Selection and subsequent physiological characterization of industrial Saccharomyces cerevisiae strains during continuous growth at sub- and- supra optimal temperatures

Supplementary material related to this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.btre.2020.e00462.A phenotypic screening of 12 industrial yeast strains and the well-studied laboratory strain CEN.PK113-7D at cultivation temperatures between 12°C and 40°C revealed significant differences in maximum growth rates and temperature tolerance. From those 12, two strains, one performing best at 12°C and the other at 40°C, plus the laboratory strain, were selected for further physiological characterization in well-controlled bioreactors. The strains were grown in anaerobic chemostats, at a fixed specific growth rate of 0.03h1 and sequential batch cultures at 12°C, 30°C, and 39°C. We observed significant differences in biomass and ethanol yields on glucose, biomass protein and storage carbohydrate contents, and biomass yields on ATP between strains and cultivation temperatures. Increased temperature tolerance coincided with higher energetic efficiency of cell growth, indicating that temperature intolerance is a result of energy wasting processes, such as increased turnover of cellular components (e.g. proteins) due to temperature induced damage.We would like to thank Judith Cohen and Kristen H. David for technical assistance with the chemostat fermentations and José Ma Heras (Lallemand Ibéria, SA) for kindly providing the industrial strains. This research was carried out within the ERA-IB project “YeastTempTation” (ERA-IB-2-6/0001/2014) and partially supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) through strategic funding UID/BIO/04469/2020 and BioTecNorte (NORTE-01-0145-FEDER-000004).info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

ME3CA - Monitoring environment exercise and emotion by a cognitive assistant

The elderly population has increased dramatically in today’s society. This fact implies the need to propose new policies of attention to this group but without increasing social spending. Currently, there is a need to promote the care of elderly people in their own homes, avoiding being transferred to saturated residences. Bearing this in mind, in recent years numerous approaches have tried to offer solutions in this sense using the continuous advances in new information and communication technologies. In this way, this article proposes the employment of a personal assistant to help the elderly in the development of their daily life activities. The proposed system, called ME3CA, is a cognitive assistant that involves users in rehabilitating exercise, consisting of a sensorization platform and different integrated decision-making mechanisms. The system tries to plan and recommend activities to older people trying to improve their physical activity. In addition, in the decision making process the assistant takes into account the emotions of the user. In this way, the system is more personalized and emotionally intelligent.- (undefined

Synchronous subnanosecond clock and data recovery for optically switched data centres using clock phase caching

The rapid growth in the amount of data being transferred within data centres, combined with the slowdown in Moore’s Law, creates challenges for the future scalability of electronically switched data-centre networks. Optical switches could offer a future-proof alternative, and photonic integration platforms have been demonstrated with nanosecond-scale optical switching times. End-to-end switching time is, however, currently limited by the clock and data recovery time, which typically takes microseconds, removing the benefits of nanosecond optical switching. Here we show that a clock phase caching technique can provide clock and data recovery times of under 625 ps (16 symbols at 25.6 Gb s−1). Our approach uses the measurement and storage of clock phase values in a synchronized network to simplify clock and data recovery versus conventional asynchronous approaches. We demonstrate the capabilities of our technique using a real-time prototype with commercial transceivers and validate its resilience against temperature variation and clock jitter

The effect of intervertebral cartilage on neutral posture and range of motion in the necks of sauropod dinosaurs

The necks of sauropod dinosaurs were a key factor in their evolution. The habitual posture and range of motion of these necks has been controversial, and computer-aided studies have argued for an obligatory sub-horizontal pose. However, such studies are compromised by their failure to take into account the important role of intervertebral cartilage. This cartilage takes very different forms in different animals. Mammals and crocodilians have intervertebral discs, while birds have synovial joints in their necks. The form and thickness of cartilage varies significantly even among closely related taxa. We cannot yet tell whether the neck joints of sauropods more closely resembled those of birds or mammals. Inspection of CT scans showed cartilage:bone ratios of 4.5% for Sauroposeidon and about 20% and 15% for two juvenile Apatosaurus individuals. In extant animals, this ratio varied from 2.59% for the rhea to 24% for a juvenile giraffe. It is not yet possible to disentangle ontogenetic and taxonomic signals, but mammal cartilage is generally three times as thick as that of birds. Our most detailed work, on a turkey, yielded a cartilage:bone ratio of 4.56%. Articular cartilage also added 11% to the length of the turkey's zygapophyseal facets. Simple image manipulation suggests that incorporating 4.56% of neck cartilage into an intervertebral joint of a turkey raises neutral posture by 15°. If this were also true of sauropods, the true neutral pose of the neck would be much higher than has been depicted. An additional 11% of zygapophyseal facet length translates to 11% more range of motion at each joint. More precise quantitative results must await detailed modelling. In summary, including cartilage in our models of sauropod necks shows that they were longer, more elevated and more flexible than previously recognised

Relationship between craving and personality in treatment-seeking women with substance-related disorders

BACKGROUND: Individual differences may impact susceptibility to addiction. The impact of personality features on drug craving, however, has not been studied, particularly in women. METHODS: Ninety-five treatment-seeking women with substance dependence, abstinent for at least 5 and no more than 21 days, were investigated regarding the correlation between personality factors and craving. Personality was assessed using the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI), the NEO Personality Inventory Revised (NEO-PI-R), and the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale version 11 (BIS-11). Cravings were assessed through the Pennsylvania Craving Scale (PCS), and the Craving Questionnaire (CQ). Anxiety and depressive symptomatology were also recorded. RESULTS: Craving scores were positively correlated with depression and negatively correlated with number of days abstinent from substance use. Also, craving scores were positively associated with the novelty-seeking factor from the TCI and the total score on the BIS-11, and negatively associated with the conscientiousness and agreeableness facets of the NEO-PI-R. CONCLUSION: Findings suggest that personality features, particularly impulsiveness, can be important predictors of craving in women, which has important implications for treatment planning

A 35-gene signature discriminates between rapidly- and slowly-progressing glioblastoma multiforme and predicts survival in known subtypes of the cancer

BACKGROUND: Gene expression can be employed for the discovery of prognostic gene or multigene signatures cancer. In this study, we assessed the prognostic value of a 35-gene expression signature selected by pathway and machine learning based methods in adjuvant therapy-linked glioblastoma multiforme (GBM) patients from the Cancer Genome Atlas. METHODS: Genes with high expression variance was subjected to pathway enrichment analysis and those having roles in chemoradioresistance pathways were used in expression-based feature selection. A modified Support Vector Machine Recursive Feature Elimination algorithm was employed to select a subset of these genes that discriminated between rapidly-progressing and slowly-progressing patients. RESULTS: Survival analysis on TCGA samples not used in feature selection and samples from four GBM subclasses, as well as from an entirely independent study, showed that the 35-gene signature discriminated between the survival groups in all cases (p < 0.05) and could accurately predict survival irrespective of the subtype. In a multivariate analysis, the signature predicted progression-free and overall survival independently of other factors considered. CONCLUSION: We propose that the performance of the signature makes it an attractive candidate for further studies to assess its utility as a clinical prognostic and predictive biomarker in GBM patients. Additionally, the signature genes may also be useful therapeutic targets to improve both progression-free and overall survival in GBM patients

Likelihood analysis of the pMSSM11 in light of LHC 13-TeV data

We use MasterCode to perform a frequentist analysis of the constraints on a phenomenological MSSM model with 11 parameters, the pMSSM11, including constraints from ∼36 /fb of LHC data at 13 TeV and PICO, XENON1T and PandaX-II searches for dark matter scattering, as well as previous accelerator and astrophysical measurements, presenting fits both with and without the (g−2)μ constraint. The pMSSM11 is specified by the following parameters: 3 gaugino masses M1,2,3 , a common mass for the first-and second-generation squarks mq~ and a distinct third-generation squark mass mq~3 , a common mass for the first-and second-generation sleptons mℓ~ and a distinct third-generation slepton mass mτ~ , a common trilinear mixing parameter A, the Higgs mixing parameter μ , the pseudoscalar Higgs mass MA and tanβ . In the fit including (g−2)μ , a Bino-like χ~01 is preferred, whereas a Higgsino-like χ~01 is mildly favoured when the (g−2)μ constraint is dropped. We identify the mechanisms that operate in different regions of the pMSSM11 parameter space to bring the relic density of the lightest neutralino, χ~01 , into the range indicated by cosmological data. In the fit including (g−2)μ , coannihilations with χ~02 and the Wino-like χ~±1 or with nearly-degenerate first- and second-generation sleptons are active, whereas coannihilations with the χ~02 and the Higgsino-like χ~±1 or with first- and second-generation squarks may be important when the (g−2)μ constraint is dropped. In the two cases, we present χ2 functions in two-dimensional mass planes as well as their one-dimensional profile projections and best-fit spectra. Prospects remain for discovering strongly-interacting sparticles at the LHC, in both the scenarios with and without the (g−2)μ constraint, as well as for discovering electroweakly-interacting sparticles at a future linear e+e− collider such as the ILC or CLIC

Mammalian Circadian Period, But Not Phase and Amplitude, Is Robust Against Redox and Metabolic Perturbations

$\textit{Aims:}$ Circadian rhythms permeate all levels of biology to temporally regulate cell and whole-body physiology, although the cell-autonomous mechanism that confers ~24-h periodicity is incompletely understood. Reports describing circadian oscillations of over-oxidized peroxiredoxin abundance have suggested that redox signaling plays an important role in the timekeeping mechanism. Here, we tested the functional contribution that redox state and primary metabolism make to mammalian cellular timekeeping. $\textit{Results:}$ We found a circadian rhythm in flux through primary glucose metabolic pathways, indicating rhythmic NAD(P)H production. Using pharmacological and genetic perturbations, however, we found that timekeeping was insensitive to changes in glycolytic flux, whereas oxidative pentose phosphate pathway (PPP) inhibition and other chronic redox stressors primarily affected circadian gene expression amplitude, not periodicity. Finally, acute changes in redox state decreased PER2 protein stability, phase dependently, to alter the subsequent phase of oscillation. $\textit{Innovation:}$ Circadian rhythms in primary cellular metabolism and redox state have been proposed to play a role in the cellular timekeeping mechanism. We present experimental data testing that hypothesis. $\textit{Conclusion:}$ Circadian flux through primary metabolism is cell autonomous, driving rhythmic NAD(P)(+) redox cofactor turnover and maintaining a redox balance that is permissive for circadian gene expression cycles. Redox homeostasis and PPP flux, but not glycolysis, are necessary to maintain clock amplitude, but neither redox nor glucose metabolism determines circadian period. Furthermore, cellular rhythms are sensitive to acute changes in redox balance, at least partly through regulation of PER protein. Redox and metabolic state are, thus, both inputs and outputs, but not state variables, of cellular circadian timekeeping.M.P. was supported by the Dutch Cancer Foundation (KWF, BUIT-2014-6637) and EMBO (ALTF-654-2014). J.S.O. was supported by the Medical Research Council (MC_UP_1201/4) and the Wellcome Trust (093734/Z/10/Z)

The Second Transmembrane Domain of P2X7 Contributes to Dilated Pore Formation

Activation of the purinergic receptor P2X7 leads to the cellular permeability of low molecular weight cations. To determine which domains of P2X7 are necessary for this permeability, we exchanged either the C-terminus or portions of the second transmembrane domain (TM2) with those in P2X1 or P2X4. Replacement of the C-terminus of P2X7 with either P2X1 or P2X4 prevented surface expression of the chimeric receptor. Similarly, chimeric P2X7 containing TM2 from P2X1 or P2X4 had reduced surface expression and no permeability to cationic dyes. Exchanging the N-terminal 10 residues or C-terminal 14 residues of the P2X7 TM2 with the corresponding region of P2X1 TM2 partially restored surface expression and limited pore permeability. To further probe TM2 structure, we replaced single residues in P2X7 TM2 with those in P2X1 or P2X4. We identified multiple substitutions that drastically changed pore permeability without altering surface expression. Three substitutions (Q332P, Y336T, and Y343L) individually reduced pore formation as indicated by decreased dye uptake and also reduced membrane blebbing in response to ATP exposure. Three others substitutions, V335T, S342G, and S342A each enhanced dye uptake, membrane blebbing and cell death. Our results demonstrate a critical role for the TM2 domain of P2X7 in receptor function, and provide a structural basis for differences between purinergic receptors. © 2013 Sun et al

X-ray polarimetry on-board HXMT

The development of micropixel gas detectors, capable to image tracks produced in a gas by photoelectrons, makes possible to perform polarimetry of X-ray celestial sources in the focus of grazing incidence X-ray telescopes. HXMT is a mission by the Chinese Space Agency aimed to survey the Hard X-ray Sky with Phoswich detectors, by exploitation of the direct demodulation technique. Since a fraction of the HXMT time will be spent on dedicated pointing of particular sources, it could host, with moderate additional resources a pair of X-ray telescopes, each with a photoelectric X-ray polarimeter (EXP2, Efficient X-ray Photoelectric Polarimeter) in the focal plane. We present the design of the telescopes and the focal plane instrumentation and discuss the performance of this instrument to detect the degree and angle of linear polarization of some representative sources. Notwithstanding the limited resources, the proposed instrument can represent a breakthrough in X-ray Polarimetry.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure