1,945 research outputs found
Folding and insertion thermodynamics of the transmembrane WALP peptide
The anchor of most integral membrane proteins consists of one or several
helices spanning the lipid bilayer. The WALP peptide, GWW(LA)(L)WWA, is a
common model helix to study the fundamentals of protein insertion and folding,
as well as helix-helix association in the membrane. Its structural properties
have been illuminated in a large number of experimental and simulation studies.
In this combined coarse-grained and atomistic simulation study, we probe the
thermodynamics of a single WALP peptide, focusing on both the insertion across
the water-membrane interface, as well as folding in both water and a membrane.
The potential of mean force characterizing the peptide's insertion into the
membrane shows qualitatively similar behavior across peptides and three force
fields. However, the Martini force field exhibits a pronounced secondary
minimum for an adsorbed interfacial state, which may even become the global
minimum---in contrast to both atomistic simulations and the alternative PLUM
force field. Even though the two coarse-grained models reproduce the free
energy of insertion of individual amino acids side chains, they both
underestimate its corresponding value for the full peptide (as compared with
atomistic simulations), hinting at cooperative physics beyond the residue
level. Folding of WALP in the two environments indicates the helix as the most
stable structure, though with different relative stabilities and chain-length
dependence.Comment: 12 pages, 5 figure
On Shape Transformations and Shape Fluctuations of Cellular Compartments and Vesicles
We discuss the shape formation and shape transitions of simple bilayer vesicles in context with their role in biology. In the first part several classes of shape changes of vesicles of one lipid component are described and it is shown that these can be explained in terms of the bending energy concept in particular augmented by the bilayer coupling hypothesis. In the second
part shape changes and vesicle fission of vesicles composed of membranes of lipid mixtures are reported. These are explained in terms of coupling between local curvature and phase separation
Building a Model of Collaboration Between Historically Black and Historically White Universities
Despite increases over the last two decades in the number of degrees awarded to students from underrepresented groups in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines, enhancing diversity in these disciplines remains a challenge. This article describes a strategic approach to this challenge—the development of a collaborative partnership between two universities: the historically Black Elizabeth City State University and the historically White University of New Hampshire. The partnership, a type of learning organization built on three mutually agreed upon principles, strives to enhance opportunities for underrepresented students to pursue careers in the STEM disciplines. This article further describes six promising practices that framed the partnership, which resulted in the submission of nine proposals to federal agencies and the funding of four grants that led to the implementation, research, learning, and evaluation that followed
Induction of the Ly-6A/E gene by interferon alpha/beta and gamma requires a DNA element to which a tyrosine-phosphorylated 91-kDa protein binds.
17. H. Vikis, unpublished results
growth factor stimulation, and ROS is known to activate Src and Jak family kinases (11, 23, 24). Thus, Rac1 may both localize STAT3 to kinase complexes and contribute to the activation of the kinases themselves. References and Notes 1. J. E. Darnell Jr., Science 277, 1630 (1997). 2. J. N. Ihle et al., Trends Biochem. Sci. 19, 222 (1994). 3. K. Shuai et al., Cell 76, 821 (1994). 4. T. E. Hayes, A. M. Kitchen, B. H. Cochran, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 84, 1272 To define the cell type(s) from which the daf-2 insulinlike signaling pathway functions to control C. elegans life-span, metabolism, and development, we restored daf-2 pathway function to restricted cell types by using distinct promoters to express daf-2 or age-1 cDNAs in either neurons, intestine, or muscle cells of a daf-2 or age-1 mutant (16 -22). Long life-span, metabolic changes, and dauer arrest were tested in these transgenic animals The long life-span of daf-2 and age-1 mutants was rescued by neuronal expression of daf-2 or age-1, respectively, with the panneuronal unc-14 promoter (16, 24). Neuronally restricted age-1 expression fully restored wild-type adult life-span to an age-1(mg44) null mutan
The Dark Energy Survey Data Management System
The Dark Energy Survey collaboration will study cosmic acceleration with a
5000 deg2 griZY survey in the southern sky over 525 nights from 2011-2016. The
DES data management (DESDM) system will be used to process and archive these
data and the resulting science ready data products. The DESDM system consists
of an integrated archive, a processing framework, an ensemble of astronomy
codes and a data access framework. We are developing the DESDM system for
operation in the high performance computing (HPC) environments at NCSA and
Fermilab. Operating the DESDM system in an HPC environment offers both speed
and flexibility. We will employ it for our regular nightly processing needs,
and for more compute-intensive tasks such as large scale image coaddition
campaigns, extraction of weak lensing shear from the full survey dataset, and
massive seasonal reprocessing of the DES data. Data products will be available
to the Collaboration and later to the public through a virtual-observatory
compatible web portal. Our approach leverages investments in publicly available
HPC systems, greatly reducing hardware and maintenance costs to the project,
which must deploy and maintain only the storage, database platforms and
orchestration and web portal nodes that are specific to DESDM. In Fall 2007, we
tested the current DESDM system on both simulated and real survey data. We used
Teragrid to process 10 simulated DES nights (3TB of raw data), ingesting and
calibrating approximately 250 million objects into the DES Archive database. We
also used DESDM to process and calibrate over 50 nights of survey data acquired
with the Mosaic2 camera. Comparison to truth tables in the case of the
simulated data and internal crosschecks in the case of the real data indicate
that astrometric and photometric data quality is excellent.Comment: To be published in the proceedings of the SPIE conference on
Astronomical Instrumentation (held in Marseille in June 2008). This preprint
is made available with the permission of SPIE. Further information together
with preprint containing full quality images is available at
http://desweb.cosmology.uiuc.edu/wik
Does participation in a pain course based on the international association for the study of pain's curricula guidelines change student knowledge about pain?
The People in Pain course was set up as a joint initiative of the Departments of Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy within the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences at The University of Queensland. It was instigated in response to the publication of Pain Curricula for Occupational Therapy and Physiotherapy by the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP) in 1994 (1). The first year it was offered, the "People in Pain" course comprised 14 h of lecture content. It was then expanded to encompass 28 h of lectures and seminar involvement. OBJECTIVES: To evaluate the impact of participation in a university pain course that meets the IASP pain curricula guidelines to increase health professional students' knowledge about pain. METHODS: Students who participated in the People in Pain course over the first three years were invited to complete the Revised Pain Knowledge and Attitudes Questionnaire (R-PKAQ) pre- and postcourse. Data obtained from 22 students in the short course formed a pilot project, and data from 22 students in the longer version of the course were used in the present study. RESULTS: Examination of the correlation matrix indicated substantial correlations between all R-PKAQ subscales except physiological basis of pain and pharmacological management of pain. In both the pilot project during the first year of the course and the expanded course in the following two years, significant improvement was found in the students' knowledge on five of the six subscales of the R-PKAQ: physiological basis of pain, psychological factors of pain perception, assessment and measurement of pain, cognitive-behavioural methods of pain relief, and pharmacological management of pain. Improvements in the developmental aspects of pain perception subscale failed to reach significance. CONCLUSIONS: An integrated pain course developed according to the pain curriculum guidelines developed by the IASP resulted in increased student knowledge regardless of the length of the program attended
Disease variants in genomes of 44 centenarians
To identify previously reported disease mutations that are compatible with extraordinary longevity, we screened the coding regions of the genomes of 44 Ashkenazi Jewish centenarians. Individual genome sequences were generated with 30x coverage on the Illumina HiSeq 2000 and single-nucleotide variants were called with the genome analysis toolkit (GATK). We identified 130 coding variants that were annotated as pathogenic or likely pathogenic based on the ClinVar database and that are infrequent in the general population. These variants were previously reported to cause a wide range of degenerative, neoplastic, and cardiac diseases with autosomal dominant, autosomal recessive, and X-linked inheritance. Several of these variants are located in genes that harbor actionable incidental findings, according to the recommendations of the American College of Medical Genetics. In addition, we found risk variants for late-onset neurodegenerative diseases, such as the APOE epsilon4 allele that was even present in a homozygous state in one centenarian who did not develop Alzheimer\u27s disease. Our data demonstrate that the incidental finding of certain reported disease variants in an individual genome may not preclude an extraordinarily long life. When the observed variants are encountered in the context of clinical sequencing, it is thus important to exercise caution in justifying clinical decisions
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