31 research outputs found
Plankton ecology: The past two decades of progress
This is a selected account of recent developments
in plankton ecology. The examples have been
chosen for their degree of innovation during the
past two decades and for their general ecological
importance. They range from plankton autecology
over interactions between populations to community
ecology. The autecology of plankton is
represented by the hydromechanics of plankton
(the problem of life in a viscous environment) and
by the nutritional ecology of phyto- and zooplankton.
Population level studies are represented
by competition, herbivory (grazing), and zooplankton
responses to predation. Community
ecology is represented by the debate about bottom-
up vs. top-down control of community organization,
by the PEG model of seasonal plankton
succession, and by the recent discovery of the microbial
food web
Do acid-tolerant picocyanobacteria exist? A study of two strains isolated from humic lakes in Poland
Identification of Novel Serotonin Transporter Compounds by Virtual Screening
The
serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, 5-HT) transporter (SERT) plays
an essential role in the termination of serotonergic neurotransmission
by removing 5-HT from the synaptic cleft into the presynaptic neuron.
It is also of pharmacological importance being targeted by antidepressants
and psychostimulant drugs. Here, five commercial databases containing
approximately 3.24 million drug-like compounds have been screened
using a combination of two-dimensional (2D) fingerprint-based and
three-dimensional (3D) pharmacophore-based screening and flexible
docking into multiple conformations of the binding pocket detected
in an outward-open SERT homology model. Following virtual screening
(VS), selected compounds were evaluated using in vitro screening and
full binding assays and an in silico hit-to-lead (H2L) screening was
performed to obtain analogues of the identified compounds. Using this
multistep VS/H2L approach, 74 active compounds, 46 of which had <i>K</i><sub>i</sub> values of ≤1000 nM, belonging to 16
structural classes, have been identified, and multiple compounds share
no structural resemblance with known SERT binders