Bovine serum albumin under the influence of alkali metal halides.

The hydration shell of a protein is so important and an integral part of it, that protein's structure, stability and functionality cannot be conceived in its absence. This layer has unique properties not found in bulk water. However, ions, always present in the protein environment, disturb the hydration shell depending on their nature and concentration.

Using Microfluidic Hepatic Spheroid Cultures to Assess Liver Toxicity of T-2 Mycotoxin.

The fungi is found in cereals and feedstuffs and may produce mycotoxins, which are secondary metabolites, such as the T-2 toxin (T-2). In this work, we explored the hepatotoxicity of T-2 using microfluidic 3D hepatic cultures. The objectives were: (i) exploring the benefits of microfluidic 3D cultures compared to conventional 3D cultures available commercially (Aggrewell plates), (ii) establishing 3D co-cultures of hepatic cells (HepG2) and stellate cells (LX2) and assessing T-2 exposure in this model, (iii) characterizing the induction of metabolizing enzymes, and (iv) evaluating inflammatory markers upon T-2 exposure in microfluidic hepatic cultures.

Elucidating lipid conformations in the ripple phase: Machine learning reveals four lipid populations.

A new mixed radial-angular, three-particle correlation function method in combination with unsupervised machine learning was applied to examine the emergence of the ripple phase in dipalmitoylphosphatidylcholine (DPPC) lipid bilayers using data from atomistic molecular dynamics simulations of system sizes ranging from 128 to 4096 lipids. Based on the acyl tail conformations, the analysis revealed the presence of four distinct conformational populations of lipids in the ripple phases of the DPPC lipid bilayers. The expected gel-like (ordered; L) and fluid-like (disordered; L) lipids are found along with their splayed tail equivalents (L and L).

Xenon and Krypton Dissolved in Water Form Nanoblobs: No Evidence for Nanobubbles.

We demonstrate, experimentally and by molecular dynamics simulations, that krypton and xenon form nanostructured water-gas domains. High pressure was applied to force the inert gases to dissolve in water following Henry's law, then the liquid was depressurized, centrifuged, and inspected by dynamic light scattering. The observed objects have similar sizes and electrical properties to nanobubbles, but we found that they have fairly neutral buoyancy even at high gravitational fields.

On the Prediction of In Vitro Arginine Glycation of Short Peptides Using Artificial Neural Networks.

One of the hallmarks of diabetes is an increased modification of cellular proteins. The most prominent type of modification stems from the reaction of methylglyoxal with arginine and lysine residues, leading to structural and functional impairments of target proteins. For lysine glycation, several algorithms allow a prediction of occurrence; thus, making it possible to pinpoint likely targets.