Growth and death in overagitated microcarrier cell cultures

The effects of hydrodynamic forces on cell growth are investigated for animal cells growing on microcarriers. A reduction in net growth was observed with high levels of agitation. DNA measurements indicated that the reduction in net growth was due entirely to cell death, from hydrodynamic forces. No inhibition or enhancement of cell replication appeared to occur with high levels of agitation.     

The cytogenetics of domestic geese

Hybrids were produced between an African male and several Pilgrim female domestic geese. Partial karyotypes revealed a difference in the fourth largest pair of autosomal chromosomes. This chromosome pair was metacentric in the African, submetacentric in the Pilgrim, and heteromorphic in the hybrids. A similar difference between the putative wild ancestors of the African and Pilgrim breeds has been reported by others. These findings provide cytological evidence to support the traditional opinion that the African breed was derived from the Asiatic swan goose (Anser cygnoides) and the Pilgrim breed was derived from the European greylag goose (Anser anser).     

Identification of a pterin derivative in Escherichia coli DNA photolyase

DNA photolyase from Escherichia coli contains reduced flavin adenine dinucleotide plus a second chromophore, partially characterized in previous studies. Both chromophores function as sensitizers in catalysis. The second chromophore has been identified as a 6-substituted pterin derivative. The compound is oxidized with permanganate to yield 6-carboxypterin or reduced with sodium cyanoborohydride to yield a 5,6,7,8-tetrahydropterin derivative. The second chromophore exhibits spectral properties (lambda max = 360, 255 nm, pH 2) similar to that observed for 7,8-dihydropterin cations. The compound does not exhibit a spectrally detectable pKa around 4 but is converted to a dication (lambda max = 346, 255 nm) in strong acid (pKa approximately 1). Similar ionization behavior is observed with 7,8-dihydropterin derivatives that are alkylated at N(5). The instability of the second chromophore in weakly alkaline solution is due to a fully reversible conversion to a labile bleached form. As compared with other pterin derivatives, the hydrolytic instability is unusual but is very similar to that observed for 5,6-dialkyl-7,8-dihydropterinium salts. It is proposed that the second chromophore is a 7,8-dihydropterin with substituents at positions 5 and 6. The discovery that a pterin derivative functions as a photosensitizer in DNA repair is apparently the first example of a photobiological function for pterins.     

Resolution of end-to-end distance distributions of flexible molecules using quenching-induced variations of the Forster distance for fluorescence energy transfer.

We describe a new method to recover the distribution of donor-to-acceptor (D-A) distances in flexible molecules using steady-state measurements of the efficiency of fluorescence energy transfer. The method depends upon changes in the Forster distance (Ro) induced by collisional quenching of the donor emission. The Ro-dependent transfer efficiencies are analyzed using nonlinear least squares to recover the mean D-A distance and the width of the distribution. The method was developed and tested using three synthetic D-A pairs, in which the chromophores were separated by alkyl chains of varying lengths. As an example application we also recovered the distribution of distances from the single tryptophan residue in troponin I (trp 158) to acceptor-labeled cysteine 133. The half-width of the distribution increases from 12 A in the native state to 53 A when unfolded by guanidine hydrochloride. For both TnI and the three model compounds the distance distributions recovered from the steady-state transfer efficiencies were in excellent agreement with the distributions recovered using the more sophisticated frequency-domain method (Lakowicz, J.R., M.L. Johnson, W. Wiczk, A. Bhat, and R.F. Steiner. 1987. Chem. Phys. Lett. 138:587-593). The method was found to be reliable and should be generally useful for studies of conformational distributions of macromolecules.