90 research outputs found
Aflatoxin Production in Corn by Aspergillus flavus Relative to Inoculation, Planting Date, and Harvest Moisture in Louisiana (Research Report #102)
Contamination of food and feed grains by aflatoxins is a problem throughout the world. Corn produced in the southeastern United States has higher levels of aflatoxin than corn produced in the Corn Belt of the Midwest.https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/agcenter_researchreports/1008/thumbnail.jp
Passive phloem loading and long-distance transport in a synthetic tree-on-a-chip
Vascular plants rely on differences of osmotic pressure to export sugars from
regions of synthesis (mature leaves) to sugar sinks (roots, fruits). In this
process, known as M\"unch pressure flow, the loading of sugars from
photosynthetic cells to the export conduit (the phloem) is crucial, as it sets
the pressure head necessary to power long-distance transport. Whereas most
herbaceous plants use active mechanisms to increase phloem concentration above
that of the photosynthetic cells, in most tree species, for which transport
distances are largest, loading seems to occur via passive symplastic diffusion
from the mesophyll to the phloem. Here, we use a synthetic microfluidic model
of a passive loader to explore the nonlinear dynamics that arise during export
and determine the ability of passive loading to drive long-distance transport.
We first demonstrate that in our device, phloem concentration is set by the
balance between the resistances to diffusive loading from the source and
convective export through the phloem. Convection-limited export corresponds to
classical models of M\"unch transport, where phloem concentration is close to
that of the source; in contrast, diffusion-limited export leads to small phloem
concentrations and weak scaling of flow rates with the hydraulic resistance. We
then show that the effective regime of convection-limited export is predominant
in plants with large transport resistances and low xylem pressures. Moreover,
hydrostatic pressures developed in our synthetic passive loader can reach
botanically relevant values as high as 10 bars. We conclude that passive
loading is sufficient to drive long-distance transport in large plants, and
that trees are well suited to take full advantage of passive phloem loading
strategies
Cell-free biosynthesis of erythroglycan in a microsomal fraction from K-562 cells.
Particulate membrane preparations from K-562 [human CML (chronic-myelogenous-leukaemia)-derived] cells catalyse the transfer of [3H]galactose from UDP-[3H]-galactose and [3H]N-acetylglucosamine from UDP-[3H]N-acetylglucosamine into an endogenous product that on digestion with Pronase yields long-chain glycopeptides (mol.wt. 7000--10 000) called 'erythroglycan'. Incorporation of either labelled sugar increased up to 60 min of incubation time. The labelled erythroglycan was isolated by chromatography on Sephadex G-50 and characterized by digestion with endo-beta-galactosidase from Escherichia freundii, followed by analysis on Bio-Gel P-2 and paper chromatography. This digestion gave the following four products: (1) a disaccharide with the sequence beta GlcNAc-beta Gal; (2) a trisaccharide with the sequence betaGal-betaGlcNAc-beta Gal; (3) a larger oligosaccharide containing galactose and N-acetylglucosamine; and (4) a putative protein-linkage region
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