Interactions of Sea Anemone Toxins with Insect Sodium Channel—Insights from Electrophysiology and Molecular Docking Studies

Animal venoms are considered as a promising source of new drugs. Sea anemones release polypeptides that affect electrical activity of neurons of their prey. Voltage dependent sodium (Nav) channels are the common targets of Av1, Av2, and Av3 toxins from Anemonia viridis and CgNa from Condylactis gigantea. The toxins bind to the extracellular side of a channel and slow its fast inactivation, but molecular details of the binding modes are not known. Electrophysiological measurements on Periplaneta americana neuronal preparation revealed differences in potency of these toxins to increase nerve activity. Av1 and CgNa exhibit the strongest effects, while Av2 the weakest effect. Extensive molecular docking using a modern SMINA computer method revealed only partial overlap among the sets of toxins’ and channel’s amino acid residues responsible for the selectivity and binding modes. Docking positions support earlier supposition that the higher neuronal activity observed in electrophysiology should be attributed to hampering the fast inactivation gate by interactions of an anemone toxin with the voltage driven S4 helix from domain IV of cockroach Nav channel (NavPaS). Our modelling provides new data linking activity of toxins with their mode of binding in site 3 of NavPaS channel.     

Effect of Physiological Concentrations of Vitamin C on the Inhibitation of Hydroxyl Radical Induced Light Emission from Fe2+-EGTA-H2O2 and Fe3+-EGTA-H2O2 Systems In Vitro

Ascorbic acid (AA) has antioxidant properties. However, in the presence of Fe²⁺/Fe³⁺ ions and H₂O₂, it may behave as a pro-oxidant by accelerating and enhancing the formation of hydroxyl radicals (^•OH). Therefore, in this study we evaluated the effect of AA at concentrations of 1 to 200 µmol/L on ^•OH-induced light emission (at a pH of 7.4 and temperature of 37 °C) from 92.6 µmol/L Fe²⁺—185.2 µmol/L EGTA (ethylene glycol-bis (β-aminoethyl ether)-N,N,N′,N′-tetraacetic acid)—2.6 mmol/L H₂O₂, and 92.6 µmol/L Fe³⁺—185.2 µmol/L EGTA—2.6 mmol/L H₂O₂ systems. Dehydroascorbic acid (DHAA) at the same range of concentrations served as the reference compound. Light emission was measured with multitube luminometer (AutoLumat Plus LB 953) for 120 s after automatic injection of H₂O₂. AA at concentrations of 1 to 50 µmol/L and of 1 to 75 µmol/L completely inhibited light emission from Fe²⁺-EGTA-H₂O₂ and Fe³⁺-EGTA-H₂O₂, respectively. Concentrations of 100 and 200 µmol/L did not affect chemiluminescence of Fe³⁺-EGTA-H₂O₂ but tended to increase light emission from Fe²⁺-EGTA-H₂O₂. DHAA at concentrations of 1 to 100 µmol/L had no effect on chemiluminescence of both systems. These results indicate that AA at physiological concentrations exhibits strong antioxidant activity in the presence of chelated iron and H₂O₂.     

Laguerre and Hermite soliton clusters in nonlocal nonlinear media

We introduce novel classes of higher-order spatial optical solitons in analogy with Laguerre-Gaussian and Hermite-Gaussian linear eigenmodes. We reveal that stable higher-order optical solitons can exist in nonlocal nonlinear media in the various forms of soliton necklaces and soliton matrices. Modulational instability can lead to nontrivial transformations between energetically close solitons with different symmetries through the intermediate states resembling generalized Hermite-Laguerre-Gaussian modes.     

Stabilizers of Functional Menger Systems

A functional Menger system is a set of n-place functions containing n projections and closed under the so-called Menger's composition of n-place functions. We give the abstract characterization for subsets of these functional systems which contain functions having one common fixed point.     

De Morgan (2, n)-Semigroups of n-Place Functions

An abstract characterization of sets of some partial functions from Aⁿ to A closed with respect to the Menger's and Mann's superpositions and a quasicomplementation is presented.     

Bifurcations and synchronization of singularly perturbed oscillators: an application case study

We present numerically obtained bifurcations of two dual singularly perturbed nonlinear oscillating circuits. Each of the circuits comprises two coupled sections: a nonlinear section with dissipation and a linear one with a small constant biasing source. The two dual oscillators show an interesting pattern of hierarchical oscillations that follow the Stern?CBrocot tree with intervals of synchronization yielding Arnold??s tongues and their corresponding devil??s-like staircases. Several numerical results are included.     

Nonlinear surface waves in arrays of curved waveguides

We study both theoretically and experimentally the nonlinear surface waves at the edge of curved waveguide arrays with a surface defect. We show that the nonlinear coupling between different linear modes supported by the array can lead to beam switching to different output waveguides with increasing of the nonlinearity strength. Our experimental observations are in good agreement with the numerical modelling.     

Spatiotemporal toroidal waves from the transverse second-harmonic generation

We study the second-harmonic generation via transversely matched interaction of two counterpropagating ultrashort pulses in chi(2) photonic structures. We show that the emitted second-harmonic wave attains the form of spatially expanding toroid with the initial thickness given by the cross correlation of the pulses. We demonstrate the formation of such toroidal waves in crystals with random ferroelectric domains as well as in annularly poled nonlinear photonic structures.     

Spiraling multivortex solitons in nonlocal nonlinear media

We demonstrate the existence of a broad class of higher-order rotating spatial solitons in nonlocal nonlinear media. We employ the generalized Hermite-Laguerre-Gaussian ansatz for constructing multivortex soliton solutions and study numerically their dynamics and stability. We discuss in detail the tripole soliton carrying two spiraling phase dislocations, or self-trapped optical vortices.     

Crystal and molecular structure of cis- and trans-2,4-dihydroxy-2,4-dimethylcyclohexanetrans-1-acetic acid γ-lactone

During the transformation process of limonene to tetrahydrofuran derivatives, the title compounds (±)-( 4 ) have been obtained as crystalline products and subjected to X-ray analysis. The crystals of trans-( 4 ) are orthorhombic, space group P2₁2₁2₁, with the lattice constants a = 7.0445(5) Å, b = 10.0908(4) Å, c = 14.0309(6) Å; the absolute configuration at atoms C1, C2, and C4 is R_c1, S_c2, and R_c4, respectively. The isomeric form cis-( 4 ) crystallizes in the monoclinic system, space group P2₁, with the following unit-cell parameters: a = 10.8275(4) Å, b = 8.6994(5) Å, c = 16.4722(6) Å, β = 106.515(3)°. The asymmetric part of the unit cell of cis-( 4 ) contains three independent molecules. Each of these three molecules has the identical absolute configuration at all centers of chirality: S_c1, S_c2, and R_c4. © John Wiley & Sons, Inc.