Analyse économique du marché du raisin en Champagne en l'absence de régulation

The limited area for producing grapes of champagne and the separated vertical structure where high reputation brands own little of the land induce steadily growing prices of the raw material. Market foreclosure and concentration both upwards (production cooperatives) and downwards (brands) will be the consequence a prohibited regulation of the market for grapes that will injure consumers welfare both on quality segmentation and product prices.Dans un contexte où le potentiel de commercialisation de l'Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée Champagne continue à croître, une absence de régulation du marché intermédiaire entre vignoble et négoce va conduire à la poursuite de l'augmentation des prix de raisin, la fermeture progressive du marché et à un double mouvement de concentration au détriment du consommateur : quelques très grandes marques en aval et quelques très grandes coopératives en amont. Cet exemple repose la question de la légitimité de l'intervention interprofessionnelle sur les prix intermédiaire

Analyse économique du marché du raisin en Champagne en l'absence de régulation

Dans un contexte où le potentiel de commercialisation de l'Appellation d'Origine Contrôlée Champagne continue à croître, une absence de régulation du marché intermédiaire entre vignoble et négoce va conduire à la poursuite de l'augmentation des prix de raisin, la fermeture progressive du marché et à un double mouvement de concentration au détriment du consommateur : quelques très grandes marques en aval et quelques très grandes coopératives en amont. Cet exemple repose la question de la légitimité de l'intervention interprofessionnelle sur les prix intermédiaires

Application of DETECTER, an evolutionary genomic tool to analyze genetic variation, to the cystic fibrosis gene family

BACKGROUND: The medical community requires computational tools that distinguish missense genetic differences having phenotypic impact within the vast number of sense mutations that do not. Tools that do this will become increasingly important for those seeking to use human genome sequence data to predict disease, make prognoses, and customize therapy to individual patients. RESULTS: An approach, termed DETECTER, is proposed to identify sites in a protein sequence where amino acid replacements are likely to have a significant effect on phenotype, including causing genetic disease. This approach uses a model-dependent tool to estimate the normalized replacement rate at individual sites in a protein sequence, based on a history of those sites extracted from an evolutionary analysis of the corresponding protein family. This tool identifies sites that have higher-than-average, average, or lower-than-average rates of change in the lineage leading to the sequence in the population of interest. The rates are then combined with sequence data to determine the likelihoods that particular amino acids were present at individual sites in the evolutionary history of the gene family. These likelihoods are used to predict whether any specific amino acid replacements, if introduced at the site in a modern human population, would have a significant impact on fitness. The DETECTER tool is used to analyze the cystic fibrosis transmembrane conductance regulator (CFTR) gene family. CONCLUSION: In this system, DETECTER retrodicts amino acid replacements associated with the cystic fibrosis disease with greater accuracy than alternative approaches. While this result validates this approach for this particular family of proteins only, the approach may be applicable to the analysis of polymorphisms generally, including SNPs in a human population

Interchanging Functionality Among Homologous Elongation Factors Using Signatures of Heterotachy

Numerous models of molecular evolution have been formulated to describe the forces that shape sequence divergence among homologous proteins. These models have greatly enhanced our understanding of evolutionary processes. Rarely are such models empirically tested in the laboratory, and even more rare, are such models exploited to generate novel molecules useful for synthetic biology. Here, we experimentally demonstrate that the heterotachy model of evolution captures signatures of functional divergence among homologous elongation factors (EFs) between bacterial EF-Tu and eukaryotic eEF1A. These EFs are GTPases that participate in protein translation by presenting aminoacylated-tRNAs to the ribosome. Upon release from the ribosome, the EFs are recharged by nucleotide exchange factors EF-Ts in bacteria or eEF1B in eukaryotes. The two nucleotide exchange factors perform analogous functions despite not being homologous proteins. The heterotachy model was used to identify a set of sites in eEF1A/EF-Tu associated with eEF1B binding in eukaryotes and another reciprocal set associated with EF-Ts binding in bacteria. Introduction of bacterial EF-Tu residues at these sites into eEF1A protein efficiently disrupted binding of cognate eEF1B as well as endowed eEF1A with the novel ability to bind bacterial EF-Ts. We further demonstrate that eEF1A variants, unlike yeast wild-type, can function in a reconstituted in vitro bacterial translation system. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1007/s00239-013-9540-9) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Extending the prediction of the thermodynamic properties of clay minerals to the trapping of trace elements

The thermodynamic properties of clay minerals, which control the stability of these minerals in solution, are still a matter of debate in spite of recent advances (Gailhanou et al., submitted). This is especially the case for the minerals that may structurally include trace elements and potential radionuclides such like Ni, Cd, Co, Cr, Mn, Pb, ... The usual methods developed in order to predict thermodynamic properties are parameterised using a given set of minerals. For clay minerals, the latter are mainly composed by Si, Al, Fe and Mg, apart from the alkalis elements (Chermak and Rimstidt, 1989), which means that predictions are limited to minerals whose layers are composed by Si, Al, Fe and Mg. At the vicinity of H&ILW disposal cells, the possible interactions between clay rock or engineered barrier and waste degradation products can result in the appearance of clay minerals that may structurally include radionuclides within an irreversible trapping process. This work aims at proposing a method for predicting the thermodynamic properties of such minerals. Theoretical principle and selection of calibration phases Vieillard (1994) has developed a methodology of estimation based on the difference of electronegativity by considering three scales of values of the parameter HO=(Mz+clay) in the three sites of phyllosilicates. We have considered the work of Vieillard (1994) that originally applies to the estimate of H0f and extended it to the estimate of Cp(T), S0 and V. Some popular estimate methods (Chermak and Rimstidt, 1989) are based on the hypothesis that the thermodynamic property of a mineral can be obtained by combining the properties of its components. An improvement of this principle had consisted in decomposing minerals into their polyhedral components (Chermak and Rimstidt, 1989). Now, we can write the fictive solution equilibrium with a basic polyhedral component MxOy as: and assumming the entropy of this fictive reaction is zero, we can define a SO= parameter as: . The value for the oxide analog of the polyhedral unit is obtained by implementing S0 of the oxide in the S0(MxOy) term. We have also defined, from the same reasoning, similar parameters for heat capacity and volume of the basic polyhedral components: ; . Results and discussion On Figure 1, we have displayed, for entropy, the correlation obtained between calculated values of SO= for the polyhedral unit and for the oxide analog. A straight line and a second-order function are obtained, for the interlayer and octahedral cations, respectively, with a good correlation coefficient. Fig. 1 - Development of predictive capacity for entropy estimates The implementation of the derived semi-empirical, first or second order relations allows to estimate the thermodynamic properties of a clay mineral, MX80 (Na0.409K0.024Ca0.009(Si3.738Al0.262)(Al1.598Mg0.214Fe3+0.173Fe2+0.035)O10(OH)2) in the present case, loaded by 6 radionuclides and to compare the values with the results obtained by Gailhanou et al. (submitted).The results can be expressed in terms of the concentrations for the elements Ni, Cd, Co, Cr, Mn and Pb and in terms of energetic potential with respect to the measurements performed by Gailhanou et al. (submitted)

Natural gas of radiolytic origin: An overlooked component of shale gas.

SignificanceNatural gas is a key fossil fuel as the world transitions away from coal toward less polluting energy sources in an attempt to minimize the impact of global climate change. Historically, the origin of natural gas produced from conventional reservoirs has been determined based on gas compositional data and stable isotope fingerprints of methane, ethane, and higher n-alkanes, revealing three dominant sources of natural gas: microbial, thermogenic, and abiotic. In our detailed synthesis of published natural gas data from a variety of unconventional hydrocarbon reservoirs worldwide, we demonstrate that there is a previously overlooked source of natural gas that is generated by radiolysis of organic matter in shales

Selection of coals of different maturities for CO2 Storage by modelling of CH4 and CO2 adsorption isotherms

International audienceCO2 injection in unmineable coal seams could be one interesting option for both storage and methane recovery processes. The objective of this study is to compare and model pure gas sorption isotherms (CO2 and CH4) for well-characterised coals of different maturities to determine the most suitable coal for CO2 storage. Carbon dioxide and methane adsorption on several coals have been investigated using a gravimetric adsorption method. The experiments were carried out using both CO2 and CH4 pure gases at 25 °C from 0.1 to 5 MPa (1 to 50 bar). The experimental results were fitted using Temkin's approach but also with the corrected Langmuir's and the corrected Tóth's equations. The two last approaches are more accurate from a thermodynamical point of view, and have the advantage of taking into account the fact that experimental data (isotherms) correspond to excess adsorption capacities. These approaches allow better quantification of the adsorbed gas. Determined CO2 adsorption capacities are from 0.5 to 2 mmol/g of dry coal. Modelling provides also the affinity parameters of the two gases for the different coals. We have shown these parameters determined with adsorption models could be used for classification and first selection of coals for CO2 storage. The affinity ratio ranges from a value close to 1 for immature coals to 41 for high rank coals like anthracites. This ratio allows selecting coals having high CO2 adsorption capacities. In our case, the modelling study of a significant number of coals from various ranks shows that anthracites seem to have the highest CO2 storage capacities. Our study provides high quality affinity parameters and values of CO2 and CH4 adsorption capacities on various coals for the future modelling of CO2 injection in coal seams