Comprehensive Profiling by Non-targeted Stable Isotope Tracing Capillary Electrophoresis-Mass Spectrometry: A New Tool Complementing Metabolomic Analyses of Polar Metabolites

Mass spectrometry (MS) driven metabolomics is a frequently used tool in various areas of life sciences; however, the analysis of polar metabolites is less commonly included. In general, metabolomic analyses lead to the detection of the total amount of all covered metabolites. This is currently a major limitation with respect to metabolites showing high turnover rates, but no changes in their concentration. Such metabolites and pathways could be crucial metabolic nodes (e.g., potential drug targets in cancer metabolism). A stable-isotope tracing capillary electrophoresis–mass spectrometry (CE-MS) metabolomic approach was developed to cover both polar metabolites and isotopologues in a non-targeted way. An in-house developed software enables high throughput processing of complex multidimensional data. The practicability is demonstrated analyzing [U-¹³C]-glucose exposed prostate cancer and non-cancer cells. This CE-MS-driven analytical strategy complements polar metabolite profiles through isotopologue labeling patterns, thereby improving not only the metabolomic coverage, but also the understanding of metabolism.     

Why define atoms in real space?

The physics of a system is determined by a variation of the action integral, i.e., by a variation of the space–time volume integral of the Lagrange function. If one demands that the properties of an atom in a molecule be derived from physics, the atom must generate its own space–time volume, requiring that its boundaries be defined in real space. The variations in the action are related to the actions of generators of infinitesimal unitary transformations. In the general case, the action integral is altered by generators acting in both the spacelike and timelike surface bounding the space–time volume, whereas for a total isolated system, the physics is totally determined by their action in just the spacelike surfaces at the two time endpoints. It is shown and illustrated for a one-dimensional system that the definition of an atom corresponds to the possibility of choosing a subsystem in such a way that the contributions to the change in action resulting from the evolution in time of its spatial boundaries vanishes identically. The properties of these subsystems and of the total system of which they are a part are, therefore, determined by one and the same action principle. This choice of subsystem corresponds to the possibility of augmenting the Lagrange function by the divergence of the gradient of the electron density a step that, while leaving the equations of motion unchanged, modifies the generating operators in the required manner. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Analysis of semiconducting materials by high-resolution radiofrequency glow discharge mass spectrometry

The analytical capabilities of a high-resolution mass spectrometer in combination with a 13.56 MHz glow discharge ion source for the analysis of semiconducting materials (silicon carbide and gallium arsenide) were studied. It was shown that single positively charged ions of sample material have about 10 eV higher average energy than the ions of the discharge and residual gas. Therefore effective energy separation of the ions of analyte from the ions of the discharge and residual gas was achieved by adjusting the ion transfer optics (breadth and position of energy slit), which improves the analytical capabilities of the developed method.Some analytical applications are presented to illustrate the performance of r.f. GDMS for the bulk analysis of semiconducting materials. The results of the trace element analysis of gallium arsenide and silicon carbide samples are compared with data of independent methods (LIMS, ICP-AES, SIMS).Dedicated to Professor Dr. rer. nat. Dr. h.c. Hubertus Nickel on the occasion of his 65th birthdayOn leave from the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry, 630090 Novosibirsk, Russia     

Working group report: Collider Physics

This is summary of the activities of the working group on collider physics in the IXth Workshop on High Energy Physics Phenomenology (WHEPP-9) held at the Institute of Physics, Bhubaneswar, India in January 2006. Some of the work subsequently done on these problems by the subgroups formed during the workshop is included in this report.     

Property (<Emphasis Type="Italic">T</Emphasis>) and rigidity for actions on Banach spaces

We study property (T) and the fixed-point property for actions on L ^p and other Banach spaces. We show that property (T) holds when L ² is replaced by L ^p (and even a subspace/quotient of L ^p ), and that in fact it is independent of 1≤p<∞. We show that the fixed-point property for L ^p follows from property (T) when 1<p< 2+ε. For simple Lie groups and their lattices, we prove that the fixed-point property for L ^p holds for any 1< p<∞ if and only if the rank is at least two. Finally, we obtain a superrigidity result for actions of irreducible lattices in products of general groups on superreflexive spaces. Bader partially supported by ISF grant 100146; Furman partially supported by NSF grants DMS-0094245 and DMS-0604611; Gelander partially supported by NSF grant DMS-0404557 and BSF grant 2004010; Monod partially supported by FNS (CH) and NSF (US).     

Symmetries of BLT-Sets

We do the tentative beginnings of a study of BLT-sets of generalised quadrangles via their symmetries. In particular, the study of whorls about a line leads us to hyperbolic reflections preserving a BLT-set of Q(4, q).     

Efficient indirect electrochemical in-situ regeneration of nadh:electrochemically driven enzymatic reduction of pyruvate catalyzed by d-ldh

Using [Cp(Me)₅Rh(bipy)C1]C1 (1) as redox catalyst for the continous NADH regeneration it was possible to perform an electrochemically driven enzymatic reduction of pyruvate to D-lactate catalyzed by D-LDH at a rate of 5 turnovers per hour. This is by a factor of 20 faster than the best results obtained until now. Current yields of 50 to 70 % may be obtained.