Effect of radioactive and non-radioactive mercury on wheat germination and the anti-toxic role of glutathione

Studies to test the noxious effect of mercury ions on wheat germination and seedling growth showed that germination rate, shoot length, and fresh weights varied as a function of their concentration in the treatment solutions. At the same concentration, the radioactive mercury proved to be more harmful to the living seeds and seedlings. The detoxification action of glutathione for both radioactive and non-radioactive mercury was also followed. After a seven-day period of germination in the presence of the investigated compounds, the wheat plantlets were cut from the seeds, and their height, weight, and residual radioactivity were measured. The shoot length decreased from 8.1 (blank) to 4.6 cm (non-radioactive mercury) or even to 2.5 cm ((203)Hg), while glutathione had both an anti-toxic and an anti-radiotoxic effect (6.4 and 6.0 cm, respectively). The root weight of the lot decreased from 1.7 to 0.7 g and 0.4 g, respectively, while glutathione showed a healing action (1.5 and 1.7 g). The radioactive ions accumulated especially in roots (35.5 %), and less in shoots (11.2 %). Results were statistically validated.     

Matrix/analyte ratio influencing polymer molecular weight distribution in matrix‐assisted laser desorption/ionization time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry

Matrix‐assisted laser desorption/ionization time‐of‐flight mass spectrometry (MALDI‐TOF‐MS) has been used to characterize poly(L‐lysine) polymers and unique oligomer peptides, like 10‐, 15‐ and 25‐mer [Lys]_n oligolysine peptides. Several matrices have been tried in order to find optimal conditions, but only α‐cyano‐4‐hydroxycinnamic acid gave analytically useful spectra. The synthetic oligomers and their mixtures gave good quality spectra, showing protonated and cationized molecules, including doubly charged species. The polymers, analogously, gave a wide distribution of single‐ and double‐cationized peak series. The polymer distributions observed indicate the presence of significant suppression effects. The concentration (matrix/analyte ratio) was found to influence the results significantly; distributions shifting to higher masses when higher polymer concentrations were used. This effect was studied in detail using the synthetic (‘monodisperse’) oligolysine peptides. It was found that the relative intensities change by over an order of magnitude in the 0.1–10 pmol/µL concentration range (typical for most proteomic analyses). The results indicate that concentration effects need to be considered when MALDI‐MS is used for quantitative purposes. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Altered Glycosylation of Human Alpha-1-Acid Glycoprotein as a Biomarker for Malignant Melanoma

A high-resolution HILIC-MS/MS method was developed to analyze anthranilic acid derivatives of N-glycans released from human serum alpha-1-acid glycoprotein (AGP). The method was applied to samples obtained from 18 patients suffering from high-risk malignant melanoma as well as 19 healthy individuals. It enabled the identification of 102 glycan isomers separating isomers that differ only in sialic acid linkage (α-2,3, α-2,6) or in fucose positions (core, antenna). Comparative assessment of the samples revealed that upregulation of certain fucosylated glycans and downregulation of their nonfucosylated counterparts occurred in cancer patients. An increased ratio of isomers with more α-2,6-linked sialic acids was also observed. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) combining 10 variables with the highest discriminatory power was employed to categorize the samples based on their glycosylation pattern. The performance of the method was tested by cross-validation, resulting in an overall classification success rate of 96.7%. The approach presented here is significantly superior to serological marker S100B protein in terms of sensitivity and negative predictive power in the population studied. Therefore, it may effectively support the diagnosis of malignant melanoma as a biomarker.     

A qualitative uncertainty principle for functions generating a Gabor frame on LCA groups

Let G be a locally compact Abelian group. In this paper we study in which way the qualitative uncertainty principle is modified when we consider only functions f∈L²(G) which generate a Gabor frame associated with a uniform lattice K in G. This provides us with sharp lower bounds for the measure of the support of such functions and their Plancherel transforms.     

Microlocal Analysis of the Geometric Separation Problem

Image data are often composed of two or more geometrically distinct constituents; in galaxy catalogs, for instance, one sees a mixture of pointlike structures (galaxy superclusters) and curvelike structures (filaments). It would be ideal to process a single image and extract two geometrically “pure” images, each one containing features from only one of the two geometric constituents. This seems to be a seriously underdetermined problem but recent empirical work achieved highly persuasive separations. We present a theoretical analysis showing that accurate geometric separation of point and curve singularities can be achieved by minimizing the ?₁ norm of the representing coefficients in two geometrically complementary frames: wavelets and curvelets. Driving our analysis is a specific property of the ideal (but unachievable) representation where each content type is expanded in the frame best adapted to it. This ideal representation has the property that important coefficients are clustered geometrically in phase space, and that at fine scales, there is very little coherence between a cluster of elements in one frame expansion and individual elements in the complementary frame. We formally introduce notions of cluster coherence and clustered sparsity and use this machinery to show that the underdetermined systems of linear equations can be stably solved by ?₁ minimization; microlocal phase space helps organize the calculations that cluster coherence requires. © 2012 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Detection of immune complexes by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry

Matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS) was used to detect an immune complex formed between beta-lactoglobulin and polyclonal anti-beta-lactoglobulin antibody in the gas phase. The most important experimental parameters to detect such a specific antibody-antigen complex by MALDI were the use of solutions at near-neutral pH and of sinapinic acid matrix prepared by the dried-droplet method. Under such conditions, predominantly one but also two molecules of antigen protein were complexed by the antibody. Specific formation of the antibody-antigen complex was confirmed by performing competitive reactions. Addition of antibody to a 1:1 mixture of beta-lactoglobulin and one control protein resulted not only in the appearance of the expected antibody-antigen complex, but also in a strong decrease in the free beta-lactoglobulin signal, while the abundance of the control protein was not influenced.     

MALDI-TOF mass spectrometry of a combinatorial peptide library: effect of matrix composition on signal suppression

The effect of matrix composition on signal suppression caused by a dominant compound under MALDI ionization was studied using the combinatorial TQTXT pentapeptide library as a model system. The peptide library is composed of 19 components with all proteinogenic amino acids except cysteine in position X. From these compounds, only the Arg peptide (TQTRT) was detected with sufficient intensity in the MALDI-TOF mass spectrum under typical MALDI conditions (CCA matrix). The analysis of a set of compounds utilized as different matrix components, additives and a cationizing agent revealed that the composition of the matrix is a critical point in signal suppression. Highly improved ion yields were achieved by using a CCA/DHB mixture as a matrix. The addition of K(+) as a cationizing agent to the CCA matrix resulted in MALDI-TOF mass spectra with relative ion intensities very similar to those obtained by electrospray ionization.     

Density of weighted wavelet frames

If ψ ∈ L²(R), Λ is a discrete subset of the affine groupA =R ⁺ ×R, and w: Λ →R ⁺ is a weight function, then the weighted wavelet system generated by ψ, Λ, and w is . In this article we define lower and upper weighted densities D _w ⁻ (Λ) and D _w ⁺ (Λ) of Λ with respect to the geometry of the affine group, and prove that there exist necessary conditions on a weighted wavelet system in order that it possesses frame bounds. Specifically, we prove that if W(ψ, Λ, w) possesses an upper frame bound, then the upper weighted density is finite. Furthermore, for the unweighted case w = 1, we prove that if W(ψ, Λ, 1) possesses a lower frame bound and D _w ⁺ (Λ⁻¹) < ∞, then the lower density is strictly positive. We apply these results to oversampled affine systems (which include the classical affine and the quasi-affine systems as special cases), to co-affine wavelet systems, and to systems consisting only of dilations, obtaining some new results relating density to the frame properties of these systems.     

Inducible gene inactivation in neurons of the adult mouse forebrain

Background  

The analysis of the role of genes in important brain functions like learning, memory and synaptic plasticity requires gene inactivation at the adult stage to exclude developmental effects, adaptive changes or even lethality. In order to achieve temporally controlled somatic mutagenesis, the Cre/loxP-recombination system has been complemented with the tamoxifen-inducible fusion protein consisting of Cre recombinase and the mutated ligand binding domain of the human estrogen receptor (CreER^T2). To induce recombination of conditional alleles in neurons of the adult forebrain, we generated a bacterial artificial chromosome-derived transgene expressing the CreER^T2 fusion protein under control of the regulatory elements of the CaMKIIα gene (CaMKCreER^T2 transgene).     

Metal-Dependent and Selective Crystallization of CAU-10 and MIL-53 Frameworks through Linker Nitration

The reaction of the V-shaped linker molecule 5-hydroxyisophthalic acid (H₂L⁰), with Al or Ga nitrate under almost identical reaction conditions leads to the nitration of the linker and subsequent formation of metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) with CAU-10 or MIL-53 type structure of composition [Al(OH)(L)], denoted as Al-CAU-10-L^{0, 2, 4, 6} or [Ga(OH)(L)], denoted as Ga-MIL-53-L². The Al-MOF contains the original linker L⁰ as well as three different nitration products (L², L⁴ and L^4/6), whereas the Ga-MOF mainly incorporates the linker L². The compositions were deduced by ¹H NMR spectroscopy and confirmed by Rietveld refinement. In situ and ex situ studies were carried out to follow the nitration and crystallization, as well as the composition of the MOFs. The crystal structures were refined against powder X-ray diffraction (PXRD) data. As anticipated, the use of the V-shaped linker results in the formation of the CAU-10 type structure in the Al-MOF. Unexpectedly, the Ga-MOF crystallizes in a MIL-53 type structure, which is usually observed with linear or slightly bent linker molecules. To study the structure directing effect of the in situ nitrated linker, pure 2-nitrobenzene-1,3-dicarboxylic acid (m-H₂BDC-NO₂) was employed which exclusively led to the formation of [Ga(OH)(C₈H₃NO₆)] (Ga-MIL-53-m-BDC-NO₂), which is isoreticular to Ga-MIL-53-L². Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations confirmed the higher stability of Ga-MIL-53-L² compared to Ga-CAU-10-L² and grand canonical Monte Carlo simulations (GCMC) are in agreement with the observed water adsorption isotherms of Ga-MIL-53-L².