Leaf Epidermal Cells： A Trap for Lipophilic Xenobiotics

Plant surfaces are covered by a layer of cuticle, which functions as a natural barrier to protect plants from mechanical damage, desiccation, and microbial invasion. Results presented in this report show that the epicuticular wax and the cuticle of plant leaves also play an important role in resisting xenobiotic invasion. Although the epicuticular wax is impermeable to hydrophilic xenobiotics, the cuticle not only restricts the penetration of hydrophilic compounds into leaf cells, but also traps lipophilic ones. The role of the epidermal cells of plant leaves in resisting xenobiotic invasion has been neglected until now. The present study shows, for the first time, that the epidermal cells may reduce or retard the transport of lipophilic xenobiotics into the internal tissues through vacuolar sequestration. Although the guard cells appear to be an easy point of entry for xenobiotics, only a very small proportion of xenobiotics present on the leaf surface actually moves into leaf tissues via the guard cells .     

厌氧发酵法生物制氢的研究现状和发展前景

氢气是一种理想的能源,具有转化率高、可再生和无污染等优点。与传统制氢方法相比,生物制氢技术的能耗低,对环境无害,其中的厌氧发酵生物制氢已经越来越受到人们的重视。本文主要介绍了厌氧发酵生物制氢技术的方法和机理,分析了生物制氢的可行性,结合国内外研究现状提出了未来的发展方向。     

Fragrep： An Efficient Search Tool for Fragmented Patterns in Genomic Sequences

Many classes of non-coding RNAs （ncRNAs; including Y RNAs, vault RNAs, RNase P RNAs, and MRP RNAs, as well as a novel class recently discovered in Dictyostelium discoideum） can be characterized by a pattern of short but well-conserved sequence elements that are separated by poorly conserved regions of sometimes highly variable lengths. Local alignment algorithms such as BLAST are therefore ill-suited for the discovery of new homologs of such ncRNAs in genomic sequences. The Fragrep tool instead implements an efficient algorithm for detecting the pattern fragments that occur in a given order. For each pattern fragment, the mismatch tolerance and bounds on the length of the intervening sequences can be specified separately. Furthermore, matches can be ranked by a statistically well-motivated scoring scheme.     

Improve survival prediction using principal components of gene expression data

The purpose of many microarray studies is to find the association between gene expression and sample characteristics such as treatment type or sample phenotype. There has been a surge of efforts developing different methods for delineating the association. Aside from the high dimensionality of microarray data, one well recognized challenge is the fact that genes could be complicatedly inter-related, thus making many statistical methods inappropriate to use directly on the expression data. Multivariate methods such as principal component analysis （PCA） and clustering are often used as a part of the effort to capture the gene correlation, and the derived components or clusters are used to describe the association between gene expression and sample phenotype. We propose a method for patient population dichotomization using maximally selected test statistics in combination with the PCA method, which shows favorable results. The proposed method is compared with a currently well-recognized method.     

废水自养生物脱氮技术研究进展

基于短程硝化和厌氧氨氧化的自养脱氮工艺是生物脱氮领域研究的热点,它的发现为低碳氮比废水的处理提供了新的思路。近些年来,人们陆续开发了SHARON、ANAMMOX、CANON、OLAND等自养生物脱氮工艺,进一步推动了高效、低耗脱氮技术的开发和研究。本文从工艺原理、特点等方面,对自养生物脱氮工艺的国内外研究状况进行了总结和对比,并提出了存在的问题及发展方向。     

植物化感作用与生物多样性

本文简要地阐释了化感作用的含义、基本特征以及作用机制,并结合生物多样性理论,综述了化感作用研究中化感物种的多样性、化感物质的多样性及其释放途径的多样性,具体讨论了化感作用对物种多样性、遗传多样性及生态系统多样性中的种群生态、协同进化、土壤生境、生态系统功能和生物入侵等方面的可能影响。文中提出了化感作用的利用、管理应与生物多样性保护相统一的看法,并指出对化感作用与生物多样性的关系以及相互影响机制进行本质的探索,特别是对植物化感作用的生态服务功能与价值评估与探讨,可为保护生物学和系统生态学提供理论基础,这也是今后工作开展的一个重要方向。     

化学修饰--提高酶催化性能的重要工具

讨论了化学修饰对酶的稳定性、有机溶剂溶解性、特殊条件下的活性和选择性的影响。对常见的和近期出现的酶修饰技术,包括交联酶晶体、酶蛋白侧链功能基共价修饰、酶蛋白表面修饰、结合定点突变的化学修饰、通过酶活性位点氨基酸原子置换进行化学突变等方法作了重点阐述。     

Chemical Constituents of Daphne giraldii Nitsche

In a search for structurally interesting substances from traditional Chinese medicines, eight compounds were isolated from an ethanolic extract of the stem bark of Daphne giraldii Nitsche. On the basis of one- and two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance and mass spectrometry data, and chemical methods, their structures were determined to be 2H-1-benzopyran-2-one-8-hydroxy-7-O-β-D-glucopyranosyl-5-（2-oxo- 2H-1-benzopyran-7-hydroxy-8-yloxy） （compound 1）, 1-pentanone, 1-（4-hydroxyphenyl）-5-phenyl （compound 2）, octadecyl caffeate （compound 3）, （＋）syringaresinol-4,4＇-diglycoside （compound 4）, daphnetin-8-O-β-D- glucopyranoside （compound 5）, p-hydroxybenzoic acid （compound 6）, 7,7＇-dihydroxy-[6, 8＇-bi-2H-benzopyran]- 2, 2＇-dione （compound 7）, and daphnorin （compound 8）, respectively. Of the compounds isolated, compounds 1 and 2, which we named daphnolin and daphnolon, respectively, were new, and the others were obtained from this plant for the first time.