Protective mechanism of glucose against alloxan-induced beta-cell damage: pivotal role of ATP

Glucose prevents the development of diabetes induced by alloxan. In the present study, the protective mechanism of glucose against alloxan-induced beta-cell damage was investigated using HIT-T 15 cell, a Syrian hamster transformed beta-cell line. Alloxan caused beta-cell damages with DNA fragmentation, inhibition of glucose-stimulated insulin release, and decrease of cellular ATP level, but all of these beta-cell damages by alloxan were prevented by the presence of 20 mM glucose. Oligomycin, a specific inhibitor of ATP synthase, completely abolished the protective effects of glucose against alloxan-induced cell damage. Furthermore, treatment of nuclei isolated from HIT-T15 cells with ATP significantly prevented the DNA fragmentation induced by Ca2+. The results indicate that ATP produced during glucose metabolism plays a pivotal role in the protection of glucose against alloxan-induced beta-cell damage.     

Chiral hyperbags

We construct and studySU (3) chiral bags (called chiral hyperbags) in the scheme of collective-coordinate quantization with chiral symmetry breaking treated as perturbation. We show how the Wess-Zumino constraint arises from the quark-bag sector, complementing the soliton sector, in a manner analogous to what happens in (1+1) dimensional chiral bags. Due to the Wess-Zumino term, all the quantum numbers — baryon charge, isopin, angular momentum, hypercharge etc. are fractionized in a prescribed manner. One notable aspect of the fractionization is that for all ranges of bag radius, there is alwaysmore angular momentum lodged in the soliton sector than in the quark sector. It is shown thatwithin the scheme we have adopted, the symmetry breaking termobstructs the Cheshire Cat principle and that consequently when strange quarks are present, the baryons (i.e. hyperons) favor a bigger bag (say R ? 1 fm) than non-strange baryons; this confirms a phenomenological argument put forward some time ago by Brown, Klimpt, Rho and Weise (at least in the collective-coordinate scheme). Our approach allows us to calculate the strangeness content of the proton — a highly topical issue — and we find that while a perturbative treatment of the symmetry breaking term can be made to work (for a big bag) for hyperon spectroscopy, the strangeness content of the proton is insensitive to the bag radius; for relevant ranges of bag radius, the ¯ss admixture stays significant, say, ?19%. This result is in stark contrast to the Callan-Klebanov Skyrmion — a remarkably successful model for hyperons — which predicts only about 3%. A subtle role of the Wess-Zumino term is suggested.     

Golmaenone, a new diketopiperazine alkaloid from the marine-derived fungus Aspergillus sp

A new diketopiperazine alkaloid, golmaenone (1). and related alkaloids, neoechinulin A (2). and L-alanyl-L-tryptophan anhydride (3). have been isolated from the culture broth of the marine-derived fungus Aspergillus sp. The structure and absolute stereochemistry of the new compound (1). was assigned by spectroscopic methods and the advanced Marfey's method. Compounds 1 and 2 exhibited a significant radical scavenging activity against 1,1-diphenyl-2-picrylhydrazyl (DPPH) with IC(50) values of 20 and 24 microM, respectively, which are similar to the positive control, ascorbic acid (IC(50), 20 microM). Compounds 1 and 2 also showed an ultraviolet-A (UV-A) (320--390 nm) protecting activity with ED(50) values of 90 and 170 microM, respectively, which are more active than oxybenzone (ED(50), 350 microM) currently being used as sunscreen.     

New farnesylhydroquinone glycosides from the gorgonian Euplexaura anastomosans

Euplexides F (3) and G (4), novel farnesylhydroquinone glycosides, have been isolated as minor constituents of the gorgonian Euplexaura anastomosans. The structures of these compounds have been determined by combined spectroscopic methods. These compounds exhibited moderate cytotoxicity and inhibitory activity against PLA2.     

The energy levels of the heavy flavour baryons in the topological soliton model

The energy levels of the charm and bottom as well as the mixed flavour hyperons are calculated with the model in which the hyperons are described as bound states of a topologicalSU (2) soliton andK-, D- andB-mesons. The spectra are obtained in a modified version of the Skyrme model where the chiral symmetry breaking term in the Lagrangian density is modified so as to incorporate the different values of the decay constants of the mesons of different flavour. The predicted strange and charmed hyperon spectra are in very good agreement with the empirical values, while the bottom hyperon energies that are more sensitive to the short range dynamics are somewhat below the empirical values. The predicted hyperfine spectra are remarkably close to those obtained with the constituent quark model, more or less independently of the short-distance properties of the effective Lagrangian. We suggest that this feature reflects the presence of an induced nonabelian gauge potential generated by the interplay between “fast” and “slow” degrees of freedom in the meson-soliton system.     

Evidence of the primary-color photoluminescence in ion (H,H,C) irradiated and thermal annealed SrTiO3

We have measured photoluminescence (PL) spectrum of (1) thermal-annealed SrTiO₃/Si thin film and undoped SrTiO₃ single crystal; (2) SrTiO₃ single crystal irradiated by high energy (3 MeV) proton, deuterium, and He ion beams and (3) SrTiO₃ single crystal irradiated by low energy (60 keV) H⁺ and C⁻ ions. Two PL emissions are induced in (1) and (2) at visible frequencies 3 and 2.45 eV, while another PL peak is induced at 2 eV in (3). When compared with our previous PL experiments on high-temperature annealed SrTiO₃/SiO₂/Si thin film and 3 MeV proton (H⁺) irradiated STO single crystal, these results confirm that the three PL emissions with blue (3 eV), green (2.45 eV), and red-orange (2 eV) frequencies originate indeed from SrTiO₃. These primary-color PL effect induced at room-temperature makes STO a strong candidate material for future oxide-based optoelectronic application.     

Minimum orders of eulerian oriented digraphs with given diameter

A digraph D is oriented if it does not contain 2-cycles.If an oriented digraph D has a directed eulerian path,it is an oriented eulerian digraph.In this paper,when an oriented eulerian digraph D has minimum out-degree 2 and a diameter d,we find the minimum order of D.In addition,when D is 2-regular with diameter 4m(m ≥ 2),we classify the extremal cases.     

Nanoporous niobium oxide for label-free detection of DNA hybridization events

We found that DNA probes can be immobilized on anodically prepared porous niobium oxide without a chemical modification of both the DNA probes and the substrate. By using the porous niobium oxide with a positive surface charge, DNA hybridization events are detected on the basis of the blue-shift of a maximum absorption peak in UV-vis-NIR spectroscopy. The blue-shift is ascribed to the change of surface charge upon single- or double-stranded DNA. The method does not require a label and shows high sensitivity with the detection limit of the concentration of 1nM.