Currinmarks5639

The β-propeller fold is adopted by a sequentially diverse family of repeat proteins with apparent rotational symmetry. While the structure is mostly stabilized by hydrophobic interactions, an additional stabilization is provided by hydrogen bonds between the N-and C-termini, which are almost invariably part of the same β-sheet. This feature is often referred to as the "Velcro" closure. The positioning of the termini within a blade is variable and depends on the protein family. In order to investigate the influence of this location on protein structure, folding and stability, we created different circular permutants, and a circularized version, of the designer propeller protein named Pizza. This protein is perfectly symmetrical, possessing six identical repeats. While all mutants adopt the same structure, the proteins lacking the "Velcro" closure were found to be significantly less resistant to thermal and chemical denaturation. This could explain why such proteins are rarely observed in nature. Interestingly the most common "Velcro" configuration for this protein family was not the most stable among the Pizza variants tested. The circularized version shows dramatically improved stability, which could have implications for future applications.

Global food security faces a number of challenges due to increasing population, climate change, and urbanization, while excessive use of nitrogen fertilizers has become a major challenge for sustainable, intensive agriculture. Assessing the impact of agronomic management practices on seed yield, grain quality, and soil fertility is a critical step in understanding nutrientuse efficiency.

The comprehensive evaluation index had good fitness to that of single attribute (i.e. seed yield, crop quality and soil fertility), indicating that the comprehensive evaluation index was reliable. Applying controlled-release urea (rice in wheat and oilseed rape field 150 kg N ha

, other crops 120 kg N ha

) plus common urea (30 kg N ha

) incorporating straw from the previous season across the growing season for cereal and oilseed crops showed a slight improvement in seed productivity and Nuse efficiency among three cropping systems in the traditional evaluation method. Compared with local farm practice (applying common urea of 150 kg N ha

), applying these practices in combination based on the outcome of the comprehensive evaluation index method decreased the seed yield by -1.27 ~ 29.8% but improved quality and soil fertility for the paddy-upland cropping system, respectively.

Properly managing N application by applying partial and fully controlled release of urea with or without straw incorporation for a specific crop system has the potential to provide a better compromise among yield, grain quality, and soil fertility in southern China. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry.

Properly managing N application by applying partial and fully controlled release of urea with or without straw incorporation for a specific crop system has the potential to provide a better compromise among yield, grain quality, and soil fertility in southern China. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry.We sought to understand the role of stage at diagnosis in observed age disparities in colon cancer survival among people aged 50 to 99 years using population-based cancer registry data from seven high-income countries Australia, Canada, Denmark, Ireland, New Zealand, Norway and the United Kingdom. We used colon cancer incidence data for the period 2010 to 2014. We estimated the 3-year net survival, as well as the 3-year net survival conditional on surviving at least 6 months and 1 year after diagnosis, by country and stage at diagnosis (categorised as localised, regional or distant) using flexible parametric excess hazard regression models. In all countries, increasing age was associated with lower net survival. For example, 3-year net survival (95% confidence interval) was 81% (80-82) for 50 to 64 year olds and 58% (56-60) for 85 to 99 year olds in Australia, and 74% (73-74) and 39% (39-40) in the United Kingdom, respectively. Those with distant stage colon cancer had the largest difference in colon cancer survival between the youngest and the oldest patients. Excess mortality for the oldest patients with localised or regional cancers was observed during the first 6 months after diagnosis. Older patients diagnosed with localised (and in some countries regional) stage colon cancer who survived 6 months after diagnosis experienced the same survival as their younger counterparts. Further studies examining other prognostic clinical factors such as comorbidities and treatment, and socioeconomic factors are warranted to gain further understanding of the age disparities in colon cancer survival.The S5-methylation test, an alternative to cytology and HPV16/18 genotyping to triage high-risk HPV-positive (hrHPV+) women, has not been widely validated in low-middle-income countries (LMICs). BAY 1000394 We compared S5 to HPV16/18 and cytology to detect cervical intraepithelial neoplasia Grade 2 or worse (CIN2+) and CIN3+ in hrHPV+ women selected from a randomized pragmatic trial of 2661 Colombian women with an earlier-borderline abnormal cytology. We included all hrHPV+ CIN2 and CIN3+ cases (n = 183) age matched to 183 less then CIN2 hrHPV+. Baseline specimens were HPV-genotyped and tested by S5-methylation, blinded to cytology, histology and initial HPV results. We evaluated the test performance of predefined S5-classifier (cut-point 0.8) and a post hoc classifier at a different cut-point (3.1). S5 sensitivity for CIN2+ was 82% (95% confidence interval [CI] 76.4-87.5) and for CIN3+ 77.08% (95% CI 65.19-88.97). S5 sensitivity was higher than HPV16/18 sensitivity (48.1%, 95% CI 40.85-55.33) or cytology (31.21%, 95% CI 24.50-37.93) but with lower specificity (35%, 95% CI 28.1-42). At cut-point 3.1, S5 sensitivity for CIN2+ (55.2%, 95% CI 48-62.4) or CIN3+ (64.6%, 95% CI 51.0-78.1) was also superior to HPV16/18 (P  less then  .05) or cytology (P  less then  .0001). At this cut-point S5 specificity (76%, 95% CI 69.8-82.1 for less then CIN2) was higher than HPV16/18 (67.21%, 95% CI 60.41-74.01, P = .0062) and similar to cytology (75.57%, 95% CI 69.34-81.79, P = 1). HPV16/18 plus cytology sensitivity was similar to S5 for CIN3+, however, false-positive rate was higher (50.27% vs. 24.04%). High sensitivity is crucial in LMICs, S5-methylation exceeded HPV16/18 or cytology sensitivity with comparable specificity for CIN2+ and CIN3+ in hrHPV-positive Colombian women. Furthermore, S5 triage had comparable sensitivity and significantly fewer false positives than cytology and HPV16/18 combination.