The use of an immobilized enzyme nylon tube reactor incorporating a four enzyme system for creatinine analysis

A single immobilized enzyme nylon tube reactor was produced incorporating a four enzyme system for the analysis of creatinine. The enzyme activity ratios in the coupling solution used to prepare the reactor were found to be of extreme importance in governing the activity of the latter. The reactor was incorporated into a continuous flow analysis system used to assay creatinine in urine samples and the results were correlated with a manual technique employing the same enzyme system in solution. The precision, correlation, high specificity, simplicity, and speed of the analysis were concluded to be factors in favor of the method's suitability for urine creatinine determinations.     

Relations between the support of a compactly supported function and the exponential-polynomials spanned by its integer translates

The interrelation between the shape of the support of a compactly supported function and the space of all exponential-polynomials spanned by its integer translates is examined. The results obtained are in terms of the behavior of these exponential-polynomials on certain finite subsets ofZ ^s , which are determined by the support of the given function. Several applications are discussed. Among these is the construction of quasi-interpolants of minimal support and the construction of a piecewise-polynomial whose integer translates span a polynomial space which is not scale-invariant. As to polynomial box splines, it is proved here that in many cases a polynomial box spline admits a certain optimality condition concerning the space of the total degree polynomials spanned by its integer translates: This space is maximal compared with the spaces corresponding to other functions with the same supportCommunicated by Klaus Höllig.     

Dendrimer-based transient supramolecular networks

Association of a 16-fold excess of a monodisperse telechelic oligo(THF) (Mw = 1270 g/mol) containing two end groups that selectively bind to the 32 binding sites of a fifth generation dendritic host (Mw = 18,511 g/mol and radius R(h) = 2.4 nm) results in the formation of reversible and dynamic supramolecular complexes. The structure of these complexes in solution depends strongly on the concentration. At low concentration, the two end groups of one guest are proposed to complex to the same host, and flowerlike structures are formed with a radius of R(h) = 3.7 nm. At higher concentrations, both end groups of one guest are complexed to different hosts, forming a bridge between them. This gives rise to the formation of larger associates, and eventually to a transient supramolecular network. Dynamic light scattering unequivocally showed that three distinct relaxation processes, associated with the proposed structures, are present in this system. In addition to the dynamics related to the flowerlike (fast) and the transient network structures (slow), an intermediate dynamic process is attributed to the cooperative motion of a few (approximately 6) connected flowerlike structures. Rheological data elucidate the nature of the intermittent network responsible for the slowest process. A monofunctional guest, not capable of forming a network structure, was used as a reference, and starlike supramolecular structures are formed at all concentrations, indeed.     

A data compression method applicable to first-order convergent iterative procedures

A data compression method is presented that is generally applicable to first-order convergent iterative procedures that employ subspace expansions or extrapolations based on successive correction vectors. This method is based on the truncation of insignificant information in successive correction vectors. Although the correction vectors themselves may be severely truncated with the proposed approach, the final solution vector may be represented to arbitrary accuracy. A feature of the proposed method is that more slowly convergent iterative procedures allow the correction vectors to be more severely truncated without affecting the overall convergence rate. The method is implemented and applied to the iterative Davidson diagonalization method. If the compressed representation of the expansion vectors can be held in main computer memory, then a significant reduction in the I/O requirements is achieved.     

Sequencing membrane proteins by tandem mass spectrometry

Tandem mass spectrometry (MS/MS) is an attractive technique for sequencing membrane proteins because it can be applied to peptides in mixtures that are difficult to separate chromatographically. To evaluate the suitability of MS/MS sequencing for membrane proteins and to develop protocols for the preparation of the cleaved peptides, we employed the well characterized apoproteins of bacteriorhodopsin and bovine rhodopsin, i.e. bacterioopsin and opsin, respectively. Without separation, nine out of ten peptides resulting from cyanogen bromide cleavage of bacterioopsin were detected by fast atom bombardment MS, the single undetected fragment being a tetrapeptide that was presumably hidden in the low-m/z matrix background. Furthermore, MS/MS was used to confirm the sequence of all the peptides detected with m/z values below 3.5 kDa (40% of the protein). Bovine opsin was analyzed in a similar fashion. Tandem MS/MS has thus allowed the sequencing of substantial portions of two integral membrane proteins by the analysis of unseparated peptide mixtures, demonstrating for the first time that this technique can obviate some of the most serious difficulties associated with sequencing membrane proteins, namely the difficult-to-achieve separation of the ‘sticky’ peptide fragments.     

Visualization and analysis of molecular scanner peptide mass spectra

The molecular scanner combines protein separation using gel electrophoresis with peptide mass fingerprinting (PMF) techniques to identify proteins in a highly automated manner. Proteins separated in a 2-dimensional polyacrylamide gel (2-D PAGE) are digested in parallel and transferred onto a membrane keeping their relative positions. The membrane is then sprayed with a matrix and inserted into a matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight (MALDI-TOF) mass spectrometer, which measures a peptide mass fingerprint at each site on the scanned grid. First, visualization of PMF data allows surveying all fingerprints at once and provides very useful information on the presence of chemical noise. Chemical noise is shown to be a potential source for erroneous identifications and is therefore purged from the mass fingerprints. Then, the correlation between neighboring spectra is used to recalibrate the peptide masses. Finally, a method that clusters peptide masses according to the similarity of the spatial distributions of their signal intensities is presented. This method allows discarding many of the false positives that usually go along with PMF identifications and allows identifying many weakly expressed proteins present in the gel.     

The addition of small molecules to (η-C5H5)2Rh2(CO)(CF3C2CF3) : I. The coordinative-addition of CO,CNR, and some group V donor ligands

Treatment of the μ(η¹)-alkyne complex (η-C₅H₅)₂Rh₂(CO)₂(CF₃C₂CF₃) with trimethylamine-N-oxide results in mono-decarbonylation to give the μ(η²)- alkyne complex (η-C₅H₅)₂Rh₂(μ-CO)(CF₃C₂CF₃). Coordinative addition of a variety of ligands L to the monocarbonyl complex has been achieved at room temperature, and stable adducts (η-C₅H₅)₂Rh₂(CO)L(CF₃C₂CF₃) (L  CO, CNBu^t, PPh₃, PMePh₂, P(OMe)₃, AsPh₃, PF₃ and PF₂(NEt₂)) have been fully characterized by infrared and NMR spectroscopy. In each complex, there is a μ(η¹)-attachment of the hexafluorobut-2-yne and a trans-arrangement of CO and L. The spectroscopic data establish that there is rapid scrambling of CO and L when L  CNBu^t. An unstable adduct is formed when (η-C₅H₅)₂Rh₂(μ-CO)(CF₃C₂CF₃) is dissolved in pyridine.     

Electron capture and collisionally activated dissociation mass spectrometry of doubly charged hyperbranched polyesteramides

Electron capture dissociation (ECD) of doubly protonated hyperbranched polyesteramide oligomers (1100-1900 Da) was examined and compared with the structural information obtained by low energy collisionally activated dissociation (CAD). Both the ester and amide bonds of the protonated species were cleaved easily upon ECD with the formation of odd electron (OE(.+)) or even electron (EE(+)) fragment ions. Several mechanistic schemes are proposed that describe the complex ECD fragmentation behavior of the multiply charged oligomers. In contrast to studies of biomolecules, the present results indicate that consecutive cleavages induced by intramolecular H-shifts are significant for ECD and of less importance for low energy CAD. The capture of an electron by the ionized species results in fragmentation associated with a redistribution of the excess internal energy over the products and the subsequent bond cleavage. Low energy, multiple collision CAD is found to be a more selective dissociation method than ECD in view of the observation that only amide bonds are cleaved for most of the hyperbranched polymers examined with CAD in this study. ECD appears not to provide complementary structural information compared to CAD in the study of hyperbranched polymers, even though a significantly more complex ECD fragmentation behavior is observed. ECD is shown to be of use for the structural characterization of large oligomers that may not dissociate upon low energy CAD. This is a direct result of the fact that ECD produces ionized hyperbranched oligomers with a relatively high internal energy.     

Determinations of bond energies by time-of-flight single-collision chemiluminescence

A pulsed beam of metastable atoms traverses a scattering chamber filled with oxidant gas at low pressures (beam + gas arrangement); the resulting chemiluminescence is spectroscopically resolved as a function of time to yield a time-of-flight (TOF) spectrum for different internal states. From this data, the initial relative translational energy distribution is derived for the reactants that populate the excited internal state observed. Lower bounds are placed on the barium halide (BaX) dissociation energies, using the reactions Ba(³D) + X₂ → BaX* + X, where X = Br, I. Arguments are presented to show that these lower bounds represent measurements of the true bond energies: it is concluded that D₀⁰(BaBr) = 85.8 ± 2 kcal/mole and D₀⁰(BaI) = 72.9 ± 2 kcal/mole. The present work corrects previous determinations of bond energies from single-collision chemiluminescent studies which were in error because of unrecognized metastable contamination in the high-temperature atomic beam.