Morphological,physiological and biochemical responses to drought stress of Stone pine (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Pinus pinea</Emphasis> L.) seedlings

In this study, the effect of irrigation intervals (drought stress) on growth, predawn xylem water potential (Ψ _w), the osmotic potential at full turgor (Ψπ ₁₀₀), the osmotic potential at the turgor loss point (Ψπ _TLP), osmotic adjustment and osmotic solutes (soluble sugars and proline) of Pinus pinea L. seedlings were examined. An experiment was carried out under greenhouse conditions using four watering treatments (control, 7-, 14- and 21-day irrigation intervals) in the first growth season; from mid-July to early November. Results showed that irrigation interval had significant effect on growth characteristics, Ψ _w, water relation parameters, and osmotic solutes. The increasing irrigation interval significantly decreased the seedling height, root collar diameter, root, stem and needle dry weight, number of lateral branches, root percentage, root:shoot ratio and diameter:height ratio. Ψ _w and total soluble sugars decreased while proline content increased with the increase of drought stress. The Ψπ ₁₀₀ and Ψπ _TLP significantly decreased in drought-stressed seedlings compared to control (no stress) seedlings. The results suggest that the impact of drought stress increased with the increase of irrigation interval. Therefore, in the drought-stressed P. pinea seedlings were indicated osmotic adjustment by increasing the proline content and decreasing Ψπ ₁₀₀ and Ψπ _TLP during drought stress. Growth decreased under drought stress conditions in P. pinea seedlings.     

Unravelling the impact of lignin on cell wall mechanics: a comprehensive study on young poplar trees downregulated for CINNAMYL ALCOHOL DEHYDROGENASE (CAD)

Lignin engineering is a promising tool to reduce the energy input and the need of chemical pre‐treatments for the efficient conversion of plant biomass into fermentable sugars for downstream applications. At the same time, lignin engineering can offer new insight into the structure–function relationships of plant cell walls by combined mechanical, structural and chemical analyses. Here, this comprehensive approach was applied to poplar trees (Populus tremula × Populus alba) downregulated for CINNAMYL ALCOHOL DEHYDROGENASE (CAD) in order to gain insight into the impact of lignin reduction on mechanical properties. The downregulation of CAD resulted in a significant decrease in both elastic modulus and yield stress. As wood density and cellulose microfibril angle (MFA) did not show any significant differences between the wild type and the transgenic lines, these structural features could be excluded as influencing factors. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and Raman imaging were performed to elucidate changes in the chemical composition directly on the mechanically tested tissue sections. Lignin content was identified as a mechanically relevant factor, as a correlation with a coefficient of determination (r²) of 0.65 between lignin absorbance (as an indicator of lignin content) and tensile stiffness was found. A comparison of the present results with those of previous investigations shows that the mechanical impact of lignin alteration under tensile stress depends on certain structural conditions, such as a high cellulose MFA, which emphasizes the complex relationship between the chemistry and mechanical properties in plant cell walls.     

Oral self-nanoemulsifying formulation of GLP-1 agonist peptide exendin-4: development,characterization and permeability assesment on Caco-2 cell monolayer

Amino Acids - The objective of this study was to prepare a stable self-nanoemulsifying formulation of exendin-4, which is an antidiabetic peptide. As exendin-4 is commercially available only in...     

Conformational changes in a Vernier zone region: Implications for antibody dual specificity

Understanding the determinants of antibody specificity is one of the challenging tasks in antibody development. Monospecific antibodies are still dominant in approved antibody therapeutics but there is a significant body of work to show that multispecific antibodies can increase the overall therapeutic effect. Dual-specific or “Two-in-One” antibodies can bind to two different antigens separately with the same antigen-binding site as opposed to bispecifics, which simultaneously bind to two different antigens through separate antigen-binding units. These nonstandard dual-specific antibodies were recently shown to be promising for new antibody-based therapeutics. Here, we physicochemically and structurally analyzed six different antibodies of which two are monospecific and four are dual-specific antibodies derived from monospecific templates to gain insight about dual-specificity determinants. These dual-specific antibodies can target both human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 and vascular endothelial growth factor at different binding affinities. We showed that a particular region of clustered Vernier zone residues might play key roles in gaining dual specificity. While there are minimal intramolecular interactions between a certain Vernier zone region, namely LV4 and LCDR1 of monospecific template, there is a significant structural change and consequently close contact formation between LV4-LCDR1 loops of derived dual-specific antibodies. Although Vernier zone residues were previously shown to be important for humanization applications, they are mostly underestimated in the literature. Here, we also aim to resurrect Vernier zone residues for antibody engineering efforts.     

The expression of fragile X chromosomes in members of the same family at different times of examination

Summary Three brothers with fragile X chromosomes were repeatedly examined using the same culture and preparation techniques. It was observed that a given individual showed a very constant frequency of fragile sites at his X chromosomes, whereas large differences in the the fragile X counts occurred between the three brothers.     

Dynamic flux balance analysis for pharmaceutical protein production by Pichia pastoris: human growth hormone

The influence of methanol feeding rate on intracellular reaction network of recombinant human growth hormone (rhGH) producing Pichia pastoris was investigated at three different specific growth rates, namely, 0.02 (MS-0.02), 0.03 (MS-0.03), and 0.04 h(-1) (MS-0.04) where Period-I (33 ≤ t <42 h) includes the early exponential growth phase; Period-II (42 ≤ t<48 h) is the exponential growth phase where the specific cell growth rate decreases; Period-III (48 ≤ t ≤51 h) is the exponential growth phase where rhGH concentration was the highest; and Period-IV (t>51 h) is the diminution phase for rhGH and cell synthesis. In Period-I, almost all of the formaldehyde entered the assimilatory pathway, at MS-0.02 and MS-0.03, whereas, at MS-0.04 high methanol feeding rate resulted in an adaptation problem. In Period-III, only at MS-0.02 co-carbon source sorbitol uptake-flux was active showing that sorbitol uptake does not affected from the predetermined feeding rate of methanol at μ(0)>0.02 h(-1). The biomass synthesis flux value was the highest in Period-I, -II and -III, respectively at MS-0.03 & MS-0.04, MS-0.04 and MS-0.02; whereas, rhGH flux was the highest in Period-I, -II, and -III, respectively at MS-0.03, MS-0.02 and MS-0.03. Based on the fluxes, Period-I should start with MS-0.03 methanol feeding rate and starting from the middle of Period-II methanol feeding rate should be shifted to MS-0.02.