ALBERT

Description: Zagros is a relatively young and active fold-thrust belt, which has formed due to convergence between the Eurasian and Arabian plates. Magnetotelluric (MT) soundings along a transect were carried out to determine the crustal structure in the collision zone of the two Palaeocontinents. MT data were analysed and modelled using 2-D inversion schemes. The models show clear conductive and resistive domains along the MT profile consistent to a great extent with documented tectonic features and surface geology. The models obtained from the joint inversion of transverse electric and transverse magnetic modes as well as the inversion of the determinant data show similar features along the profile. The new MT results reveal that the transition between two continents at the surface coincides with the western boundary of Sanandaj-Sirjan Zone (SSZ) at the Main Zagros Thrust (MZT). Along the profile towards northeast the conductors at top indicate massive Neogene sediments of the central domain (CD) while the very thick, shallow-located, resistive body (5–25 km thick and 100 km long) beneath is unlikely to be of oceanic affinity, but continental. Another main feature along the profile is the main resistive and conductive parts of the Arabian Plate, which coincide with the tectonic events of High Zagros Fault and Mountain Front Fault. Two highly conductive thick zones are recognized at the southwest part and in the middle of the profile apparently extending to a depth of about 50 km, possibly related to a downward smearing effect due to the presence of thick sedimentary columns in the upper crust. Along the profile, conductive features are recognized at the metamorphic SSZ and Urumieh-Dokhtar Magmatic Assemblage units as well as at CD. Below site 31 along the surface trace of the MZT, the transition between the two continents is distinguished by a complex sequence of conductive and resistive zones both varying laterally as well as vertically. The main difference between the two domains is that the Eurasian Plate seems to be more resistive than the Arabian Plate, although some part of the difference can be related to the thick sequence of conductive sedimentary rocks on the Arabian Plate.

Description: Motivation: Microtubules are dynamic polymers of tubulin dimers that undergo continuous assembly and disassembly. A mounting number of microtubule-associated proteins (MAPs) regulate the dynamic behavior of microtubules and hence the assembly and disassembly of disparate microtubule structures within the cell. Despite recent advances in identification and functional characterization of MAPs, a substantial number of microtubule accessory factors have not been functionally annotated. Here, using profile-to-profile comparisons and structure modeling, we show that the yeast outer kinetochore components NDC80 and NUF2 share evolutionary ancestry with a novel protein family in mammals comprising, besides NDC80/HEC1 and NUF2, three Intraflagellar Transport (IFT) complex B subunits (IFT81, IFT57, CLUAP1) as well as six proteins with poorly defined function (FAM98A-C, CCDC22, CCDC93 and C14orf166). We show that these proteins consist of a divergent N-terminal calponin homology (CH)-like domain adjoined to an array of C-terminal heptad repeats predicted to form a coiled-coil arrangement. We have named the divergent CH-like domain NN–CH after the founding members NDC80 and NUF2. Contact : kbschou@bio.ku.dk or lbpedersen@bio.ku.dk Supplementary information: Supplementary data are available at Bioinformatics online.

Description: The Geological Survey of Sweden has been collecting airborne tensor very low frequency data (VLF) over several decades, covering large parts of the country. The data has been an invaluable source of information for identifying conductive structures that can among other things be related to water-filled fault zones, wet sediments that fill valleys or ore mineralizations. Because the method only uses two differently polarized plane waves of very similar frequency, vertical resolution is low and interpretation is in most cases limited to maps that are directly derived from the data. Occasionally, 2-D inversion is carried out along selected profiles. In this paper, we present for the first time a 3-D inversion for tensor VLF data in order to further increase the usefulness of the data set. The inversion is performed using a non-linear conjugate gradient scheme (Polak-Ribière) with an inexact line-search. The gradient is obtained by an algebraic adjoint method that requires one additional forward calculation involving the adjoint system matrix. The forward modelling is based on integral equations with an analytic formulation of the half-space Green's tensor. It avoids typically required Hankel transforms and is particularly amenable to singularity removal prior to the numerical integration over the volume elements. The system is solved iteratively, thus avoiding construction and storage of the dense system matrix. By using fast 3-D Fourier transforms on nested grids, subsequently farther away interactions are represented with less detail and therefore with less computational effort, enabling us to bridge the gap between the relatively short wavelengths of the fields (tens of metres) and the large model dimensions (several square kilometres). We find that the approximation of the fields can be off by several per cent, yet the transfer functions in the air are practically unaffected. We verify our code using synthetic calculations from well-established 2-D methods, and trade modelling accuracy off against computational effort in order to keep the inversion feasible in both respects. Our compromise is to limit the permissible resistivity to not fall below 100 m to maintain computational domains as large as 10 10 km 2 and computation times on the order of a few hours on standard PCs. We investigate the effect of possible local violations of these limits. Even though the conductivity magnitude can then not be recovered correctly, we do not observe any structural artefacts related to this in our tests. We invert a data set from northern Sweden, where we find an excellent agreement of known geological features, such as contacts or fault zones, with elongated conductive structures, while high resistivity is encountered in probably less disturbed geology, often related to topographic highs, which have survived predominantly glacial erosion processes. As expected from synthetic studies, the resolution is laterally high, but vertically limited down to the top of conductive structures.