NO–) reaktivne vrste, te identifikovali neke od modifikacija molekula enzima koje pri tome nastaju izazivajući njegovu inaktivaciju. U ovom radu je pokazano da pri izlaganju MnSOD azot-monoksidu dolazi i do nitrovanja ostatka tirozina u molekulu enzima, što doprinosi njegovoj inaktivaciji. Ovi rezultati ukazuju da pri interakciji MnSOD sa NO dolazi do nastajanja nitrujućih vrsta, što baca novo svetlo na proces nitrovanja ostataka tirozina i inaktivaciju MnSOD in vivo. Ovo može da predstavlja novi mehanizam kojim MnSOD štiti ćeliju odštetnih efekata izazvanih hiperprodukcijom azot-monoksida. Međutim ekstenzivne modifikacije i inaktivacija MnSOD do kojih dolazi pri produženom izlaganju enzima NO, uvećaće toksične efekte izazvane povećanim koncentracijama superoksida i NO u ćeliji

RNA mutagenesis yields highly diverse mRNA libraries for in vitro protein evolution

BACKGROUND: In protein drug development, in vitro molecular optimization or protein maturation can be used to modify protein properties. One basic approach to protein maturation is the introduction of random DNA mutations into the target gene sequence to produce a library of variants that can be screened for the preferred protein properties. Unfortunately, the capability of this approach has been restricted by deficiencies in the methods currently available for random DNA mutagenesis and library generation. Current DNA based methodologies generally suffer from nucleotide substitution bias that preferentially mutate particular base pairs or show significant bias with respect to transitions or transversions. In this report, we describe a novel RNA-based random mutagenesis strategy that utilizes Qβ replicase to manufacture complex mRNA libraries with a mutational spectrum that is close to the ideal. RESULTS: We show that Qβ replicase generates all possible base substitutions with an equivalent preference for mutating A/T or G/C bases and with no significant bias for transitions over transversions. To demonstrate the high diversity that can be sampled from a Qβ replicase-generated mRNA library, the approach was used to evolve the binding affinity of a single domain V(NAR )shark antibody fragment (12Y-2) against malarial apical membrane antigen-1 (AMA-1) via ribosome display. The binding constant (K(D)) of 12Y-2 was increased by 22-fold following two consecutive but discrete rounds of mutagenesis and selection. The mutagenesis method was also used to alter the substrate specificity of β-lactamase which does not significantly hydrolyse the antibiotic cefotaxime. Two cycles of RNA mutagenesis and selection on increasing concentrations of cefotaxime resulted in mutants with a minimum 10,000-fold increase in resistance, an outcome achieved faster and with fewer overall mutations than in comparable studies using other mutagenesis strategies. CONCLUSION: The RNA based approach outlined here is rapid and simple to perform and generates large, highly diverse populations of proteins, each differing by only one or two amino acids from the parent protein. The practical implications of our results are that suitable improved protein candidates can be recovered from in vitro protein evolution approaches using significantly fewer rounds of mutagenesis and selection, and with little or no collateral damage to the protein or its mRNA

Cosmological radiative transfer comparison project - II. The radiation-hydrodynamic tests

The development of radiation hydrodynamical methods that are able to follow gas dynamics and radiative transfer (RT) self-consistently is key to the solution of many problems in numerical astrophysics. Such fluid flows are highly complex, rarely allowing even for approximate analytical solutions against which numerical codes can be tested. An alternative validation procedure is to compare different methods against each other on common problems, in order to assess the robustness of the results and establish a range of validity for the methods. Previously, we presented such a comparison for a set of pure RT tests (i.e. for fixed, non-evolving density fields). This is the second paper of the Cosmological Radiative Transfer Comparison Project, in which we compare nine independent RT codes directly coupled to gas dynamics on three relatively simple astrophysical hydrodynamics problems: (i) the expansion of an H ii region in a uniform medium, (ii) an ionization front in a 1/r2 density profile with a flat core and (iii) the photoevaporation of a uniform dense clump. Results show a broad agreement between the different methods and no big failures, indicating that the participating codes have reached a certain level of maturity and reliability. However, many details still do differ, and virtually every code has showed some shortcomings and has disagreed, in one respect or another, with the majority of the results. This underscores the fact that no method is universal and all require careful testing of the particular features which are most relevant to the specific problem at han

Search for Doubly-Charged Higgs Boson Production at HERA

A search for the single production of doubly-charged Higgs bosons H^{\pm \pm} in ep collisions is presented. The signal is searched for via the Higgs decays into a high mass pair of same charge leptons, one of them being an electron. The analysis uses up to 118 pb^{-1} of ep data collected by the H1 experiment at HERA. No evidence for doubly-charged Higgs production is observed and mass dependent upper limits are derived on the Yukawa couplings h_{el} of the Higgs boson to an electron-lepton pair. Assuming that the doubly-charged Higgs only decays into an electron and a muon via a coupling of electromagnetic strength h_{e \mu} = \sqrt{4 \pi \alpha_{em}} = 0.3, a lower limit of 141 GeV on the H^{\pm\pm} mass is obtained at the 95% confidence level. For a doubly-charged Higgs decaying only into an electron and a tau and a coupling h_{e\tau} = 0.3, masses below 112 GeV are ruled out.Comment: 15 pages, 3 figures, 1 tabl

Forward pi^0 Production and Associated Transverse Energy Flow in Deep-Inelastic Scattering at HERA

Deep-inelastic positron-proton interactions at low values of Bjorken-x down to x \approx 4.10^-5 which give rise to high transverse momentum pi^0 mesons are studied with the H1 experiment at HERA. The inclusive cross section for pi^0 mesons produced at small angles with respect to the proton remnant (the forward region) is presented as a function of the transverse momentum and energy of the pi^0 and of the four-momentum transfer Q^2 and Bjorken-x. Measurements are also presented of the transverse energy flow in events containing a forward pi^0 meson. Hadronic final state calculations based on QCD models implementing different parton evolution schemes are confronted with the data.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures and 3 table

Constraints on the χ_(c1) versus χ_(c2) polarizations in proton-proton collisions at √s = 8 TeV

The polarizations of promptly produced χ_(c1) and χ_(c2) mesons are studied using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC, in proton-proton collisions at √s=8  TeV. The χ_c states are reconstructed via their radiative decays χ_c → J/ψγ, with the photons being measured through conversions to e⁺e⁻, which allows the two states to be well resolved. The polarizations are measured in the helicity frame, through the analysis of the χ_(c2) to χ_(c1) yield ratio as a function of the polar or azimuthal angle of the positive muon emitted in the J/ψ → μ⁺μ⁻ decay, in three bins of J/ψ transverse momentum. While no differences are seen between the two states in terms of azimuthal decay angle distributions, they are observed to have significantly different polar anisotropies. The measurement favors a scenario where at least one of the two states is strongly polarized along the helicity quantization axis, in agreement with nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics predictions. This is the first measurement of significantly polarized quarkonia produced at high transverse momentum