Transcriptomic Analysis During Olive Fruit Development and Expression Profiling of Fatty Acid Desaturase Genes.

The olive fruit is a drupe whose development and ripening takes several months from flowering to full maturation. During this period, several biochemical and physiological changes occur that affect the skin color, texture, composition, and size of the mesocarp. The final result is a fruit rich in fatty acids, phenolic compounds, tocopherols, pigments, sterols, terpenoids, and other compounds of nutritional interest.

Quantum mechanical-based strategies in drug discovery: Finding the pace to new challenges in drug design.

The expansion of the chemical space to tangible libraries containing billions of synthesizable molecules opens exciting opportunities for drug discovery, but also challenges the power of computer-aided drug design to prioritize the best candidates. This directly hits quantum mechanics (QM) methods, which provide chemically accurate properties, but subject to small-sized systems. Preserving accuracy while optimizing the computational cost is at the heart of many efforts to develop high-quality, efficient QM-based strategies, reflected in refined algorithms and computational approaches.

On the relevance of query definition in the performance of 3D ligand-based virtual screening.

Ligand-based virtual screening (LBVS) methods are widely used to explore the vast chemical space in the search of novel compounds resorting to a variety of properties encoded in 1D, 2D or 3D descriptors. The success of 3D-LBVS is affected by the overlay of molecular pairs, thus making selection of the template compound, search of accessible conformational space and choice of the query conformation to be potential factors that modulate the successful retrieval of actives. This study examines the impact of adopting different choices for the query conformation of the template, paying also attention to the influence exerted by the structural similarity between templates and actives.

Acetylcholinesterase: A Versatile Template to Coin Potent Modulators of Multiple Therapeutic Targets.

ConspectusThe enzyme acetylcholinesterase (AChE) hydrolyzes the neurotransmitter acetylcholine (ACh) at cholinergic synapses of the peripheral and central nervous system. Thus, it is a prime therapeutic target for diseases that occur with a cholinergic deficit, prominently Alzheimer's disease (AD). Working at a rate near the diffusion limit, it is considered one of nature's most efficient enzymes.

RNA Polymerases IV and V Are Involved in Olive Fruit Development.

Transcription is carried out in most eukaryotes by three multimeric complexes (RNA polymerases I, II and III). However, plants contain two additional RNA polymerases (IV and V), which have evolved from RNA polymerase II. RNA polymerases II, IV and V contain both common and specific subunits that may specialise some of their functions.