Study of the Antioxidative Properties of Several Amino Acid-Type Surfactants and their Synergistic Effect in Mixed Micelle

Cysteine and methionine, two sulfur-containing amino acids (AA), were introduced in their surfactant forms as potential antioxidants. The antioxidative (AOX) properties of lauroyl methionine (C12-Met) and lauroyl cysteine (C12-Cys) was investigated by means of the oxygen radical absorbance capacity assay. Both the surfactants exhibited excellent AOX behavior at the premicellar state and micellar medium. The AOX behavior was found to be comparable for both the surfactants at their premicellar states. However, in micellar medium, C12-Met showed better AOX property than C12-Cys. The AOX power of the surfactants was compared with other previously developed AA-type surfactants. The order of the AOX power was found to be: C12-tryptophan > C12-tyrosine ≈ C12-methionine ≈ C12-cysteine > C12-histidine at the premicellar state and C12-tryptophan > C12-tyrosine > C12-methionine > C12-cysteine > C12-histidine at the micellar state. C12-Cys displayed lower AOX property in micellar medium due to its dimer formation tendency. Based on the HPLC and UPLC-Q-TOF-MS analysis, the dimer formation of C12-Cys was found to be accelerated due to the micellar environment and results into negative synergistic effect on other aromatic AA-type surfactants. However, the presence of C12-His in the micellar solution of C12-Cys resulted no synergistic effect due to stronger H-bonding between the surfactants and resulting less dimer formation.     

Molecular Evolution of the TET Gene Family in Mammals

Ten-eleven translocation (TET) proteins, a family of Fe²⁺- and 2-oxoglutarate-dependent dioxygenases, are involved in DNA demethylation. They also help regulate various cellular functions. Three TET paralogs have been identified (TET1, TET2, and TET3) in humans. This study focuses on the evolution of mammalian TET genes. Distinct patterns in TET1 and TET2 vs. TET3 were revealed by codon-based tests of positive selection. Results indicate that TET1 and TET2 genes have experienced positive selection more frequently than TET3 gene, and that the majority of codon sites evolved under strong negative selection. These findings imply that the selective pressure on TET3 may have been relaxed in several lineages during the course of evolution. Our analysis of convergent amino acid substitutions also supports the different evolutionary dynamics among TET gene subfamily members. All of the five amino acid sites that are inferred to have evolved under positive selection in the catalytic domain of TET2 are localized at the protein’s outer surface. The adaptive changes of these positively selected amino acid sites could be associated with dynamic interactions between other TET-interacting proteins, and positive selection thus appears to shift the regulatory scheme of TET enzyme function.     

Topic allocation method on edge servers for latency-sensitive notification service

The importance of real-time notification has been growing for social services and Intelligent Transporting System (ITS). As an advanced version of Pub/Sub systems, publish-process-subscribe systems, where published messages are spooled and processed on edge servers, have been proposed to achieve data-driven intelligent notifications. In this paper, we present a system that allows a topic to be managed on multiple edge servers so that messages are processed near the publishers, even when publishers spread over a wide area. Duplicating messages on geographically distributed servers could enable immediate notification to neighboring subscribers. However, the duplicated message spool may cause exhaustion of resources. We prepare a formal model of our publish-process-subscribe system and formulate the topic allocation as an optimization problem under the resource constraints of edge servers. As the optimization problem is NP-hard, we propose heuristics leveraging the locality and the pub/sub relationships observed between clients to use the edge server resources efficiently. Our performance evaluation shows that our method reduces the delay to deliver notifications and the effectiveness of the strategy exploiting the relationships between clients.     

Chain stiffness and chain conformation of poly(α-methylene-γ-butyrolactone) in dilute solutions

The chain stiffness and local chain conformation of atactic poly(α-methylene-γ-butyrolactone) (PMBL), which is a side chain cyclic structural analog of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA), with a weight-average molecular weight (M_w) ranging from 2.8 × 10³ to 2.6 × 10⁶ in N,N-dimethylformamide (DMF) and γ-butyrolactone (GBL) were characterized by size exclusion chromatography with a multi-angle light-scattering detector (SEC-MALS) and synchrotron radiation small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS). Based on the Kratky-Porod worm-like chain model, the scattering functions and the M_w dependence of z-average root-mean-square radius of gyration <S²>_z^1/2 yielded the Kuhn segment lengths λ⁻¹, the diameter of the PMBL chains d, and the excluded-volume strengths in DMF and GBL. The local conformation of atactic PMBL in DMF and GBL were slightly larger than those of atactic PMMA, due to the presence of the conformationally rigid lactone ring structure.     

Natural denitrification in the Kakamigahara groundwater basin,Gifu prefecture,central Japan

Although nitrate is recognized as the most common groundwater contaminant due to growing anthropogenic sources, such as agriculture in particular, its adverse effects on human and animal health are debatable. The current issue, however, is to control and reduce nitrate contamination with regards to the long residence time of groundwater within aquifers. Denitrification has recently been recognized for its ability to reduce high nitrate concentrations in groundwater. The Kakamigahara groundwater basin, Gifu prefecture, Japan, witnessed rising levels of nitrate (>12 mg/l NO(3)-N) originating from agricultural sources. Chemical analyses for the determination of major constituents of groundwater and delta(15)N of residual nitrate were performed on representative groundwater samples in order to fulfill two main objectives. One is to investigate the current situation of nitrate groundwater pollution. The second objective is to determine whether the denitrification is a potential natural mechanism, which eliminates nitrate pollution in the Kakamigahara aquifer. Agricultural nitrate contamination of groundwater was obvious from characteristically high concentrations of Ca(2+), Mg(2+), NO(3)(-) and SO(4)(2-). High nitrate concentrations were found on the eastern side of the basin in association with vegetable cultivation fields, and decreased gradually towards the west of the basin along the direction of groundwater flow. The decrease of nitrate concentration was conveniently coupled with increase of HCO(3)(-) (the heterotrophic denitrification product), pH and delta(15)N of residual nitrate (due to isotopic fractionation) from east to west. Therefore, denitrification in situ is continuously removing nitrate from the Kakamigahara groundwater system.     

Isolation and Characterization of Two Types of Xyloglucanases from a Phytopathogenic Fungus,Verticillium dahliae

Xyloglucan is a major hemicellulosic component in plant cell walls. Phytopathogenic fungi secrete cell wall-degrading enzymes on their infection to hosts, while the nature of the cell wall-lytic enzymes of such fungi are yet to be fully understood. Verticillium dahliae is a soil-borne fungus that causes vascular wilt diseases in a variety of commercially important crops worldwide. We purified two types of xyloglucanases, XEG12A and XEG74B, from the culture of naturally isolated Verticillium dahliae strain 2148. XEG12A showed a molecular size of 23 kDa with its maximal activity at pH 7.5. XEG12A specifically hydrolyzed xyloglucan with no activity on other β-glucans. XEG74B had a molecular size of 110 kDa with its optimum pH at 6.0. XEG74B primarily hydrolyzed xyloglucan, with a slight activity on β-1,3-1,4-glucan. Analysis of hydrolytic products of xyloglucanooligasaccharide (XXXGXXXG) by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF MS) revealed that the both enzymes cleaved β-1,4-glucosidic linkage at the position of unbranched chain, while XEG74B showed a little fluctuation with the cleavage site. Both enzymes did not hydrolyzed xyloglucanoheptasaccharide (XXXG) at all. N-Terminal and internal amino acid sequencing of the enzymes revealed that XEG12A and XEG74B belonged to Glycoside Hydrolase (GH) Families 12 and 74, respectively. Based on these results we concluded that V. dahliae XEG12A and XEG74B were xyloglucan-specific endo-β-1,4-glucanases (EC 3.2.1.151).     

Disturbance rejection with information constraints: Performance limitations of a scalar system for bounded and Gaussian disturbances

This paper derives performance limitations for disturbance rejection of scalar systems under information constraints subject to either bounded or Gaussian disturbances. Two kinds of disturbance are treated in a unified manner, using appropriate entropies and distortions. It is shown that the achievable performance cannot be improved even if the maximum information constraint is relaxed to an average information constraint. Another observation is that, while the information constraints are weaker than bit-rate or signal-to-noise ratio constraints on the communication channel, the same performance levels are achieved by the best encoder and decoder for disturbance rejection with the information constraints.     

Coexisting state of surge and rotating stall in a two-stage axial flow compressor using a double-phase-locked averaging technique

The interaction between surge and rotating stall in an axial flow compressor was investigated from the viewpoint of an unsteady inner flow structure. The aim of this study was to identify the key factor that determines the switching phenomenon of a surge cycle. The main feature of the tested compressor is a shock tube connected in series to the compressor outlet through a diaphragm, slits, and a concentric duplex pipe: this system allows surge and rotating stall to be generated by connecting the shock tube with the compressor, or enables the compression plane wave injection. The unsteady characteristics and the internal flow velocity fluctuations were measured in detail, and the stall cell structure was averaged and visualized along the movement of the operation point under a coexisting state of surge. A coefficient of the cell scale fluctuation was calculated using the result of the averaging, and it confirmed that the processes of inner flow structure change differed from each other according to the next cycle of the surge. The result suggests that the key factor that determines the next cycle is the transformation of the internal flow structure, particularly between the stall cell and the entire circumferential stall, in both the recovering and stalling processes.