Sequence of the non-phosphorylating glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase from Nicotiana plumbaginifolia and phylogenetic origin of the gene family

A cDNA-library has been constructed from Nicotiana plumbaginifolia seedlings, and the non-phosphorylating glyceraldehyde-3-phosphate dehydrogenase (GapN, EC 1.2.1.9) was isolated by plaque hybridization using the cDNA from pea as a heterologous probe. The cDNA comprises the entire GapN coding region. A putative polyadenylation signal is identified. Phylogenetic analysis based on the deduced amino acid sequences revealed that the GapN gene family represents a separate ancient branch within the aldehyde dehydrogenase superfamily. It can be shown that the GapN gene family and other distinct branches of the superfamily have its phylogenetic origin before the separation of primary life-forms. This further demonstrates that already very early in evolution, a broad diversification of the aldehyde dehydrogenases led to the formation of the superfamily.     

Engineering training in Germany

In Germany, there are two types of schools where a degree in engineering can be acquired: the university of technology and the technical college. The major difference between these two types of schools is the content of the study. While the studies at technical colleges are mainly practice-oriented, studies at universities of technology have a more theoretical content. The prerequisites for the studies, length of the studies, number of students, certificates, professional perspectives, and future trends in the two types of schools are described     

Zona pellucida mediated acrosome reaction and sperm morphology

PURPOSE: The Octopus program Octosmart is able to classify visual fields into six classes. In the program a horizontal bar indicates these classes, and an indicator points to the most probable position, related to the measured pathology. The width of this dashed indicator shows the range of possible fluctuations in the measurement and, therefore, its precision. This study sets out to analyse the suitability of this display mode using other visual-field index data. METHODS: The visual fields of 83 glaucomatous eyes of 61 patients of various etiological groups and glaucoma suspects were studied for periods varying from 1 to 5 years in a retrospective study. All examinations were performed with the G1 Octopus program and analyzed with the Octosmart program. The statistical significance of linear trends of the visual-field indices, mean defect (MD) and corrected loss variance (CLV), and the class shown by the indicator (POI = position of indicator) were determined, and their regression coefficients were analyzed by means of a linear trend test as a function of time. RESULTS: Of the sample of 83 tested eyes, a total of 18 significant trends were recorded after five examinations. All visual-field indices showed a trend towards amelioration. CONCLUSIONS: The 18 significant trends observed must be attributed to perturbing long-term fluctuations and, despite their statistical significance, are of little clinical value. It is questionable whether an increased number of examinations per eye would have attenuated the threshold fluctuations sufficiently to make the change in field class more reliable.     

Canavalia brasiliensis seeds. Protein quality and nutritional implications of dietary lectin

This study reports on the performance of rats fed with diets based on Canavalia brasiliensis seed proteins. The raw seeds are not a good regime, causing the animals to lose weight, exhibiting low net protein utilization (NPU) values, high nitrogen excretion and macroscopic alterations of key internal organs. Heat treatment, but not dialysis of the seed meal, had a beneficial effect on the nutritional parameters. Feeding rats with a diet containing pure lectin showed a lower digestibility and NPU, a much higher dry matter and nitrogen excretion, impaired growth rate and small-intestine enlargement in comparison with rats pair-fed on egg-white protein. In addition, lectin was detected fully active against rabbit erythrocytes in the faeces of rats fed lectin-containing diets. It was suggested that the seed lectin acts as an antinutritive dietary component.     

Expression and Localization of Thrombospondins,Plastin 3, and STIM1 in Different Cartilage Compartments of the Osteoarthritic Varus Knee

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a multifactorial disease which is characterized by a change in the homeostasis of the extracellular matrix (ECM). The ECM is essential for the function of the articular cartilage and plays an important role in cartilage mechanotransduction. To provide a better understanding of the interaction between the ECM and the actin cytoskeleton, we investigated the localization and expression of the Ca²⁺-dependent proteins cartilage oligomeric matrix protein (COMP), thrombospondin-1 (TSP-1), plastin 3 (PLS3) and stromal interaction molecule 1 (STIM1). We investigated 16 patients who suffered from varus knee OA and performed a topographical analysis of the cartilage from the medial and lateral compartment of the proximal tibial plateau. In a varus knee, OA is more pronounced in the medial compared to the lateral compartment as a result of an overloading due to the malalignment. We detected a location-dependent staining of PLS3 and STIM1 in the articular cartilage tissue. The staining intensity for both proteins correlated with the degree of cartilage degeneration. The staining intensity of TSP-1 was clearly reduced in the cartilage of the more affected medial compartment, an observation that was confirmed in cartilage extracts by immunoblotting. The total amount of COMP was unchanged; however, slight changes were detected in the localization of the protein. Our results provide novel information on alterations in OA cartilage suggesting that Ca²⁺-dependent mechanotransduction between the ECM and the actin cytoskeleton might play an essential role in the pathomechanism of OA.     

Gain-scheduled PID controller design

Gain scheduling (GS) is one of the most popular approaches to nonlinear control design and it is known that GS controllers have a better performance than robust ones. Following the terminology of control engineering, linear parameter-varying (LPV) systems are time-varying plants whose state space matrices are fixed functions of some vector of varying parameters. Our approach is based on considering that the LPV system, scheduling parameters and their derivatives with respect to time lie in a priori given hyper rectangles. To guarantee the performance we use the notion of guaranteed costs. The class of control structure includes centralized, decentralized fixed order output feedbacks like PID controller. Numerical examples illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.