Effects of Water and Nitrogen Addition on Species Turnover in Temperate Grasslands in Northern China

Global nitrogen (N) deposition and climate change have been identified as two of the most important causes of current plant diversity loss. However, temporal patterns of species turnover underlying diversity changes in response to changing precipitation regimes and atmospheric N deposition have received inadequate attention. We carried out a manipulation experiment in a steppe and an old-field in North China from 2005 to 2009, to test the hypothesis that water addition enhances plant species richness through increase in the rate of species gain and decrease in the rate of species loss, while N addition has opposite effects on species changes. Our results showed that water addition increased the rate of species gain in both the steppe and the old field but decreased the rates of species loss and turnover in the old field. In contrast, N addition increased the rates of species loss and turnover in the steppe but decreased the rate of species gain in the old field. The rate of species change was greater in the old field than in the steppe. Water interacted with N to affect species richness and species turnover, indicating that the impacts of N on semi-arid grasslands were largely mediated by water availability. The temporal stability of communities was negatively correlated with rates of species loss and turnover, suggesting that water addition might enhance, but N addition would reduce the compositional stability of grasslands. Experimental results support our initial hypothesis and demonstrate that water and N availabilities differed in the effects on rate of species change in the temperate grasslands, and these effects also depend on grassland types and/or land-use history. Species gain and loss together contribute to the dynamic change of species richness in semi-arid grasslands under future climate change

Molecular dynamics simulation study on the molecular structures of the amylin fibril models

The structural characterization of amyloid fibers is one of the most investigated areas in structural biology. Recently, protofibril models for amylin, i.e., the 37-residue human islet amyloid polypeptide or hIAPP were suggested by two groups based on NMR ( Biochemistry 2007, 46, 13505−13522) and X-ray ( Protein Sci. 2008, 17, 1467−1474) techniques. However, there are significant differences in the two models which maybe originate from the polymorphic nature of amylin fibrils. To obtain further insights into the packing and stability features of the different models, we performed a series of molecular dynamics simulations on them. Our analysis showed that even pairs of β-sheets composed of a limited number of β-strands are stable in the 100-ns simulations, which suggests that steric zipper interactions at a β-sheet-β-sheet interface strongly contribute to the stability of these amyloid aggregates. For both models, outer strands are more flexible, which might coincide with the dynamical requirement that outer strands act as growing sites facilitating conformational changes of new incoming chains. Moreover, simulation results showed that the X-ray models are structurally more compact than the NMR models and have more intimate patterns, which lead to more rigid amyloid models. As a result, the X-ray models are energetically more stable than the NMR models. Further modeling analyses verify the most likely amylin fibril model among both NMR and X-ray models. Upon further study of the force-induced dissociation of a single chain from the protofibrils, the binding energy and the mechanical stability of the fibril models are revealed. On these bases, it is possible to reconcile the crystallographic and the NMR data on the basic amylin fiber unit

Acidic pH retards the fibrillization of human islet amyloid polypeptide due to electrostatic repulsion of histidines

The human Islet Amyloid Polypeptide (hIAPP) is the major constituent of amyloid deposits in pancreatic islets of type-II diabetes. IAPP is secreted together with insulin from the acidic secretory granules at a low pH of approximately 5.5 to the extracellular environment at a neutral pH. The increased accumulation of extracellular hIAPP in diabetes indicates that changes in pH may promote amyloid formation. To gain insights and underlying mechanisms of the pH effect on hIAPP fibrillogenesis, all-atom molecular dynamics simulations in explicit solvent model were performed to study the structural properties of five hIAPP protofibrillar oligomers, under acidic and neutral pH, respectively. In consistent with experimental findings, simulation results show that acidic pH is not conducive to the structural stability of these oligomers. This provides a direct evidence for a recent experiment [L. Khemtemourian, E. Domenech, J. P. F. Doux, M. C. Koorengevel, and J. A. Killian, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 133, 15598 (2011)]10.1021/ja205007j, which suggests that acidic pH inhibits the fibril formation of hIAPP. In addition, a complementary coarse-grained simulation shows the repulsive electrostatic interactions among charged His18 residues slow down the dimerization process of hIAPP by twofold. Besides, our all-atom simulations reveal acidic pH mainly affects the local structure around residue His18 by destroying the surrounding hydrogen-bonding network, due to the repulsive interactions between protonated interchain His18 residues at acidic pH. It is also disclosed that the local interactions nearby His18 operating between adjacent β-strands trigger the structural transition, which gives hints to the experimental findings that the rate of hIAPP fibril formation and the morphologies of the fibrillar structures are strongly pH-dependentPublished versio

Effect of self-assembly of fullerene nano-particles on lipid membrane.

Carbon nanoparticles can penetrate the cell membrane and cause cytotoxicity. The diffusion feature and translocation free energy of fullerene through lipid membranes is well reported. However, the knowledge on self-assembly of fullerenes and resulting effects on lipid membrane is poorly addressed. In this work, the self-assembly of fullerene nanoparticles and the resulting influence on the dioleoylphosphtidylcholine (DOPC) model membrane were studied by using all-atom molecular dynamics simulations with explicit solvents. Our simulation results confirm that gathered small fullerene cluster can invade lipid membrane. Simulations show two pathways: 1) assembly process is completely finished before penetration; 2) assembly process coincides with penetration. Simulation results also demonstrate that in the membrane interior, fullerene clusters tend to stay at the position which is 1.0 nm away from the membrane center. In addition, the diverse microscopic stacking mode (i.e., equilateral triangle, tetrahedral pentahedral, trigonal bipyramid and octahedron) of these small fullerene clusters are well characterized. Thus our simulations provide a detailed high-resolution characterization of the microscopic structures of the small fullerene clusters. Further, we found the gathered small fullerene clusters have significant adverse disturbances to the local structure of the membrane, but no great influence on the global integrity of the lipid membrane, which suggests the prerequisite of high-content fullerene for cytotoxicity

The insertion depth of each fullerene particle in the membrane as a function of the simulation time.

<p>The straight line in each subfigure is the average half thickness of the lipid membrane in the absence of fullerene, and the six colorful curves are for six fullerene particles.</p

The largest cluster size as a function of simulation time.

<p>Y-axis is the amount of fullerene forming the largest cluster.</p