Calcium alginate: A new approach in the artificial culturing of insects,applied toSpodoptera littoralis (Boisduval)

Résumé La réaction entre l'alginate de soude et les ions de calcium a été utilisée dans la préparation à froid d'un gel nutritif servant à l'élevage artificiel deSpodoptera littoralis (Boisduval).     

Tetramerization of an RNA oligonucleotide containing a GGGG sequence.

Poly rG can form four-stranded helices. The Hoogsteen-paired quartets of G residues on which such structures depend are so stable that they will form in 5'-GMP solutions, provided that Na+ or K+ are present (see for example, refs 2-4). Telomeric DNA sequences, which are G-rich, adopt four-stranded antiparallel G-quartet conformations in vitro, and parallel tetramerization of G-rich sequences may be involved in meiosis. Here we show that RNAs containing short runs of Gs can also tetramerize. A 19-base oligonucleotide derived from the 5S RNA of Escherichia coli (strand III), 5'GCCGAUGGUAGUGUGGGGU3', forms a K(+)-stabilized tetrameric aggregate that depends on the G residues at its 3' end. This complex is so stable that it would be surprising if similar structures do not occur in nature.     

Engineering the third wave of biocatalysis

Over the past ten years, scientific and technological advances have established biocatalysis as a practical and environmentally friendly alternative to traditional metallo- and organocatalysis in chemical synthesis, both in the laboratory and on an industrial scale. Key advances in DNA sequencing and gene synthesis are at the base of tremendous progress in tailoring biocatalysts by protein engineering and design, and the ability to reorganize enzymes into new biosynthetic pathways. To highlight these achievements, here we discuss applications of protein-engineered biocatalysts ranging from commodity chemicals to advanced pharmaceutical intermediates that use enzyme catalysis as a key step.     

Structural asymmetry and the stability of diverse food webs

Untangling the influence of human activities on food-web stability and persistence is complex given the large numbers of species and overwhelming number of interactions within ecosystems. Although biodiversity has been associated with stability, the actual structures and processes that confer stability to diverse food webs remain largely unknown. Here we show that real food webs are structured such that top predators act as couplers of distinct energy channels that differ in both productivity and turnover rate. Our theoretical analysis shows that coupled fast and slow channels convey both local and non-local stability to food webs. Alarmingly, the same human actions that have been implicated in the loss of biodiversity also directly erode the very structures and processes that we show to confer stability on food webs.