The State of Illinois Manufacturing

The strength of the manufacturing sector is fundamental to the overall economic performance of Illinois and the U.S. as a whole. The manufacturing sector in Illinois create large numbers of jobs that pay high wages to workers, purchases more goods and services from within the state than any other sector, and constitutes a main component of the state export economy. For these and other reasons, manufacturing needs be at the center of all government discussions on economic policy.The Center for Labor and Community Research (CLCR) was commissioned by the Illinois Manufacturers' Association to analyze the condition of the Illinois manufacturing sector. We found that Illinois manufacturing is essential to Illinois' economy, and although it is among the top manufacturing states in the country, it faces a number of challenges. This report demonstrates why and how Illinois manufacturing matters, explains the current challenges it faces, and recommends actions to overcome some of these challenges. In addition to looking at manufacturing as a whole, this report looks at four key manufacturing sectors, or clusters, that together account for 64% of manufacturing employment in the state. These are the metals, electrical, printing, and food manufacturing sectors.A few key findings that CLCR uncovered in this study include the following: Manufacturing is vital to the state's economy and workers. Manufacturing exports create significant employment opportunities in Illinois, and the state's manufacturing workers are the most productive in the nation by far.Like other U.S. states, Illinois faces increasing competition from low-wage producers in the developing world as well as from highly skilled producers in developed countries. In order to remain competitive into the future, the sector requires increased investments in its infrastructure and workers and an improved workforce development system in order to increase the value-added component of their products.The Illinois manufacturing sector needs a "High Road" partnership with government and labor to increase investment in infrastructure and workforce development, to support the sector by creating specialized service centers that provide assistance to Illinois companies, and to effectively using public subsidies to reward and assist those companies that are pursuing High Road strategies of innovation and development

Commercial Vegetable Weed, Insect, and Disease Control Guide: Beets, Carrots, Lettuce, Onions, Parsnips, Radishes, Rutabagas, Turnips, Spinach (Revised 1983)

This archival publication may not reflect current scientific knowledge or recommendations. Current information available from the University of Minnesota Extension: https://www.extension.umn.edu

The synthetic integron: an in vivo genetic shuffling device

As the field of synthetic biology expands, strategies and tools for the rapid construction of new biochemical pathways will become increasingly valuable. Purely rational design of complex biological pathways is inherently limited by the current state of our knowledge. Selection of optimal arrangements of genetic elements from randomized libraries may well be a useful approach for successful engineering. Here, we propose the construction and optimization of metabolic pathways using the inherent gene shuffling activity of a natural bacterial site-specific recombination system, the integron. As a proof of principle, we constructed and optimized a functional tryptophan biosynthetic operon in Escherichia coli. The trpA-E genes along with ‘regulatory’ elements were delivered as individual recombination cassettes in a synthetic integron platform. Integrase-mediated recombination generated thousands of genetic combinations overnight. We were able to isolate a large number of arrangements displaying varying fitness and tryptophan production capacities. Several assemblages required as many as six recombination events and produced as much as 11-fold more tryptophan than the natural gene order in the same context

Solvent-Enabled Nonenyzmatic Sugar Production from Biomass for Chemical and Biological Upgrading

We recently reported a nonenzymatic biomass deconstruction process for producing carbohydrates using homogeneous mixtures of γ-valerolactone (GVL) and water as a solvent. A key step in this process is the separation of the GVL from the aqueous phase, enabling GVL recycling and the production of a concentrated aqueous carbohydrate solution. In this study, we demonstrate that phenolic solvents—sec-butylphenol, nonylphenol, and lignin-derived propyl guaiacol—are effective at separating GVL from the aqueous phase using only small amounts of solvent (0.5 g per g of the original water, GVL, and sugar hydrolysate). Furthermore, using nonylphenol, we produced a hydrolysate that supported robust growth and high yields of ethanol (0.49 g EtOH per g glucose) at an industrially relevant concentration (50.8 g L−1 EtOH). These results suggest that using phenolic solvents could be an interesting solution for separating and/or detoxifying aqueous carbohydrate solutions produced using GVL-based biomass deconstruction processes

Enzyme adaptation to habitat thermal legacy shapes the thermal plasticity of marine microbiomes

Microbial communities respond to temperature with physiological adaptation and compositional turnover. Whether thermal selection of enzymes explains marine microbiome plasticity in response to temperature remains unresolved. By quantifying the thermal behaviour of seven functionally-independent enzyme classes (esterase, extradiol dioxygenase, phosphatase, beta-galactosidase, nuclease, transaminase, and aldo-keto reductase) in native proteomes of marine sediment microbiomes from the Irish Sea to the southern Red Sea, we record a significant effect of the mean annual temperature (MAT) on enzyme response in all cases. Activity and stability profiles of 228 esterases and 5 extradiol dioxygenases from sediment and seawater across 70 locations worldwide validate this thermal pattern. Modelling the esterase phase transition temperature as a measure of structural flexibility confirms the observed relationship with MAT. Furthermore, when considering temperature variability in sites with non-significantly different MATs, the broadest range of enzyme thermal behaviour and the highest growth plasticity of the enriched heterotrophic bacteria occur in samples with the widest annual thermal variability. These results indicate that temperature-driven enzyme selection shapes microbiome thermal plasticity and that thermal variability finely tunes such processes and should be considered alongside MAT in forecasting microbial community thermal response

Regulation of Petrobactin and Bacillibactin Biosynthesis in Bacillus anthracis under Iron and Oxygen Variation

siderophore biosynthetic operons that are responsible for synthesis of petrobactin and bacillibactin, during variable growth conditions., a member of the bacillibactin biosynthetic operon, was only transcribed under conditions of iron-depletion, regardless of growth aeration.

Deleterious GRM1 Mutations in Schizophrenia

We analysed a phenotypically well-characterised sample of 450 schziophrenia patients and 605 controls for rare non-synonymous single nucleotide polymorphisms (nsSNPs) in the GRM1 gene, their functional effects and family segregation. GRM1 encodes the metabotropic glutamate receptor 1 (mGluR1), whose documented role as a modulator of neuronal signalling and synaptic plasticity makes it a plausible schizophrenia candidate. In a recent study, this gene was shown to harbour a cluster of deleterious nsSNPs within a functionally important domain of the receptor, in patients with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Our Sanger sequencing of the GRM1 coding regions detected equal numbers of nsSNPs in cases and controls, however the two groups differed in terms of the potential effects of the variants on receptor function: 6/6 case-specific and only 1/6 control-specific nsSNPs were predicted to be deleterious. Our in-vitro experimental follow-up of the case-specific mutants showed that 4/6 led to significantly reduced inositol phosphate production, indicating impaired function of the major mGluR1signalling pathway; 1/6 had reduced cell membrane expression; inconclusive results were obtained in 1/6. Family segregation analysis indicated that these deleterious nsSNPs were inherited. Interestingly, four of the families were affected by multiple neuropsychiatric conditions, not limited to schizophrenia, and the mutations were detected in relatives with schizophrenia, depression and anxiety, drug and alcohol dependence, and epilepsy. Our findings suggest a possible mGluR1 contribution to diverse psychiatric conditions, supporting the modulatory role of the receptor in such conditions as proposed previously on the basis of in vitro experiments and animal studies

A Putative Homologue of CDC20/CDH1 in the Malaria Parasite Is Essential for Male Gamete Development

Cell-cycle progression is governed by a series of essential regulatory proteins. Two major regulators are cell-division cycle protein 20 (CDC20) and its homologue, CDC20 homologue 1 (CDH1), which activate the anaphase-promoting complex/cyclosome (APC/C) in mitosis, and facilitate degradation of mitotic APC/C substrates. The malaria parasite, Plasmodium, is a haploid organism which, during its life-cycle undergoes two stages of mitosis; one associated with asexual multiplication and the other with male gametogenesis. Cell-cycle regulation and DNA replication in Plasmodium was recently shown to be dependent on the activity of a number of protein kinases. However, the function of cell division cycle proteins that are also involved in this process, such as CDC20 and CDH1 is totally unknown. Here we examine the role of a putative CDC20/CDH1 in the rodent malaria Plasmodium berghei (Pb) using reverse genetics. Phylogenetic analysis identified a single putative Plasmodium CDC20/CDH1 homologue (termed CDC20 for simplicity) suggesting that Plasmodium APC/C has only one regulator. In our genetic approach to delete the endogenous cdc20 gene of P. berghei, we demonstrate that PbCDC20 plays a vital role in male gametogenesis, but is not essential for mitosis in the asexual blood stage. Furthermore, qRT-PCR analysis in parasite lines with deletions of two kinase genes involved in male sexual development (map2 and cdpk4), showed a significant increase in cdc20 transcription in activated gametocytes. DNA replication and ultra structural analyses of cdc20 and map2 mutants showed similar blockage of nuclear division at the nuclear spindle/kinetochore stage. CDC20 was phosphorylated in asexual and sexual stages, but the level of modification was higher in activated gametocytes and ookinetes. Changes in global protein phosphorylation patterns in the Δcdc20 mutant parasites were largely different from those observed in the Δmap2 mutant. This suggests that CDC20 and MAP2 are both likely to play independent but vital roles in male gametogenesis

減價ノ計算法

Metabolic engineering is the science of rewiring the metabolism of cells to enhance production of native metabolites or to endow cells with the ability to produce new products. The potential applications of such efforts are wide ranging, including the generation of fuels, chemicals, foods, feeds, and pharmaceuticals. However, making cells into efficient factories is challenging because cells have evolved robust metabolic networks with hard-wired, tightly regulated lines of communication between molecular pathways that resist efforts to divert resources. Here, we will review the current status and challenges of metabolic engineering and will discuss how new technologies can enable metabolic engineering to be scaled up to the industrial level, either by cutting off the lines of control for endogenous metabolism or by infiltrating the system with disruptive, heterologous pathways that overcome cellular regulation