Combining Mass Spectrometric Metabolic Profiling with Genomic Analysis: A Powerful Approach for Discovering Natural Products from Cyanobacteria.

An innovative approach was developed for the discovery of new natural products by combining mass spectrometric metabolic profiling with genomic analysis and resulted in the discovery of the columbamides, a new class of di- and trichlorinated acyl amides with cannabinomimetic activity. Three species of cultured marine cyanobacteria, Moorea producens 3L, Moorea producens JHB, and Moorea bouillonii PNG, were subjected to genome sequencing and analysis for their recognizable biosynthetic pathways, and this information was then compared with their respective metabolomes as detected by MS profiling. By genome analysis, a presumed regulatory domain was identified upstream of several previously described biosynthetic gene clusters in two of these cyanobacteria, M.

Mono- and polynucleation, atomistic growth, and crystal phase of III-V nanowires under varying group V flow.

We present a refined model for the vapor-liquid-solid growth and crystal structure of Au-catalyzed III-V nanowires, which revisits several assumptions used so far and is capable of describing the transition from mononuclear to polynuclear regime and ultimately to regular atomistic growth. We construct the crystal phase diagrams and calculate the wurtzite percentages, elongation rates, critical sizes, and polynucleation thresholds of Au-catalyzed GaAs nanowires depending on the As flow. We find a non-monotonic dependence of the crystal phase on the group V flow, with the zincblende structure being preferred at low and high group V flows and the wurtzite structure forming at intermediate group V flows.

MORPH-PRO: a novel algorithm and web server for protein morphing.

Background: Proteins are known to be dynamic in nature, changing from one conformation to another while performing vital cellular tasks. It is important to understand these movements in order to better understand protein function. At the same time, experimental techniques provide us with only single snapshots of the whole ensemble of available conformations.

Analysis of two-dimensional photonic band gaps of any rod shape and conductivity using a conical-integral-equation method.

The conical-boundary-integral-equation method has been proposed for calculation of the sensitive optical response of two-dimensional photonic band gaps (PBGs), including dielectric, absorbing, and high-conductive rods of various shapes working in any wavelength range. It is possible to determine the diffracted field by computing the scattering matrices separately for any grating boundary profile. The computation of the matrices is based on the solution of a 2×2 system of singular integral equations at each interface between two different materials.