Somatostatin content and release of isolated pancreatic islets from obese-hyperglycemic mice.

The somatostatin content in pancreatic islets of obese-hyperglycemic mice was much lower than in the islets of normal mice. Also the release of somatostatin was decreased from the islets obtained from the obese-hyperglycemic mice. Tissue culture for 1 week changed neither the content of, nor the amount of somatostatin released from, the pancreatic islets.     

Differential binding of conA and WGA on the cell surface, the role of sialic acid in their expression and the increased activity of sialidase after cis-Platin treatment

It is reported that concanavalin A (conA) and wheat germ agglutinin (WGA) have a differential binding pattern on normal mouse spleen lymphocytes and the surface of Dalton's lymphoma cells. It is suggested that sialic acid on the cell surface controls the expression of lectin binding sites. Further, it has been observed that the increased release of sialic acid from cell surfaces after cis-dichlorodiammine platinum (II) (cis-Platin) treatment is due to the increased activity of sialidase.     

Coexistence of A- and B-form DNA in a single crystal lattice

It is well known that DNA can exist in a variety of conformations which can be interconverted by relatively mild changes in conditions. The in vivo conformation of DNA is usually thought to be the B form, but there is recent evidence that other conformations may be important in DNA-protein recognition. Different fragments of DNA crystallized under virtually identical conditions can form A, B or Z helices. A fragment that adopted an A conformation in a crystal was found in the B conformation in solution, whereas NMR spectroscopy of A-DNA films revealed the presence of a substantial amount of disordered B-DNA. Until now, however, a DNA fragment of a given sequence has not been crystallized in more than one global conformation. We report here an X-ray diffraction study of crystals of the DNA octamer dGGBrUABrUACC. In addition to a 'framework' of A-DNA, which gives discrete X-ray reflections, there are partially disordered B-DNA helices, recognized by their diffuse scattering features.     

MULTIPLE CRITERIA DECISION MAKING： DISCORDANT PREFERENCES AND PROBLEM DESCRIPTION

There are many practical decision problems where decision makers＇ preferences may be inconsistent and contradictory. In this paper, new methods for ordering and classifying multi-attribute objects by discordant collective preferences are suggested. These methods are based on the theory of multiset metric spaces. The proposed techniques are applied to ranking companies and a competitive selection of projects, which are estimated by several experts upon multiple qualitative criteria.     

Cooperative tandem binding of met repressor of Escherichia coli

We present biochemical and genetic data to support the hypothesis that the Escherichia coli met repressor, MetJ, binds to synthetic and natural operator sequences in tandem arrays such that repression depends not only on the affinity of the DNA-protein interaction, but also on protein-protein contacts along the tandem array. This represents a novel form of regulatory switch. Furthermore, there seems to be homology between the organization of the met and trp operators.