7,521 research outputs found
Structural and mutagenic analysis of the RM controller protein C.Esp1396I
Bacterial restriction-modification (RM) systems are comprised of two complementary enzymatic activities that prevent the establishment of foreign DNA in a bacterial cell: DNA methylation and DNA restriction. These two activities are tightly regulated to prevent over-methylation or auto-restriction. Many Type II RM systems employ a controller (C) protein as a transcriptional regulator for the endonuclease gene (and in some cases, the methyltransferase gene also). All high-resolution structures of C-protein/DNA-protein complexes solved to date relate to C.Esp1396I, from which the interactions of specific amino acid residues with DNA bases and/or the phosphate backbone could be observed. Here we present both structural and DNA binding data for a series of mutations to the key DNA binding residues of C.Esp1396I. Our results indicate that mutations to the backbone binding residues (Y37, S52) had a lesser affect on DNA binding affinity than mutations to those residues that bind directly to the bases (T36, R46), and the contributions of each side chain to the binding energies are compared. High-resolution X-ray crystal structures of the mutant and native proteins showed that the fold of the proteins was unaffected by the mutations, but also revealed variation in the flexible loop conformations associated with DNA sequence recognition. Since the tyrosine residue Y37 contributes to DNA bending in the native complex, we have solved the structure of the Y37F mutant protein/DNA complex by X-ray crystallography to allow us to directly compare the structure of the DNA in the mutant and native complexes
Thermohaline mixing in low-mass giants: RGB and beyond
Thermohaline mixing has recently been proposed to occur in low mass red
giants, with large consequence for the chemical yields of low mass stars. We
investigate the role of thermohaline mixing during the evolution of stars
between 1 Msun and 3 Msun. We use a stellar evolution code which includes
rotational mixing and internal magnetic fields. We confirm that thermohaline
mixing has the potential to destroy most of the helium 3 which is produced
earlier on the main sequence during the red giant stage, in stars below
1.5Msun. We find this process to continue during core helium burning and
beyond. We find rotational and magnetic mixing to be negligible compared to the
thermohaline mixing in the relevant layers, even if the interaction of
thermohaline motions with the differential rotation may be essential to
establish the time scale of thermohaline mixing in red giants.Comment: Proceedings of the Conference "Unsolved problems in stellar physics"
- Cambridge, July 200
Long GRBs from binary stars: runaway, Wolf-Rayet progenitors
The collapsar model for long gamma-ray bursts requires a rapidly rotating
Wolf-Rayet star as progenitor. We test the idea of producing rapidly rotating
Wolf-Rayet stars in massive close binaries through mass accretion and
consecutive quasi-chemically homogeneous evolution; the latter had previously
been shown to provide collapsars below a certain metallicity threshold for
single stars. The binary channel presented here may provide a means for massive
stars to obtain the high rotation rates required to evolve quasi-chemically
homogeneous and fulfill the collapsar scenario. Moreover, it suggests that a
possibly large fraction of long gamma-ray bursts occurs in runaway stars.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of the conference "Unsolved problems in
stellar physics" - Cambridge, July 200
Some Remarks on Effective Range Formula in Potential Scattering
In this paper, we present different proofs of very recent results on the
necessary as well as sufficient conditions on the decrease of the potential at
infinity for the validity of effective range formulas in 3-D in low energy
potential scattering (Andr\'e Martin, private communication, to appear. See
Theorem 1 below). Our proofs are based on compact formulas for the
phase-shifts. The sufficiency conditions are well-known since long. But the
necessity of the same conditions for potentials keeping a constant sign at
large distances are new. All these conditions are established here for
dimension 3 and for all angular momenta
Electron-Phonon Interactions in C-derived Molecular Solids
We present {\it ab initio} density-functional calculations of molecular
solids formed from C-derived closed-shell fullerenes. Solid
CH is found to bind weakly and exhibits many of the electronic
structure features of solid C with an enhanced electron-phonon
interaction potential. We show that chemical doping of this structure is
feasible, albeit more restrictive than its C counterpart, with an
estimated superconducting transition temperature exceeding those of the
alkali-doped C solids.Comment: Lower quality postscript file for Figure 1 is used in the manuscript
in order to meet submission quota for pre-print server. Higher quality
postscript file available from author: [email protected] This article has
been updated to reflect changes incorporated during the peer review process.
It is published in PRB 70, 140504(R) 200
The cost of stochastic resetting
Resetting a stochastic process has been shown to expedite the completion time
of some complex task, such as finding a target for the first time. Here we
consider the cost of resetting by associating a cost to each reset, which is a
function of the distance travelled during the reset event. We compute the
Laplace transform of the joint probability of first passage time , number
of resets and resetting cost , and use this to study the statistics of
the total cost. We show that in the limit of zero resetting rate the mean cost
is finite for a linear cost function, vanishes for a sub-linear cost function
and diverges for a super-linear cost function. This result contrasts with the
case of no resetting where the cost is always zero. For the case of an
exponentially increasing cost function we show that the mean cost diverges at a
finite resetting rate. We explain this by showing that the distribution of the
cost has a power-law tail with continuously varying exponent that depends on
the resetting rate.Comment: 22 pages, 7 figure
Mott-Hubbard insulators for systems with orbital degeneracy
We study how the electron hopping reduces the Mott-Hubbard band gap in the
limit of a large Coulomb interaction U and as a function of the orbital
degeneracy N. The results support the conclusion that the hopping contribution
grows as roughly \sqrt{N}W, where W is the one-particle band width, but in
certain models a crossover to a \sim NW behavior is found for a sufficiently
large N.Comment: 7 pages, revtex, 6 figures more information at
http://www.mpi-stuttgart.mpg.de/dokumente/andersen/fullerene
A consistent derivation of the quark--antiquark and three quark potentials in a Wilson loop context
In this paper we give a new derivation of the quark-antiquark potential in
the Wilson loop context. This makes more explicit the approximations involved
and enables an immediate extension to the three-quark case. In the
case we find the same semirelativistic potential obtained in
preceding papers but for a question of ordering. In the case we find a
spin dependent potential identical to that already derived in the literature
from the ad hoc and non correct assumption of scalar confinement. Furthermore
we obtain the correct form of the spin independent potential up to the
order.Comment: 30 pages, Revtex (3 figures available as hard copies only), IFUM
452/F
Effect of Pre-breeding Weight and MGA Supplementation on Heifer Performance
Developing heifers to reach a target weight of 50% of mature body weight at the beginning of the breeding season is an effective method for reducing heifer development cost. Net costs to produce a bred yearling heifer and 2-year-old cow were lower when heifers were developed to 50% rather than 55% of mature body weight, regardless of breeding season length. Administration of oral progestin to heifers developed to 50% mature body weight prior to breeding did not affect reproductive performance during the first breeding season when heifers were exposed to bulls 13 days after the end of progestin treatment
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