Intrinsically disordered inhibitor of glutamine synthetase is a functional protein with random-coil-like pKa values

The sequential action of glutamine synthetase (GS) and glutamate synthase (GOGAT) in cyanobacteria allows the incorporation of ammonium into carbon skeletons. In the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803, the activity of GS is modulated by the interaction with proteins, which include a 65-residue-long intrinsically disordered protein (IDP), the inactivating factor IF7. This interaction is regulated by the presence of charged residues in both IF7 and GS. To understand how charged amino acids can affect the binding of an IDP with its target and to provide clues on electrostatic interactions in disordered states of proteins, we measured the pKa values of all IF7 acidic groups (Glu32, Glu36, Glu38, Asp40, Asp58, and Ser65, the backbone C-terminus) at 100 mM NaCl concentration, by using NMR spectroscopy. We also obtained solution structures of IF7 through molecular dynamics simulation, validated them on the basis of previous experiments, and used them to obtain theoretical estimates of the pKa values. Titration values for the two Asp and three Glu residues of IF7 were similar to those reported for random-coil models, suggesting the lack of electrostatic interactions around these residues. Furthermore, our results suggest the presence of helical structure at the N-terminus of the protein and of conformational changes at acidic pH values. The overall experimental and in silico findings suggest that local interactions and conformational equilibria do not play a role in determining the electrostatic features of the acidic residues of IF7.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad CTQ 2015-64445-R, BFU2013- 41712-P, BIO2016-75634PJunta de Andalucía BIO-284Generalitat Valenciana Prometeo 018/201

Past, Present, and Future of Simultaneous Localization And Mapping: Towards the Robust-Perception Age

Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM)consists in the concurrent construction of a model of the environment (the map), and the estimation of the state of the robot moving within it. The SLAM community has made astonishing progress over the last 30 years, enabling large-scale real-world applications, and witnessing a steady transition of this technology to industry. We survey the current state of SLAM. We start by presenting what is now the de-facto standard formulation for SLAM. We then review related work, covering a broad set of topics including robustness and scalability in long-term mapping, metric and semantic representations for mapping, theoretical performance guarantees, active SLAM and exploration, and other new frontiers. This paper simultaneously serves as a position paper and tutorial to those who are users of SLAM. By looking at the published research with a critical eye, we delineate open challenges and new research issues, that still deserve careful scientific investigation. The paper also contains the authors' take on two questions that often animate discussions during robotics conferences: Do robots need SLAM? and Is SLAM solved

Evaluación del uso de programación por objetivos priorizables para la seleccion de sistemas de cosecha

89 p.Este estudio se enfoca en la evaluación del uso de Programación por Objetivos Priorizables (o de pesos ordinales PPO) para la selección de sistemas de cosecha. El modelo generado se basó en uno de Programación por Objetivos Penalizables (o de pesos cardinales PPO) desarrollado por Aedo y Bravo (1995). La variable de impacto ambiental del modelo fue redefinida. En lugar de usar la pérdida de suelo anual, se usó el porcentaje de huellas de madereo para cuantificar el efecto ambiental. La decisión de cambiar la variable se basó en una revisión bibliográfica exhaustiva. Mientras mayor porcentaje de huellas de madereo es permitido, el número de sistemas HFC decrece y el número de sistemas FSTP se incrementa. El número de sistemas MSKB y MSOB son usados como complemento para alcanzar los objetivos pues ellos tienen un impacto ambiental de mediana influencia acompañado de una producción más baja que el de los sistemas HFC y FSTP. Programación por Objetivos Priorizables es una técnica válida de ser considerada para seleccionar sistemas de cosecha cuando se está en presencia de múltiples objetivos antagónicos. Para tener una clara cuantificación del tipo y número de sistemas de cosecha a implementar, el planificador debe tener claro la priorización de los objetivos considerados y una medida del impacto medioambiental permitido

Diseño e implementación de un ambiente virtual de aprendizaje que fomente la aplicación de funciones reales en la solución de situaciones problema en estudiantes de grado once del colegio Jose Maria Córdoba

Esta investigación presenta el proceso de diseño e implementación de un ambiente virtual de aprendizaje como apoyo al proceso de enseñanza-aprendizaje de los estudiantes de C.E.I José María Córdoba para afianzar el conocimiento del concepto de funciones reales a través de la aplicación de estas en situaciones problema. Aplicando este proyecto a estudiantes de grado once. También se contó con una combinación entre los modelos ADDIE, ASSURE y ARC, para guiar la propuesta de diseño instruccional, y desarrollar así las fases de construcción del proyecto

Adherencia al TARGA, en pacientes mayores de 18 años, con diagnóstico de VIH/SIDA del Hospital III José Cayetano Heredia, EsSalud - Piura, 2012 - 2017

El presente estudio de investigación titulado adherencia al TARGA, en pacientes mayores de 18 años, con diagnóstico de VIH/SIDA del Hospital III "José Cayetano Heredia", EsSalud - Piura, 2012 - 2017, tuvo como objetivo evaluar el porcentaje de Adherencia al TARGA en los pacientes mayores de 18 años con diagnóstico de VIH/SIDA del Hospital III José Cayetano Heredia, EsSalud - Piura 2012 - 2017. El presente estudio es de tipo descriptivo, retrospectivo. La población fue constituida por todos los pacientes con diagnóstico de VIH/SIDA del Hospital III José Cayetano Heredia y la muestra fueron 443 pacientes mayores de 18 años que recibieron TARGA en el Servicio de Farmacia. La recolección de datos se hizo mediante una ficha técnica de registro de dispensación elaborada por los Bachilleres José Dilter Abad Neira y Gina Denisse Imán Chiroque y se aplicó el Test de Morisky - Green. El análisis y procesamiento de datos obtenidos se realizó a través del programa estadístico EXCEL, haciendo uso de tablas dinámicas, para luego elaborar los respectivos gráficos. Con los resultados se pudo concluir que existe un bajo porcentaje de Adherencia al TARGA pues solo el 11.29% (50 pacientes) de los pacientes mayores de 18 años con diagnóstico de VIH/SIDA del Hospital III José Cayetano Heredia EsSalud - Piura fueron Adherentes al TARGA y el 88.71% (393 pacientes) no lo fueron.Tesi

Conformational Stability of Hepatitis C Virus NS3 Protease

AbstractThe hepatitis C virus NS3 protease is responsible for the processing of the nonstructural region of viral precursor polyprotein in infected hepatic cells. NS3 has been considered a target for drug discovery for a long time. NS3 is a zinc-dependent serine protease. However, the zinc ion is not involved in the catalytic mechanism, because it is bound far away from the active site. Thus, zinc is essential for the structural integrity of the protein and it is considered to have a structural role. The first thermodynamic study on the conformational equilibrium and stability of NS3 and the effect of zinc on such equilibrium is presented here. In agreement with a previous calorimetric study on the binding of zinc to NS3, the global unfolding heat capacity is dominated by the zinc dissociation step, suggesting that the binding of zinc induces a significant structural rearrangement of the protein. In addition, contrary to other homologous zinc-dependent proteases, the zinc-free NS3 protease is not completely unstructured. It is apparent that the conformational landscape of hepatitis C virus NS3 protease is fairly complex due to its intrinsic plasticity, and to the interactions with its different effectors (zinc and the accessory viral protein NS4A) and their modulation of the population of the different conformational states

Place recognition using near and far visual information

In this paper we show how to carry out robust place recognition using both near and far information provided by a stereo camera. Visual appearance is known to be very useful in place recognition tasks. In recent years, it has been shown that taking geometric information also into account further improves system robustness. Stereo visual systems provide 3D information and texture of nearby regions, as well as an image of far regions. In order to make use of all this information, our system builds two probabilistic undirected graphs, each considering either near or far information. Inference is carried out in the framework of conditional random fields. We evaluate our algorithm in public indoor and outdoor datasets from the Rawseeds project and in an outdoor dataset obtained at the MIT campus. Results show that this combination of information is very useful to solve challenging cases of perceptual aliasing

A new sunburned apple category browning under conventional and organic management: phenolic compounds and antioxidant capacity in cold storage

The effect of mild sunburn damage on three apple cultivars: Brookfield®, Granny Smith and Fuji from conventional and organic orchards in the 6th Region of Chile were evaluated in 2012/2013. Total and specific phenols, antioxidant capacity and ripeness of the fruit were assessed at harvest and different time of conventional cold storage: after one, two and four months. According to the results, the peel of all the cultivars have their own property and the response to sunburn damage is independent of the type of management. Phenolic compounds content in the peel of sun-damaged apples at harvest was twice as high in comparison with the peel of healthy fruit. After four months, the apples with mild damage under this conditionhad higher phenolic compounds and antioxidant content than healthy fruit at harvest. Considering these successful results, a new category of “sunny – apple”, we propose that has a higher content of antioxidantcompounds

Biophysical analysis of the MHR motif in folding and domain swapping of the HIV capsid protein C-terminal domain

© 2015 Biophysical Society. Infection by human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) depends on the function, in virion morphogenesis and other stages of the viral cycle, of a highly conserved structural element, the major homology region (MHR), within the carboxyterminal domain (CTD) of the capsid protein. In a modified CTD dimer, MHR is swapped between monomers. While no evidence for MHR swapping has been provided by structural models of retroviral capsids, it is unknown whether it may occur transiently along the virus assembly pathway. Whatever the case, the MHR-swapped dimer does provide a novel target for the development of anti-HIV drugs based on the concept of trapping a nonnative capsid protein conformation. We have carried out a thermodynamic and kinetic characterization of the domain-swapped CTD dimer in solution. The analysis includes a dissection of the role of conserved MHR residues and other amino acids at the dimerization interface in CTD folding, stability, and dimerization by domain swapping. The results revealed some energetic hotspots at the domain-swapped interface. In addition, many MHR residues that are not in the protein hydrophobic core were nevertheless found to be critical for folding and stability of the CTD monomer, which may dramatically slow down the swapping reaction. Conservation of MHR residues in retroviruses did not correlate with their contribution to domain swapping, but it did correlate with their importance for stable CTD folding. Because folding is required for capsid protein function, this remarkable MHR-mediated conformational stabilization of CTD may help to explain the functional roles of MHR not only during immature capsid assembly but in other processes associated with retrovirus infection. This energetic dissection of the dimerization interface in MHR-swapped CTD may also facilitate the design of anti-HIV compounds that inhibit capsid assembly by conformational trapping of swapped CTD dimers.Spanish Government (BIO2012-37649) and Comunidad de Madrid (S-2009/MAT/1467) and by an institutional grant from Fundación Ramón Areces.Peer Reviewe

Session 1B Internet Expansion Plan Proposal in Developing Countries: Peru as a Case Study

Full text available. The presentation will explore how cell phone carriers have helped countries work toward SDG 9, Target 9.c. It will be a critical perspective and will include economic, social, and political implications in the countries researched