Monosaccharide templates for de novo designed 4-alpha-helix bundle proteins: template effects in carboproteins

De novo design and total chemical synthesis of proteins provide powerful approaches to critically test our understanding of protein folding, structure, and stability. The 4-alpha-helix bundle is a frequently studied structure in which four amphiphilic alpha-helical peptide strands form a hydrophobic core. Assembly of protein models on a template has been suggested as a way to reduce the entropy of folding. We have previously developed the concept of carbohydrates as templates in the de novo design of protein models termed 'carboproteins'. Here we present the chemical synthesis of three 8.1 kDa 4-alpha-helix bundles by oxime ligation of tetra-aminooxyacetyl functionalized D-galacto-, D-gluco-, and D-altropyranoside templates with an amphiphilic C-terminal hexadecapeptide aldehyde sequence. CD spectroscopy indicated that the choice of template has an effect on the overall structure of the carboprotein, as the altro-based carboprotein was found to be more alpha-helical than the corresponding galacto- and gluco-carboproteins. However, an influence on stability could not be detected in the present experiments, as the three carboproteins gave similar free energy of foldings (deltaG(F)H2O) and melting points in chemical and thermal denaturation experiments.     

An enantiomerically pure adamantylimido molybdenum alkylidene complex. An effective new catalyst for enantioselective olefin metathesis

An enantiomerically pure Mo-based complex that bears an alkylimido ligand is prepared and characterized through NMR spectroscopy and X-ray analysis. Mo complex 4 is the only reported chiral alkylimido catalyst; all previous chiral complexes are arylimido systems. These studies show that the chiral Mo catalyst exists exclusively as the syn isomer and that it offers unique reactivity and selectivity profiles in asymmetric olefin metathesis.     

A conjectural generalization of the n! result to arbitrary groups

The aim of this paper is to formulate a conjecture for an arbitrary simple Lie algebra g in terms of the geometry of principal nilpotent pairs. When g is specialized to sln, this conjecture readily implies the n! result and it is very likely that, in fact, it is equivalent to the n! result in this case. In addition, this conjecture can be thought of as generalizing an old result of Kostant. In another direction, we show that to prove the validity of the n! result for an arbitrary n and an arbitrary partition of n, it suffices to show its validity only for the staircase partitions.     

Transfer Matrices and Partition-Function Zeros for Antiferromagnetic Potts Models. II. Extended Results for Square-Lattice Chromatic Polynomial

We study the chromatic polynomials for m×n square-lattice strips, of width 9m13 (with periodic boundary conditions) and arbitrary length n (with free boundary conditions). We have used a transfer matrix approach that allowed us also to extract the limiting curves when n. In this limit we have also obtained the isolated limiting points for these square-lattice strips and checked some conjectures related to the Beraha numbers.     

Unusual Corrections to Scaling in the 3-State Potts Antiferromagnet on a Square Lattice

At zero temperature, the 3-state antiferromagnetic Potts model on a square lattice maps exactly onto a point of the 6-vertex model whose long-distance behavior is equivalent to that of a free scalar boson. We point out that at nonzero temperature there are two distinct types of excitation: vortices, which are relevant with renormalization-group eigenvalue 1/2 and non-vortex unsatisfied bonds, which are strictly marginal and serve only to renormalize the stiffness coefficient of the underlying free boson. Together these excitations lead to an unusual form for the corrections to scaling: for example, the correlation length diverges as J/kT according to Ae ² (1+be ^– +···), where b is a nonuniversal constant that may nevertheless be determined independently. A similar result holds for the staggered susceptibility. These results are shown to be consistent with the anomalous behavior found in the Monte Carlo simulations of Ferreira and Sokal.     

Coordination of imidazoles by Cu(II) and Zn(II) as studied by NMR relaxometry, EPR, far-FTIR vibrational spectroscopy and ab initio calculations: effect of methyl substitution

Synthetic imidazole ligands are typically substituted at the N(1) ((1)-Im) position while natural imidazole ligands are substituted at the C(4) ((4)-Im) position. To outline the difference in coordination properties, the methyl-substituted imidazoles Me(4)-Im and Me(1)-Im were complexed with CuCl(2) and ZnCl(2) and investigated by NMR relaxometry, electron paramagnetic resonance, far-Fourier transform IR vibrational spectroscopy, and ab initio calculations. Me(4)-Im, Me(1)-Im, and Im in excess form the usual tetragonal D(4h) [CuL(4)X(2)] complexes with CuCl(2) whereas the methylated imidazoles form pseudotetrahedral C(2v) complexes instead of the usual octahedral O(h) [ZnIm(6)](2+) complex. All imidazoles display a high degree of covalence in the M-L σ- and π-bonds and the π-interaction strength affects the relative energies of complexation. Opportunities to tailor complexes by the chemical properties of the substituents are envisaged due to the role of the inductive and hyperconjugative effects, rather than position.     

Finite-temperature phase transition in a class of four-state Potts antiferromagnets

We argue that the four-state Potts antiferromagnet has a finite-temperature phase transition on any Eulerian plane triangulation in which one sublattice consists of vertices of degree 4. We furthermore predict the universality class of this transition. We then present transfer-matrix and Monte?Carlo data confirming these predictions for the cases of the Union Jack and bisected hexagonal lattices.     

A column generation approach for solving the patient admission scheduling problem

This paper addresses the Patient Admission Scheduling (PAS) problem. The PAS problem entails assigning elective patients to beds, while satisfying a number of hard constraints and as many soft constraints as is possible, and arises at all planning levels for hospital management. There exist a few, different variants of this problem. In this paper we consider one such variant and propose an optimization-based heuristic building on branch-and-bound, column generation, and dynamic constraint aggregation to solve it. We achieve tighter lower bounds than previously reported in the literature and, in addition, we are able to produce new best known solutions for five out of twelve instances from a publicly available repository.     

An accelerated simulation method of medium density wood fiber boards

An accelerated micro-scale simulation method for the prediction of the stiffness of medium density fiber boards is proposed with the aim to increase the speed of the coupled micro-macro simulation and to study the influence of fiber orientation on material properties. The stiffness is interpolated between loads in a n-dimensional simplex figure, which is constructed in a macroscopic strain, temperature, moisture, time and other load. (© 2014 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)