ルテイン集合体の電子顕微鏡による観察

Lutein, one of major carotenoids in green leaves, disperses in aqueous solutions to form chiral helical aggregates which acquire an optical activity in visible region. We confirmed that this aggregate had enormous size with ultrafiltration and sedimentation equilibrium analyses. In this paper, lutein aggregates dispersed in dilute surfactant solution, SDS or DTAB, are observed with electron microscope to estimate the size and the shape of the aggregate. Lutein aggregate showed images of rod-like shape, and their sizes are from 0.3 to 1.5 um in length and from 0.05 to 0.2 um in width. Possible conformation of the aggregate with helical structure was illustrated, and a working hypothesis for physiological function of lutein in thylakoid was postulated

Endometriosis of the Appendix Resulting in Perforated Appendicitis

Endometriosis is a relatively common disease among women of reproductive age. However, gastrointestinal endometriosis is rare and endometriosis of the appendix resulting in perforated appendicitis is even rarer. We experienced a case of endometriosis of the appendix manifesting as panperitonitis caused by perforation of the appendix. The patient was a 35-year-old woman who was hospitalized with an acute abdomen. She was diagnosed with panperitonitis and underwent urgent laparotomy. When perforation of the appendix was detected, appendectomy and intraperitoneal drainage were performed. Pathological examination revealed endometriosis extending from the muscularis propria to the subserosa, and a diagnosis of endometriosis of the appendix was made. We consider the relevant literature describing the mechanism by which endometriosis of the appendix occurs, and the association between endometriosis of the appendix and acute appendicitis

Definitive Identification of the Transition between Small- to Large-Scale Clustering for Lyman Break Galaxies

We report angular correlation function (ACF) of Lyman Break Galaxies (LBGs) with unprecedented statistical quality on the basis of 16,920 LBGs at z=4 detected in the 1 deg^2 sky of the Subaru/XMM-Newton Deep Field. The ACF significantly departs from a power law, and shows an excess on small scale. Particularly, the ACF of LBGs with i'<27.5 have a clear break between the small and large-scale regimes at the angular separation of ~7'' whose projected length corresponds to the virial radius of dark halos with a mass of 10^11-12 Mo, indicating multiple LBGs residing in a single dark halo. Both on small (2''<theta<3'') and large (40''<theta<400'') scales, clustering amplitudes monotonically increase with luminosity for the magnitude range of i'=24.5-27.5, and the small-scale clustering shows a stronger luminosity dependence than the large-scale clustering. The small-scale bias reaches b~10-50, and the outskirts of small-scale excess extend to a larger angular separation for brighter LBGs. The ACF and number density of LBGs can be explained by the cold dark matter model.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJL. 5 pages, 4 figures. The text and Figures 2-4 have been revised. There is no major change which affects to the main discussion shown in the original preprint. This paper with high resolution figures is available at http://www-int.stsci.edu/~ouchi/work/astroph/sxds_z4LBG/ouchi_highres.pdf (PDF

Cloning of rat GADD45 gene and induction analysis following ionizing radiation in vivo

AbstractA gene encoded GADD45 was isolated from rat and revealed four exons along with a p53 binding consensus sequence and a putative AP-1 site in the third intron. This suggests that the rat GADD45 gene is also involved in the p53 signal pathway related to the G1 cell cycle checkpoint. The rat GADD45 mRNA was induced within 30 min in liver and increased as a function of γ-irradiation. We found that mRNA expression differed substantially in a variety of tissues (brain, liver, kidney, and spleen). The finding of in vivo induction of GADD45 gene may provide insight into the role of GADD45 gene in DNA repair