Generalized moist potential vorticity and its application in the analysis of atmospheric flows

Potential vorticity(PV)serves as an important dynamic tracer for large-scale motions in the atmosphere and oceans.Significant pro-gress has been made on the understanding and application of PV since the work of Hoskins et al,who introduced an"IPV thinking"of a dynamical system in a purely dry atmosphere.In particular,there has been a substantial amount of work done on the PV in a general moist atmosphere.In this paper,the generalized moist potential vorticity(GMPV)and its application in the mesoscale meteorological fields are reviewed.The GMPV is derived for a real atmosphere(neither completely dry nor saturated)by introducing a generalized potential temperature instead of the potential temperature or equivalent potential temperature.Such a generalization can depict the moist effect on PV anomaly in the non-uniformly saturated atmosphere.The effect of mass forcing induced by rainfall on the anomaly of GMPV is also reviewed and a new dynamic variable,the convective vorticity vector(CVV),is introduced in connection with GMPV.2008 National Natural Science Foundation of China and Chinese Academy of Sciences.Published by Elsevier Limited and Science in China Press.All rights reserved.     

Enrichment of ligands with molecular dockings and subsequent characterization for human alcohol dehydrogenase 3

Alcohol dehydrogenase 3 (ADH3) has been assigned a role in nitric oxide homeostasis due to its function as an S-nitrosoglutathione reductase. As altered S-nitrosoglutathione levels are often associated with disease, compounds that modulate ADH3 activity might be of therapeutic interest. We performed a virtual screening with molecular dockings of more than 40,000 compounds into the active site of human ADH3. A novel knowledge-based scoring method was used to rank compounds, and several compounds that were not known to interact with ADH3 were tested in vitro. Two of these showed substrate activity (9-decen-1-ol and dodecyltetraglycol), where calculated binding scoring energies correlated well with the logarithm of the k _cat/K _m values for the substrates. Two compounds showed inhibition capacity (deoxycholic acid and doxorubicin), and with these data three different lines for specific inhibitors for ADH3 are suggested: fatty acids, glutathione analogs, and cholic acids.     

The genetics of plant metabolism

Variation for metabolite composition and content is often observed in plants. However, it is poorly understood to what extent this variation has a genetic basis. Here, we describe the genetic analysis of natural variation in the metabolite composition in Arabidopsis thaliana. Instead of focusing on specific metabolites, we have applied empirical untargeted metabolomics using liquid chromatography-time of flight mass spectrometry (LC-QTOF MS). This uncovered many qualitative and quantitative differences in metabolite accumulation between A. thaliana accessions. Only 13.4% of the mass peaks were detected in all 14 accessions analyzed. Quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis of more than 2,000 mass peaks, detected in a recombinant inbred line (RIL) population derived from the two most divergent accessions, enabled the identification of QTLs for about 75% of the mass signals. More than one-third of the signals were not detected in either parent, indicating the large potential for modification of metabolic composition through classical breeding.