Molecular cloning of unintegrated visna viral DNA and characterization of frequent deletions in the 3' terminus

Visna viral DNA, like other retroviral DNA, exists in two circular forms in infected cells. The larger probably contains two copies of the LTR, the smaller, one copy. Recombinant DNA techniques were used to clone unintegrated circular visna viral DNA in the lambda WES . lambda B vector. Circular visna viral DNA was digested with the restriction enzyme SstI, which yields a 9.2-kb viral DNA fragment containing 90% of the viral genome colinear with the restriction map of linear viral DNA. This fragment extends from a site about 900 bp from the left (5') end of the viral DNA molecule, through the 3' region, including U3 and R sequences at its right (3') end. The recombinant clones isolated contain visna viral DNA inserts which range in size from 3.1 kb to 9.2 kb. All the clones contain the 5' region intact, but most had sustained deletions of varying lengths in the 3' terminal region of the cloned fragment.     

Fermented foods, feeds and beverages

There has been a proliferation of books and papers dealing with the indigenous fermented foods/beverages of the world. It is anticipated that these foods/beverages will play an ever-increasingly important role in feeding both the developing and the developed world as population increases from approximately 4.5 billion to 6 billion by the year 2000 and to 8 to 12 billion people in the 21st century. The indigenous fermented foods consist of microbial protein grown on edible substrates. Microbial or single cell protein (SCP) per se continues to receive research and development attention. It is likely to play an important role in feeding animals in the future when it becomes competitive with soy protein. It may play a direct role in feeding humans in the future after its safety for feeding animals has been adequately demonstrated and it has been shown that it can be processed into foods acceptable to humans. At the present time, mushrooms, a form of microbial protein highly acceptable to humans, which can be grown readily on ligno-cellulosic and other agricultural and food processing wastes, offer considerable opportunity for expanding man's food supply.     

User−Producer Interaction in Housing Energy Innovations

Von Hippel and colleagues have highlighted the crucial role of users in innovation in different industries and types of products. They describe the innovation process in terms of the distinct domains of knowledge that producers and users possess. Producers have knowledge about technical solutions and users about their needs, the context of use, and their own capabilities as users. Both sets of knowledge are characterized by "stickiness": They move relatively freely within their own domain but are difficult to transfer outside of it.
In the case of radical innovations for sustainable consumption, the problem of "sticky information" is compounded. Both producers and consumers need to reach out of their conventional competencies and search for new solutions. "Societal actors," such as government bodies or environmental experts, can show the way to such solutions, but this new knowledge needs to be integrated with the "sticky" knowledge about everyday practices in production and consumption.
In the present article we attempt to conceptualize the role and interaction of user and producer knowledge with the knowledge of environmental experts in housing energy innovations. We do so by applying the user−producer interaction framework to a case study on the introduction of low-energy housing concepts in Finland. On the basis of this analysis, we draw conclusions on the potential and limitations of today's practices in the field. For example, we suggest that user involvement can help to enhance the acceptance of low-energy solutions but that the methods for involving users need to be adapted to the particular circumstances in each industry.     

The flanking sequence contributes to the immobilisation of spermine at the G-quadruplex in the NHE (nuclease hypersensitivity element) III1 of the c-Myc promoter

Defining the molecular basis of the DNA sequence selectivity of polyamine binding is central to understanding polyamine-dependent gene expression. We have studied, by selective NMR experiments, the variation of spermine mobility and conformation in the presence of G-quadruplexes formed by sequences of the purine-rich strand of the c-Myc promoter, nuclease hypersensitivity element III₁ (NHE III₁). All the NHE quadruplexes restrict spermine mobility and induce a spermine conformational change but the most effective immobilisation occurs when all five G-tracts of the NHE III₁ are present. This suggests structure within the nucleotides flanking the G-quadruplex has a role in immobilising spermine.     

The Impact of Social Factors and Consumer Behavior on Carbon Dioxide Emissions in the United Kingdom

In this article we apply geodemographic consumer segmentation data in an input−output framework to understand the direct and indirect carbon dioxide (CO₂) emissions associated with consumer behavior of different lifestyles in the United Kingdom. In a subsequent regression analysis, we utilize the lifestyle segments contained in the dataset to control for aspects of behavioral differences related to lifestyles in an analysis of the impact of various socioeconomic variables on CO₂ emissions, such as individual aspirations and people's attitudes toward the environment, as well as the physical context in which people act.
This approach enables us to (1) test for the significance of lifestyles in determining CO₂ emissions, (2) quantify the importance of a variety of individual socioeconomic determinants, and (3) provide a visual representation of "where" the various factors exert the greatest impact, by exploiting the spatial information contained in the lifestyle data.
Our results indicate the importance of consumer behavior and lifestyles in understanding CO₂ emissions in the United Kingdom. Across lifestyle groups, CO₂ emissions can vary by a factor of between 2 and 3. Our regression results provide support for the idea that sociodemographic variables are important in explaining emissions. For instance, controlling for lifestyles and other determinants, we find that emissions are increasing with income and decreasing with education. Using the spatial information, we illustrate how the lifestyle mix of households in the United Kingdom affects the geographic distribution of environmental impacts.     

The Impacts of Household Consumption and Options for Change

This introductory article situates the contributions that comprise this special issue within the field of sustainable consumption and production (SCP) studies. After a brief review of the policy history surrounding SCP, we organize our discussion and the subsequent collection of articles into two groups. The first suite of articles views the environmental impacts associated with household consumption from the perspectives of different consumer groups, income levels, and geographic areas. This work confirms and refines several insights that have been developing over the past several years, namely that food and beverages, mobility, housing, and energy-using products are the most critical consumption domains from the standpoint of environmental sustainability and that higher household income leads to greater (but less than proportional) impacts. The second subset of articles analyzes the potential for mitigating these impacts through behavioral changes and innovation strategies. Although the contributions to this special issue describe several noteworthy examples of information- and team-based initiatives to catalyze behavioral changes, the state of knowledge pertaining to this aspect of the consumption problem is much more inchoate. Research on the formulation and implementation of effective "change management for sustainable consumption" should be treated as an area of priority attention for industrial ecologists.     

High resolution crystal structures of unliganded and liganded human liver ACBP reveal a new mode of binding for the acyl-CoA ligand

The acyl-CoA binding protein (ACBP) is essential for the fatty acid metabolism, membrane structure, membrane fusion, and ceramide synthesis. Here high resolution crystal structures of human cytosolic liver ACBP, unliganded and liganded with a physiological ligand, myristoyl-CoA are described. The binding of the acyl-CoA molecule induces only few structural differences near the binding pocket. The crystal form of the liganded ACBP, which has two ACBP molecules in the asymmetric unit, shows that in human ACBP the same acyl-CoA binding pocket is present as previously described for the bovine and Plasmodium falciparum ACBP and the mode of binding of the 3'-phosphate-AMP moiety is conserved. Unexpectedly, in one of the acyl-CoA binding pockets the acyl moiety is bound in a reversed mode as compared with the bovine and P. falciparum structures. In this binding mode, the myristoyl-CoA molecule is fully ordered and bound across the two ACBP molecules of the crystallographic asymmetric unit: the 3'-phosphate-AMP moiety is bound in the binding pocket of one ACBP molecule and the acyl chain is bound in the pocket of the other ACBP molecule. The remaining binding pocket cavities of these two ACBP molecules are filled by other ligand fragments. This novel binding mode shows that the acyl moiety can flip out of its classical binding pocket and bind elsewhere, suggesting a mechanism for the acyl-CoA transfer between ACBP and the active site of a target enzyme. This mechanism is of possible relevance for the in vivo function of ACBP.     

Effects of enzyme loading and β-glucosidase supplementation on enzymatic hydrolysis of switchgrass processed by leading pretreatment technologies

The objective of this work is to investigate the effects of cellulase loading and β-glucosidase supplementation on enzymatic hydrolysis of pretreated Dacotah switchgrass. To assess the difference among various pretreatment methods, the profiles of sugars and intermediates were determined for differently treated substrates. For all pretreatments, 72 h glucan/xylan digestibilities increased sharply with enzyme loading up to 25 mg protein/g-glucan, after which the response varied depending on the pretreatment method. For a fixed level of enzyme loading, dilute sulfuric acid (DA), SO₂, and Lime pretreatments exhibited higher digestibility than the soaking in aqueous ammonia (SAA) and ammonia fiber expansion (AFEX). Supplementation of Novozyme-188 to Spezyme-CP improved the 72 h glucan digestibility only for the SAA treated samples. The effect of β-glucosidase supplementation was discernible only at the early phase of hydrolysis where accumulation of cellobiose and oligomers is significant. Addition of β-glucosidase increased the xylan digestibility of alkaline treated samples due to the β-xylosidase activity present in Novozyme-188.     

滞育诱导温周期对桃小食心虫滞育幼虫生理指标的影响

【目的】为了明确秋季温度升高对桃小食心虫Carposina sasakii Matsumura 耐寒性的影响,针对桃小食心虫滞育过程的生理指标进行了一系列研究。【方法】在GXZ-0450型智能光照培养箱中,温度为26~18, 26~20, 26~22, 28~18, 28~20, 28~22, 30~18, 30~20和30~22℃ 9组变温下（高温10 h,低温14 h,相对湿度70%~80%,光周期为12L∶12D）分别诱导桃小食心虫滞育,再对滞育幼虫过冷却点（supercooling point, SCP）、结冰点（freezing point, FP）以及体内水、脂肪和小分子糖醇类物质含量进行测定。【结果】在适宜滞育的光照下变温不会影响桃小食心虫的滞育率,所有脱果的老熟幼虫全部进入滞育,但其生理指标却有很大差异,其中SCP和FP在较高日高温下较高（SCP：F_135,2=23.83,P<0.001;FP：F_135,2=47.64,P<0.0001）,而在较高夜低温下反而较低（SCP：F_135,2=52.88,P<0.0001;FP：F_135,2=33.34,P<0.0001）。含水量随夜低温和日高温升高显著升高（夜低温：F_135,2=13.47,P<0.0001;日高温：F_135,2=10.39,P<0.0001）。脂肪含量随夜低温升高下降（F_135,2=40.91, P<0.0001）,随日高温升高而上升（F_135,2=161.18,P<0.0001）。小分子糖醇类物质含量随温度的变化各不相同,但差异均显著（P<0.0001）：其中海藻糖、葡萄糖和赤藓糖醇的含量随夜低温升高而下降,但在日高温30℃时海藻糖和赤藓糖醇的含量却随夜温的升高而升高,葡萄糖的含量随夜低温的变化无差异;甘油随日高温的升高而显著升高,随夜低温的升高而显著下降;山梨醇和肌醇的含量随夜低温和日高温的变化差异很大。【结论】桃小食心虫不同温度下诱导滞育的幼虫SCP、FP、水、脂肪和小分子糖醇类含量存在明显差异。滞育诱导期温度对桃小食心虫幼虫的滞育生理有重要的作用,其滞育幼虫起始生理差别可能会影响其越冬。     

Kefir yeast technology: scale-up in SCP production using milk whey

A three-step process to scale-up kefir biomass production at a semi-industrial scale employing whey is reported. Aerobic fermentations were initially performed at laboratory scales, in 1.5- and 4-L bioreactors, yielding 79 g/L final kefir biomass (0.89 g/g of lactose utilized), in 7 h of fermentation time. The use of whey as carbon source even in solid cultures led to the formation of a granular biomass. These results encouraged scale-up at a semi-industrial-scale pilot plant employing 100- and 3,000-L bioreactors, leading to the development of a process for granular kefir biomass production. The results validated the laboratory-scale experiments and the avoidance of centrifugal separators due to granular biomass formation. Pilot-plant operations showed kefir to be highly resistant to contamination under actual industrial conditions and no serious problems in handling of raw materials and equipment were observed. Economic analysis showed a 20% higher cost of the market price of products, with added value of up to 15.9 x 10(9) within the European Union.