THE UNIQUE ABILITY OF PICRATE TO UNCOUPLE SUBMITOCHONDRIAL PARTICLES BUT NOT MITOCHONDRIA IS CONSISTENT WITH THE CHEMIOSMOTIC HYPOTHESIS

If a person requires a tissue donation in order to survive, many philosophers argue that whatever moral responsibility a biological relative may have to donate to the person in need will be grounded at least partially, if not entirely, in the biological relations the potential donor bears to the recipient. Such views tend to ignore the role played by a potential donor’s unique ability to help the person in need and the perceived burden of the donation type in underwriting such judgments. If, for example, a sperm donor is judged to have a significant moral responsibility to donate tissue to a child conceived with his sperm, we argue that such judgments will largely be grounded in the presumed unique ability of the sperm donor to help the child due to the compatibility of his tissues with those of the recipient. In this paper, we report the results of two main studies and three supplementary studies designed to investigate the comparative roles that biological relatedness, unique ability to help, and donation burden play in generating judgments of moral responsibility in tissue donation cases. We found that the primary factor driving individuals’ judgments about the moral responsibility of a potential donor to donate tissue to someone in need was the degree to which a donor was in a unique ability to help. We observed no significant role for biological relatedness as such. Biologically related individuals were deemed to have a significant moral responsibility to donate tissue only when they are one of a small number of people who have a relatively unique capacity to help. We also found that people are less inclined to think individuals have a moral responsibility to donate tissue when the donation is more costly to make. We bring these results into dialogue with contemporary disputes concerning the ethics of tissue donation.

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Judgments of moral responsibility in tissue donation cases

10.31234/osf.io/rvsnc ◽

2020 ◽

Author(s):

James R. Beebe

Keyword(s):

Moral Responsibility ◽

Tissue Donation ◽

Potential Donor ◽

Sperm Donor ◽

Biological Relationship ◽

Related Individuals ◽

Unique Ability

If a person requires an organ or tissue donation to survive, many philosophers argue that whatever moral responsibility a biological relative may have to donate to the person in need will be grounded at least partially, if not entirely, in biological relations the potential donor bears to the recipient. We contend that such views ignore the role that a potential donor’s unique ability to help the person in need plays in underwriting such judgments. If, for example, a sperm donor is judged to have a significant moral responsibility to donate tissue to a child conceived with his sperm, we think this will not be due to the fact that the donor stands in a close biological relationship to the recipient. Rather, we think such judgments will largely be grounded in the presumed unique ability of the sperm donor to help the child due to the compatibility of his tissues and organs with those of the recipient. In this paper, we report the results of two studies designed to investigate the comparative roles that biological relatedness and unique ability play in generating judgments of moral responsibility in tissue donation cases. We found that biologically related individuals are deemed to have a significant moral responsibility to donate tissue only when they are one of a small number of people who have the capacity to help.

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Assessment of soil fertility augmenting potential of faba bean (Vicia faba L.) germplasm and their performance

Journal of AgriSearch ◽

10.21921/jas.v3i3.11373 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 3 (3) ◽

Author(s):

Anil Kumar Singh ◽

Rashmi Yadav ◽

M.K. Meena ◽

Y.J. Khan

Keyword(s):

Soil Fertility ◽

Vicia Faba ◽

Faba Bean ◽

Climate Scenario ◽

Climatic Conditions ◽

Third Place ◽

Changing Climate ◽

Vicia Faba L ◽

Unique Ability

Faba bean (Vicia faba L.) maintain third place with respect to area and production among legume. Its unique ability to excel under all most all type of climatic conditions, it is one of the best performing crops under changing climate scenario. Its soil fertility augmenting potential and their performance was evaluated for two years with 73 accessions collected from Bihar. This study provides glimpses of scope and magnitude of soil fertility improving potential of faba bean (Vicia faba L.)

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An enzymatic activation of formaldehyde for nucleotide methylation

Nature Communications ◽

10.1038/s41467-021-24756-8 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 12 (1) ◽

Author(s):

Charles Bou-Nader ◽

Frederick W. Stull ◽

Ludovic Pecqueur ◽

Philippe Simon ◽

Vincent Guérineau ◽

...

Keyword(s):

Amino Acids ◽

Thymidylate Synthase ◽

Active Site ◽

De Novo ◽

Crystallographic Structure ◽

De Novo Synthesis ◽

Active Site Residues ◽

Enzymatic Activation ◽

Enzyme Cofactors ◽

Unique Ability

AbstractFolate enzyme cofactors and their derivatives have the unique ability to provide a single carbon unit at different oxidation levels for the de novo synthesis of amino-acids, purines, or thymidylate, an essential DNA nucleotide. How these cofactors mediate methylene transfer is not fully settled yet, particularly with regard to how the methylene is transferred to the methylene acceptor. Here, we uncovered that the bacterial thymidylate synthase ThyX, which relies on both folate and flavin for activity, can also use a formaldehyde-shunt to directly synthesize thymidylate. Combining biochemical, spectroscopic and anaerobic crystallographic analyses, we showed that formaldehyde reacts with the reduced flavin coenzyme to form a carbinolamine intermediate used by ThyX for dUMP methylation. The crystallographic structure of this intermediate reveals how ThyX activates formaldehyde and uses it, with the assistance of active site residues, to methylate dUMP. Our results reveal that carbinolamine species promote methylene transfer and suggest that the use of a CH2O-shunt may be relevant in several other important folate-dependent reactions.

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Respiration-driven Proton Transport in Submitochondrial Particles

Journal of Biological Chemistry ◽

10.1016/s0021-9258(18)61829-0 ◽

1971 ◽

Vol 246 (19) ◽

pp. 6024-6028 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Peter C. Hinkle ◽

Lawrence L. Horstman

Keyword(s):

Proton Transport ◽

Submitochondrial Particles

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New Mechanistic Insights on Carbon Nanotubes’ Nanotoxicity Using Isolated Submitochondrial Particles, Molecular Docking, and Nano-QSTR Approaches

Biology ◽

10.3390/biology10030171 ◽

2021 ◽

Vol 10 (3) ◽

pp. 171

Author(s):

Michael González-Durruthy ◽

Riccardo Concu ◽

Juan M. Ruso ◽

M. Natália D. S. Cordeiro

Keyword(s):

Carbon Nanotubes ◽

Network Models ◽

Single Walled Carbon Nanotubes ◽

Docking Studies ◽

Fractal Surface ◽

Submitochondrial Particles ◽

Elastic Network ◽

Elastic Network Models ◽

Walled Carbon Nanotubes

Single-walled carbon nanotubes can induce mitochondrial F0F1-ATPase nanotoxicity through inhibition. To completely characterize the mechanistic effect triggering the toxicity, we have developed a new approach based on the combination of experimental and computational study, since the use of only one or few techniques may not fully describe the phenomena. To this end, the in vitro inhibition responses in submitochondrial particles (SMP) was combined with docking, elastic network models, fractal surface analysis, and Nano-QSTR models. In vitro studies suggest that inhibition responses in SMP of F0F1-ATPase enzyme were strongly dependent on the concentration assay (from 3 to 5 µg/mL) for both pristine and COOH single-walled carbon nanotubes types (SWCNT). Besides, both SWCNTs show an interaction inhibition pattern mimicking the oligomycin A (the specific mitochondria F0F1-ATPase inhibitor blocking the c-ring F0 subunit). Performed docking studies denote the best crystallography binding pose obtained for the docking complexes based on the free energy of binding (FEB) fit well with the in vitro evidence from the thermodynamics point of view, following an affinity order such as: FEB (oligomycin A/F0-ATPase complex) = −9.8 kcal/mol > FEB (SWCNT-COOH/F0-ATPase complex) = −6.8 kcal/mol ~ FEB (SWCNT-pristine complex) = −5.9 kcal/mol, with predominance of van der Waals hydrophobic nano-interactions with key F0-ATPase binding site residues (Phe 55 and Phe 64). Elastic network models and fractal surface analysis were performed to study conformational perturbations induced by SWCNT. Our results suggest that interaction may be triggering abnormal allosteric responses and signals propagation in the inter-residue network, which could affect the substrate recognition ligand geometrical specificity of the F0F1-ATPase enzyme in order (SWCNT-pristine > SWCNT-COOH). In addition, Nano-QSTR models have been developed to predict toxicity induced by both SWCNTs, using results of in vitro and docking studies. Results show that this method may be used for the fast prediction of the nanotoxicity induced by SWCNT, avoiding time- and money-consuming techniques. Overall, the obtained results may open new avenues toward to the better understanding and prediction of new nanotoxicity mechanisms, rational drug design-based nanotechnology, and potential biomedical application in precision nanomedicine.

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