Unusual heme-histidine bond in the active site of a chaperone

The heme chaperone CcmE is essential for the delivery of heme to c-type cytochromes. It forms an unusual transient, yet covalent, bond between an essential histidine, H130, and heme. We report on the discovery of the chemical structure of this bond solved by NMR, where the heme vinyl is cross-linked at the beta carbon to the Ndelta1 of H130. As this type of heme linkage has not been described previously in any cytochrome or hemoprotein, it represents a novel type of heme-histidine complex.     

Measurements of side-chain 13C-13C residual dipolar couplings in uniformly deuterated proteins

13C-only spectroscopy was used to measure multiple residual (13)C-(13)C dipolar couplings (RDCs) in uniformly deuterated and (13)C-labeled proteins. We demonstrate that (13)C-start and (13)C-observe spectra can be routinely used to measure an extensive set of the side-chain residual (13)C-(13)C dipolar couplings upon partial alignment of human ubiquitin in the presence of bacteriophages Pf1. We establish that, among different broadband polarization transfer schemes, the FLOPSY family can be used to exchange magnetization between a J coupled network of spins while largely decoupling dipolar interactions between these spins. An excellent correlation between measured RDCs and the 3D structure of the protein was observed, indicating a potential use of the (13)C-(13)C RDCs in the structure determination of perdeuterated proteins.     

Longitudinal (1)H relaxation optimization in TROSY NMR spectroscopy

A general method to enhance the sensitivity of the multidimensional NMR experiments performed at high-polarizing magnetic field via the significant reduction of the longitudinal proton relaxation times is described. The method is based on the use of two vast pools of "thermal bath" 1H spins residing on hydrogens covalently attached to carbon and oxygen atoms in 13C,15N labeled and fully protonated or fractionally deuterated proteins to uniformly enhance longitudinal relaxation of the 1HN spins and concomitantly the sensitivity of multipulse NMR experiments. The proposed longitudinal relaxation optimization is implemented in the 2D [15N,1H]-LTROSY, 2D [15N,1H]-LHSQC and 3D LTROSY-HNCA experiments yielding the factor 2-2.5 increase of the maximal signal-to-noise ratio per unit time at 600 MHz. At 900 MHz, the predicted decrease of the 1HN longitudinal relaxation times can be as large as one order of magnitude, making the proposed method an important tool for protein NMR at high magnetic fields.     

Cosmological production of vector bosons and cosmic microwave background radiation

An intensive cosmological production of vector W and Z bosons is considered within a cosmological model that involves a relative scale of measurement. Field-theory models are studied in which cosmic microwave background radiation and baryon matter may appear as products of the decay of such primordial bosons.     

Monopole vacuum in non-Abelian theories

It is shown that, in the theory of interacting Yang-Mills fields and a Higgs field, there is a topological degeneracy of Bogomol'nyi-Prasad-Sommerfield (BPS) monopoles and that there arises, in this case, a chromoelectric monopole characterized by a new topological variable that describes transitions between topological states of the monopole in Minkowski space (in just the same way as an instanton describes such transitions in Euclidean space). The limit of an infinitely large mass of the Higgs field at a finite density of the Bogomol'nyi-Prasad-Sommerfield monopole is considered as a model of the stable vacuum in pure Yang-Mills theory. It is shown that, in QCD, such a monopole vacuum may lead to a growing potential, a topological confinement, and an additional mass of the η₀ meson. The relationship between the result obtained here for the generating functional of perturbation theory and the Faddeev-Popov integral is discussed.     

Chiral phenomenological relations between rates of rare radiative decays of kaon to pion and leptons and the meson form factors

In the framework of the chiral perturbation theory we obtain the phenomenological relations between decay branches of rare radiative kaon to pion and leptons K ⁺ → π⁺ l ⁺ l ⁻ and K _S ⁰ → π⁰ l ⁺ l ⁻ and meson form factors. The comparison of these results with the present-day experimental data shows us that the ChPT relations for a charge kaon can determine meson form factors from already measured decay rates at high precision level. However, in the case of the neutral kaon decays K ⁰ → π⁰ e ⁺ e ⁻(μ⁺μ⁻) the form factor data are known to a higher precision than data on the differential rates of radiative kaon decay K ⁰ π⁰ e ⁺ e ⁻(μ⁺μ⁻).     

Convective heat exchange of a viscoplastic fluid with temperature-dependent rheological characteristics during structural flow in a circular pipe

Heat exchange in a viscoplastic liquid moving in a circular pipe is investigated, taking into account the dependence of plastic viscosity and ultimate shear stress on temperature. A system of motion, energy, and continuity equations transformed under the assumption that the Pe and Pr numbers are much greater than 1 is solved on a computer by the method of finite differences using iterations. Results of the numerical solutions for the exponential form of the dependences of the rheological characteristics on temperature are analyzed in detail. A comparison of the numerical solutions with well-known theoretical solutions in particular cases and also with experimental data indicates their high precision.