Intersecting Xenobiology and Neometabolism To Bring Novel Chemistries to Life

The diversity of life relies on a handful of chemical elements (carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen, sulfur and phosphorus) as part of essential building blocks; some other atoms are needed to a lesser extent, but most of the remaining elements are excluded from biology. This circumstance limits the scope of biochemical reactions in extant metabolism – yet it offers a phenomenal playground for synthetic biology. Xenobiology aims to bring novel bricks to life that could be exploited for (xeno)metabolite synthesis. In particular, the assembly of novel pathways engineered to handle nonbiological elements (neometabolism) will broaden chemical space beyond the reach of natural evolution. In this review, xeno-elements that could be blended into nature's biosynthetic portfolio are discussed together with their physicochemical properties and tools and strategies to incorporate them into biochemistry. We argue that current bioproduction methods can be revolutionized by bridging xenobiology and neometabolism for the synthesis of new-to-nature molecules, such as organohalides.     

Modeling language acquisition in atypical phenotypes.

An increasing number of connectionist models have been proposed to explain behavioral deficits in developmental disorders. These simulations motivate serious consideration of the theoretical implications of the claim that a developmental disorder fits within the parameter space of a particular computational model of normal development. The authors examine these issues in depth with respect to a series of new simulations investigating past-tense formation in Williams syndrome. This syndrome and the past-tense domain are highly relevant because both have been used to make strong theoretical claims about the processes underlying normal language acquisition. The authors conclude that computational models have great potential to advance psychologists' understanding of developmental deficits because they focus on the developmental process itself as a pivotal causal factor in producing atypical phenotypic outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Are eating disorders culture-bound syndromes? Implications for conceptualizing their etiology.

The authors explore the extent to which eating disorders, specifically anorexia nervosa (AN) and bulimia nervosa (BN), represent culture-bound syndromes and discuss implications for conceptualizing the role genes play in their etiology. The examination is divided into 3 sections: a quantitative meta-analysis of changes in incidence rates since the formal recognition of AN and BN, a qualitative summary of historical evidence of eating disorders before their formal recognition, and an evaluation of the presence of these disorders in non-Western cultures. Findings suggest that BN is a culture-bound syndrome and AN is not. Thus, heritability estimates for BN may show greater variability cross-culturally than heritability estimates for AN, and the genetic bases of these disorders may be associated with differential pathoplasticity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

紫杉醇及其类似物生产的代谢工程研究进展

大量生产抗癌新药紫杉醇是目前生物技术的研究热点之一。通过对紫杉醇生物合成途径中关键酶基因的分离、克隆与遗传转化等方面最新研究结果进行评述 ,指出通过紫杉醇次生代谢途径中关键酶的基因改造及遗传转化 ,构建高效表达紫杉醇或其重要前体紫杉烷的基因工程细胞株 ,并建立其相应的基因表达调控方法 ,是解决紫杉醇药源问题的最有前途的方法之一。     

罗801块微生物驱油菌种代谢产物分析

为了研究罗801块微生物驱油菌种代谢产物,从代谢产物化学性质的角度探索驱油作用机理,依据微生物代谢规律,应用气相色谱、气质联用仪(气相色谱-质谱GC-MS)、傅立叶变换红外光谱仪等化学分析仪器和手段,建立了一套通用的驱油菌种代谢产物定性定量分析方法:短链脂肪酸和生物气气相色谱分析,长链脂肪酸、醇类、酚类以及生物烃的预处理和GC-MS分析,醛类、酮类的衍生化及GC-MS分析,生物表面活性物质的薄层层析和红外光谱定性分析,脂类化合物的GC-MS定量分析等;介绍了罗801块驱油菌种代谢产物分析结果:罗801块驱油菌种代谢产物共检出近百种化合物,不同菌种代谢产物种类和数量差异较大。驱油菌种代谢产物分析说明了驱油菌种代谢的复杂性,该研究对矿场试验效果评价及微生物驱油机理探索有重要意义。     

低强度激光血管内照射对海洛因戒断综合征的疗效观察

对于毒瘾戒断综合症的治疗一般采用强行戒断或逐步撤药等方法 ,但患者非常痛苦 ,且复吸率较高。为了观察低强度He -Ne激光对戒断症状的抑制作用 ,本文用低强度激光血管内照射疗法对 3 0例吸毒戒断综合征患者进行了治疗 ,并与对照组比较。结果证明 :实验组疗效明显优于对照组 (P <0 .0 1) ,为进一步的临床应用提供了临床依据。     

Health and Indoor Climate Complaints of 7043 office Workers in 61 Buildings in the Netherlands

During the winter of 1988/1989, the relationships between the prevalence of work-related health and indoor climate complaints and a number of building, management, workplace and personal characteristics have been investigated in a study in more than 60 office buildings located throughout the Netherlands. To collect the information, a questionnaire was prepared on health and indoor climate complaints and personal and workplace characteristics. A checklist was used to obtain information on building characteristics More than 7000 questionnaires were completed by the regular users of the buildings investigated. The results showed that the prevalence of symptoms was higher in air-conditioned buildings than in naturally or mechanically ventilated buildings. some other variables were also related with most work-related complaints after adjustment for selected management, personal, workplace and job characteristics. These included gender, work satisfaction in general, presence of allergies and/or respiratory symptoms, and personal control over temperature at the workplace. No differences were found in symptom prevalences between buildings with spray and steam humidification. The combination of air-conditioning and humidification did not lead to further increases in the prevalence of complaints as compared to buildings with only airconditioning or only humidification.     

Diagnostic Data Compression Techniques for Embedded Memories with Built-In Self-Test

A system-on-chip (SOC) usually consists of many memory cores with different sizes and functionality, and they typically represent a significant portion of the SOC and therefore dominate its yield. Diagnostics for yield enhancement of the memory cores thus is a very important issue. In this paper we present two data compression techniques that can be used to speed up the transmission of diagnostic data from the embedded RAM built-in self-test (BIST) circuit that has diagnostic support to the external tester. The proposed syndrome-accumulation approach compresses the faulty-cell address and March syndrome to about 28% of the original size on average under the March-17N diagnostic test algorithm. The key component of the compressor is a novel syndrome-accumulation circuit, which can be realized by a content-addressable memory. Experimental results show that the area overhead is about 0.9% for a 1Mb SRAM with 164 faults. A tree-based compression technique for word-oriented memories is also presented. By using a simplified Huffman coding scheme and partitioning each 256-bit Hamming syndrome into fixed-size symbols, the average compression ratio (size of original data to that of compressed data) is about 10, assuming 16-bit symbols. Also, the additional hardware to implement the tree-based compressor is very small. The proposed compression techniques effectively reduce the memory diagnosis time as well as the tester storage requirement.