High-temperature mass spectrometric study of thermodynamic properties in the TiO -Al O -SiO system and modeling.

Rationale: The TiO -Al O -SiO system is the base for various glass-ceramic materials, which have great practical value for a large number of modern technologies. Many TiO -Al O -SiO materials are synthesized or applied at high temperatures, which justifies the relevance of the present study.

Methods: The samples in the TiO -Al O -SiO system were synthesized using the method of induction melting in a cold crucible.

[Flow cytometry evaluation of the rhesus monkey cellular immunity following the Zaire ebolavirus (Filoviridae; Ebolavirus: Zaire ebolavirus) experimental infection].

Introduction: The outbreaks of the Zaire ebolavirus (ZE) disease (ZED) that have arisen in the last decade determine the need to study the infection pathogenesis, the formation of specific immunity forming as well as the development of effective preventive and therapeutic means. All stages of fight against the ZED spread require the experimental infection in sensitive laboratory animals, which are rhesus monkeys in case of this disease .The aim of the study is to evaluate the rhesus monkey cellular immunity following the ZE experimental infection by the means of flow cytometry (cytofluorimetry).

Hydration sites of unpaired RNA bases: a statistical analysis of the PDB structures.

Background: Hydration is crucial for RNA structure and function. X-ray crystallography is the most commonly used method to determine RNA structures and hydration and, therefore, statistical surveys are based on crystallographic results, the number of which is quickly increasing.

Results: A statistical analysis of the water molecule distribution in high-resolution X-ray structures of unpaired RNA nucleotides showed that: different bases have the same penchant to be surrounded by water molecules; clusters of water molecules indicate possible hydration sites, which, in some cases, match those of the major and minor grooves of RNA and DNA double helices; complex hydrogen bond networks characterize the solvation of the nucleotides, resulting in a significant rigidity of the base and its surrounding water molecules.

FRASS: the web-server for RNA structural comparison.

Background: The impressive increase of novel RNA structures, during the past few years, demands automated methods for structure comparison. While many algorithms handle only small motifs, few techniques, developed in recent years, (ARTS, DIAL, SARA, SARSA, and LaJolla) are available for the structural comparison of large and intact RNA molecules.

Results: The FRASS web-server represents a RNA chain with its Gauss integrals and allows one to compare structures of RNA chains and to find similar entries in a database derived from the Protein Data Bank.

Protein domain boundary predictions: a structural biology perspective.

One of the important fields to apply computational tools for domain boundaries prediction is structural biology. They can be used to design protein constructs that must be expressed in a stable and functional form and must produce diffraction-quality crystals. However, prediction of protein domain boundaries on the basis of amino acid sequences is still very problematical.