Investigation of the Flavonoids in Croatian Propolis by Thin-Layer Chromatography

JPC – Journal of Planar Chromatography – Modern TLC - Flavonoids and phenolic acids with a variety of biological activity are considered to be the main compounds in propolis–a...     

A sensitive and specific precursor ion scanning approach in liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry to detect methylprednisolone acetate and its metabolites in rat urine

A new, simple, sensitive and specific liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometric (LC/ESI‐MS/MS) method in precursor ion scanning (PIS) mode has been developed for the rapid detection of methylprednisolone acetate (MPA) and its metabolites in rat urine. A suitable product ion specific for methylprednisolone (MP) and MPA was selected after a fragmentation study on 20 (cortico)steroids at different collision energies (5–40 eV). Urine samples were simply treated with acetonitrile then dried in a SpeedVac system. The method was validated and compared with other PIS methods for detecting corticosteroids in human urine. It was more sensitive, with limit of detection (LOD) and lower limit of quantitation (LLOQ), respectively, of 5 and 10 ng mL^?1. The method was applied for the analysis of rat urine collected before and after (24, 48, 72 h) intra‐articular (IA) injection of a marketed formulation of MPA (Depo‐Medrol®). MS/MS acquisitions were taken at different collision energies for the precursor ions of interest, detected in PIS mode, to verify the MP‐related structure. Six different metabolites were detected in rat urine, and their chemical structures were assigned with a computational study. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How Does Diet Influence Our Lives? Evaluating the Relationship between Isotopic Signatures and Mortality Patterns in Italian Roman Imperial and Medieval Periods

The present research investigates the relationship between dietary habits and mortality patterns in the Roman Imperial and Medieval periods. The reconstructions of population dynamics and subsistence strategies provide a fascinating source of information for understanding our history. This is particularly true given that the changes in social, economic, political, and religious aspects related to the transition from the Roman period to the Middle Ages have been widely discussed. We analyzed the isotopic and mortality patterns of 616 individuals from 18 archeological sites (the Medieval Latium sites of Colonna, Santa Severa, Allumiere, Cencelle, and 14 Medieval and Imperial funerary contexts from Rome) to compile a survivorship analysis. A semi-parametric approach was applied, suggesting variations in mortality patterns between sexes in the Roman period. Nitrogen isotopic signatures influenced mortality in both periods, showing a quadratic and a linear effect for Roman Imperial and Medieval populations, respectively. No influence of carbon isotopic signatures has been detected for Roman Imperial populations. Conversely, increased mortality risk for rising carbon isotopic values was observed in Medieval samples.     

A Roe-type scheme with low Mach number preconditioning for a two-phase compressible flow model with pressure relaxation

We describe two-phase compressible flows by a hyperbolic six-equation single-velocity two-phase flow model with stiff mechanical relaxation. In particular, we are interested in the simulation of liquid-gas mixtures such as cavitating flows. The model equations are numerically approximated via a fractional step algorithm, which alternates between the solution of the homogeneous hyperbolic portion of the system through Godunov-type finite volume schemes, and the solution of a system of ordinary differential equations that takes into account the pressure relaxation terms. When used in this algorithm, classical schemes such as Roe’s or HLLC prove to be very efficient to simulate the dynamics of transonic and supersonic flows. Unfortunately, these methods suffer from the well known difficulties of loss of accuracy and efficiency for low Mach number regimes encountered by upwind finite volume discretizations. This issue is particularly critical for liquid-gasmixtures due to the large and rapid variation in the flow of the acoustic impedance. To cure the problem of loss of accuracy at low Mach number, in this work we apply to our original Roe-type scheme for the two-phase flow model the Turkel’s preconditioning technique studied by Guillard–Viozat [Computers & Fluids, 28, 1999] for the Roe’s scheme for the classical Euler equations.We present numerical results for a two-dimensional liquid-gas channel flow test that show the effectiveness of the resulting Roe-Turkel method for the two-phase system.     

Full-fledged proteomic analysis of bioactive wheat amylase inhibitors by a 3-D analytical technique: Identification of new heterodimeric aggregation states

Wheat proteinaceous alpha-amylase inhibitors (alpha-AIs) are increasingly investigated for their agronomical role as natural defence molecules of plants against the attack of insects and pests, but also for their effects on human health. The wheat genomes code for several bioactive alpha-AIs that share sequence homology, but differ in their specificity against alpha-amylases from different species and for their aggregation states. Wheat alpha-AIs are traditionally classified as belonging to the three classes of tetrameric, homodimeric and monomeric forms, each class being constituted by a number of polypeptides that display different electrophoretic mobilities. Here we describe a proteomic approach for the identification of bioactive alpha-AIs from wheat and, in particular, a 3-D technique that allows to best identify and characterize the dimeric fraction. The technique takes advantage of the thermal resistance of alpha-AIs (resistant to T > 70 degrees C) and consists in the separation of protein mixtures by 2-D polyacrylamide/starch electrophoresis under nondissociating PAGE (ND-PAGE, first dimension) and dissociating (urea-PAGE or U-PAGE second dimension) conditions, followed by in-gel spontaneous reaggregation of protein complexes and identification of the alpha-amylase inhibitory activity (antizymogram, third dimension) using enzymes from human salivary glands and from the larvae of Tenebrio molitor coleopter (yellow mealworm). Dimeric alpha-AIs from Triticum aestivum (bread wheat) were observed to exist as heterodimers. The formation of heterodimeric complexes was also confirmed by in vitro reaggregation assays carried out on RP-HPLC purified wheat dimeric alpha-AIs, and their bioactivity assayed by antizymogram analysis. The present 3-D analytical technique can be exploited for fast, full-fledged identification and characterization of wheat alpha-AIs.     

Biopolymers and biomaterials based on elastomeric proteins

Elastomeric proteins represent a very interesting subject of investigation, not only for their molecular mechanism(s) of elasticity, but also for their great potential as novel biomaterials. This review is intended to give an overview of the properties of the main elastic proteins, with particular focus on elastin and, at the same time, a report on the most recent acquisitions in the field of elastomeric biomaterials.

TEM image of poly(OrnGlyGlyOrnGly) after crosslinking reaction with GTA. The bar represents 100 nm.     

High frequency wave packets for the Schrödinger equation and its numerical approximations

We build Gaussian wave packets for the linear Schrödinger equation and its finite difference space semi-discretization and illustrate the lack of uniform dispersive properties of the numerical solutions as established in Ignat and Zuazua (2009) [6]. It is by now well known that bigrid algorithms provide filtering mechanisms allowing to recover the uniformity of the dispersive properties as the mesh size goes to zero. We analyze and illustrate numerically how these high frequency wave packets split and propagate under these bigrid filtering mechanisms, depending on how the fine grid/coarse grid filtering is implemented.     

Metal binding studies using spiroacetal thiacrown ethers

The binding ability of a series of spiroacetal thiacrown ethers with Li⁺, Na⁺, K⁺, Cs⁺, Co²⁺, Cd²⁺, Ag⁺ and Pb²⁺ is reported. The thiacrown ethers showed an affinity for the heavy metals. The interaction of the three thiacrown ethers 1-3 and [Al(acac)₃] 5, [Co(NH₃)₅NO₂](BPh₄)₂6 and [Co(en)₃](BPh₄)₃7 complexes is also investigated.     

Fluorescence contrast and threshold limit: implications for photodynamic diagnosis of basal cell carcinoma

This study was designed to evaluate what application time of delta-5-aminolaevulinic acid (ALA) results in highest contrast between tumour and normal skin, in the interval 1-4 h, when using photodynamic diagnosis (PDD) of basal cell carcinomas (BCC) located on the face. Moreover, a value of the demarcation limit has been derived based on the fluorescence variation in normal skin adjacent to the tumour. Forty patients were included in the study, randomly allocated to four different groups with varying ALA application time in the range 1-4 h. The contrast, defined as the ratio between the fluorescence intensity in ALA-treated tumour tissue and normal skin, was calculated for each patient, and the mean values in each group were evaluated as a function of ALA application time. In addition, the fluorescence intensity variation in ALA-treated normal skin adjacent to the tumour was assessed. The results from this study show a peak of the mean contrast values after 3 h ALA application, but due to large interpatient variation, the mean contrast did not differ significantly in the interval 2-4 h. After 2 h ALA application, the fluorescence intensity variation in the normal ALA-treated skin was found to be at a maximum, which suggests that 2 h ALA application is not preferable when using PDD. Based on data of the fluorescence variation in ALA-treated normal skin after 3 and 4 h ALA application, a tolerance interval was calculated implying that values above 1.4 times the mean normal fluorescence indicate an abnormal condition. This tolerance limit agrees well with results obtained in a former study.