qNMR for profiling the production of fungal secondary metabolites

Analysis of complex mixtures is a common challenge in natural products research. Quantitative nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy offers analysis of complex mixtures at early stages and with benefits that are orthogonal to more common methods of quantitation, including ultraviolet absorption spectroscopy and mass spectrometry. Several experiments were conducted to construct a methodology for use in analysis of extracts of fungal cultures. A broadly applicable method was sought for analysis of both pure and complex samples through use of an externally calibrated method. This method has the benefit of not contaminating valuable samples with the calibrant, and it passed scrutiny for line fitting and reproducibility. The method was implemented to measure the yield of griseofulvin and dechlorogriseofulvin from three fungal isolates. An isolate of Xylaria cubensis (coded MSX48662) was found to biosynthesize griseofulvin in the greatest yield, 149 ± 8 mg per fermentation, and was selected for further supply experiments. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Variational characterization of eigenvalues of a non-symmetric eigenvalue problem governing elastoacoustic vibrations

Small amplitude vibrations of an elastic structure completely filled by a fluid are considered. Describing the structure by displacements and the fluid by its pressure field one arrives at a non-selfadjoint eigenvalue problem. Taking advantage of a Rayleigh functional we prove that its eigenvalues can be characterized by variational principles of Rayleigh, minmax and maxmin type.     

Influence of the aluminum alkyl co-catalyst type in Ziegler-Natta ethene polymerization on the formation of active sites, polymerization rate, and molecular weight

The influence of the concentration of the co-catalysts triethylaluminium (TEAL), tri-iso-butylaluminium (TIBAL), tri-n-octylaluminium on the polymerization rate for standard Ziegler-Natta catalyst systems was studied. By comparing the influence of monomeric TIBAL with TEAL co-catalyst on the polymerization activity, the effect of TEAL dimerization was described. The use of the Eley-Ridealadsorption model instead of Langmuir-Hinselwood model is proposed for the absorption of monomeric aluminiumalkyl species and for the formation of active centers C*. It is further proposed that steric hindrance from different co-catalysts, which results in a higher molecular weight (MW) of polymers, is caused by active centers with reduced space for chain transfer reactions.     

On Suboptimal LCS-alignments for Independent Bernoulli Sequences with Asymmetric Distributions

Let X = X ₁ ... X _n and Y = Y ₁ ... Y _n be two binary sequences with length n. A common subsequence of X and Y is any subsequence of X that at the same time is a subsequence of Y; The common subsequence with maximal length is called the longest common subsequence (LCS) of X and Y. LCS is a common tool for measuring the closeness of X and Y. In this note, we consider the case when X and Y are both i.i.d. Bernoulli sequences with the parameters ϵ and 1 − ϵ, respectively. Hence, typically the sequences consist of large and short blocks of different colors. This gives an idea to the so-called block-by-block alignment, where the short blocks in one sequence are matched to the long blocks of the same color in another sequence. Such and alignment is not necessarily a LCS, but it is computationally easy to obtain and, therefore, of practical interest. We investigate the asymptotical properties of several block-by-block type of alignments. The paper ends with the simulation study, where the of block-by-block type of alignments are compared with the LCS.     

BAMLSS: Bayesian Additive Models for Location,Scale, and Shape (and Beyond)

Bayesian analysis provides a convenient setting for the estimation of complex generalized additive regression models (GAMs). Since computational power has tremendously increased in the past decade, it is now possible to tackle complicated inferential problems, for example, with Markov chain Monte Carlo simulation, on virtually any modern computer. This is one of the reasons why Bayesian methods have become increasingly popular, leading to a number of highly specialized and optimized estimation engines and with attention shifting from conditional mean models to probabilistic distributional models capturing location, scale, shape (and other aspects) of the response distribution. To embed many different approaches suggested in literature and software, a unified modeling architecture for distributional GAMs is established that exploits distributions, estimation techniques (posterior mode or posterior mean), and model terms (fixed, random, smooth, spatial,…). It is shown that within this framework implementing algorithms for complex regression problems, as well as the integration of already existing software, is relatively straightforward. The usefulness is emphasized with two complex and computationally demanding application case studies: a large daily precipitation climatology, as well as a Cox model for continuous time with space-time interactions. Supplementary material for this article is available online.     

Towards Photochromic Azobenzene-Based Inhibitors for Tryptophan Synthase

Light regulation of drug molecules has gained growing interest in biochemical and pharmacological research in recent years. In addition, a serious need for novel molecular targets of antibiotics has emerged presently. Herein, the development of a photocontrollable, azobenzene-based antibiotic precursor towards tryptophan synthase (TS), an essential metabolic multienzyme complex in bacteria, is presented. The compound exhibited moderately strong inhibition of TS in its E configuration and five times lower inhibition strength in its Z configuration. A combination of biochemical, crystallographic, and computational analyses was used to characterize the inhibition mode of this compound. Remarkably, binding of the inhibitor to a hitherto-unconsidered cavity results in an unproductive conformation of TS leading to noncompetitive inhibition of tryptophan production. In conclusion, we created a promising lead compound for combatting bacterial diseases, which targets an essential metabolic enzyme, and whose inhibition strength can be controlled with light.     

Synthesis and biological evaluation of 3-aryltyramines as fragments binding to BACE-1 and BACE-2

3-Aryltyramines were prepared in one single step from tyramine and various arenediazonium salts by radical arylation. Binding as well as enzyme inhibition data of the 14 compounds do not prove true interaction with BACE-1. In contrast, with BACE-2 inhibition and binding could be confirmed indicating that 3-aryltyramines are potential starting points for a drug discovery effort.     

Multiscale damage analyis for steel structures

An approach to model the deterioration of steel structures is presented by transferring the results of a continuum damage mechanics analysis to an extended beam model which can account for the loss of structural integrity. Damage starts at the microscopic level by the initiation, growth and coalescence of voids with decreasing material resistance followed by the formation of microcracks at the mesoscale. Nevertheless, the material behavior can be sufficiently modelled on a phenomenological basis taking into account viscoplasticity, hardening effects and damage evolution. The associated model parameters are identified with the help of an evolutionary algorithm adapting numerical to experimental results. Using the finite element method a nonlocal formulation of the damage variable is required to obtain mesh-independent results by structural analysis. The maximum element size is limited by the small magnitude of the internal length. Therefore, numerical analyses of large scale 3D steel structures are computationally expensive. To reduce the effort a beam element is proposed to account for the plastic hinges and the loss of resistance in the course of damage evolution. The corresponding relationship of bending moment and curvature bases on the continuum damage mechanics model. (© 2016 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)