Rationally designed glycosylated premithramycins: hybrid aromatic polyketides using genes from three different biosynthetic pathways

Heterologous expression of the urdGT2 gene from the urdamycin producer Streptomyces fradiae Tü2717, which encodes a C-glycosyltransferase, into mutants of the mithramycin producer Streptomyces argillaceus, in which either one or all glycosyltransferases were inactivated, yielded four novel C-glycosylated premithramycin-type molecules. Structure elucidation revealed these to be 9-C-olivosylpremithramycinone, 9-C-mycarosylpremithramycinone, and their respective 4-O-demethyl analogues. In another experiment, both the urdGT2 gene from S. fradiae and the lanGT1 gene from S. cyanogenus, were coexpressed into a S. argillaceus mutant lacking the MtmGIV glycosyltransferase. This experiment, in which genes from three different organisms were combined, resulted in the production of 9-C-(olivo-1-4-olivosyl)premithramycinone. These results prove the unique substrate flexibility of the C-glycosyltransferase UrdGT2, which tolerates not only a variety of sugar-donor substrates, but also various acceptor substrates. The five new hybrid products also represent the first compounds, in which sugars were attached to a position that is normally unglycosylated. The successful combination of two glycosyltransferases in the latter experiment proves that the design of saccharide side chains by combinatorial biosynthetic methods is possible.     

NH3 and O2 interaction with tetrahedral Ti3+ ions isomorphously substituted in the framework of TiAlPO-5. A combined pulse EPR, pulse ENDOR, UV-Vis and FT-IR study

Continuous Wave (CW), pulse Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) and pulse Electron Nuclear Double Resonance (ENDOR) spectroscopies, in conjunction with UV-Vis and Infrared (IR) spectroscopies, are used to investigate the chemical reactivity of tetrahedrally coordinated Ti(3+) ions isomorphously substituted in the framework of AlPO-5 towards NH(3) and O(2). The coordination of ammonia to Ti(3+) centres is followed in detail by complementary vibrational and electron magnetic resonance techniques. In particular HYSCORE spectra allow identifying the coordination of two ammonia molecules to Ti(3+) centres resolving the full hyperfine and quadrupole (14)N coupling tensors. The reactivity of the reduced TiAlPO sample towards molecular oxygen is detailed by means of CW-EPR and pulse ENDOR spectroscopy. (17)O(2) is employed, allowing to establish the formation of a "side-on" η(2) O(2)(-)-Ti(4+) electrostatic complex. Pulse ENDOR spectra provide detailed information on the local environment of the formed superoxide radical anion which acts as a paramagnetic probe, providing evidence for Ti-O-Ti oligomeric species.     

Approaching Adversarial Example Classification with Chaos Theory

Adversarial examples are one of the most intriguing topics in modern deep learning. Imperceptible perturbations to the input can fool robust models. In relation to this problem, attack and defense methods are being developed almost on a daily basis. In parallel, efforts are being made to simply pointing out when an input image is an adversarial example. This can help prevent potential issues, as the failure cases are easily recognizable by humans. The proposal in this work is to study how chaos theory methods can help distinguish adversarial examples from regular images. Our work is based on the assumption that deep networks behave as chaotic systems, and adversarial examples are the main manifestation of it (in the sense that a slight input variation produces a totally different output). In our experiments, we show that the Lyapunov exponents (an established measure of chaoticity), which have been recently proposed for classification of adversarial examples, are not robust to image processing transformations that alter image entropy. Furthermore, we show that entropy can complement Lyapunov exponents in such a way that the discriminating power is significantly enhanced. The proposed method achieves 65% to 100% accuracy detecting adversarials with a wide range of attacks (for example: CW, PGD, Spatial, HopSkip) for the MNIST dataset, with similar results when entropy-changing image processing methods (such as Equalization, Speckle and Gaussian noise) are applied. This is also corroborated with two other datasets, Fashion-MNIST and CIFAR 19. These results indicate that classifiers can enhance their robustness against the adversarial phenomenon, being applied in a wide variety of conditions that potentially matches real world cases and also other threatening scenarios.     

Ferroelectric Phase Transition of first Order in BaTiO3

A microscopic model of BaTiO₃ is treated to describe static phenomena near the ferroelectric phase transition. In addition to the polarization, changes of the lattice constant at fixed pressure are also considered. That leads to a new explanation of the first order character of the transition, which is carried out not only qualitatively but also quantitatively. We investigate the dependence on pressure and external field. Agreement with the experiment through the adjustment of the parameters of the theory is obtained.     

DFT 1H–1H coupling constants in the conformational analysis and stereoisomeric differentiation of 6‐heptenyl‐2H‐pyran‐2‐ones: configurational reassignment of synargentolide A

Density functional theory (DFT) ¹H–¹H NMR coupling constant calculations, including solvation parameters with the polarizable continuum model B3LYP/DGDZVP basis set together with the experimental values measured by spectral simulation, were used to predict the configuration of hydroxylated 6‐heptenyl‐5,6‐dihydro‐2H‐pyran‐2‐ones 1 , 2 , 4 , and 7 , allowing epimer differentiation. Modeling of these flexible compounds requires the inclusion of solvation models that account for stabilizing interactions derived from intramolecular and intermolecular hydrogen bonds, in contrast with peracetylated derivatives ( 3 , 5 , and 6 ) in which the solvation consideration can be omitted. Using this DFT NMR integrated approach as well as spectral simulation, the configurational reassignment of synargentolide A ( 8 ) was accomplished by calculations in the gas phase among four possible diastereoisomers ( 8–11 ). Calculated ³J_H,H values established its configuration as 6R‐[4′S,5′S,6′S‐(triacetyloxy)‐2E‐heptenyl]‐5,6‐dihydro‐2H‐pyran‐2‐one ( 8 ), in contrast with the incorrect 6R,4′R,5′R,6′R‐diastereoisomer previously proposed by synthesis ( 12 ). Application of this approach increases the probability for successful enantiospecific total syntheses of flexible compounds with multiple chiral centers. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pushing the Boundaries of Vinylogous Reactivity: Catalytic Enantioselective Mukaiyama Aldol Reactions of Highly Unsaturated 2‐Silyloxyindoles

The first example of catalytic, enantioselective hypervinylogous Mukaiyama aldol reaction (HVMAR) involving multiply unsaturated 2‐silyloxyindoles is reported. The reaction utilizes a chiral Lewis base‐catalyzed Lewis acid‐mediated technology to deliver homoallylic 3‐polyenylidene 2‐oxindoles with extraordinary levels of regio‐, enantio‐, and geometrical selectivity. This work highlights a subtle yet decisive influence of the indole N‐substituents on the propagation of the vinylogous reactivity space of the donor substrates up to ten bonds away from the origin of the vinylogy effect. Analysis of the ¹³C NMR chemical shifts of the C‐ω remote site within homologous silyloxyindole donors enabled rationalization of the results and easy qualitative prediction of the HVMAR reactivity/inertia toward a given aldehyde acceptor.     

Microwave-assisted cycloaddition of diisopropyl diazomethylphosphonate to electron-deficient alkenes: synthesis of multifunctionalized phosphonopyrazolynes and phosphonopyrazoles

An efficient method for the synthesis of functionalized phosphonopyrazolines has been developed. The procedure involved the microwave-assisted cycloaddition of diisopropyl diazomethylphosphonate to dipolarophiles, such as α,β-unsaturated-nitriles and -esters, performed in neat conditions. By oxidative aromatization the phosphonopyrazolines, thus obtained, were converted into the corresponding phosphonopyazoles. Alternatively, phosphonopyazoles could be obtained by a one-pot, two step procedure directly from dipolarophiles, thus avoiding the isolation of the intermediate pyrazolines. Full spectroscopic characterization of the compounds has been also reported.