Importance of Moisture Content Control for Enzymatic Reactions in Organic Solvents: A Novel Concept of 'Microaqueous'

This minireview emphasizes the importance of control of trace amounts of moisture for biocatalytic reactions performed in organic solvents, no matter whether the solvent is water-soluble or water-immiscible, and whatever state of the biocatalyst is applied. The term 'microaqueous' is introduced to emphasize the importance of moisture control and to describe the reaction system precisely, for all possible biocatalytic forms in organic solvents. States of water molecules in the microaqueous organic solvents containing enzyme are discussed.     

Organic Aerosols and the Origin of Life: An Hypothesis

Recent experimental work has verified the prediction that marine aerosols could have an exterior film of amphiphiles; palmitic, stearic and oleic acids were predominant. Thermodynamic analysis has revealed that such aerosols are energetically capable of asymmetric division. In a prebiotic terrestrial environment, one of the products of such aerosol fission would have been bacterially sized (microns), the other would have been virally sized (tens of nanometers). Plausible avenues for chemical differentiation between the two particles are discussed, and the probabilities for the transition from geochemistry to biochemistry updated in light of recent palaeo fossil studies.     

Unifying electrostatic mechanism for receptor-ligand activity

A prior article in skeletal form proposed an electrostatic mechanism for receptor-ligand activity. The present review provides an elaboration, including supporting evidence. The fundamental aspect entails the presence of molecular electrostatic potential associated with ions and dipoles in the ligand. The ligand can be regarded as an electrical link that joins prevalent electrostatic fields present in the surrounding protein matrix. The exact role of these fields is speculative. One possibility is to function as conduits for electrons and radicals in cell signaling. There is increasing support for important participation of these species in signal transduction. There might also be a favorable influence on energetics involving the electron transfer process. A summary of receptor biology is also provided, including receptors for acetylcholine (nicotinic and muscarinic), GABA, adrenergic, and glutamate.     

Unifying Electrostatic Mechanism for Receptor-Ligand Activity

A prior article in skeletal form proposed an electrostatic mechanism for receptor-ligand activity. The present review provides an elaboration, including supporting evidence. The fundamental aspect entails the presence of molecular electrostatic potential associated with ions and dipoles in the ligand. The ligand can be regarded as an electrical link that joins prevalent electrostatic fields present in the surrounding protein matrix. The exact role of these fields is speculative. One possibility is to function as conduits for electrons and radicals in cell signaling. There is increasing support for important participation of these species in signal transduction. There might also be a favorable influence on energetics involving the electron transfer process. A summary of receptor biology is also provided, including receptors for acetylcholine (nicotinic and muscarinic), GABA, adrenergic, and glutamate.     

A Unifying Organ Model of Pancreatic Insulin Secretion

The secretion of insulin by the pancreas has been the object of much attention over the past several decades. Insulin is known to be secreted by pancreatic β-cells in response to hyperglycemia: its blood concentrations however exhibit both high-frequency (period approx. 10 minutes) and low-frequency oscillations (period approx. 1.5 hours). Furthermore, characteristic insulin secretory response to challenge maneuvers have been described, such as frequency entrainment upon sinusoidal glycemic stimulation; substantial insulin peaks following minimal glucose administration; progressively strengthened insulin secretion response after repeated administration of the same amount of glucose; insulin and glucose characteristic curves after Intra-Venous administration of glucose boli in healthy and pre-diabetic subjects as well as in Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus. Previous modeling of β-cell physiology has been mainly directed to the intracellular chain of events giving rise to single-cell or cell-cluster hormone release oscillations, but the large size, long period and complex morphology of the diverse responses to whole-body glucose stimuli has not yet been coherently explained. Starting with the seminal work of Grodsky it was hypothesized that the population of pancreatic β-cells, possibly functionally aggregated in islets of Langerhans, could be viewed as a set of independent, similar, but not identical controllers (firing units) with distributed functional parameters. The present work shows how a single model based on a population of independent islet controllers can reproduce very closely a diverse array of actually observed experimental results, with the same set of working parameters. The model’s success in reproducing a diverse array of experiments implies that, in order to understand the macroscopic behaviour of the endocrine pancreas in regulating glycemia, there is no need to hypothesize intrapancreatic pacemakers, influences between different islets of Langerhans, glycolitic-induced oscillations or β-cell sensitivity to the rate of change of glycemia.     

A New Concept for DNA-Arrays

Abstract

We will insert a cleavage site in an oligodeoxynucleotide, which can be used for a selective and quantitative cleavage. For that reason we synthesized the four 5′-S-(4,4′-dimethoxytrityl)-mercapto-2′-deoxynucleotide-3′-O-(2-cyanoethoxydiisopropylamino)-phosphites ( 5a–d ). The cleavage of P-S and C-S bonds is described (Mag, M.; Lücking, S.; Engels, J.W. Synthesis and selective cleavage of an oligodeoxy-nucleotide containing a bridged internucleotide 5′-phosphorthioate linkage Nucleic Acids Res. 1991, 19 (7), 1437–1441; Marriott, J.H.; Mottahedeh, M.; Reese, C.B. 9-(4-methoxyphenyl)xanthen-9-thiol: A useful reagent for the preperation of thiols. Tetrahedron Lett. 1990, 31 (51), 7485–7488; Divakar, K.J.; Mottoh, A.; Reese, C.B.; Shanghvi, Y.S. Approaches to the synthesis of 2′ thio analogues of pyrimidine ribosides. J. Chem. Sc., Perkin Trans. 1 1990, 969–974). The oligodeoxynucleotides with an achiral bridged 5′-phosphorothioate linkage 5′-O-P-S-3′ are synthesized by the phosphoramidite procedure.     

Life Cycle Perspectives to Achieve Business Benefits: From Concept to Technique

The purpose of this paper is to describe how one pollution prevention tool, life-cycle assessment, can be used to identify and manage environmental issues associated with product systems. Specifically, this paper will describe what life-cycle assessment is, determine the key players in its development and application, and present ideas on how life-cycle assessment can be used today. LCA provides a systematic means to broaden the perspective of a company's decisionmaking process to incorporate the consideration of energy and material use, transportation, post-customer use, and disposal, and the environmental releases associated with the product system. LCA provides a framework to achieve a better understanding of the trade-offs associated with specific change in a product, package, or process. This understanding lays the foundation for subsequent risk assessments and risk management efforts by decision-makers.     

Organic bioelectronics: A new era for organic electronics

Background

This issue of “Biochimica et Biophysica Acta — General Subjects” is dedicated to organic bioelectronics, an interdisciplinary field that has been growing at a fast pace. Bioelectronics creates tremendous promise, excitement, and hype. The application of organic electronic materials in bioelectronics offers many opportunities and is fuelled by some unique features of these materials, such as the ability to transport ions.

Scope of review

This is a perspective on the history and current status of the field.

Major conclusions

Organic bioelectronics currently encompasses many different applications, including neural interfaces, tissue engineering, drug delivery, and biosensors. The interdisciplinary nature of the field necessitates collaborations across traditional scientific boundaries.

General significance

Organic bioelectronics is a young and exciting interdisciplinary field. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled Organic Bioelectronics — Novel Applications in Biomedicine.     

A Unifying,Analytic Model for Certain Linear Rank Tests. Part II: Exact Distribution Algorithms

On the basic of the analytic properties of the unifying model developed in the earlier Part I of this presentation, exact distribution algorithms are developed for the Wilcoxon 2-sample sum-of-rank test, the Freund-Ansari scale test, and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test. For the signed-rank test, provisions are made for zero-differences.