The neuronal sortilin-related receptor SORL1 is genetically associated with Alzheimer disease

The recycling of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) from the cell surface via the endocytic pathways plays a key role in the generation of amyloid beta peptide (Abeta) in Alzheimer disease. We report here that inherited variants in the SORL1 neuronal sorting receptor are associated with late-onset Alzheimer disease. These variants, which occur in at least two different clusters of intronic sequences within the SORL1 gene (also known as LR11 or SORLA) may regulate tissue-specific expression of SORL1. We also show that SORL1 directs trafficking of APP into recycling pathways and that when SORL1 is underexpressed, APP is sorted into Abeta-generating compartments. These data suggest that inherited or acquired changes in SORL1 expression or function are mechanistically involved in causing Alzheimer disease.     

Insight into a natural Diels-Alder reaction from the structure of macrophomate synthase

The Diels-Alder reaction, which forms a six-membered ring from an alkene (dienophile) and a 1,3-diene, is synthetically very useful for construction of cyclic products with high regio- and stereoselectivity under mild conditions. It has been applied to the synthesis of complex pharmaceutical and biologically active compounds. Although evidence on natural Diels-Alderases has been accumulated in the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites, there has been no report on the structural details of the natural Diels-Alderases. The function and catalytic mechanism of the natural Diels-Alderase are of great interest owing to the diversity of molecular skeletons in natural Diels-Alder adducts. Here we present the 1.70 A resolution crystal structure of the natural Diels-Alderase, fungal macrophomate synthase (MPS), in complex with pyruvate. The active site of the enzyme is large and hydrophobic, contributing amino acid residues that can hydrogen-bond to the substrate 2-pyrone. These data provide information on the catalytic mechanism of MPS, and suggest that the reaction proceeds via a large-scale structural reorganization of the product.     

Enzymatic catalysis of anti-Baldwin ring closure in polyether biosynthesis

Polycyclic polyether natural products have fascinated chemists and biologists alike owing to their useful biological activity, highly complex structure and intriguing biosynthetic mechanisms. Following the original proposal for the polyepoxide origin of lasalocid and isolasalocid and the experimental determination of the origins of the oxygen and carbon atoms of both lasalocid and monensin, a unified stereochemical model for the biosynthesis of polyether ionophore antibiotics was proposed. The model was based on a cascade of nucleophilic ring closures of postulated polyepoxide substrates generated by stereospecific oxidation of all-trans polyene polyketide intermediates. Shortly thereafter, a related model was proposed for the biogenesis of marine ladder toxins, involving a series of nominally disfavoured anti-Baldwin, endo-tet epoxide-ring-opening reactions. Recently, we identified Lsd19 from the Streptomyces lasaliensis gene cluster as the epoxide hydrolase responsible for the epoxide-opening cyclization of bisepoxyprelasalocid A to form lasalocid A. Here we report the X-ray crystal structure of Lsd19 in complex with its substrate and product analogue to provide the first atomic structure-to our knowledge-of a natural enzyme capable of catalysing the disfavoured epoxide-opening cyclic ether formation. On the basis of our structural and computational studies, we propose a general mechanism for the enzymatic catalysis of polyether natural product biosynthesis.     

Systematic design of single carrier overlap frequency domain equalization

<正> This paper proposes a systematic design method of overlap frequency domain equalization(FDE) for single carrier (SC) transmission without a guard interval (GI).Based on the analysis of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) of the equalizer output for each symbol,the authors adaptivelydetermine the block of the overlap FDE,where the block is defined as a set of symbols at the equalizeroutput with sufficiently low error rate,for a certain fixed sliding window size,which corresponds toa fast Fourier transform (FFT) window size.The proposed method takes advantage of the fact thatthe utility part of the equalized signal is localized around the center of the FFT window.In addition,the authors also propose to adjust the block size in order to control the computational complexity ofthe equalization per processed sample associating with the average bit error rate (BER) of the system.Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can achieve comparable BER performance to theconventional SC-FDE scheme with sufficient GI insertion for both the coded and uncoded cases withvarious modulation levels,while requiring lower computational complexity compared to the SC overlapFDE transmission with the fixed block.     

阻尼非线性Schrödinger方程解的时间衰减估计

研究了满足强耗散条件Iλ<0,︳Iλ︳>((p-1)/2(√p))︳Rλ︳的一维阻尼非线性Schr?dinger方程的初始值问题.在初始值‖v0(x)‖H0,θ(?)(1/2<θ≤1)较大的条件下,讨论了此类阻尼非线性Schr?dinger方程解的时间衰减估计和长时间渐近行为.     

Morphology and Microstructure of Spider Dragline Silk from Araneus Ventricosus

The spider dragline silk has excellent mechanical properties. The stress- strain curves of dragline silk fibers have intraspecific and intraindividual variability because of the spiders active control during spinning process. To investigate the relationship between the morphology of dragline silk fibers and spinning conditions, four samples were made at the reeling rates of 1mm/s, 20mm/s, 43.5mm/s and 110mm/s from the major ampullate glands of Araneus Ventricosus and the other two of dragline silks were prepared from a crawling or dropping spider. The surface microstructure and nanofibril characteristic were analyzed with atomic force microscopy (AFM). AFM images of 2000nm*2000nm and 500nm*500nm of these samples showed that the spinning condition influenced the surface roughness and fibril size, while AFM images of 200nm*200nm clearly displayed that dragline silk of Araneus Ventricosus included sheet macro-conformation structure. These results can facilitate the further investigation of the spinning mechanism of a spider in order to understand mechanical properties and macromolecular structures of dragline silk.     

Java字节码异常处理中信息流的分析

为提高Java移动代码动态安全验证的准确性和实用性,通过分析Java字节码中异常处理的方式与流程,提出了追踪、记录异常处理中信息流的方法.采用字节码改写技术,将异常处理中信息流的相关数据封装在异常类当中,从而保证了所采取的处理对Java虚拟机的透明性,并进一步提高了动态验证的精度.     

Northern Hemisphere forcing of climatic cycles in Antarctica over the past 360,000 years

The Milankovitch theory of climate change proposes that glacial-interglacial cycles are driven by changes in summer insolation at high northern latitudes. The timing of climate change in the Southern Hemisphere at glacial-interglacial transitions (which are known as terminations) relative to variations in summer insolation in the Northern Hemisphere is an important test of this hypothesis. So far, it has only been possible to apply this test to the most recent termination, because the dating uncertainty associated with older terminations is too large to allow phase relationships to be determined. Here we present a new chronology of Antarctic climate change over the past 360,000 years that is based on the ratio of oxygen to nitrogen molecules in air trapped in the Dome Fuji and Vostok ice cores. This ratio is a proxy for local summer insolation, and thus allows the chronology to be constructed by orbital tuning without the need to assume a lag between a climate record and an orbital parameter. The accuracy of the chronology allows us to examine the phase relationships between climate records from the ice cores and changes in insolation. Our results indicate that orbital-scale Antarctic climate change lags Northern Hemisphere insolation by a few millennia, and that the increases in Antarctic temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentration during the last four terminations occurred within the rising phase of Northern Hemisphere summer insolation. These results support the Milankovitch theory that Northern Hemisphere summer insolation triggered the last four deglaciations.