The Mouse Genome Database: enhancements and updates

The Mouse Genome Database (MGD) is a major component of the Mouse Genome Informatics (MGI, http://www.informatics.jax.org/) database resource and serves as the primary community model organism database for the laboratory mouse. MGD is the authoritative source for mouse gene, allele and strain nomenclature and for phenotype and functional annotations of mouse genes. MGD contains comprehensive data and information related to mouse genes and their functions, standardized descriptions of mouse phenotypes, extensive integration of DNA and protein sequence data, normalized representation of genome and genome variant information including comparative data on mammalian genes. Data for MGD are obtained from diverse sources including manual curation of the biomedical literature and direct contributions from individual investigator’s laboratories and major informatics resource centers, such as Ensembl, UniProt and NCBI. MGD collaborates with the bioinformatics community on the development and use of biomedical ontologies such as the Gene Ontology and the Mammalian Phenotype Ontology. Recent improvements in MGD described here includes integration of mouse gene trap allele and sequence data, integration of gene targeting information from the International Knockout Mouse Consortium, deployment of an MGI Biomart, and enhancements to our batch query capability for customized data access and retrieval

Elution of Uranium and Transition Metals from Amidoxime-Based Polymer Adsorbents for Sequestering Uranium from Seawater

High-surface-area amidoxime and carboxylic acid grafted polymer adsorbents developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory were tested for sequestering uranium in a flowing seawater flume system at the PNNL-Marine Sciences Laboratory. FTIR spectra indicate that a KOH conditioning process is necessary to remove the proton from the carboxylic acid and make the sorbent effective for sequestering uranium from seawater. The alkaline conditioning process also converts the amidoxime groups to carboxylate groups in the adsorbent. Both Na₂CO₃–H₂O₂ and hydrochloric acid elution methods can remove ∼95% of the uranium sequestered by the adsorbent after 42 days of exposure in real seawater. The Na₂CO₃–H₂O₂ elution method is more selective for uranium than conventional acid elution. Iron and vanadium are the two major transition metals competing with uranium for adsorption to the amidoxime-based adsorbents in real seawater. Tiron (4,5-dihydroxy-1,3-benzenedisulfonic acid disodium salt, 1 M) can remove iron from the adsorbent very effectively at pH around 7. The coordination between vanadium­(V) and amidoxime is also discussed based on our ⁵¹V NMR data