Elicitor-Induced Cellular and Molecular Events Are Responsible for Productivity Enhancement in Hairy Root Cultures: An Insight Study

A wide range of external stress stimuli triggers a plant cell to undergo a complex network of reactions that ultimately lead to the synthesis and accumulation of secondary metabolites. These secondary metabolites help the plant to survive under stress challenge. The potential of biotic and abiotic elicitors for the induction and enhancement of secondary metabolite production in various culture systems including hairy root (HR) cultures is well-known. The elicitor-induced defense responses involves signal perception of elicitor by a cell surface receptor followed by its transduction involving some major cellular and molecular events including activation of major secondary message signaling pathways. This result in induction of gene expressions escorting to the synthesis of various proteins mainly associated with plant defense responses and secondary metabolite synthesis and accumulation. The review discusses the elicitor-induced various cellular and molecular events and correlates them with enhanced secondary metabolite synthesis in HR systems. Further, this review also concludes that combining elicitation with in-silico approaches enhances the usefulness of this practice in better understanding and identifying the rate-limiting steps of biosynthetic pathways existing in HRs which in turn can contribute towards better productivity by utilizing metabolic engineering aspects.     

16+ spin-gap isomer in 96Cd

A β-decaying high-spin isomer in (96)Cd, with a half-life T(1/2)=0.29(-0.10)(+0.11) s, has been established in a stopped beam rare isotope spectroscopic investigations at GSI (RISING) experiment. The nuclei were produced using the fragmentation of a primary beam of (124)Xe on a (9)Be target. From the half-life and the observed γ decays in the daughter nucleus, (96)Ag, we conclude that the β-decaying state is the long predicted 16(+) "spin-gap" isomer. Shell-model calculations, using the Gross-Frenkel interaction and the πν(p(1/2),g(9/2)) model space, show that the isoscalar component of the neutron-proton interaction is essential to explain the origin of the isomer. Core excitations across the N=Z=50 gaps and the Gamow-Teller strength, B(GT) distributions have been studied via large-scale shell-model calculations using the πν(g,d,s) model space to compare with the experimental B(GT) value obtained from the half-life of the isomer.     

Theoretical study of DABCO-based ionic liquid: synthesis and reaction mechanism

Quaternary ammonium salt obtained from the Menshutkin reaction between DABCO and benzyl chloride has been used in the synthesis of a novel Bronsted acidic ionic liquid (IL), namely 1-benzyl-4-(sulfobutyl)-diaza-bicyclo-octane hydrogen sulfate. The reaction of DABCO with benzyl chloride is a crucial step in the synthesis of this IL. Density functional theory calculations at B3LYP/6-31G(d,p) level have been employed to investigate the mechanism of Menshutkin reaction by calculating the energy barriers through possible transition states i.e., five-membered ring transition state and S_N2 transition state in gas phase and in diethyl ether as a solvent. It was found that while DABCO reacts with benzyl chloride through the well-known S_N2 transition state mechanism, the corresponding reaction with chlorodiphenylmethane can proceed through both S_N2 and five-membered ring transition state mechanism. However, S_N2 transition state mechanism is still the strongly preferred one out of the two possible mechanisms. The electronic structure analysis shows that solvent effects and enhanced resonance stabilization may play a decisive role in guiding the reaction pathway.     

Cycloaddition of CS2 to N‐benzylaziridine to synthesize N‐benzylthiazolidine‐2‐thione: a novel reaction route proposed by DFT Study

N‐Benzylthiazolidine‐2‐thione is the key intermediate for the synthesis of pharmaceutically important compounds. A novel route for the synthesis of N‐benzylthiazolidine‐2‐thione through cycloaddition of CS₂ with N‐benzylaziridine in the presence of 1,3‐di‐tert‐butylimidazolium‐2‐dithocarboxylate ( catalyst I ) has been proposed by reliable computations performed within the formalism of density functional theory. The mechanism of the proposed reaction is similar to the cycloaddition of tertiary aziridines and carbon dioxide using a recyclable catalyst that is reported to provide access to 3‐substituted 2‐oxazolidones with excellent yield. Because the rate determining step needs to surmount a high energy barrier, the reaction route has been deciphered in high boiling solvent (1, 2‐ethanediol). The highlight of the mechanistic route detailed here is that the proposed pathway is a cyclic process that is exothermic in nature with the regeneration of the catalyst and involves simple reagents. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Vapor-phase processable novel nonplanar donor-acceptor quateraryls for blue OLEDs(#)

A novel series of thermally stable blue light emitting quateraryls with a piperidine donor and a nitrile acceptor was prepared from a ketene- S, S-acetal under mild conditions without using an organometal catalyst. The performance of a blue quateraryl 6e was investigated by fabricating a multilayer OLED with a configuration of ITO/PEDOT:PSS (40 nm)/quateraryl (60 nm)/BCP (6 nm)/Alq(3) (20 nm)/LiF (0.5 nm)/Al (200 nm), which exhibited blue emission with a low turn on voltage of 4 V at a brightness of 0.22 cd/m(2).     

ChemInform Abstract: A DFT Based Prediction of Gold Fullerene Au92Si12 with the Aid of Silicon.

The structure, stability, and effect of doping Au_n (n = 1—16) clusters with Si is investigated by DFT calculations.     

C-H/π-interaction-guided self-assembly in π-conjugated oligomers

We report CH/π hydrogen-bond-driven self-assembly in π-conjugated skeletons based on oligophenylenevinylenes (OPVs) and trace the origin of interactions at the molecular level by using single-crystal structures. OPVs were designed with appropriate pendants in the aromatic core and varied by hydrocarbon or fluorocarbon tails along the molecular axis. The roles of aromatic π-stack, van der Waals forces, fluorophobic effect and CH/π interactions were investigated on the theromotropic liquid crystallinity of OPV molecules. Single-crystal structures of hydrocarbon OPVs provided direct evidence for the existence of CH/π interactions between the π-ring (H-bond acceptor) and alkyl C-H (H-bond donor). The four important crystallographic parameters, d(c-x)=3.79 ?, θ=21.49°, φ=150.25° and d(Hp-x)=0.73 ?, matched in accordance with typical CH/π interactions. The CH/π interactions facilitate the close-packing of mesogens in x-y planes, which were further protruded along the c axis producing a lamellar structure. In the absence of CH/π interactions, van der Waals interactions drove the assembly towards a Schlieren nematic texture. Fluorocarbon OPVs exhibited smectic liquid-crystalline textures that further underwent Smectic A (SmA) to Smectic C (SmC) phase transitions with shrinkage up to 11%. The orientation and translational ordering of mesogens in the liquid-crystalline (LC) phases induced H- and J-type molecular arrangements in fluorocarbon and hydrocarbon OPVs, respectively. Upon photoexcitation, the H- and J-type molecular arrangements were found to emit a blue or yellowish/green colour. Time-resolved fluorescence decay measurements confirmed longer lifetimes for H-type smectic OPVs relative to that of loosely packed one-dimensional nematic hydrocarbon-tailed OPVs.     

Synthesis of anionic hypervalent cyclic selenenate esters: relevance to the hypervalent intermediates in nucleophilic substitution reactions at the selenium(II) center

The synthesis of a diaryl diselenide that contains 2,6‐dicarboxylic acid groups, 2,2′‐diselanediylbis(5‐tert‐butylisophthalic acid) ( 10 ), is described. Diselenide 10 undergoes intramolecular cyclization in methanol to form a cyclic selenenate ester, 5‐tert‐butyl‐3‐oxo‐3H‐benzo[c][1,2]oxaselenole‐7‐carboxylic acid ( 11 ). The cyclization reaction proceeds more rapidly in the presence of organic bases, such as pyridine, adenine, and 4,4′‐bipyridine, to form pyridinium 5‐tert‐butyl‐3‐oxo‐3H‐benzo[c][1,2]oxaselenole‐7‐carboxylate ( 14 ), adeninium 5‐tert‐butyl‐3‐oxo‐3H‐benzo[c][1,2]oxaselenole‐7‐carboxylate ( 15 ), and 4,4′‐bipyridiniumbis(5‐tert‐butyl‐3‐oxo‐3H‐benzo[c][1,2]oxaselenole‐7‐carboxylate) ( 16 ), respectively. However, 2,2′‐diselanediyldibenzoic acid ( 22 ) does not undergo cyclization under similar conditions. Structural studies on cyclic selenenate esters 14 – 16 revealed that the Se???O (COO^?) secondary distances (2.170, 2.075, and 2.176 Å) were significantly shorter than the corresponding Se???O distances (2.465, 2.472, and 2.435 Å) observed for the selenenate esters stabilized by the neutral donors (CHO, COOH, and COOEt). ¹H, ¹³C, and ⁷⁷Se NMR spectroscopy of compounds 11 and 14 – 16 reveal that the aryl protons of compound 11 and the organic cations of compounds 14 – 16 exchange between the two carboxylate groups via a hypercoordinate intermediate. The corresponding hypercoordinate intermediate ( 14 b , pyridinium selenuranide) for compound 14 was detected at low temperatures using ⁷⁷Se NMR spectroscopy. The presumed hypercoordinate intermediates in the carboxylate‐exchange reactions at the selenium(II) center for a set of model reactions were optimized using DFT‐B3LYP/6–311+g(d) calculations and their structural features compared with the X‐ray structure of anionic selenenate esters 14 – 16 .