Self‐Assembled BiFeO3‐ε‐Fe2O3 Vertical Heteroepitaxy for Visible Light Photoelectrochemistry

Self‐assembled vertical heterostructure with a high interface‐to‐volume ratio offers tremendous opportunities to realize intriguing properties and advanced modulation of functionalities. Here, a heterostructure composed of two visible‐light photocatalysts, BiFeO₃ (BFO) and ε‐Fe₂O₃ (ε‐FO), is designed to investigate its photoelectrochemical performance. The structural characterization of the BFO‐FO heterostructures confirms the phase separation with BFO nanopillars embedded in the ε‐FO matrix. The investigation of band structure of the heterojunction suggests the assistance of photoexcited carrier separation, leading to an enhanced photoelectrochemical performance. The insights into the charge separation are further revealed by means of ultrafast dynamics and electrochemical impedance spectroscopies. This work shows a delicate design of the self‐assembled vertical heteroepitaxy by taking advantage of the intimate contact between two phases that can lead to a tunable charge interaction, providing a new configuration for the optimization of photoelectrochemical cell.     

Synthesis and anti-inflammatory evaluation of 4-anilinofuro[2,3-b]quinoline and 4-phenoxyfuro[2,3-b]quinoline derivatives. Part 3

Mast cells, neutrophils and macrophages are important inflammatory cells that have been implicated in the pathogenesis of acute and chronic inflammatory diseases. To explore a novel anti-inflammatory agent, we have synthesized certain 4-anilinofuro[2,3-b]quinoline and 4-phenoxyfuro[2,3-b]quinoline derivatives and evaluated their anti-inflammatory activities by reaction of 3,4-dichlorofuro[2,3-b]quinoline with appropriate Ar-NH(2) or Ar-OH. Compounds 6a and 15 were proved to be more potent than the reference inhibitor, mepacrine for the inhibition of rat peritoneal mast cell degranulation with IC(50) values of 6.5 and 16.4 microM, respectively. Compounds 2b, 6a, 10, and 15 also showed potent inhibitory activity (IC(50)=7.2-29.4 microM) for the secretion of lysosomal enzyme and beta-glucuronidase from neutrophils. These results also indicated that oxime derivatives are more potent than the respective ketone precursors (6a> or =2a; 7a> or =3), and the substituent such as Me at the oxime decreased inhibitory activity (6a> or =6b; 7a> or =7b). Among these derivatives, compound 6a showed the most potent activity with IC(50) values of 6.5-11.6 microM for the inhibition of mast cell degranulation and neutrophil degranulation.     

Identification of a crotoxin-binding protein in membranes from guinea pig brain by photoaffinity labeling

Crotoxin is a neurotoxic phospholipase A₂ capable of blocking synaptic transmission by inhibiting the release of neurotransmitters. The photoaffinity labeling technique was used to identify the neural membrane molecules involved in the binding of crotoxin. A photoactivatable, radioactive derivative of crotoxin was synthesized by reacting crotoxin withN-hydroxysuccinimidyl-4-azidobenzoate and with Na[¹²⁵I]. Photoirradiation of synaptosomes from guinea pig brains in the presence of the crotoxin derivative resulted in the formation of a major radioactive conjugate of 100,000 daltons as revealed by autoradiography of a sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoretic pattern. Pretreatment of the synaptosomes with trypsin,Staphylococcus aureus protease, or papain prevented the formation of this conjugate. The conjugate was not detected when plasma membranes from several nonneural tissues replaced the brain synaptosomes. Unmodified crotoxin inhibited the formation of this adduct with an IC₅₀ of about 10^–8 M. Mojave toxin, caudoxin, notexin,Naja naja PLA, and taipoxin also inhibited adduct formation with different potencies, while -bungarotoxin and pancreatic PLA were ineffective. We concluded that an 85,000-dalton protein is the major component responsible for the binding of crotoxin to synaptosomal membranes.On leave from Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, University of Hawaii School of Medicine, Honolulu, Hawaii.     

Determinants in the maturation of rubella virus p200 replicase polyprotein precursor

Rubella virus (RUBV), a positive-strand RNA virus, replicates its RNA within membrane-associated replication complexes (RCs) in the cytoplasm of infected cells. RNA synthesis is mediated by the nonstructural proteins (NSPs) P200 and its cleavage products, P150 and P90 (N and C terminal within P200, respectively), which are processed by a protease residing at the C terminus of P150. In this study of NSP maturation, we found that early NSP localization into foci appeared to target the membranes of the endoplasmic reticulum. During maturation, P150 and P90 likely interact within the context of P200 and remain in a complex after cleavage. We found that P150-P90 interactions were blocked by mutational disruption of an alpha helix at the N terminus (amino acids [aa] 36 to 49) of P200 and that these mutations also had an effect on NSP targeting, processing, and membrane association. While the P150-P90 interaction also required residues 1700 to 1900 within P90, focus formation required the entire RNA-dependent RNA polymerase (aa 1700 to 2116). Surprisingly, the RUBV capsid protein (CP) rescued RNA synthesis by several alanine-scanning mutations in the N-terminal alpha helix, and packaged replicon assays showed that rescue could be mediated by CP in the virus particle. We hypothesize that CP rescues these mutations as well as internal deletions of the Q domain within P150 and mutations in the 5' and 3' cis-acting elements in the genomic RNA by chaperoning the maturation of P200. CP's ability to properly target the otherwise aggregated plasmid-expressed P200 provides support for this hypothesis.     

Novel Assay Reveals Multiple Pathways Regulating Stress-Induced Accumulations of Inorganic Polyphosphate in Escherichia coli

A major impediment to understanding the biological roles of inorganic polyphosphate (polyP) has been the lack of sensitive definitive methods to extract and quantitate cellular polyP. We show that polyP recovered in extracts from cells lysed with guanidinium isothiocynate can be bound to silicate glass and quantitatively measured by a two-enzyme assay: polyP is first converted to ATP by polyP kinase, and the ATP is hydrolyzed by luciferase to generate light. This nonradioactive method can detect picomolar amounts of phosphate residues in polyP per milligram of extracted protein. A simplified procedure for preparing polyP synthesized by polyP kinase is also described. Using the new assay, we found that bacteria subjected to nutritional or osmotic stress in a rich medium or to nitrogen exhaustion had large and dynamic accumulations of polyP. By contrast, carbon exhaustion, changes in pH, temperature upshifts, and oxidative stress had no effect on polyP levels. Analysis of Escherichia coli mutants revealed that polyP accumulation depends on several regulatory genes, glnD (NtrC), rpoS, relA, and phoB.     

Xanthine Oxidoreductase Function Contributes to Normal Wound Healing

Chronic, nonhealing wounds result in patient morbidity and disability. Reactive oxygen species (ROS) and nitric oxide (NO) are both required for normal wound repair, and derangements of these result in impaired healing. Xanthine oxidoreductase (XOR) has the unique capacity to produce both ROS and NO. We hypothesize that XOR contributes to normal wound healing. Cutaneous wounds were created in C57Bl6 mice. XOR was inhibited with dietary tungsten or allopurinol. Topical hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂, 0.15%) or allopurinol (30 μg) was applied to wounds every other day. Wounds were monitored until closure or collected at d 5 to assess XOR expression and activity, cell proliferation and histology. The effects of XOR, nitrite, H₂O₂ and allopurinol on keratinocyte cell (KC) and endothelial cell (EC) behavior were assessed. We identified XOR expression and activity in the skin and wound edges as well as granulation tissue. Cultured human KCs also expressed XOR. Tungsten significantly inhibited XOR activity and impaired healing with reduced ROS production with reduced angiogenesis and KC proliferation. The expression and activity of other tungsten-sensitive enzymes were minimal in the wound tissues. Oral allopurinol did not reduce XOR activity or alter wound healing but topical allopurinol significantly reduced XOR activity and delayed healing. Topical H₂O₂ restored wound healing in tungsten-fed mice. In vitro, nitrite and H₂O₂ both stimulated KC and EC proliferation and EC migration. These studies demonstrate for the first time that XOR is abundant in wounds and participates in normal wound healing through effects on ROS production.     

Systematic identification of SH3 domain-mediated human protein-protein interactions by peptide array target screening

Systematic identification of direct protein-protein interactions is often hampered by difficulties in expressing and purifying the corresponding full-length proteins. By taking advantage of the modular nature of many regulatory proteins, we attempted to simplify protein-protein interactions to the corresponding domain-ligand recognition and employed peptide arrays to identify such binding events. A group of 12 Src homology (SH) 3 domains from eight human proteins (Swiss-Prot ID: SRC, PLCG1, P85A, NCK1, GRB2, FYN, CRK) were used to screen a peptide target array composed of 1536 potential ligands, which led to the identification of 921 binary interactions between these proteins and 284 targets. To assess the efficiency of the peptide array target screening (PATS) method in identifying authentic protein-protein interactions, we examined a set of interactions mediated by the PLCgamma1 SH3 domain by coimmunoprecipitation and/or affinity pull-downs using full-length proteins and achieved a 75% success rate. Furthermore, we characterized a novel interaction between PLCgamma1 and hematopoietic progenitor kinase 1 (HPK1) identified by PATS and demonstrated that the PLCgamma1 SH3 domain negatively regulated HPK1 kinase activity. Compared to protein interactions listed in the online predicted human interaction protein database (OPHID), the majority of interactions identified by PATS are novel, suggesting that, when extended to the large number of peptide interaction domains encoded by the human genome, PATS should aid in the mapping of the human interactome.     

Rare Variants Association Analysis in Large-Scale Sequencing Studies at the Single Locus Level

Genetic association analyses of rare variants in next-generation sequencing (NGS) studies are fundamentally challenging due to the presence of a very large number of candidate variants at extremely low minor allele frequencies. Recent developments often focus on pooling multiple variants to provide association analysis at the gene instead of the locus level. Nonetheless, pinpointing individual variants is a critical goal for genomic researches as such information can facilitate the precise delineation of molecular mechanisms and functions of genetic factors on diseases. Due to the extreme rarity of mutations and high-dimensionality, significances of causal variants cannot easily stand out from those of noncausal ones. Consequently, standard false-positive control procedures, such as the Bonferroni and false discovery rate (FDR), are often impractical to apply, as a majority of the causal variants can only be identified along with a few but unknown number of noncausal variants. To provide informative analysis of individual variants in large-scale sequencing studies, we propose the Adaptive False-Negative Control (AFNC) procedure that can include a large proportion of causal variants with high confidence by introducing a novel statistical inquiry to determine those variants that can be confidently dispatched as noncausal. The AFNC provides a general framework that can accommodate for a variety of models and significance tests. The procedure is computationally efficient and can adapt to the underlying proportion of causal variants and quality of significance rankings. Extensive simulation studies across a plethora of scenarios demonstrate that the AFNC is advantageous for identifying individual rare variants, whereas the Bonferroni and FDR are exceedingly over-conservative for rare variants association studies. In the analyses of the CoLaus dataset, AFNC has identified individual variants most responsible for gene-level significances. Moreover, single-variant results using the AFNC have been successfully applied to infer related genes with annotation information.     

Inorganic polyphosphate in Vibrio cholerae: genetic, biochemical, and physiologic features

Vibrio cholerae O1, biotype El Tor, accumulates inorganic polyphosphate (poly P) principally as large clusters of granules. Poly P kinase (PPK), the enzyme that synthesizes poly P from ATP, is encoded by the ppk gene, which has been cloned from V. cholerae, overexpressed, and knocked out by insertion-deletion mutagenesis. The predicted amino acid sequence of PPK is 701 residues (81.6 kDa), with 64% identity to that of Escherichia coli, which it resembles biochemically. As in E. coli, ppk is part of an operon with ppx, the gene that encodes exopolyphosphatase (PPX). However, unlike in E. coli, PPX activity was not detected in cell extracts of wild-type V. cholerae. The ppk null mutant of V. cholerae has diminished adaptation to high concentrations of calcium in the medium as well as motility and abiotic surface attachment.     

Neural progenitors isolated from newborn rat spinal cords differentiate into neurons and astroglia

Permanent functional deficit in patients with spinal cord injury (SCI) is in part due to severe neural cell death. Therefore, cell replacement using stem cells and neural progenitors that give rise to neurons and glia is thought to be a potent strategy to promote tissue repair after SCI. Many studies have shown that stem cells and neural progenitors can be isolated from embryonic, postnatal and adult spinal cords. Recently, we isolated neural progenitors from newborn rat spinal cords. In general, the neural progenitors grew as spheres in culture, and showed immunoreactivity to a neural progenitor cellular marker, nestin. They were found to proliferate and differentiate into glial fibrillary acidic protein-positive astroglia and multiple neuronal populations, including GABAergic and cholinergic neurons. Neurotrophin 3 and neurotrophin 4 enhanced the differentiation of neural progenitors into neurons. Furthermore, the neural progenitors that were transplanted into contusive spinal cords were found to survive and have migrated in the spinal cord rostrally and caudally over 8 mm to the lesion center 7 days after injury. Thus, the neural progenitors isolated from newborn rat spinal cords in combination with neurotrophic factors may provide a tool for cell therapy in SCI patients.