不同效应室浓度舒芬太尼复合丙泊酚对Narcotrend的影响

目的:探讨靶控输注不同效应室浓度的舒芬太尼复合丙泊酚对Narcotrend指数(NI)的影响。方法:选择60例全麻患者,年龄40-60岁,体重指数30 kg/m2,ASAⅠ-Ⅱ级,随机分为4组(n=15):舒芬太尼效应室靶控浓度0.1 ng/m L(A组)、0.2 ng/m L(B组)、0.3 ng/m L(C组)、0.4 ng/m L(D组);各组舒芬太尼达效应室靶浓度5 min后给予丙泊酚1 mg/kg。记录实验过程中的血压、心率、血氧饱和度及NI。所有患者在实验结束后,均调整至适宜的麻醉深度,给与阿曲库胺,进行气管插管。结果:靶控输注舒芬太尼使各组的NI有不同程度的降低,随着靶控浓度的增加,降低幅度增大;单纯靶控输注舒芬太尼时,其效应室浓度与NI呈负相关,相关系数为-0.456。结论:舒芬太尼能降低NI,舒芬太尼效应室浓度与NI呈负相关。而舒芬太尼效应室浓度0.4 ng/m L复合丙泊酚后,NI反而呈短暂的上升,随后下降的现象。     

Leaf economics and hydraulic traits are decoupled in five species‐rich tropical‐subtropical forests

Leaf economics and hydraulic traits are critical to leaf photosynthesis, yet it is debated whether these two sets of traits vary in a fully coordinated manner or there is room for independent variation. Here, we tested the relationship between leaf economics traits, including leaf nitrogen concentration and leaf dry mass per area, and leaf hydraulic traits including stomatal density and vein density in five tropical‐subtropical forests. Surprisingly, these two suites of traits were statistically decoupled. This decoupling suggests that independent trait dimensions exist within a leaf, with leaf economics dimension corresponding to light capture and tissue longevity, and the hydraulic dimension to water‐use and leaf temperature maintenance. Clearly, leaf economics and hydraulic traits can vary independently, thus allowing for more possible plant trait combinations. Compared with a single trait dimension, multiple trait dimensions may better enable species adaptations to multifarious niche dimensions, promote diverse plant strategies and facilitate species coexistence.     

Cold truths: how winter drives responses of terrestrial organisms to climate change

Winter is a key driver of individual performance, community composition, and ecological interactions in terrestrial habitats. Although climate change research tends to focus on performance in the growing season, climate change is also modifying winter conditions rapidly. Changes to winter temperatures, the variability of winter conditions, and winter snow cover can interact to induce cold injury, alter energy and water balance, advance or retard phenology, and modify community interactions. Species vary in their susceptibility to these winter drivers, hampering efforts to predict biological responses to climate change. Existing frameworks for predicting the impacts of climate change do not incorporate the complexity of organismal responses to winter. Here, we synthesise organismal responses to winter climate change, and use this synthesis to build a framework to predict exposure and sensitivity to negative impacts. This framework can be used to estimate the vulnerability of species to winter climate change. We describe the importance of relationships between winter conditions and performance during the growing season in determining fitness, and demonstrate how summer and winter processes are linked. Incorporating winter into current models will require concerted effort from theoreticians and empiricists, and the expansion of current growing‐season studies to incorporate winter.     

Carbon concentration and oxygen availability affect lipid and carotenoid production by carob pulp syrup‐grown Rhodosporidium toruloides NCYC 921

The simultaneous effect of oxygen availability and carbon source concentration on yeast lipid and carotenoid production has never been studied before. In this work, a Doehlert distribution design was used to study the simultaneous effect of carbon concentration and oxygen availability on Rhodosporidium toruloides NCYC 921 carotenoid and lipid production. A cheap industrial byproduct was used as carbon source (carob pulp syrup). A total sugar concentration of 106.3 g/L and a medium volume of 0.120 L induced the highest total carotenoid and total fatty acid productivities (4.60 μg/Lh and 0.029 g/Lh, respectively). Flow cytometry was used to assess yeast stress response under different cultivation conditions. The highest proportion of cells with permeabilised membrane (>20%) was induced when the cultivations were carried out at the highest sugar concentration studied (130.0 g/L) or when the culture reached the minimum final medium pH (4.60). The results showed that the total sugar concentration had a positive influence on the yeast biomass and carotenoid content, while the oxygen availability had little influence on the biomass concentration, but had a slight positive influence on the carotenoid content. Regarding the fatty acids, the two factors had a negative impact on the synthesis of these compounds.     

Pentacycloundecane lactam vs lactone norstatine type protease HIV inhibitors: binding energy calculations and DFT study

Background

Novel pentacycloundecane (PCU)-lactone-CO-EAIS peptide inhibitors were designed, synthesized, and evaluated against wild-type C-South African (C-SA) HIV-1 protease. Three compounds are reported herein, two of which displayed IC₅₀ values of less than 1.00 μM. A comparative MM-PB(GB)SA binding free energy of solvation values of PCU-lactam and lactone models and their enantiomers as well as the PCU-lactam-NH-EAIS and lactone-CO-EAIS peptide inhibitors and their corresponding diastereomers complexed with South African HIV protease (C-SA) was performed. This will enable us to rationalize the considerable difference between inhibitory concentration (IC₅₀) of PCU-lactam-NH-EAIS and PCU-lactone-CO-EAIS peptides.

Results

The PCU-lactam model exhibited more negative calculated binding free energies of solvation than the PCU-lactone model. The same trend was observed for the PCU-peptide inhibitors, which correspond to the experimental activities for the PCU-lactam-NH-EAIS peptide (IC₅₀ = 0.076 μM) and the PCU-lactone-CO-EAIS peptide inhibitors (IC₅₀ = 0.850 μM). Furthermore, a density functional theory (DFT) study on the natural atomic charges of the nitrogen and oxygen atoms of the three PCU-lactam, PCU-lactim and PCU-lactone models were performed using natural bond orbital (NBO) analysis. Electrostatic potential maps were also used to visualize the electron density around electron-rich regions. The asymmetry parameter (η) and quadrupole coupling constant (χ) values of the nitrogen and oxygen nuclei of the model compounds were calculated at the same level of theory. Electronic molecular properties including polarizability and electric dipole moments were also calculated and compared. The Gibbs theoretical free solvation energies of solvation (∆G_solv) were also considered.

Conclusions

A general trend is observed that the lactam species appears to have a larger negative charge distribution around the heteroatoms, larger quadrupole constant, dipole moment and better solvation energy, in comparison to the PCU-lactone model. It can be argued that these characteristics will ensure better eletronic interaction between the lactam and the receptor, corresponding to the observed HIV protease activities in terms of experimental IC₅₀ data.

Electronic supplementary material

The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12929-015-0115-5) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.     

The impact of high‐order epistasis in the within‐host fitness of a positive‐sense plant RNA virus

RNA viruses are the main source of emerging infectious diseases because of the evolutionary potential bestowed by their fast replication, large population sizes and high mutation and recombination rates. However, an equally important property, which is usually neglected, is the topography of the fitness landscape. How many fitness maxima exist and how well they are connected is especially interesting, as this determines the number of accessible evolutionary pathways. To address this question, we have reconstructed a region of the fitness landscape of tobacco etch potyvirus constituted by mutations observed during the experimental adaptation of the virus to the novel host Arabidopsis thaliana. Fitness was measured for many genotypes and showed the existence of multiple peaks and holes in the landscape. We found prevailing epistatic effects between mutations, with cases of reciprocal sign epistasis being common among pairs of mutations. We also found that high‐order epistasis was as important as pairwise epistasis in their contribution to fitness. Therefore, results suggest that the landscape was rugged due to the existence of holes caused by lethal genotypes, that a very limited number of potential neutral paths exist and that it contained a single adaptive peak.     

反相C18固相萃取小柱用于蛋白质组分析中少量样品预处理

针对少量且复杂蛋白质组样品,开发一种耗时短、操作简便的分离方法。以人的脑海马组织蛋白样品为研究对象,采用反相C18固相萃取小柱,采用不同乙腈浓度对酶切后样品进行梯度洗脱,与反相高效液相色谱法对比分离效果。通过比较不同乙腈梯度洗脱方案所鉴定到的谱图数、非冗余多肽数、蛋白数和各洗脱组分间重复率分析,确定一种样品量少、简单易行、分离效果好的实验方案。虽然反相C18固相萃取小柱法鉴定蛋白总数占高效液相色谱法的85.5%,但其操作简单,耗时少。通过4种不同乙腈浓度方案比较,确定乙腈洗脱浓度优化为5%、15%、20%和90%时,分离30μg人的海马多肽混合物可以得到较优的分离效果。其蛋白鉴定数为反相液相色谱法的67.0%,且重复性良好。该结果证实反相C18固相萃取小柱分离效果比反相高效液相色谱法稍差,但此方法可以分离少量复杂蛋白质组样品。该方法分离样品充分,操作易行,耗时短,是进行蛋白质组学分析中少量样品的一个简便预处理方法。