Folding mechanism of the alpha-subunit of tryptophan synthase, an alpha/beta barrel protein: global analysis highlights the interconversion of multiple native, intermediate, and unfolded forms through parallel channels

A variety of techniques have been used to investigate the urea-induced kinetic folding mechanism of the alpha-subunit of tryptophan synthase from Escherichia coli. A distinctive property of this 29 kDa alpha/beta barrel protein is the presence of two stable equilibrium intermediates, populated at approximately 3 and 5 M urea. The refolding process displays multiple kinetic phases whose lifetimes span the submillisecond to greater than 100 s time scale; unfolding studies yield two relaxation times on the order of 10-100 s. In an effort to understand the populations and structural properties of both the stable and transient intermediates, stopped-flow, manual-mixing, and equilibrium circular dichroism data were globally fit to various kinetic models. Refolding and unfolding experiments from various initial urea concentrations as well as forward and reverse double-jump experiments were critical for model discrimination. The simplest kinetic model that is consistent with all of the available data involves four slowly interconverting unfolded forms that collapse within 5 ms to a marginally stable intermediate with significant secondary structure. This early intermediate is an off-pathway species that must unfold to populate a set of four on-pathway intermediates that correspond to the 3 M urea equilibrium intermediate. Reequilibrations among these conformers act as rate-limiting steps in folding for a majority of the population. A fraction of the native conformation appears in less than 1 s at 25 degrees C, demonstrating that even large proteins can rapidly traverse a complex energy surface.     

Direct fibre-optic transmission of entire microwave satellite antenna signals

The entire 500 MHz bandwidth multicarrier C-band microwave signal spectrum from a satellite antenna is transmitted over low-loss optical fibre. The optical system introduces 1dB or less of degradation for both low-spectral-density QPSK signals and high-spectral-density FM video signals present in typical satellite transmission systems. For the video signals, the signal/noise ratio after AM conversion was reduced from 56 dB to 55dB.     

Enteric and Plant Derived Deterrents in Regurgitate of American Bird Grasshopper, Schistocerca americana

Regurgitates of the grasshopper Schistocerca americana were deterrent to Crematogaster ants. Regurgitates obtained from insects fed upon wheat seedlings were more strongly deterrent than those obtained from insects fed on romaine lettuce leaves. After extraction of the regurgitates with ethyl acetate, deterrence could be demonstrated in both the organic and aqueous phases. Wheat seedlings, lettuce, and feces from wheat- or lettuce-fed insects yielded extracts with lower deterrency. Our results suggest that deterrents in the organic phase of the regurgitate are primarily due to the presence of plant natural products, whereas the deterrency of the aqueous phase is probably due to digestive enzymes from enteric components, probably digestive enzymes.     

Wide tunable double ring resonator coupled lasers

A double ring resonator coupled laser (DR-RCL) is proposed and analyzed in this letter. Benefiting from the uniform peak transmission, narrow bandwidth and other superior characteristics of traveling wave supported high-Q resonators, DR-RCLs offers many promising advantages over the conventional tunable lasers, including ultra wide wavelength tuning range, high side mode suppression ratio, uniform threshold and efficiency, narrow linewidth, low frequency chirp, and simple fabrication. A DR-RCL with a moderate optical loss ~10 dB/cm in the ring resonators can achieve a wavelength tuning enhancement of ~50. With such a large tuning leverage, DR-RCLs could utilize the electrooptic effects to achieve ultrafast tuning speed with a wide tuning range covering the material gain bandwidth