Review
Plant Sciences
Katherine E. Helliwell
Summary: Phosphorus (P) and nitrogen (N) are important nutrients for plant and algal growth. Recent research has revealed the molecular mechanisms of N and P acquisition and emphasized the need to study the synergistic interactions between them. It has been found that different organisms have distinct mechanisms for sensing P and N, although core P-starvation signaling components are conserved.
TRENDS IN PLANT SCIENCE
(2023)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Solveig G. Schmidt, Ulrik Gether, Claus J. Loland
Summary: Sodium-coupled neurotransmitter transporters are important in terminating synaptic neurotransmission, and research into their molecular transport mechanisms has been enlightening. Despite their structural differences, studies on neurotransmitter: sodium symporters and excitatory amino acid transporters are crucial in understanding their ion-dependence and transport kinetics. Single-molecule studies have been instrumental in expanding the understanding of protein-level transport across membranes.
NEUROCHEMICAL RESEARCH
(2022)
Article
Plant Sciences
John A. Raven, Mary J. Beilby
Summary: Protein assemblages in the plasma membrane of photosynthetic organisms play a crucial role in polar auxin transport and cellular acid-base balance, but the mechanism behind the formation of small radius of curvature membrane areas in transfer cells and charasomes remains incompletely understood.
JOURNAL OF PLANT PHYSIOLOGY
(2021)
Review
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Michiko Yamashita, Udo R. Markert
Summary: This review summarizes the current knowledge of drug transporters in the human placenta, emphasizing the importance for the health of pregnant women and their fetuses in need of drug treatment.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF MOLECULAR SCIENCES
(2021)
Article
Physiology
Antonio G. Soares, Jorge Contreras, Crystal R. Archer, Elena Mironova, Rebecca Berdeaux, James D. Stockand, Tarek Mohamed Abd El-Aziz
Summary: The study demonstrates that targeted activation of Gs signaling exclusively in renal principal cells (PC) is sufficient to increase ENaC activity and decrease urinary sodium excretion in live animals.
FRONTIERS IN PHYSIOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Plant Sciences
S. Antony Ceasar
Summary: Foxtail millet, a fully annotated C4 model cereal, has genomic resources that are helpful in understanding and improving nutrient transport in other cereals.
PLANT GROWTH REGULATION
(2023)
Article
Plant Sciences
Fatemeh Rasouli, Ali Kiani-Pouya, Ayesha Tahir, Lana Shabala, Zhonghua Chen, Sergey Shabala
Summary: Superior salinity tolerance in halophytes is achieved through significantly faster stomatal opening and closure, the ability to discriminate K+ over Na+, and decoupling of CO2 assimilation from changes in stomatal aperture. Stomatal densities are intrinsically lower in halophytic species, and their stomatal responses to environmental stimuli are much faster compared to glycophytes. High maximum carboxylation rate of Rubisco (V-cmax) and higher rates of electron transport through photosystem II (J) contribute to the high photosynthetic rates and biomass productions in halophytic species under moderate salinity levels.
ENVIRONMENTAL AND EXPERIMENTAL BOTANY
(2021)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Shigeto Morita, Natsumi Tamba, Mineo Shibasaka, Shizuka Sasano, Taiju Kadoike, Yasuyo Urase, Masamitsu Maruyama, Aguri Fukuoka, Junta Yanai, Takehiro Masumura, Yasunari Ogihara, Shigeru Satoh, Kunisuke Tanaka, Maki Katsuhara, Hideki Nakayama
Summary: This study demonstrates that OsHAK2 gene in rice is involved in Na+ transport, promoting shoot growth under low Na+ and K+ conditions. However, overexpression of OsHAK2 increases salt sensitivity, indicating that it is not associated with salt tolerance.
BIOSCIENCE BIOTECHNOLOGY AND BIOCHEMISTRY
(2023)
Article
Engineering, Chemical
Qing Zhu, Yahua Liu, Peipei Zuo, Yu Dong, Zhengjin Yang, Tongwen Xu
Summary: Researchers have developed a sodium selective isoporous membrane derived from lyotropic liquid crystals, which exhibits excellent Na+ selectivity and ion transport properties. This highly selective membrane could play a crucial role in high precision separation and the design of new generation ion selective membranes.
JOURNAL OF MEMBRANE SCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Microbiology
Jan Stephan Wichers, Paolo Mesen-Ramirez, Gwendolin Fuchs, Jing Yu-Strzelczyk, Jan Staecker, Heidrun von Thien, Arne Alder, Isabelle Henshall, Benjamin Liffner, Georg Nagel, Christian Loew, Danny Wilson, Tobias Spielmann, Shiqiang Gao, Tim-Wolf Gilberger, Anna Bachmann, Jan Strauss
Summary: This study investigated the subcellular localization and essentiality of several membrane transport proteins in Plasmodium falciparum parasites. Four of the membrane transport proteins were found to be essential for asexual development, and the plasma membrane resident transporter 1 was shown to be essential for gametocytogenesis.
Article
Chemistry, Medicinal
Jonai Pujol-Gimenez, Marion Poirier, Sven Buehlmann, Celine Schuppisser, Rajesh Bhardwaj, Mahendra Awale, Ricardo Visini, Sacha Javor, Matthias A. Hediger, Jean-Louis Reymond
Summary: Researchers discovered the first inhibitor of ZIP8, showing that this target is druggable, through screening a library of molecules in a database.
Article
Cell Biology
Maria Florencia Carusela, J. Miguel Rubi
Summary: Understanding the structure, activity, and characteristics of membrane transporters is crucial, and a computational model has been proposed to replicate their functionality by quantifying the flow of substrates through the cell membrane. The model can identify the forces that drive transport, such as conformational changes in ATP hydrolysis or electrochemical gradients of ions, and compute transport rates by averaging velocities along substrate paths, in accordance with experimental results. This model provides an overall framework for analyzing membrane transport proteins that regulate the movement of ions, nutrients, and other molecules across cell membranes.
FRONTIERS IN CELL AND DEVELOPMENTAL BIOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
F. Van Liefferinge, E. -m. Krammer, J. Waeytens, M. Prevost
Summary: The study used molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the import of thiamine pyrophosphate (TPP) through the mitochondrial membranes. It revealed that TPP utilizes a specific carrier with a single binding site for transport across the outer and inner membranes, demonstrating analogies with other metabolites. Energy contributions from salt bridge networks and ionic interactions play essential roles in the transport mechanism of TPP.
JOURNAL OF COMPUTER-AIDED MOLECULAR DESIGN
(2021)
Article
Engineering, Chemical
Ousmanou Njoya, Shengxin Zhao, Xingyu Kong, Jimin Shen, Jing Kang, Binyuan Wang, Zhonglin Chen
Summary: The treatment of industrial wastewater containing Cr(VI)-organic compounds has been a long-term concern in the field of environment. Researchers developed a novel catalytic chemical reduction/membrane filtration method for efficient removal of total Cr (TCr) in a system with coexisting Cr(VI) and oxalate (Ox). The study investigated the effects of Ox, Fe(III), and Al(III) concentrations, NaBH4 dosage, and sedimentation time on the removal of Cr(VI) containing Ox by NaBH4.
SEPARATION AND PURIFICATION TECHNOLOGY
(2021)
Review
Plant Sciences
Stanislaus Antony Ceasar, Theivanayagam Maharajan, Pedro Garcia-Caparros
Summary: Plants require essential nutrients for normal physiological functions, and plasma membrane-localized nutrient transporters play key roles in acquiring and allocating these nutrients. Extensive research has been done on functional characterization of plant nutrient transporters, including crystal structure analysis and mutagenesis studies. This review provides a comprehensive list of functional residues and discusses the potential application of CRISPR/Cas tools to improve nutrient transport in plants.
CRITICAL REVIEWS IN PLANT SCIENCES
(2023)
Article
Mathematics, Applied
James McCoy, Glen Wheeler, Yuhan Wu
Summary: The study focuses on the evolution of regular closed curves, showing that when the curvature or energy of the initial curve is small enough, the evolving curve converges to a straight horizontal line segment. The smallness conditions depend only on m.
ADVANCES IN CALCULUS OF VARIATIONS
(2022)
Article
Mathematics
Kwok-Kun Kwong, Yong Wei, Glen Wheeler, Valentina-Mira Wheeler
Summary: This study focuses on the evolution of compact convex curves in two-dimensional space forms, proving that solutions exist for all time and converge exponentially fast to a standard round geodesic circle. This has important implications for proving geometric inequalities and providing counterexamples to certain conjectures.
MATHEMATISCHE ANNALEN
(2022)
Article
Plant Sciences
Sonja Repetti, Cintia Iha, Kavitha Uthanumallian, Christopher J. Jackson, Yibi Chen, Cheong Xin Chan, Heroen Verbruggen
Summary: This study aims to understand the genomic diversity in green algae and investigates lineage-specific gene evolution. The results show genome streamlining in Pedinophyceae and genome expansion in the UTC clade, which may contribute to their success in different habitats.
Review
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Katherine E. Dougan, Raul A. Gonzalez-Pech, Timothy G. Stephens, Sarah Shah, Yibi Chen, Mark A. Ragan, Debashish Bhattacharya, Cheong Xin Chan
Summary: Modern microbial taxonomy often relies on single or concatenated marker genes for classification. However, using whole-genome data can provide more accurate classification, especially for microbial eukaryotes.
TRENDS IN MICROBIOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Plant Sciences
Rosalyn Lo, Katherine E. Dougan, Yibi Chen, Sarah Shah, Debashish Bhattacharya, Cheong Xin Chan
Summary: Dinoflagellates of the Symbiodiniaceae family play important roles as symbionts in corals and other marine organisms. Recent research has shown significant genome sequence divergence among different Symbiodiniaceae taxa. Using an alignment-free phylogenetic approach, this study assessed the phylogenetic relationships among 16 Symbiodiniaceae taxa based on whole-genome sequences. The results suggest that the phylogenetic signal associated with protein-coding genes and amino acids is consistent with established markers, while other genomic regions exhibit distinct phylogenetic signals. This study also identified conserved repeat sequences and observed enhanced activity of transposable elements in symbiotic Symbiodinium taxa. The use of alignment-free phylogenetic methods as a scalable approach for inferring comprehensive whole-genome phylogenies of dinoflagellates and microbial eukaryotes is demonstrated.
FRONTIERS IN PLANT SCIENCE
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Jan Y. Xue, Katharine R. Hind, Matthew A. Lemay, Andrea Mcminigal, Emma Jourdain, Cheong Xin Chan, Patrick T. Martone
Summary: In this study, we identified key gene candidates in the lignin biosynthesis pathway of the red alga Calliarthron tuberculosum using transcriptome and genomic data. We found evidence of independent evolution of these gene candidates from their land plant counterparts. Additionally, tools for extracting metabolic pathways and genes were provided using the transcriptomic and genomic datasets.
Article
Mathematics
James A. McCoy, Phil Schrader, Glen Wheeler
Summary: In this article, we studied L-2(d theta)-gradient flows for higher-order curvature functionals and derived similar representation formulae for their solutions. Solutions exist for all time under natural conditions on the initial curve and converge exponentially fast in the smooth topology to multiply-covered circles. We considered different types of curves and also discussed corresponding `globally constrained' flows and a higher order approach to the Yau problem.
JOURNAL OF DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
(2023)
Article
Plant Sciences
Gerald Langer, Ian Probert, Madison B. Cox, Alison Taylor, Glenn M. Harper, Colin Brownlee, Glen Wheeler
Summary: In this study, the effects of microtubule and actin inhibitors on coccolith morphogenesis in two species of coccolithophores were examined. The results showed that all cytoskeleton inhibitors induced malformations in coccoliths, indicating the crucial roles of microtubules and actin filaments in morphogenesis.
JOURNAL OF PHYCOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Mathematics, Applied
Shinya Okabe, Glen Wheeler
Summary: In this paper, we study the L2-gradient flow of the modified p-elastic energy on planar closed curves. We introduce a notion of weak solution for the flow and prove the existence of global-in-time weak solutions for initial curves in the energy space when p ≥ 2 using the method of minimizing movements. Furthermore, we establish the existence of unique global-in-time solutions to the flow when p = 2 and show their subconvergence to an elastica as t tends to infinity.
JOURNAL DE MATHEMATIQUES PURES ET APPLIQUEES
(2023)
Article
Mathematics
M. K. Cooper, G. Wheeler, V. -M. Wheeler
Summary: In this article, we study Chen's flow of curves from both theoretical and numerical perspectives. Our goal is to understand the global behavior of the flow in two different settings: closed immersed co-circles and immersed lines satisfying a cocompactness condition. While the argument for the cocompact case is straightforward, the argument for the closed case is complex. We successfully conduct a full analysis of the rescaling under a curvature condition. Our work is supplemented by a numerical study of the flow, including an explanation of the algorithms used. (c) 2023 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
JOURNAL OF DIFFERENTIAL EQUATIONS
(2023)
Article
Mathematics
Philip Schrader, Glen Wheeler, Valentina-Mira Wheeler
Summary: In this article, we study the length functional on immersed planar curves. The curve shortening flow is obtained as the gradient flow of the length functional with respect to the L-2(ds(gamma)) Riemannian metric. Motivated by the vanishing of the L-2(ds(gamma)) Riemannian distance, we consider the gradient flow of the length functional with respect to the H-1(ds(gamma))-metric. Circles with radius r(0) shrink according to r(t) = root W(e(c-2t)), where W is the Lambert W function and c = r(0)(2) + log r(0)(2). We conduct a thorough study of this flow, including the existence of eternal solutions, convergence for general initial data, preservation of regularity in various spaces, qualitative properties of the flow after rescaling, and numerical simulations.
JOURNAL OF GEOMETRIC ANALYSIS
(2023)
Article
Plant Sciences
Yang Xu, Shrikaar Kambhampati, Stewart A. Morley, Ron Cook, John Froehlich, Doug K. Allen, Christoph Benning
Summary: The study found that ACP4 and RBL10 can affect chloroplast lipid biosynthesis by modulating substrate precursor pools, thus participating in chloroplast lipid assembly and monogalactosyldiacylglycerol biosynthesis. This study shows that Arabidopsis ACP4 and RBL10 independently affect chloroplast membrane lipid biosynthesis.
Article
Mathematics, Applied
Piotr Rybka, Glen Wheeler
Summary: This paper shows the stabilization of solutions to the sixth-order convective Cahn-Hilliard equation. By applying an abstract result by Carvalho, Langa, and Robinson, it is proved that for small delta, the equation has the structure of gradient flow in a weak sense. The desired stabilization is obtained through a powerful theorem due to Hale and Raugel. The importance of this article lies in providing a significant approach to solve the problem by citing other research and applying theorems.
SIAM JOURNAL ON MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS
(2023)
Article
Education & Educational Research
Bonnie Amelia Dean, Trish Mundy, Oriana Price, Meredith Kennedy, Glen Wheeler, Lynn Sheridan, Loretta Iskra
Summary: This study explores academics' perceptions of work-integrated learning (WIL) resourcing provisions and challenges at one institution. The findings suggest mixed perceptions on WIL resourcing, with a need for more integration in subjects and recognition of WIL work. The study highlights the invisibility of academics' efforts to embed WIL in curriculum and recommends coherent policies for recognition of WIL work.
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF WORK-INTEGRATED LEARNING
(2023)
Article
Mathematics, Interdisciplinary Applications
Glen Wheeler
Summary: This note establishes exponential smooth convergence for global curve diffusion flows, and discusses open problems related to embeddedness and global existence.
MATHEMATICS IN ENGINEERING
(2022)