Protein identification and protein expression profiling of Saccharomyces cerevisiae grown under low and very high gravity conditions

Proteomics is the analysis of the total complement of proteins expressed by a cell or organism grown under a specified condition. The obtained protein profile would provide a better understanding of phenotypic characteristics of a cell grown under pre-determined conditions. Mass spectrometric-based protein analysis is currently the standard method in proteomic studies; however, there are many limitations associated with its application. The major objectives of this study included the development of a strategy to analyze the confidence of identified proteins and the development of an algorithm to interpret the experimentally obtained mass spectral data. A two-step strategy was developed to analyze the confidence of identified proteins. In the first step, the proteins identified by a single protein identification tool were classified into two groups: high confidence proteins that were identified by unique peptides, and low confidence proteins that were identified by non-unique peptides. In the second step, the proteins identified by different tools (e.g., SEQUEST and Mascot in our work) were cross-compared. After integrating the two-step analysis, the identified proteins were classified into four levels of confidence. The proteins that were identified by the presence of unique peptides and that were commonly identified by different tools were grouped into the highest confidence level - Level 4. Even though the number of proteins in Level 4 was reduced significantly, the conclusions drawn from the proteins were more reliable. According to the operation of tandem mass spectrometry and the characteristics of the peptides generated by site-specific protease digestion, a two-pass approach for identifying the species-specific proteins was developed. The approach can find all possible peptides corresponding to a precursor ion and gives detailed matching information of each peptide candidate to the experimental product ion series. According to the total number of matched product ions, the total number of matched b- and y- ions, and the contiguity characteristic of identified product ions, the peptide candidates were ranked decreasingly from the most probable to the least. Combined with the concept of unique peptide, the obtained most probable peptide can then be used to predict proteins existing in the original sample. The developed two-pass approach and two-step strategy were then used to study the protein profiling of Saccharomyces cerevisiae cultivated in various gravity conditions (10 and 300 g glucose/l) in order to investigate the changes in central metabolic pathways of S. cerevisiae. Our fermentation data indicated that the higher glucose contents would result in lower cell growth and higher ethanol production (e.g., high ethanol concentration in fermentation broth). However, the relative ethanol yield as related to the glucose consumption was lower under higher glucose concentrations. The protein profile showed that a higher flux of nutrient was channelled into the pentose phosphate pathway when S. cerevisiae was grown under a high glucose concentration. The reason for this phenomenon might be that the cell needs more reducing power (e.g., NADPH) for the synthesis of macromolecules such as proteins, nucleic acids, and lipids. These materials are essential to the cell in order to modify its structure (e.g., cell wall), to survive osmotic stress and to replicate

Extraction and characterization of radish seed oils using different methods

Purpose: To evaluate the impact of three different extraction methods on oil yield, physicochemical properties and bioactive ingredients of radish seeds.Methods: Radish seed oil was prepared by traditional solvent extraction (SE), supercritical carbon dioxide extraction (SCE) and sub-critical propane extraction (SPE). The yield, physicochemical properties, fatty acid composition and oxidative stability of the oil extracts were compared. The contents of tocopherol and sulforaphene in the oils were also determined.Results: The oil yield obtained by SPE, SE, SCE were 33.69, 27.17 and 24.10 %, respectively. There were no significant differences in physicochemical properties and fatty acid composition of oils extracted by the three methods. However, SCE oil had the best oxidative stability, and highest contents of vitamin E and sulforaphene, followed by oils from SPE and SEConclusion: SCE is highly selective for tocopherol and sulforaphene, which could explain its high oil oxidative stability. These results suggest that of the three extraction methods, SCE is best suited for preparing medicinal radish seed oil.Keywords: Radish seed oil, Different extraction methods, Fatty acid composition, Tocopherol, Sulforaphen

Extraction and characterization of Raphanus Sativus seed oil obtained by different methods

Purpose: To evaluate the impact of three different extraction methods on yield, physicochemical properties and bioactive ingredients of Raphanus sativus seed oil.Methods: Raphanus sativus seed oil was prepared by traditional solvent extraction (SE), super-critical carbon dioxide extraction (SCE) and sub-critical propane  extraction (SPE). The yield, physicochemical properties, fatty acid composition and oxidative stability of the oil extracts were compared. The contents of tocopherol and sulforaphene in the oils were also determined.Results: The oil yield obtained by SPE, SE and SCE were 33.69, 27.17 and 24.10 %, respectively. There were no significant differences in physicochemical properties and fatty acid compositions of oils extracted by the three methods. However, SCE oil had the best oxidative stability, and highest contents of vitamin E and sulforaphene, followed by oils from SPE and SE.Conclusion: SCE is highly selective for tocopherol and sulforaphene, which could explain its high oil oxidative stability. These results suggest that of the three extraction methods, SCE is best suited for preparing medicinal radish seed oil.Keywords: Raphanus sativus seed oil, Different extraction methods, Fatty acid composition, Tocopherol, Sulforaphen

An Evaluation of the Effect of Corrosion Tests on Thermal Performance of Aluminum Heat Exchangers

This paper shows the impact of the external corrosion generated by SWAAT tests on the thermal performance of the aluminum heat exchangers. The SWAAT tests were designed to evaluate the durability of metallic materials, it could be further utilized to evaluate the effect of corrosion on the thermal and hydraulic performances. The accelerated corrosion test leaves a large amount of salt and corrosion products on the heat exchanger surface. These deposits do not usually occur in operating conditions (some fouling does), they could mislead the understanding of the real effect of corrosion on heat exchanger performance. This paper presents experiments with two identical brazed aluminum HXs being exposed to a series of salt spray corrosion tests (SWAAT): the airside pressure drop, the heat exchanger heat transfer characteristics, and the weight of the heat exchangers were examined periodically after the salt spray test. One heat exchanger is cleaned periodically to remove the deposit. The thermal performances are evaluated both before and after cleaning. The other heat exchanger is evaluated without cleaning and removal of the deposits. The uncleaned heat exchanger shows much worse performance than the cleaned heat exchanger: a significant increase in the airside pressure drop and weight, also a decrease of the heat transfer coefficient have been identified. Our experimental results show a linear trend of thermal performance degradation vs. corrosion testing time. Data also suggests that the periodical cleaning of the heat exchanger may further accelerate the corrosion, indicated by the faster decrease of thermal performance and drop of HX weight

Hybrid continuum-discrete simulation of granular impact dynamics

Granular impact -- the dynamic intrusion of solid objects into granular media -- is widespread across scientific and engineering applications including geotechnics. Existing approaches for simulating granular impact dynamics have relied on either a pure discrete method or a pure continuum method. Neither of these methods, however, is deemed optimal from the computational perspective. Here, we introduce a hybrid continuum-discrete approach, built on the coupled material-point and discrete-element method (MP-DEM), for simulating granular impact dynamics with unparalleled efficiency. To accommodate highly complex solid-granular interactions, we enhance the existing MP-DEM formulation with three new ingredients: (i) a robust contact algorithm that couples the continuum and discrete parts without any interpenetration under extreme impact loads, (ii) large deformation kinematics employing multiplicative elastoplasticity, and (iii) a trans-phase constitutive relation capturing gasification of granular media. For validation, we also generate experimental data through laboratory measurement of the impact dynamics of solid spheres dropped onto dry sand. Simulation of the experiments shows that the proposed approach can well reproduce granular impact dynamics in terms of impact forces, intrusion depths, and splash patterns. Further, through parameter studies on material properties, model formulations, and numerical schemes, we identify key factors for successful continuum-discrete simulation of granular impact dynamics

OccupancyDETR: Making Semantic Scene Completion as Straightforward as Object Detection

Visual-based 3D semantic occupancy perception (also known as 3D semantic scene completion) is a new perception paradigm for robotic applications like autonomous driving. Compared with Bird's Eye View (BEV) perception, it extends the vertical dimension, significantly enhancing the ability of robots to understand their surroundings. However, due to this very reason, the computational demand for current 3D semantic occupancy perception methods generally surpasses that of BEV perception methods and 2D perception methods. We propose a novel 3D semantic occupancy perception method, OccupancyDETR, which consists of a DETR-like object detection module and a 3D occupancy decoder module. The integration of object detection simplifies our method structurally - instead of predicting the semantics of each voxels, it identifies objects in the scene and their respective 3D occupancy grids. This speeds up our method, reduces required resources, and leverages object detection algorithm, giving our approach notable performance on small objects. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed method on the SemanticKITTI dataset, showcasing an mIoU of 23 and a processing speed of 6 frames per second, thereby presenting a promising solution for real-time 3D semantic scene completion

Bis(2-hydroxy-N′-isopropylidenebenzo­hydrazidato-κ2 N′,O)bis­(pyridine-κN)cobalt(II)

In the title complex, [Co(C10H11N2O2)2(C5H5N)2], the CoII atom lies on a centre of symmetry and adopts a distorted cis-CoO2N4 octa­hedral geometry. The two acetone salicyloylhydrazone ligands are deprotonated and act as N,O-bidentate monoanionic ligands, forming the equatorial plane, while the axial positions are occupied by two N atoms of two pyridine mol­ecules. The complex presents O—H⋯N and C—H⋯N intra­molecular hydrogen bonds. Inter­molecular C—H⋯N and C—H⋯O inter­actions are also present in the crystal