A dual functional peptide carrying in vitro selected catalytic and binding activities

When minimal functional sequences are used, it is possible to integrate multiple functions on a single peptide chain, like a “single stroke drawing”.</p

A Large X-ray Flare from a Single Weak-lined T Tauri Star TWA-7 Detected with MAXI GSC

We present a large X-ray flare from a nearby weak-lined T Tauri star TWA-7 detected with the Gas Slit Camera (GSC) on the Monitor of All-sky X-ray Image (MAXI). The GSC captured X-ray flaring from TWA-7 with a flux of $3\times10^{-9}$ ergs cm$^{-2}$ s$^{-1}$ in 2--20 keV band during the scan transit starting at UT 2010-09-07 18:24:30.The estimated X-ray luminosity at the scan in the energy band is 3$\times10^{32}$ ergs s$^{-1}$,indicating that the event is among the largest X-ray flares fromT Tauri stars.Since MAXI GSC monitors a target only during a scan transit of about a minute per 92 min orbital cycle, the luminosity at the flare peak might have been higher than that detected. At the scan transit, we observed a high X-ray-to-bolometric luminosity ratio, log $L_{\rm X}/L_{\rm bol}$ = $-0.1^{+0.2}_{-0.3}$; i.e., the X-ray luminosity is comparable to the bolometric luminosity. Since TWA-7 has neither an accreting disk nor a binary companion, the observed event implies that none of those are essential to generate such big flares in T Tauri stars.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, 1 table accepted for publication in PAS

サブミリビョウ デ ノ オリタタミ ウンドウ ノ カンサツ カラ アキラカ ト ナッタ タンパクシツ コウゾウ ケイセイ ニ オケル シュウシュク ト タンサク メカニズム

京都大学0048新制・課程博士博士(工学)甲第12342号工博第2671号新制||工||1377(附属図書館)24178UT51-2006-J334京都大学大学院工学研究科分子工学専攻(主査)教授 白川 昌宏, 教授 川﨑 昌博, 教授 渡辺 宏学位規則第4条第1項該当Doctor of EngineeringKyoto UniversityDA

Generating Ampicillin-Level Antimicrobial Peptides with Activity-Aware Generative Adversarial Networks

Antimicrobial peptides are a potential solution to the threat of multidrug-resistant bacterial pathogens. Recently, deep generative models including generative adversarial networks (GANs) have been shown to be capable of designing new antimicrobial peptides. Intuitively, a GAN controls the probability distribution of generated sequences to cover active peptides as much as possible. This paper presents a peptide-specialized model called PepGAN that takes the balance between covering active peptides anddodging non-active peptides. As a result, PepGAN has superior statistical fidelity with respect to physicochemical descriptors including charge, hydrophobicity and weight. Top six peptides were synthesized and one of them was confirmed to be highly antimicrobial. The minimum inhibitory concentration was 3.1μg/mL, indicating that the peptide is twice as strong as ampicillin.</p

Targeted delivery of fluorogenic peptide aptamers into live microalgae by femtosecond laser photoporation at single-cell resolution

Microalgae-based metabolic engineering has been proven effective for producing valuable substances such as food supplements, pharmaceutical drugs, biodegradable plastics, and biofuels in the past decade. The ability to accurately visualize and quantify intracellular metabolites in live microalgae is essential for efficient metabolic engineering, but remains a major challenge due to the lack of characterization methods. Here we demonstrate it by synthesizing fluorogenic peptide aptamers with specific binding affinity to a target metabolite and delivering them into live microalgae by femtosecond laser photoporation at single-cell resolution. As a proof-of-principle demonstration of our method, we use it to characterize Euglena gracilis, a photosynthetic unicellular motile microalgal species, which is capable of producing paramylon (a carbohydrate granule similar to starch). Specifically, we synthesize a peptide aptamer containing a paramylon-binding fluorescent probe, 7-nitrobenzofurazan, and introduce it into E. gracilis cells one-by-one by suppressing their mobility with mannitol and transiently perforating them with femtosecond laser pulses at 800nm for photoporation. To demonstrate the method’s practical utility in metabolic engineering, we perform spatially and temporally resolved fluorescence microscopy of single live photoporated E. gracilis cells under different culture conditions. Our method holds great promise for highly efficient microalgae-based metabolic engineering

大規模な崖状地形に建設された大型ウインドファームを対象とした気流場解析

Huadian Group's first wind project in Yunnan, Duogu wind farm, has been approved by the Provincial Development and Reform Commission. The acquired site is in Mengzi, south east of Yunnan Province. The developer intends to employ 33 units of 1.5MW turbines in this new wind farm (49.5MW) and the total cost of construction has been estimated to be CNY449.7 million ($69.61 million). The present study compared the prediction accuracy of two CFD software packages for simulating a flow around an actual escarpment with a steep slope: 1) OpenFOAM (turbulence model: SST k−ω RANS), which is a free, open source CFD software package developed by OpenCFD Ltd at ESI Group and distributed by the OpenFOAM Foundation and 2) RIAM-COMPACT【○!R】 (turbulence model: the standard Smagorinsky LES), which has been developed by the lead author of the present paper. Relatively good agreement was obtained between the OpenFOAM and the RIAM-COMPACT【○!R】

Quantum Annealing Designs Nonhemolytic Antimicrobial Peptides in a Discrete Latent Space

Increasing the variety of antimicrobial peptides is crucial in meeting the global challenge of multi-drug-resistant bacterial pathogens. While several deep-learning-based peptide design pipelines are reported, they may not be optimal in data efficiency. High efficiency requires a well-compressed latent space, where optimization is likely to fail due to numerous local minima. We present a multi-objective peptide design pipeline based on a discrete latent space and D-Wave quantum annealer with the aim of solving the local minima problem. To achieve multi-objective optimization, multiple peptide properties are encoded into a score using non-dominated sorting. Our pipeline is applied to design therapeutic peptides that are antimicrobial and non-hemolytic at the same time. From 200 000 peptides designed by our pipeline, four peptides proceeded to wet-lab validation. Three of them showed high anti-microbial activity, and two are non-hemolytic. Our results demonstrate how quantum-based optimizers can be taken advantage of in real-world medical studies

Bioelectrochemical Switches for the Quantitative Detection of Antibodies Directly in Whole Blood

The development of rapid, low-cost point-of-care approaches for the quantitative detection of antibodies would drastically impact global health by shortening the delay between sample collection and diagnosis and by improving the penetration of modern diagnostics into the developing world. Unfortunately, however, current methods for the quantitative detection of antibodies, including ELISAs, Western blots, and fluorescence polarization assays, are complex, multiple-step processes that rely on well-trained technicians working in well-equipped laboratories. In response, we describe here a versatile, DNA-based electrochemical “switch” for the rapid, single-step measurement of specific antibodies directly in undiluted whole blood at clinically relevant low-nanomolar concentrations