Biochemical and Structural Studies of Conserved Maf Proteins Revealed Nucleotide Pyrophosphatases with a Preference for Modified Nucleotides

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Data-Independent Microbial Metabolomics with Ambient Ionization Mass Spectrometry

Atmospheric ionization methods are ideally suited for prolonged MS/MS analysis. Data-independent MS/MS is a complementary technique for analysis of biological samples as compared to data-dependent analysis. Here, we pair data-independent MS/MS with the ambient ionization method nanospray desorption electrospray ionization (nanoDESI) for untargeted analysis of bacterial metabolites. Proof-of-principle data and analysis are illustrated by sampling Bacillus subtilis and Pseudomonas aeruginosa directly from Petri dishes. We found that this technique enables facile comparisons between strains via MS and MS/MS plots which can be translated to chemically informative molecular maps through MS/MS networking. The development of novel techniques to characterize microbial metabolites allows rapid and efficient analysis of metabolic exchange factors. This is motivated by our desire to develop novel techniques to explore the role of interspecies interactions in the environment, health, and disease. This is a contribution to honor Professor Catherine C. Fenselau in receiving the prestigious ASMS Award for a Distinguished Contribution in Mass Spectrometry for her pioneering work on microbial mass spectrometry.

Reactions of 2- and 4-pyrones with secondary phosphine chalcogenides: a facile synthesis of functional phosphorylated pyrones

The oxidative cross-coupling between 4-hydroxy-6-methyl-2-pyrone or 3-hydroxy-2-methyl-4-pyrone and secondary phosphine chalcogenides proceeds in CCl₄/Et₃N under mild conditions (20–52 °С, 0.75–10 h) through the hydroxyl group to give O-(6-methyl-2-oxo-2H-pyran-4-yl) diorganylphosphinochalcogenoates or O-(2-methyl-4-oxo-4H-pyran-3-yl) diorganylphosphinochalcogenoates, in high yields.     

Surface segregation in blends of miscible amorphous polymers

The isothermal luminescence decay kinetics in near-surface nanolayers of plasma-activated bulk samples of amorphous polystyrene (PS) and poly(2,6-dimethyl-1,4-phenylene oxide) (PPO) and their miscible blends with weight ratios PS/PPO of 75/25 and 50/50 has been studied at 77 K. The intensities of isothermal luminescence (I) of homopolymer and blend surfaces have been compared. It has been found that the ratio between the luminescence intensities for PS and PPO (I(PS)/I(PPO)) may be as high as 50, while the luminescence intensities for the PS–PPO blends are close to I(PPO). The results obtained indicate that the PPO concentration in the surface layers of the blends is higher than that in the bulk.     

Hydrophobization of coarse calico by wet treatment in aluminum chloride solutions

This paper describes the method of wet chemistry used for hydrophobization of coarse calico surface. It was found that hydrophobicity of coarse calico surface is achieved by the formation of aluminum oxide on the surface. An experimental plan was drawn up according to the Taguchi method. The effect of soap solution temperature, aluminum chloride solution concentration, sample treatment time in aluminum chloride solution and heat treatment temperature on water absorption, contact angle, capillary absorption and calico moisture content was studied. The dependencies of hygroscopic properties on the process parameters were obtained. Capillary absorption and water absorption of the test samples increased with increasing concentration of aluminum chloride solution. An increase in the processing time of coarse calico samples in an aluminum chloride solution leads to a decrease in the hydrophobicity of the samples. The characteristics of the dependencies of hygroscopic properties on the temperature of heat treatment and the temperature of the soap solution are similar.

     

Superlight small bipolarons in the presence of a strong Coulomb repulsion

We study a lattice bipolaron on a staggered triangular ladder and triangular and hexagonal lattices with both long-range electron-phonon interaction and strong Coulomb repulsion using a novel continuous-time quantum Monte Carlo algorithm to solve the two-particle Coulomb-Fr?hlich model. The algorithm is preceded by an exact integration over phonon degrees of freedom, and as such is extremely efficient. The bipolaron effective mass and radius are computed. Bipolarons on lattices constructed from triangular plaquettes have a novel crablike motion, and are small but very light over a wide range of parameters. We discuss the conditions under which such particles may form a Bose-Einstein condensate with high transition temperature, proposing a route to room temperature superconductivity.