ALBERT

Description: The soluble N-ethylmaleimide–sensitive factor attachment protein receptor (SNARE) complex drives the majority of intracellular and exocytic membrane fusion events. Whether and how SNAREs cooperate to mediate fusion has been a subject of intense study, with estimates ranging from a single SNARE complex to 15. Here we show that there is...

Description: The unique structural motifs and self-recognition properties of DNA can be exploited to generate self-assembling DNA nanostructures of specific shapes using a 'bottom-up' approach. Several assembly strategies have been developed for building complex three-dimensional (3D) DNA nanostructures. Recently, the DNA 'origami' method was used to build two-dimensional addressable DNA structures of arbitrary shape that can be used as platforms to arrange nanomaterials with high precision and specificity. A long-term goal of this field has been to construct fully addressable 3D DNA nanostructures. Here we extend the DNA origami method into three dimensions by creating an addressable DNA box 42 x 36 x 36 nm(3) in size that can be opened in the presence of externally supplied DNA 'keys'. We thoroughly characterize the structure of this DNA box using cryogenic transmission electron microscopy, small-angle X-ray scattering and atomic force microscopy, and use fluorescence resonance energy transfer to optically monitor the opening of the lid. Controlled access to the interior compartment of this DNA nanocontainer could yield several interesting applications, for example as a logic sensor for multiple-sequence signals or for the controlled release of nanocargos.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Andersen, Ebbe S -- Dong, Mingdong -- Nielsen, Morten M -- Jahn, Kasper -- Subramani, Ramesh -- Mamdouh, Wael -- Golas, Monika M -- Sander, Bjoern -- Stark, Holger -- Oliveira, Cristiano L P -- Pedersen, Jan Skov -- Birkedal, Victoria -- Besenbacher, Flemming -- Gothelf, Kurt V -- Kjems, Jorgen -- England -- Nature. 2009 May 7;459(7243):73-6. doi: 10.1038/nature07971.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Danish National Research Foundation: Centre for DNA Nanotechnology.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19424153" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: Coffee is a valuable beverage crop due to its characteristic flavor, aroma, and the stimulating effects of caffeine. We generated a high-quality draft genome of the species Coffea canephora, which displays a conserved chromosomal gene order among asterid angiosperms. Although it shows no sign of the whole-genome triplication identified in Solanaceae species such as tomato, the genome includes several species-specific gene family expansions, among them N-methyltransferases (NMTs) involved in caffeine production, defense-related genes, and alkaloid and flavonoid enzymes involved in secondary compound synthesis. Comparative analyses of caffeine NMTs demonstrate that these genes expanded through sequential tandem duplications independently of genes from cacao and tea, suggesting that caffeine in eudicots is of polyphyletic origin.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Denoeud, France -- Carretero-Paulet, Lorenzo -- Dereeper, Alexis -- Droc, Gaetan -- Guyot, Romain -- Pietrella, Marco -- Zheng, Chunfang -- Alberti, Adriana -- Anthony, Francois -- Aprea, Giuseppe -- Aury, Jean-Marc -- Bento, Pascal -- Bernard, Maria -- Bocs, Stephanie -- Campa, Claudine -- Cenci, Alberto -- Combes, Marie-Christine -- Crouzillat, Dominique -- Da Silva, Corinne -- Daddiego, Loretta -- De Bellis, Fabien -- Dussert, Stephane -- Garsmeur, Olivier -- Gayraud, Thomas -- Guignon, Valentin -- Jahn, Katharina -- Jamilloux, Veronique -- Joet, Thierry -- Labadie, Karine -- Lan, Tianying -- Leclercq, Julie -- Lepelley, Maud -- Leroy, Thierry -- Li, Lei-Ting -- Librado, Pablo -- Lopez, Loredana -- Munoz, Adriana -- Noel, Benjamin -- Pallavicini, Alberto -- Perrotta, Gaetano -- Poncet, Valerie -- Pot, David -- Priyono -- Rigoreau, Michel -- Rouard, Mathieu -- Rozas, Julio -- Tranchant-Dubreuil, Christine -- VanBuren, Robert -- Zhang, Qiong -- Andrade, Alan C -- Argout, Xavier -- Bertrand, Benoit -- de Kochko, Alexandre -- Graziosi, Giorgio -- Henry, Robert J -- Jayarama -- Ming, Ray -- Nagai, Chifumi -- Rounsley, Steve -- Sankoff, David -- Giuliano, Giovanni -- Albert, Victor A -- Wincker, Patrick -- Lashermes, Philippe -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2014 Sep 5;345(6201):1181-4. doi: 10.1126/science.1255274. Epub 2014 Sep 4.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique, Genoscope, Institut de Genomique, BP5706, 91057 Evry, France. CNRS, UMR 8030, CP5706, Evry, France. Universite d'Evry, UMR 8030, CP5706, Evry, France. ; Department of Biological Sciences, 109 Cooke Hall, University at Buffalo (State University of New York), Buffalo, NY 14260, USA. ; Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD), UMR Resistance des Plantes aux Bioagresseurs (RPB) [Centre de Cooperation Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Developpement (CIRAD), IRD, UM2)], BP 64501, 34394 Montpellier Cedex 5, France. ; CIRAD, UMR Amelioration Genetique et Adaptation des Plantes Mediterraneennes et Tropicales (AGAP), F-34398 Montpellier, France. ; IRD, UMR Diversite Adaptation et Developpement des Plantes (CIRAD, IRD, UM2), BP 64501, 34394 Montpellier Cedex 5, France. ; Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Development (ENEA) Casaccia Research Center, Via Anguillarese 301, 00123 Roma, Italy. ; Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Ottawa, 585 King Edward Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada. ; Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique, Genoscope, Institut de Genomique, BP5706, 91057 Evry, France. ; Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD), UMR Resistance des Plantes aux Bioagresseurs (RPB) [Centre de Cooperation Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Developpement (CIRAD), IRD, UM2)], BP 64501, 34394 Montpellier Cedex 5, France. Bioversity International, Parc Scientifique Agropolis II, 34397 Montpellier Cedex 5, France. ; Nestle Research and Development Centre, 101 Avenue Gustave Eiffel, Notre-Dame-d'Oe, BP 49716, 37097 Tours Cedex 2, France. ; ENEA Trisaia Research Center, 75026 Rotondella, Italy. ; Bioversity International, Parc Scientifique Agropolis II, 34397 Montpellier Cedex 5, France. ; Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Ottawa, 585 King Edward Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada. Center for Biotechnology, Universitat Bielefeld, Universitatsstrasse 27, D-33615 Bielefeld, Germany. AG Genominformatik, Technische Fakultat, Universitat Bielefeld, 33594 Bielefeld, Germany. ; Institut National de la Recherche Agronomique (INRA), Unite de Recherches en Genomique-Info (UR INRA 1164), Centre de Recherche de Versailles, 78026 Versailles Cedex, France. ; Department of Biological Sciences, 109 Cooke Hall, University at Buffalo (State University of New York), Buffalo, NY 14260, USA. Department of Biology, Chongqing University of Science and Technology, 4000042 Chongqing, China. ; Department of Plant Biology, 148 Edward R. Madigan Laboratory, MC-051, 1201 West Gregory Drive, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL 61801, USA. ; Departament de Genetica and Institut de Recerca de la Biodiversitat (IRBio), Universitat de Barcelona, Diagonal 643, Barcelona 08028, Spain. ; Department of Mathematics, University of Maryland, Mathematics Building 084, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA. School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of Ottawa, 800 King Edward Avenue, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada. ; Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, Via Licio Giorgieri 5, 34127 Trieste, Italy. ; Indonesian Coffee and Cocoa Institute, Jember, East Java, Indonesia. ; Laboratorio de Genetica Molecular, Nucleo de Biotecnologia (NTBio), Embrapa Recursos Geneticos e Biotecnologia, Final Av. W/5 Norte, Parque Estacao Biologia, Brasilia-DF 70770-917, Brazil. ; CIRAD, UMR RPB (CIRAD, IRD, UM2), BP 64501, 34394 Montpellier Cedex 5, France. ; Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste, Via Licio Giorgieri 5, 34127 Trieste, Italy. DNA Analytica Srl, Via Licio Giorgieri 5, 34127 Trieste, Italy. ; Queensland Alliance for Agriculture and Food Innovation, The University of Queensland, St. Lucia 4072, Australia. ; Central Coffee Research Institute, Coffee Board, Coffee Research Station (Post) - 577 117 Chikmagalur District, Karnataka State, India. ; Hawaii Agriculture Research Center, Post Office Box 100, Kunia, HI 96759-0100, USA. ; BIO5 Institute, University of Arizona, 1657 Helen Street, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA. ; Department of Biological Sciences, 109 Cooke Hall, University at Buffalo (State University of New York), Buffalo, NY 14260, USA. vaalbert@buffalo.edu pwincker@genoscope.cns.fr philippe.lashermes@ird.fr. ; Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique, Genoscope, Institut de Genomique, BP5706, 91057 Evry, France. CNRS, UMR 8030, CP5706, Evry, France. Universite d'Evry, UMR 8030, CP5706, Evry, France. vaalbert@buffalo.edu pwincker@genoscope.cns.fr philippe.lashermes@ird.fr. ; Institut de Recherche pour le Developpement (IRD), UMR Resistance des Plantes aux Bioagresseurs (RPB) [Centre de Cooperation Internationale en Recherche Agronomique pour le Developpement (CIRAD), IRD, UM2)], BP 64501, 34394 Montpellier Cedex 5, France. vaalbert@buffalo.edu pwincker@genoscope.cns.fr philippe.lashermes@ird.fr.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25190796" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉

Description: Forsterite, Mg 2 SiO 4 , the magnesian end-member of the olivine system, is the archetypal example of an orthosilicate structure. We have conducted synchrotron-based single-crystal X-ray diffraction experiments to 90 GPa on synthetic end-member forsterite to study its equation of state and phase transitions. Upon room-temperature compression, the forsterite structure is observed to 48 GPa. By fitting a third-order Birch-Murnaghan equation of state to our compression data, we obtain the zero-pressure isothermal bulk modulus, K 0T = 130.0(9) GPa and its pressure derivative, K ' 0T = 4.12(7) for a fixed room-pressure volume, V 0 = 290.1(1) Å 3 , in good agreement with earlier work. At 50 GPa, a phase transition to a new structure (forsterite II) occurs, followed by a second transition to forsterite III at 58 GPa. Forsterite III undergoes no additional phase transitions until at least 90 GPa. There is an ~4.8% volume reduction between forsterite and forsterite II, and a further ~4.2% volume reduction between forsterite II and III. On decompression forsterite III remains until as low as 12 GPa, but becomes amorphous at ambient conditions. Using our X-ray diffraction data together with an evolutionary crystal structure prediction algorithm and metadynamics simulations, we find that forsterite II has triclinic space group P 1 and forsterite III has orthorhombic space group Cmc 2 1 . Both high-pressure phases are metastable. Metadynamics simulations show a stepwise phase transition sequence from 4-coordinated Si in forsterite to mixed tetrahedral and octahedral Si (as in forsterite II), and then fully sixfold-coordinated Si (as in forsterite III), occurring by displacement in [001](100). The forsterite III structure is a member of the family of post-spinel structures adopted by compositions such as CaFe 2 O 4 and CaTi 2 O 4 .