钾细菌JF88菌株解钾作用及应用研究

采用比浊法测定JF88菌株的解钾能力,其结果为接菌处理水溶性钾比不接菌增加30．5％,可作为钾细菌肥料的生产菌种,对农业环保具有一定的理论和实践意义。     

黑河流域浮游植物及其地理分布特征研究

1997年5至8月对黑河（中）流域河道、湖泊、沼泽的10站位的调查中,共鉴定浮游植物8门109种（未鉴定到种的按1种计）,其中蓝藻（Cyanophyta）16tkhh,bqvnaiks(Cryptophyta)2种,甲藻（Pyrrophyta)3种,金藻（Chrysophyta)4种,黄藻（Xanthophyta)4种,裸藻（Euglenophyta)8种,绿藻（Chlorophyta)38种,硅藻（Bacillariophyta)34种。南部祁连山山区的浮游植物种类很贫乏。中下游诸点有黑河流域浮游植物全部属、种,故可以认为黑河流域浮游植物地理分布具有与河流水文分带相对应的垂直地理性分异。     

陕北黄土高原森林植被数量分类及环境解释

通过对陕北黄土高原森林群落的系统聚类分析和因子分析（FA）及其与5个土壤变量的多元统计分析。定量研究了该地区森林植被的类型及土壤特征之间的相互关系。结果表明,陕北黄土高原森林植被可分为5个群系,即油松林、辽东栎林、山杨林、白桦林和侧柏林,聚类分析结果与传统分类的结果完全一致。该地区森林植被格局可由群落土壤条件的差异来解释,土壤因子中含水量、全氮和有机质是主导性因素,各群落沿此梯度呈现出一定的分布格局,其它土壤因子的作用并不明显。     

发酵甜高粱计耐高浓度酒精酵母菌的选育

采用负染色计数法从非自然诱变菌株中成功地选育一株以C4植物甜高粱汁做基质发酵生产液体生物燃料（酒精）的酵母菌株,产酒率最高达12．80％（V／V）。     

Assessing conservation attitudes and behaviors of Congolese children neighboring the world's first bonobo (Pan paniscus) release site

Poaching and habitat destruction in the Congo Basin threaten African great apes including the bonobo (Pan paniscus), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), and gorillas (Gorilla spp.) with extinction. One way to combat extinction is to reintroduce rescued and rehabilitated apes and repopulate native habitats. Reintroduction programs are only successful if they are supported by local populations. Ekolo ya Bonobo, located in Equateur province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), is the world's only reintroduction site for rehabilitated bonobos. Here we assess whether children, of the Ilonga‐Pôo, living adjacent to Ekolo ya Bonobo demonstrate more pro‐ape conservation attitudes than children living in, Kinshasa, the capital city. We examined children's attitudes toward great apes because children are typically the focus of conservation education programs. We used the Great Ape Attitude Questionnaire to test the Contact Hypothesis, which posits that proximity to great ape habitat influences pro‐conservation attitudes toward great apes. Ilonga‐Pôo children who live in closer contact with wild bonobos felt greater responsibility to protect great apes compared to those in Kinshasa who live outside the natural habitat of great apes. These results suggest that among participants in the DRC, spatial proximity to a species fosters a greater sense of responsibility to protect and conserve. These results have implications for the successful implementation of great ape reintroduction programs in the Congo Basin. The data analyzed in this study were collected in 2010 and therefore provide a baseline for longitudinal study of this reintroduction site.     

Structure and function of muscle myosin

We have studied the primary structures of myosins from chicken muscles in order to clarify the relationship between structure and function of muscle myosin. The primary structures of the various kinds of light chains from chicken muscle myosins have been determined. We also report the primary structure of the 23K fragment of subfragment-1 (S-1) component from the heavy chain of chicken fast skeletal muscle myosin. In addition, antibody was prepared against the 23K fragment. The antibody was found to inhibit the Mg²⁺-ATPase activity and the initial P_i burst of the ATPase in the S-1 component. The antibody suppressed the ATP-induced fluorescence enhancement of S-1, though it did not suppress the binding of ATP to S-1. These results are also discussed.This article was presented during the proceedings of the International Conference on Macromolecular Structure and Function, held at the National Defence Medical College, Tokorozawa, Japan, December 1985.     

The Alarmone (p)ppGpp Regulates Primer Extension by Bacterial Primase

Primase is an essential component of the DNA replication machinery, responsible for synthesizing RNA primers that initiate leading and lagging strand DNA synthesis. Bacterial primase activity can be regulated by the starvation-inducible nucleotide (p)ppGpp. This regulation contributes to a timely inhibition of DNA replication upon amino acid starvation in the Gram-positive bacterium Bacillus subtilis. Here, we characterize the effect of (p)ppGpp on B. subtilis DnaG primase activity in vitro. Using a single-nucleotide resolution primase assay, we dissected the effect of ppGpp on the initiation, extension, and fidelity of B. subtilis primase. We found that ppGpp has a mild effect on initiation, but strongly inhibits primer extension and reduces primase processivity, promoting termination of primer extension. High (p)ppGpp concentration, together with low GTP concentration, additively inhibit primase activity. This explains the strong inhibition of replication elongation during starvation which induces high levels of (p)ppGpp and depletion of GTP in B. subtilis. Finally, we found that lowering GTP concentration results in mismatches in primer base pairing that allow priming readthrough, and that ppGpp reduces readthrough to protect priming fidelity. These results highlight the importance of (p)ppGpp in protecting replisome integrity and genome stability in fluctuating nucleotide concentrations upon onset of environmental stress.     

Extending the Horizon of Homology Detection with Coevolution-based Structure Prediction

Traditional sequence analysis algorithms fail to identify distant homologies when they lie beyond a detection horizon. In this review, we discuss how co-evolution-based contact and distance prediction methods are pushing back this homology detection horizon, thereby yielding new functional insights and experimentally testable hypotheses. Based on correlated substitutions, these methods divine three-dimensional constraints among amino acids in protein sequences that were previously devoid of all annotated domains and repeats. The new algorithms discern hidden structure in an otherwise featureless sequence landscape. Their revelatory impact promises to be as profound as the use, by archaeologists, of ground-penetrating radar to discern long-hidden, subterranean structures. As examples of this, we describe how triplicated structures reflecting longin domains in MON1A-like proteins, or UVR-like repeats in DISC1, emerge from their predicted contact and distance maps. These methods also help to resolve structures that do not conform to a “beads-on-a-string” model of protein domains. In one such example, we describe CFAP298 whose ubiquitin-like domain was previously challenging to perceive owing to a large sequence insertion within it. More generally, the new algorithms permit an easier appreciation of domain families and folds whose evolution involved structural insertion or rearrangement. As we exemplify with α1-antitrypsin, coevolution-based predicted contacts may also yield insights into protein dynamics and conformational change. This new combination of structure prediction (using innovative co-evolution based methods) and homology inference (using more traditional sequence analysis approaches) shows great promise for bringing into view a sea of evolutionary relationships that had hitherto lain far beyond the horizon of homology detection.