Biosynthesis of an Anti-Addiction Agent from the Iboga Plant

Abstract(−)-Ibogaine and (−)-voacangine are plant derived psychoactives that show promise as effective treatments for opioid addiction. However, these compounds are produced by hard to source plants making these chemicals difficult for broad-scale use. Here we report the complete biosynthesis of (−)-voacangine, and de-esterified voacangine, which is converted to (−)-ibogaine by heating. This discovery will enable production of these compounds by synthetic biology methods. Notably, (−)-ibogaine and (−)-voacangine are of the opposite enantiomeric configuration compared to the other major alkaloids found in this natural product class. Discovery of these biosynthetic enzymes therefore demonstrates how nature generates both enantiomeric series of this medically important alkaloid scaffold using closely related enzymes, including those that catalyze enantioselective formal Diels-Alder reactions.One Sentence SummaryBiosynthesis of iboga alkaloids with anti-addiction promise reveals enantioselectivity of enzymatic Diels-Alder reactions.

SOM-Based Class Discovery for Emotion Detection Based on DEAP Dataset

This paper investigates the possibility of identifying classes by clustering. This study includes employing Self-Organizing Maps (SOM) in identifying clusters from EEG signals that could then be mapped to emotional classes. Beginning by training varying sizes of SOM with the EEG data provided from the public dataset: DEAP. The produced graphs showing Neighbor Distance, Sample Hits, and Weight Position are examined. Following that, the ground-truth label provided in DEAP is tested, in order to identify correlations between the label and the clusters produced by the SOM. The results show that there is a potential of class discovery using SOM-based clustering. It is then concluded that by evaluating the implications of this work and the difficulties in evaluating its outcome.