CRYSTALLOGRAPHIC INVESTIGATION OF ANTITHROMBIN III.

1987 ◽  
Author(s):  
J P Samama ◽  
M Delarue ◽  
D Moras ◽  
M Petitou ◽  
J C Lormeau ◽  
...  

The plasma protein inhibitor anti thrombin III in its native form has been crystallized using standard techniques.The crystals diffract to about and belong to space group P41212 with cell parameters:a = b = 90.6<, c = 380.7<.The asymmetric unit contains three molecules of anti thrombin III.The self rotation function computed with the native data set indicates the presence of a non crystallographic three fold axis. Cross rotation function calculations using themodel of the cleaved α1,-antitrypsin (H. Loebermann at.,J. Mol. Biol.(1985) 177, 531) suggests tertiary structuresimilarities between the two plasma proteins.This is in agreement with the already described primary sequence homology of these glycoproteins but at variance with the model of active α1-anti trypsin inferred from the previous studies on the cleaved molecule.The technical assistance of M. Maman is deeply appreciated.

Author(s):  
Bingquan Gao ◽  
Ridao Chen ◽  
Xiao Liu ◽  
Jungui Dai ◽  
Fei Sun

Prenylated aromatics are produced by aromatic prenyltransferases during the secondary metabolism of bacteria, fungi and plants. The prenylation of nonprenylated precursors can lead to great chemical diversity and extensive biological properties.Aspergillus terreusaromatic prenyltransferase (AtaPT), which has recently been discovered and characterized, is such an enzyme and is responsible for the prenylation of various aromatic compounds. Here, recombinant AtaPT was overexpressed inEscherichia coli, purified and crystallized. Diffraction data were collected to a resolution of 1.71 Å and the crystal belonged to space groupP21212, with unit-cell parametersa= 96.2,b = 135.8,c= 69.5 Å, α = β = γ = 90°. Analysis of the calculated Matthews coefficient and the self-rotation function suggested that there are two AtaPT molecules in the asymmetric unit.


1999 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 528-530 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Bernier-Villamor ◽  
A. Camacho ◽  
D. González-Pacanowska ◽  
E. Cedergren-Zeppezauer ◽  
A. Antson ◽  
...  

Crystals of Trypanosoma cruzi dUTPase have been grown. Two different morphologies are observed, depending on the molecular weight of the PEG used as precipitating agent in the mother liquor, both having a hexagonal unit cell with similar dimensions. Complete X-ray diffraction data have been collected to low resolution for one of the forms. The space group is P6322, with unit-cell dimensions a = 134.15, c = 147.05 Å. Peaks in the self-rotation function and the solvent content are consistent with two molecules of dUTPase per asymmetric unit.


1998 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 202-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne Skiffington ◽  
Ephrem Fernandez ◽  
Ken McFarland

This study extends previous attempts to assess emotion with single adjective descriptors, by examining semantic as well as cognitive, motivational, and intensity features of emotions. The focus was on seven negative emotions common to several emotion typologies: anger, fear, sadness, shame, pity, jealousy, and contempt. For each of these emotions, seven items were generated corresponding to cognitive appraisal about the self, cognitive appraisal about the environment, action tendency, action fantasy, synonym, antonym, and intensity range of the emotion, respectively. A pilot study established that 48 of the 49 items were linked predominantly to the specific emotions as predicted. The main data set comprising 700 subjects' ratings of relatedness between items and emotions was subjected to a series of factor analyses, which revealed that 44 of the 49 items loaded on the emotion constructs as predicted. A final factor analysis of these items uncovered seven factors accounting for 39% of the variance. These emergent factors corresponded to the hypothesized emotion constructs, with the exception of anger and fear, which were somewhat confounded. These findings lay the groundwork for the construction of an instrument to assess emotions multicomponentially.


1976 ◽  
Vol 35 (02) ◽  
pp. 295-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
B Østerud ◽  
M Miller-Andersson ◽  
U Abildgaard ◽  
H Prydz

SummaryAntithrombin III, purified to homogeneity according to Polyacrylamide gel disc electrophoresis and immunoelectrophoresis, inhibited the activity of purified factor IXa and Xa, whereas factor VII was not inhibited either in the active or in the native form.Antithrombin III is the single most important inhibitor of factor Xa in plasma. Factor Xa does not, however, reduce the activity of antithrombin III against thrombin.


2020 ◽  
Vol 7 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S417-S417
Author(s):  
Peyton R Treutel ◽  
Anna Carr ◽  
Pradeep Bathina

Abstract Background Aspergillus is a fungus spread by inhalation of spores that can lead to invasive (IA), chronic, or allergic aspergillosis. Risk factors for IA include neutropenia, hematological malignancy, allogenic stem cell (HSCT) or solid organ transplant, severe immunodeficiency, or prolonged steroid use. An alternative to invasive tissue sampling, the serum Galactomannan (AGM) test detects a polysaccharide cell wall component of Aspergillus and can be used to determine a probable diagnosis of IA. Accuracy of AGM is related to disease burden and thus has the highest sensitivity and specificity in patients with hematologic malignancy or Hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT) at 70-82% and 86-92%, respectively. Studies have shown sensitivity to decline in other populations, with solid organ transplants as low as 20%. Methods We performed a retrospective study of all patients who received the AGM test at UMMC from January 3, 2013 to December 31, 2019. Patient Cohort Explorer was used to obtain de-identified patient data from EPIC. We obtained the number of encounters and patients on whom the AGM test was performed along with other variables. Billing offices provided the self-pay cost per AGM test. Results A total of 6,404 AGM tests were performed on 2,126 patients during 4,315 encounters in the study period. With a total of 499, 574, 984, 1140, 851, 1175 and 1181 tests done respectively from 2013 to 2019, a increasing trend was noted. The patients ages ranged from 1 to 89 with a median age of 52 years. A total of 3,055 tests were ordered in females, and 3,349 were ordered in males. At a cut off value (optical density index) of &gt; 0.5, 183 AGM tests resulted positive in 108 patients and at a cut of &gt; 1.0, 113 tests are positive in 70 patients. The rate of a positive AGM tests at &gt; 0.5 was at 2.85% and at &gt; 1.0 was at 1.76% over the study period. With the self-pay cost of each test at $134.54 in 2019 USD, the total cost of 6,404 tests was $861,594.16. Conclusion To our knowledge this data set constitutes the largest sample size of AGM testing. From our data, it seems that the rate of ordering this test has increased yearly. Relatively low percentage of these tests are positive, suggesting that it is most likely a large amount of these tests could have been ordered inappropriately or in the wrong clinical context. Disclosures All Authors: No reported disclosures


Author(s):  
Wei Yue ◽  
Marc Cowling

It is well documented that the self-employed experience higher levels of happiness than waged employees even when their incomes are lower. Given the UK government’s asymmetric treatment of waged workers and the self-employed, we use a unique Covid-19 period data set which covers the months leading up to the March lockdown and the months just after to assess three aspects of the Covid-19 crisis on the self-employed: hours of work reductions, the associated income reductions and the effects of both on subjective well-being. Our findings show the large and disproportionate reductions in hours and income for the self-employed directly contributed to a deterioration in their levels of subjective well-being compared to waged workers. It appears that their resilience was broken when faced with the reality of dealing with rare events, particularly when the UK welfare support response was asymmetric and favouring waged employees.


Author(s):  
Mingbo Wu ◽  
Xiaohong Peng ◽  
Hua Wen ◽  
Qin Wang ◽  
Qianming Chen ◽  
...  

Tannase catalyses the hydrolysis of the galloyl ester bond of tannins to release gallic acid. It belongs to the serine esterases and has wide applications in the food, feed, beverage, pharmaceutical and chemical industries. The tannase fromLactobacillus plantarumwas cloned, expressed and purified. The protein was crystallized by the sitting-drop vapour-diffusion method with microseeding. The crystals belonged to space groupP1, with unit-cell paramtersa= 46.5,b= 62.8,c= 83.8 Å, α = 70.4, β = 86.0, γ = 79.4°. Although the enzyme exists mainly as a monomer in solution, it forms a dimer in the asymmetric unit of the crystal. The crystals diffracted to beyond 1.60 Å resolution using synchrotron radiation and a complete data set was collected to 1.65 Å resolution.


2015 ◽  
Vol 34 (9) ◽  
pp. 1094-1112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Darren Lee-Ross

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to permit further understanding of entrepreneurial personality characteristics of need for achievement, locus of control, innovation, risk-taking and competitive aggression by comparing the self-employed with waged and salaried workers and the general population. Design/methodology/approach – A logistic regression equation was used on the “World Values Survey (WVS)” data set to test the relationship between entrepreneurship and personality characteristics by estimating the probability of an event occurring directly. Findings – This research replicated and extended the earlier work of Beugelsdijk and Noorderhaven (2005). Using two reference groups for comparison, entrepreneurs are different in terms of their psychological characteristics. Specifically, these are need for achievement and locus of control; these were the strongest characteristics. Competitive aggression and risk-taking were moderate in this respect with innovation finding least support. Research limitations/implications – In terms of limitations, the present study does not account for environmental enablers or mitigation of starting and sustaining businesses. Also how do the national media, society and culture regard entrepreneurship? Moreover, is there only one model of entrepreneurship or several? For example, amongst indigenous societies, entrepreneurship is more of a collective rather than an individual pursuit where culture and heritage preservation are more important than purely profit generation. Similarly, no account is taken of the differences (nuanced or otherwise) between entrepreneurial personality characteristics in factor vs opportunity/innovation-driven economies. Practical implications – The self-employed in this study were different to both comparison groups which is important information for government policy formation at all levels in terms of targeted business/career education, infrastructure, funding, opportunity creation and incubator programmes. Furthermore, rudimentary community and university diagnostics could be formulated around these entrepreneurial characteristics to identify potential entrepreneurs for a “career” of self-employment or placement within large firms as “intrapreneurs” to improve productivity and economic growth. Originality/value – This study is the first to use the WVS for scrutiny of entrepreneurial personality traits. It expands and augments earlier work in the field which used the smaller “European Values Survey” by including many more questions pertaining to entrepreneurial personality characteristics adding additional robustness to the outcomes.


2002 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-81 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. Modai ◽  
M. Ritsner ◽  
R. Kurs ◽  
S. Mendel ◽  
A. Ponizovsky

SummaryBackgroundMedically serious suicide attempts have been recognized as the most important predictor of suicide. The Computerized Suicide Risk Scale based on backpropagation neural networks (CSRS-BP) has been recently found efficient in the detection of records of patients who performed medically serious suicide attempts (MSSA).ObjectivesTo validate the CSRS-BP by: 1) using the CSRS-BP with patients instead of records; 2) comparing the ability of expert psychiatrists to detect MSSA, using the CSRS checklist; and 3) comparing the results of the Risk Estimator for Suicide (RES) and the self-rating Suicide Risk Scale (SRS) with the CSRS-BP.MethodsTwo hundred fifty psychiatric inpatients (35 MSSA and 215 non-MSSA) were diagnosed by clinicians using the SCID DSM-IV. Three expert psychiatrists completed the CSRS checklist, and the RES for each patient, and the patients completed the self-report SRS assessment scale. The CSRS-BP was run for each patient. Five other expert psychiatrists assessed the CSRS checklists and estimated the probability of MSSA for each patient. Comparisons of sensitivity and specificity rates between CSRS-BP, assessment scales and experts were done.ResultsInitially, the CSRS-BP, RES, SRS, and experts performed poorly. Although sensitivity and specificity rates significantly improved (two to four times) after the inclusion of information regarding the number of previous suicide attempts in the input data set, results still remained insignificant.ConclusionsThe CSRS-BP, which was very successful in the detection of MSSA patient records, failed to detect MSSA patients in face-to-face interviews. Information regarding previous suicide attempts is an important MSSA predictor, but remains insufficient for the detection of MSSA in individual patients. The detection rate of the SRS and RES scales was also poor and could therefore not identify MSSA patients or be used to validate the CSRS-BP.


2014 ◽  
Vol 70 (10) ◽  
pp. 1424-1427 ◽  
Author(s):  
José A. Brito ◽  
André Gutierres ◽  
Kevin Denkmann ◽  
Christiane Dahl ◽  
Margarida Archer

The ability to perform the very simple oxidation of two molecules of thiosulfate to tetrathionate is widespread among prokaryotes. Despite the prevalent occurrence of tetrathionate formation and its well documented significance within the sulfur cycle, little is known about the enzymes that catalyze the oxidative condensation of two thiosulfate anions. To fill this gap, the thiosulfate dehydrogenase (TsdA) enzyme from the purple sulfur bacteriumAllochromatium vinosumwas recombinantly expressed inEscherichia coli, purified and crystallized, and a crystallographic data set was collected. The crystals belonged to the monoclinic space groupC2, with unit-cell parametersa= 79.2,b= 69.9,c= 57.9 Å, β = 129.3°, contained one monomer per asymmetric unit and diffracted to a resolution of 1.98 Å.


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