Detergent-resistant plasma membrane proteome to elucidate microdomain functions in plant cells

Although proteins and lipids have been assumed to be distributed homogeneously in the plasma membrane (PM), recent studies suggest that the PM is in fact non-uniform structure that includes a number of lateral domains enriched in specific components (i.e., sterols, sphingolipids, and some kind of proteins). These domains are called as microdomains and considered to be the platform of biochemical reaction center for various physiological processes. Microdomain is able to be extracted as detergent-resistant membrane (DRM) fractions, and DRM fractions isolated from some plant species have been used for proteome and other biochemical characterizations to understand microdomain functions. Profiling of sterol-dependent proteins using a putative microdomain-disrupting agent suggests specific lipid–protein interactions in the microdomain. Furthermore, DRM proteomes dynamically respond to biotic and abiotic stresses in some plant species. Taken together, these results suggest that DRM proteomic studies provide us important information to understand physiological functions of microdomains that are critical to prosecute plant’s life cycle successfully in the aspect of development and stress responses

Nutrition-Physiology-Gene Interactions in the Chicken

Nutrition entails the sum of processes involved in the ingestion of foods, digestion, absorption, transport of nutrients, intermediary metabolism, underlying anabolism and catabolism, and excretion of unabsorbed nutrients and metabolites. Research at the Animal Nutrition Laboratory is concerned with the identification of nutritional characteristics in several animal species with the aid of comparative biochemistry and molecular biology. This mini-review provides an overview of the nutritional regulation of metabolism, physiological functions and gene expression in avian species

Some results concerning the valences of (super) edge-magic graphs

A graph $G$ is called edge-magic if there exists a bijective function $f:V\left(G\right) \cup E\left(G\right)\rightarrow \left\{1, 2, \ldots , \left\vert V\left( G\right) \right\vert +\left\vert E\left( G\right) \right\vert \right\}$ such that $f\left(u\right) + f\left(v\right) + f\left(uv\right)$ is a constant (called the valence of $f$) for each $uv\in E\left( G\right)$. If $f\left(V \left(G\right)\right) =\left\{1, 2, \ldots , \left\vert V\left( G\right) \right\vert \right\}$, then $G$ is called a super edge-magic graph. A stronger version of edge-magic and super edge-magic graphs appeared when the concepts of perfect edge-magic and perfect super edge-magic graphs were introduced. The super edge-magic deficiency $\mu_{s}\left(G\right)$ of a graph $G$ is defined to be either the smallest nonnegative integer $n$ with the property that $G \cup nK_{1}$ is super edge-magic or $+ \infty$ if there exists no such integer $n$. On the other hand, the edge-magic deficiency $\mu\left(G\right)$ of a graph $G$ is the smallest nonnegative integer $n$ for which $G\cup nK_{1}$ is edge-magic, being $\mu\left(G\right)$ always finite. In this paper, the concepts of (super) edge-magic deficiency are generalized using the concepts of perfect (super) edge-magic graphs. This naturally leads to the study of the valences of edge-magic and super edge-magic labelings. We present some general results in this direction and study the perfect (super) edge-magic deficiency of the star $K_{1,n}$

A method to compute the strength using bounds

A numbering $f$ of a graph $G$ of order $n$ is a labeling that assigns distinct elements of the set $\{1,2, \ldots, n \}$ to the vertices of $G$. The strength $\mathrm{str}\left(G\right)$ of $G$ is defined by $\mathrm{str}\left( G\right) =\min \left\{ \mathrm{str}_{f}\left( G\right)\left\vert f\text{ is a numbering of }G\right. \right\}$, where $\mathrm{str}_{f}\left( G\right) =\max \left\{ f\left( u\right) +f\left( v\right) \left\vert uv\in E\left( G\right) \right. \right\}$. A few lower and upper bounds for the strength are known and, although it is in general hard to compute the exact value for the strength, a reasonable approach to this problem is to study for which graphs a lower bound and an upper bound for the strength coincide. In this paper, we study general conditions for graphs that allow us to determine which graphs have the property that lower and upper bounds for the strength coincide and other graphs for which this approach is useless

High-temperature thermoelectric properties of the double-perovskite ruthenium oxide (Sr1−x_{1-x}Lax_x)2_2ErRuO6_6

We have prepared polycrystalline samples of (Sr$_{1-x}$La$_x$)$_2$ErRuO$_6$ and (Sr$_{1-x}$La$_x$)$_2$YRuO$_6$, and have measured the resistivity, Seebeck coefficient, thermal conductivity, susceptibility and x-ray absorption in order to evaluate the electronic states and thermoelectric properties of the doped double-perovskite ruthenates. We have observed a large Seebeck coefficient of -160 $\mu$V/K and a low thermal conductivity of 7 mW/cmK for $x$=0.1 at 800 K in air. These two values are suitable for efficient oxide thermoelectrics, although the resistivity is still as high as 1 $\Omega$cm. From the susceptibility and x-ray absorption measurements, we find that the doped electrons exist as Ru$^{4+}$ in the low spin state. On the basis of the measured results, the electronic states and the conduction mechanism are discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, J. Appl. Phys. (accepted

Recent studies on the super edge-magic deficiency of graphs

A graph $G$ is called edge-magic if there exists a bijective function $f:V\left(G\right) \cup E\left(G\right)\rightarrow \left\{1, 2, \ldots , \left\vert V\left( G\right) \right\vert +\left\vert E\left( G\right) \right\vert \right\}$ such that $f\left(u\right) + f\left(v\right) + f\left(uv\right)$ is a constant for each $uv\in E\left( G\right)$. Also, $G$ is said to be super edge-magic if $f\left(V \left(G\right)\right) =\left\{1, 2, \ldots , \left\vert V\left( G\right) \right\vert \right\}$. Furthermore, the super edge-magic deficiency $\mu_{s}\left(G\right)$ of a graph $G$ is defined to be either the smallest nonnegative integer $n$ with the property that $G \cup nK_{1}$ is super edge-magic or $+ \infty$ if there exists no such integer $n$. In this paper, we introduce the parameter $l\left(n\right)$ as the minimum size of a graph $G$ of order $n$ for which all graphs of order $n$ and size at least $l\left(n\right)$ have $\mu_{s} \left( G \right)=+\infty$, and provide lower and upper bounds for $l\left(G\right)$. Imran, Baig, and Fe\u{n}ov\u{c}\'{i}kov\'{a} established that for integers $n$ with $n\equiv 0\pmod{4}$, $\mu_{s}\left(D_{n}\right) \leq 3n/2-1$, where $D_{n}$ is the cartesian product of the cycle $C_{n}$ of order $n$ and the complete graph $K_{2}$ of order $2$. We improve this bound by showing that $\mu_{s}\left(D_{n}\right) \leq n+1$ when $n \geq 4$ is even. Enomoto, Llad\'{o}, Nakamigawa, and Ringel posed the conjecture that every nontrivial tree is super edge-magic. We propose a new approach to attak this conjecture. This approach may also help to resolve another labeling conjecture on trees by Graham and Sloane