Effects of Orthophosphates and Condensed Phosphates on Chemical and Spectral Properties of the Humus Derivatives of Phosphorus and Metals

Inorganic orthophosphates and condensed phosphates strongly affected the acidic-basic properties of soil humus substances, which was expressed by the degree of their hydrolyzability in alkaline, acidic, and neutral media. The humus substances modified by phosphates were characterized by increased electron donor (basic, after Lewis) properties, as compared to the native substances, due to accumulation of C=C-bonds. They exerted an especially strong dissolving effect on Fe- and Al-containing soil minerals and had a greater affinity to exogenous Zn. The pattern of distribution of phosphorus in ortho- and pyrophosphates among a fraction of humus substances was studied.     

Agonist-Induced Stimulation of Inositol Phosphates in Primary Rabbit Retinal Cultures

Carbachol, noradrenaline, and serotonin stimulated the accumulation of inositol phosphates in a dose-dependent manner and maximally by 172.4%, 71.2%, and 51.6%, respectively, in 3-day-old rabbit retinal cultures. In contrast, dopamine, nicotine, isoproterenol, clonidine, 8-OH-dipropylaminotetralin, and gamma-aminobutyric acid were ineffective. In older cultures identified as containing primarily Müller cells, only carbachol and noradrenaline were able to induce a significant stimulatory response. The carbachol-, noradrenaline-, and serotonin-induced responses were pharmacologically characterized and shown to be mediated by muscarinic, alpha 1-adrenergic, and 5-hydroxytryptamine2 receptors, respectively. The results of the present study show that primary retinal cultures of 3 days of age give results comparable with those of the intact retina. Furthermore, it is demonstrated for the first time that putative Müller cells in cultures possess functional muscarinic and alpha 1-adrenergic receptors.     

The Correlation between Antiesterase Activities and Chemical Structure of Saligenin Cyclic Phosphates

The effect of substituents on phosphorus of saligenin cyclic phosphorus esters on inhibitory activities toward cholinesterases and ali-esterases in vitro and in vivo was studied. The most insecticidal methyl derivative was the strongest inhibitor of insect cholinesterase both in vitro and in vivo. When the size of the substituent increased, the specificity toward ali-esterase increased, while decreased toward cholinesterase. The inhibitor ratio (I₅₀ ChE/I₅₀ AliE) appears to relate closely with insecticidal activity. Non-insecticidal aryl derivatives are very specific to inhibit insect ali-esterase. They are very weak inhibitors of insect cholinesterase in vivo. Their thiono analogs are stronger in vivo than corresponding oxo analogs.     

Chemical Ecology and Biomolecular Evolution

The belief in the Darwinian theory of evolution appeared to be shaken when one tried to interpret statements of molecular biology in it. As a consequence there arose a theory of non-Darwinian neutral evolution. The supporters of this theory believe that under natural conditions no factors exist which can distinguish and select organisms on their internal (molecular) structure. In the opinion of these neutralists natural selection cannot in principle control the molecular constitution of organisms. Contrary to the viewpoint of the critics of neutralism it is impossible to admit that nucleic acids, proteins and other biomolecules can evolve without the participation of natural selection. This controversy in contemporary theoretical biology can be solved by integrating the conceptions of molecular ecology with Darwinian theory. Molecular ecology acknowledges the interactions of organisms by means of chemical substances synthesized by them. Such chemical ecological factors play a leading part in the selective stages of biomolecular evolution. These diverse chemical ecological interrelations take place intensively when living beings interact with parasitic microbes.     

Rubber-The Primary Sources For American Production

Despite extensive war-time investigations of other rubber-containing latex plants, the Pará rubber tree of Brazil remains, by any measure, the world's foremost source, and only guayule and the Russian dandelion display any possibility of becoming secondary sources of commercial importance.     

Sources of Canopy Chemical and Spectral Diversity in Lowland Bornean Forest

Sources of variation among the chemical and spectral properties of tropical forest canopies are poorly understood, yet chemical traits reveal potential ecosystem and phylogenetic controls, and spectral linkages to chemical traits are needed for remote sensing of functional and biological diversity. We analyzed 21 leaf traits in 395 fully sunlit canopies, representing 232 species and multiple growth forms, in a lowland mixed dipterocarp forest of Sarawak, Malaysia. Leaf traits related to light capture and growth (for example, photosynthetic pigments, nutrients) were up to 55% lower, and defense traits (for example, phenols, lignin) were 15–40% higher, in the dominant family Dipterocarpaceae and in its genus Shorea, as compared to all other canopy species. The chemical variation within Dipterocarpaceae and Shorea was equivalent to that of all other canopy species combined, highlighting the role that a single phylogenetic branch can play in creating canopy chemical diversity. Seventeen of 21 traits had more than 50% of their variation explained by taxonomic grouping, and at least 16 traits show a connection to remotely sensed spectroscopic signatures (RMSE < 15%). It is through these chemical-to-spectral linkages that studies of functional and biological diversity interactions become possible at larger spatial scales, thereby improving our understanding of the role of species in tropical forest ecosystem dynamics.     

Evolution of Associative Learning in Chemical Networks

Organisms that can learn about their environment and modify their behaviour appropriately during their lifetime are more likely to survive and reproduce than organisms that do not. While associative learning – the ability to detect correlated features of the environment – has been studied extensively in nervous systems, where the underlying mechanisms are reasonably well understood, mechanisms within single cells that could allow associative learning have received little attention. Here, using in silico evolution of chemical networks, we show that there exists a diversity of remarkably simple and plausible chemical solutions to the associative learning problem, the simplest of which uses only one core chemical reaction. We then asked to what extent a linear combination of chemical concentrations in the network could approximate the ideal Bayesian posterior of an environment given the stimulus history so far? This Bayesian analysis revealed the ‘memory traces’ of the chemical network. The implication of this paper is that there is little reason to believe that a lack of suitable phenotypic variation would prevent associative learning from evolving in cell signalling, metabolic, gene regulatory, or a mixture of these networks in cells.     

Evolution of Primary Hemostasis in Early Vertebrates

Hemostasis is a defense mechanism which protects the organism in the event of injury to stop bleeding. Recently, we established that all the known major mammalian hemostatic factors are conserved in early vertebrates. However, since their highly vascularized gills experience high blood pressure and are exposed to the environment, even very small injuries could be fatal to fish. Since trypsins are forerunners for coagulation proteases and are expressed by many extrapancreatic cells such as endothelial cells and epithelial cells, we hypothesized that trypsin or trypsin-like proteases from gill epithelial cells may protect these animals from gill bleeding following injuries. In this paper we identified the release of three different trypsins from fish gills into water under stress or injury, which have tenfold greater serine protease activity compared to bovine trypsin. We found that these trypsins activate the thrombocytes and protect the fish from gill bleeding. We found 27 protease-activated receptors (PARs) by analyzing zebrafish genome and classified them into five groups, based on tethering peptides, and two families, PAR1 and PAR2, based on homologies. We also found a canonical member of PAR2 family, PAR2-21A which is activated more readily by trypsin, and PAR2-21A tethering peptide stops gill bleeding just as trypsin. This finding provides evidence that trypsin cleaves a PAR2 member on thrombocyte surface. In conclusion, we believe that the gills are evolutionarily selected to produce trypsin to activate PAR2 on thrombocyte surface and protect the gills from bleeding. We also speculate that trypsin may also protect the fish from bleeding from other body injuries due to quick contact with the thrombocytes. Thus, this finding provides evidence for the role of trypsins in primary hemostasis in early vertebrates.     

Chemical Evolution and Meteorites: An Update

Carbonaceous chondrites are a primitive group of meteorites, which contain abundant organic material and provide a unique natural record of prebiotic chemical evolution. This material comprises a varied suite of soluble organic compounds that are similar, sometimes identical, to those found in the biosphere, such as amino acids, carboxylic acids, and sugar derivatives. Some amino acids of this suite also show L-enantiomeric excesses, and suggest the possibility they may have contributed to terrestrial homochirality by direct input of meteoritic material to the early Earth. This optical activity appears to be limited to the subgroup of alpha-methyl amino acids which, although not common in the extant biosphere, would have been well suited to provide the early earth with both enantiomeric excesses and means for their amplification by subsequent chemical evolution. We can also envision this exogenous delivery of carbonaceous material by meteorites and comets as having coincided with the endogenous formation of prebiotic precursors and influenced their evolution by complementary reactions or catalysis.     

A Center of Primary Sources for Plains Indian History

Abstract

Preservation of the nation’s Indian records is recogni: zed as a task of national importance. Public access to government documents and data is now possible at ten regional records centers across the country. The material stored provides detailed and analytic accounts of daily activity and business at Indian agencies. The nature and content of the data relevant to Plains Indian agencies is described in this paper.     

丛枝菌根促进植物根系吸收难溶态磷的研究进展(综述)

从扩大植物根系吸收面积、改善根际微环境、促进磷元素运输等方面综述丛枝菌根促进植物活化、吸收难溶态磷的最新研究概况。     

Evolution of Chemical Diversity in Echinocandin Lipopeptide Antifungal Metabolites

The echinocandins are a class of antifungal drugs that includes caspofungin, micafungin, and anidulafungin. Gene clusters encoding most of the structural complexity of the echinocandins provided a framework for hypotheses about the evolutionary history and chemical logic of echinocandin biosynthesis. Gene orthologs among echinocandin-producing fungi were identified. Pathway genes, including the nonribosomal peptide synthetases (NRPSs), were analyzed phylogenetically to address the hypothesis that these pathways represent descent from a common ancestor. The clusters share cooperative gene contents and linkages among the different strains. Individual pathway genes analyzed in the context of similar genes formed unique echinocandin-exclusive phylogenetic lineages. The echinocandin NRPSs, along with the NRPS from the inp gene cluster in Aspergillus nidulans and its orthologs, comprise a novel lineage among fungal NRPSs. NRPS adenylation domains from different species exhibited a one-to-one correspondence between modules and amino acid specificity that is consistent with models of tandem duplication and subfunctionalization. Pathway gene trees and Ascomycota phylogenies are congruent and consistent with the hypothesis that the echinocandin gene clusters have a common origin. The disjunct Eurotiomycete-Leotiomycete distribution appears to be consistent with a scenario of vertical descent accompanied by incomplete lineage sorting and loss of the clusters from most lineages of the Ascomycota. We present evidence for a single evolutionary origin of the echinocandin family of gene clusters and a progression of structural diversification in two fungal classes that diverged approximately 290 to 390 million years ago. Lineage-specific gene cluster evolution driven by selection of new chemotypes contributed to diversification of the molecular functionalities.     

7种不同蜜源蜂蜜的化学组成及抗氧化性

为了解不同蜜源蜂蜜的化学组成及抗氧化活性差异,并探索二者关系,本文较系统的研究了7种不同蜜源蜂蜜的化学组成及抗氧化性,为评价蜂蜜的保健功能提供了理论依据.实验采用分光光度法测定了蜂蜜色度、总酚和总黄酮含量;以23种酚类化合物为对照品,利用高效液相色谱法(High-performance liquid chromatography,HPLC) 测定了蜂蜜中的酚类化合物;最后测定了蜂蜜的抗氧化能力.对上述指标进行相关性分析表明,色度值越大,蜂蜜中的总酚和总黄酮含量越高;蜂蜜的总酚含量与其抗氧化活性相关性极显著(R2=0.881**);整体上表现出蜂蜜颜色越深,总酚与总黄酮含量越高,其抗氧化能力越强.     

Metabolic Formation of Saligenin Cyclic Phosphates from o-Tolyl Phosphates in House Flies,Musca domestica

The toxicological effects on house flies of several tri-esters of phosphoric acid and a di-ester of phosphsphonic acid were examined. Certain esters were converted to biologically active metabolites. At least one o-tolyl group and another aryl substituent were necessary for the ester to show any distinctive biological effects. The active metabolites were confirmed by chromatography to be saligenin cyclic phosphates.     

Emergence of Self-Reproduction in Cooperative Chemical Evolution of Prebiological Molecules

The paper presents a model of coevolution of short peptides (P) and short oligonucleotides (N) at an early stage of chemical evolution leading to the origin of life. The model describes polymerization of both P and N types of molecules on mineral surfaces in aqueous solution at moderate temperatures. It is assumed that amino acid and nucleotide monomers were available in a prebiotic milieu, that periodic variation in environmental conditions between dry/warm and wet/cool took place and that energy sources were available for the polymerization. An artificial chemistry approach in combination with agent-based modeling was used to explore chemical evolution from an initially random mixture of monomers. It was assumed that the oligonucleotides could serve as templates for self-replication and for translation of peptide compositional sequences, and that certain peptides could serve as weak catalysts. Important features of the model are the short lengths of the peptide and oligonucleotide molecules that prevent an error catastrophe caused by copying errors and a finite diffusion rate of the molecules on a mineral surface that prevents excessive development of parasitism. The result of the simulation was the emergence of self-replicating molecular systems consisting of peptide catalysts and oligonucleotide templates. In addition, a smaller but significant number of molecules with alternative compositions also survived due to imprecise reproduction and translation of templates providing variability for further evolution. In a more general context, the model describes not only peptide-oligonucleotide molecular systems, but any molecular system containing two types of polymer molecules: one of which serves as templates and the other as catalysts.The presented coevolutionary system suggests a possible direction towards finding the origin of molecular functionality in a prebiotic environment.