Ultrafast solvation dynamics at internal sites of staphylococcal nuclease investigated by site-directed mutagenesis

Internal solvation of protein was studied by site-directed mutagenesis,with which an intrinsically fluorescent probe,tryptophan,is inserted into the desired position inside a protein molecule for ultrafast spectroscopic study.Here we review this unique method for protein dynamics research.We first introduce the frontiers of protein solvation,site-directed mutagenesis,protein stability and characteristics,and the spectroscopic methods.Then we present time-resolved spectroscopic dynamics of solvation dynamics inside cavities of active sites.The studies are carried out on a globular protein,staphylococcal nuclease.The solvation at sites inside the protein molecule’s cavities clearly reveals characteristics of the local environment.These solvation behaviors are directly correlated to enzyme activity.     

Design,Synthesis, and Structure–Activity Relationship Study of Potent MAPK11 Inhibitors

Huntington’s disease (HD) is a rare single-gene neurodegenerative disease, which can only be treated symptomatically. Currently, there are no approved drugs for HD on the market. Studies have found that MAPK11 can serve as a potential therapeutic target for HD. Regrettably, no MAPK11 small molecule inhibitors have been approved at present. This paper presents three series of compounds that were designed and synthesized based on the structure of skepinone-L, a known MAPK14 inhibitor. Among the synthesized compounds, 13a and 13b, with IC₅₀ values of 6.40 nM and 4.20 nM, respectively, displayed the best inhibitory activities against MAPK11. Furthermore, the structure–activity relationship (SAR) is discussed in detail, which is constructive in optimizing the MAPK11 inhibitors for better activity and effect against HD.     

高压下β-InSe弹性常数、电子结构的第一性原理研究

基于密度泛函理论的第一性原理计算方法,本文研究了高压对β-InSe弹性常数、机械性能和电子结构的影响.在0～20 GPa范围内,随着压力的增大,β-InSe的晶格常数、晶胞体积逐渐减小,结构参数a/a_0、c/c_0、V/V_0单调减小.在0～12 GPa范围内,弹性模量G、E、B和泊松比v随着压力增大而增大,在16 GPa时大幅减小,G、E、B分别减小了34.9%、53.3%、82.9%.随着压力增大,Se-In和In-In原子之间的电荷密度增大,Se-In原子之间的共价键增强,层间距减小.而且,β-InSe在20 GPa时带隙消失,发生了半导体向半金属的相变.     

Theoretical investigation of the crystallographic structure,anisotropic elastic response,and electronic properties of the major borides in Ni-based superalloys

ABSTRACT

In Ni-based superalloys, it is usually found that borides can strengthen the grain boundaries, thereby resulting in an increase in mechanical strength and high-temperature creep properties. Due to their importance and prevalence in Ni-based superalloys, this study employs first-principles methods to investigate the crystallographic structure, anisotropic elastic response, and electronic properties of the major borides, such as M₂B, M₅B₃ and M₃B₂ (M: Cr, Mo, W), respectively, which is necessary for the assessment of complex mechanical responses of Ni-based superalloys. The results demonstrate that the studied borides are all thermodynamically and mechanically stable. Among the M _x B _y binary borides analysed, Cr _x B _y exhibits the largest shear modulus, Young’s modulus, and Vicker hardness values, and these properties increase with the increase of B contents. The studied borides display nearly isotropic elastic properties except for W₅B₃ and W₃B₂. The electronic structure analysis of M _x B _y shows that the strong hybridisation between M-d and B-p orbitals leads to these borides exhibiting higher theoretical hardness, and the overlapping peaks of M-d and B-p orbitals move to a lower energy area with the increase of B contents, which leads to the increase of shear and Young’s moduli of M _x B _y . Furthermore, for M₃B₂ borides, the Cr-B bonds and Cr–Cr bonds are much stronger than the W-B & Mo-B bonds, and W-W & Mo-Mo bonds, respectively, which leads to Cr _x B _y yielding the largest values of elastic moduli.     

Structural Entropy of the Stochastic Block Models

With the rapid expansion of graphs and networks and the growing magnitude of data from all areas of science, effective treatment and compression schemes of context-dependent data is extremely desirable. A particularly interesting direction is to compress the data while keeping the “structural information” only and ignoring the concrete labelings. Under this direction, Choi and Szpankowski introduced the structures (unlabeled graphs) which allowed them to compute the structural entropy of the Erdős–Rényi random graph model. Moreover, they also provided an asymptotically optimal compression algorithm that (asymptotically) achieves this entropy limit and runs in expectation in linear time. In this paper, we consider the stochastic block models with an arbitrary number of parts. Indeed, we define a partitioned structural entropy for stochastic block models, which generalizes the structural entropy for unlabeled graphs and encodes the partition information as well. We then compute the partitioned structural entropy of the stochastic block models, and provide a compression scheme that asymptotically achieves this entropy limit.     

A New Strategy in Boosting Information Spread

Finding a seed set to propagate more information within a specific budget is defined as the influence maximization (IM) problem. The traditional IM model contains two cardinal aspects: (i) the influence propagation model and (ii) effective/efficient seed-seeking algorithms. However, most of models only consider one kind of node (i.e., influential nodes), ignoring the role of other nodes (e.g., boosting nodes) in the spreading process, which are irrational. Specifically, in the real-world propagation scenario, the boosting nodes always improve the spread of influence from the initial activated seeds, which is an efficient and cost-economic measure. In this paper, we consider the realistic budgeted influence maximization (RBIM) problem, which contains two kind of nodes to improve the diffusion of influence. Facing the newly modified objective function, we propose a novel B-degree discount algorithm to solve it. The novel B-degree discount algorithm which adopts the cost-economic boosting nodes to retweet the influence from the predecessor nodes can greatly reduce the cost, and performs better than other state-of-the-art algorithms in both effect and efficiency on RBIM problem solving.     

以萘酰亚胺衍生物基荧光高分子为载体和指示剂的 相分离免疫分析方法

以4-甲氧基-N-(2-N’,N’-二甲基氨基乙基-N’-烯丙基)萘二甲酰亚胺氯化铵(DMNAA)为荧光单体, 合成了一种pH敏感荧光高分子聚N-异丙基丙烯酰胺-4-甲氧基-N-(2-N’,N’-二甲基氨基乙基-N’-烯丙基)萘二甲酰亚胺氯化铵-N,N-二甲基氨丙基甲基丙烯酰胺[P(NIP-DMAPM-DMNAA)]. 采用共聚法将日本血吸虫抗原(SjAg)固定在P(NIP-DMAPM-DMNAA)上, 制备P(NIP-DMAPM-DMNAA)-SjAg连接物, 与日本血吸虫抗体(待测, SjAb)发生免疫反应后, 调节pH值, 使荧光高分子相变分离高分子-免疫组分连接物, 最后, 利用蛋白A对抗体的亲和性捕获P(NIP-DMAPM-DMNAA)-SjAg-SjAb, 通过测定高分子自身的荧光信号来定量 SjAb. 该新型高分子具有良好的荧光特性, 对pH响应快速, 37 ℃下相转变pH值为7.2, 分离免疫复合物时造成的损害低. 与传统相分离免疫分析比较, 新方法通过高分子相变分离和蛋白A捕获双重分离作用, 消除了非特异性组分和未反应的特异性免疫成分等的干扰; 利用高分子自身的荧光信号检测, 无须另外的标记物, 大大提高了免疫分析的简便性. 以日本血吸虫抗体为分析对象, 测得线性范围为1～1500 ng/mL, 抗体检出限为1.3 ng/mL, 相对标准偏差为3.6% (n＝10), 结果令人满意.     

常用玻璃量器检定注意事项

总结了常用玻璃量器检定过程中的注意事项,讨论了外观检查、清洁度、涂抹油脂、温度控制、液面观察方法对常用玻璃量器检定结果的影响,其中定容时是否使用黑色遮光带造成的影响最大。