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Water Chreodes And The Mechanisms Of Ligand Diffusion, General Anesthesia, And Sleep, Lemont B. Kier

Study of Biological Complexity Publications

The concept of the presence of passageways, chreodes, created by the influence of the hydropathic states of amino acid side chains on the surface water of proteins, has been proposed. These chreodes facilitate and direct the diffusion of neurotransmitters through surface water, to the receptor or active site on a protein. This system of chreodes is vulnerable to the presence of some other molecules that may encounter the chreode system. This encounter and disruption has been proposed to explain the mechanism of general anesthesia. Based on much recent evidence of the similarities between anesthesia from volatile anesthetic agents and sleep, …

Marine Reptiles, Arne R. Rasmessen, John D. Murphy, Medy Ompi, J. Whitfield Gibbons, Peter Uetz

Study of Biological Complexity Publications

Of the more than 12,000 species and subspecies of extant reptiles, about 100 have re-entered the ocean. Among them are seven species of sea turtles and about 80 species and subspecies of sea snakes, as well as a few other species that are occasionally or regularly found in brackish waters, including various other snakes, the saltwater crocodile, and the marine iguana of the Galapagos Islands. The largest group of marine reptiles, the sea snakes, occur in the tropical and subtropical waters of the Indian and Pacific Oceans from the east coast of Africa to the Gulf of Panama. They inhabit …

The Protein Interaction Map Of Bacteriophage Lambda, Seesandra V. Rajagopala, Sherwood Casjens, Peter Uetz

Study of Biological Complexity Publications

Background

Bacteriophage lambda is a model phage for most other dsDNA phages and has been studied for over 60 years. Although it is probably the best-characterized phage there are still about 20 poorly understood open reading frames in its 48-kb genome. For a complete understanding we need to know all interactions among its proteins. We have manually curated the lambda literature and compiled a total of 33 interactions that have been found among lambda proteins. We set out to find out how many protein-protein interactions remain to be found in this phage.

Results

In order to map lambda's interactions, we …

Evolution Combined With Genomic Study Elucidates Genetic Bases Of Isobutanol Tolerance In Escherichia Coli, Jeremy J. Minty, Ann A. Lesnefsky, Fengming Lin, Yu Chen, Ted A. Zaroff, Artur B. Veloso, Bin Xie, Catie A. Mcconnell, Rebecca J. Ward, Donald R. Schwartz, Jean-Marie Rouillard, Yuan Gao, Erdogan Gulari, Xiaoxia Nina Lin

Study of Biological Complexity Publications

Background

Isobutanol is a promising next-generation biofuel with demonstrated high yield microbial production, but the toxicity of this molecule reduces fermentation volumetric productivity and final titer. Organic solvent tolerance is a complex, multigenic phenotype that has been recalcitrant to rational engineering approaches. We apply experimental evolution followed by genome resequencing and a gene expression study to elucidate genetic bases of adaptation to exogenous isobutanol stress.

Results

The adaptations acquired in our evolved lineages exhibit antagonistic pleiotropy between minimal and rich medium, and appear to be specific to the effects of longer chain alcohols. By examining genotypic adaptation in multiple independent …