Number Of Residues Research Articles

Pervasiveness of inorganic gunshot residue (IGSR) in handguns after cleaning and conditioning procedures.

Memory effect in firearms that is, the possibility for a weapon to release inorganic particles whose elemental composition depends on its entire shooting history, is responsible for most of the interpretation difficulties encountered in forensic gunshot residue analysis. The presence of residues chemically inconsistent with the last discharged round, the creation of particles having unusual elemental profiles, and the dependence of residue population composition on the collection point are all manifestations of memory effect. The experimental results reported in this paper highlight the ineffectiveness of a wide number of gun cleaning procedures in reducing memory effect. Moreover, the common alternative of discharging batches of rounds having a "new" primer mixture does not fully eliminate the possibility to recover "old" residues at least from the shooter's hands. Two brand new pistols and ammunition having lead-based, leadless and heavy metal free primers were used. Specimens, collected both from the shooters' hands and from cotton targets set nearby the gun muzzle, were analyzed by SEM-EDS and by ICP-OES. After discharging 10's of new ammunitions, the number of old residues ejected from the gun muzzle indeed showed an asymptotic decrease to zero. In spite of this, the number of old residues recovered from the shooter's hands did not follow any predictable trend. These different behaviors suggest that all internal components of a gun, and not just the barrel, play a role in memory effect.

An ascomycete H4 variant with an unknown function.

Histone variants leading to altered nucleosome structure, dynamics and DNA accessibility occur frequently, albeit rarely for H4. We carried out a comprehensive in silico scrutiny of fungal genomes, which revealed the presence of a novel H4 variant (H4E) in the ascomycetes, throughout the Pezizomycotina, in basal species of the Taphrinomycotina and also in the Glomeromycota. The coding cognate genes show a specific intron/exon organization, different from H4 canonical genes. H4Es diverge from canonical H4s mainly in the N- and C-terminal extensions, showing marked differences in the distribution and number of Lys and Arg residues, which may result in novel post-translational modifications. In Aspergillus nidulans (Pezizomycotina, Eurotiomycetes) the H4E variant protein level is low in mycelia. However, the encoding gene is well expressed at 37°C under nitrogen starvation. H4E localizes to the nucleus and interacts with H3, but its absence or overexpression does not result in any detectable phenotype. Deletion of only one of the of the two canonical H4 genes results in a strikingly impaired growth phenotype, which indicates that H4E cannot replace this canonical histone. Thus, an H4 variant is present throughout a whole subphylum of the ascomycetes, but with hitherto no experimentally detectable function.

Molecular Characterization of Alpha-Amylase of Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus oryzae: An In Silico Study

Alpha amylases (EC 3.2.1.1.) hydrolyze polysaccharides like starch and glycogen to create oligosaccharides of different sizes by random cleavage of internal 1, 4-glucosidic linkages. These enzymes are produced by many different bacteria and fungi. In this investigation, α-amylase from Aspergillus flavus and Aspergillus oryzae was taken into consideration. Amino acid sequences and protein structure were retrieved from databases. Sequences of Aspergillus oryzae possess a high number of charged residues whereas Aspergillus flavus have a higher abundance of uncharged polar and hydrophobic amino acid residues. 3 common superfamilies were observed between both species. The alignment of sequences showed their similar conservative nature. Non-covalent intra-protein interactions like the salt bridge, aromatic-aromatic interactions, aromatic-sulfur interactions and cation-pi interactions helped to increase the stability of α-amylase of Aspergillus oryzae. The tunnels and cavities also help to increase the functionality and catalytic activity of α-amylase. This study will also be helpful for protein engineering.

Hist-i-fy—a multiple histidine post-translational-modification (PTM) prediction server based on protein sequences using convolution neural network: a case study on mass spectroscopy data

Computational characterization of multiple Histidine (His) post-translational-modifications (PTM) at enzyme active sites complements tedious experimental characterization in proteins-of-unknown-functions (PUFs) and domain-of-unknown-functions (DUFs). There are only a handful of Histidine-PTM-prediction-tools and those also annotate only a single function. Here, we addressed the problem using artificial neural networks on functional histidine dataset curated from enzyme (protein) sequences available in UniProt database (sample size n = 1584). The convolution-neural-network (CNN) model (‘Hist-i-fy’) performed the best with 75% overall accuracy/F1-score. A case study was performed on histidine-phosphorylation (n = 34) obtained from mass spectroscopy data. For the first time, we report multiple His-PTM-prediction-tool (https://histify.streamlit.app/& https://github.com/dibyansu24-maker/Histify), with optimal performance. The inputs to the tool are (i) protein sequence containing histidine, and (ii) the histidine residue number. Prediction output is one out of the eight histidine functions—acetylation, ribosylation, glycosylation, hydroxylation, methylation, oxidation, phosphorylation, and protein splicing. Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma

Etonogestrel promotes respiratory recovery in an invivo rat model of central chemoreflex impairment.

The central CO2 chemoreflex is a vital component of respiratory control networks, providing excitatory drive during resting conditions and challenges to blood gas homeostasis. The retrotrapezoid nucleus is a crucial hub for CO2 chemosensitivity; its ablation or inhibition attenuates CO2 chemoreflexes and diminishes restful breathing. Similar phenotypes characterize certain hypoventilation syndromes, suggesting underlying retrotrapezoid nucleus impairment in these disorders. Progesterone stimulates restful breathing and CO2 chemoreflexes. However, its mechanisms and sites of actions remain unknown and the experimental use of synthetic progestins in patients and animal models have been met with mixed respiratory outcomes. We investigated whether acute or chronic administration of the progestinic drug, etonogestrel, could rescue respiratory chemoreflexes following selective lesion of the retrotrapezoid nucleus with saporin toxin. Adult female Sprague Dawley rats were grouped based on lesion size determined by the number of surviving chemosensitive neurons, and ventilatory responses were measured by whole body plethysmography. Ventilatory responses to hypercapnia (but not hypoxia) were compromised in a lesion-dependent manner. Chronic etonogestrel treatment improved CO2 chemosensitivity selectively in rats with moderate lesion, suggesting that a residual number of chemosensitive neurons are required for etonogestrel-induced CO2 chemoreflex recovery. This study provides new evidence for the use of progestins as respiratory stimulants under conditions of central hypoventilation and provides a new testable model for assessing the mechanism of action of progestins in the respiratory network.

S288T mutation altering MmpL3 periplasmic domain channel and H-bond network: a novel dual drug resistance mechanism.

Mycobacterial membrane proteins Large 3 (MmpL3) is responsible for the transport of mycobacterial acids out of cell membrane to form cell wall, which is essential for the survival of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) and has become a potent anti-tuberculosis target. SQ109 is an ethambutol (EMB) analogue, as a novel anti-tuberculosis drug, can effectively inhibit MmpL3, and has completed phase 2b-3 clinical trials. Drug resistance has always been the bottleneck problem in clinical treatment of tuberculosis. The S288T mutant of MmpL3 shows significant resistance to the inhibitor SQ109, while the specific action mechanism remains unclear. The results show that MmpL3 S288T mutation causes local conformational change with little effect on the global structure. With MmpL3 bound by SQ109 inhibitor, the distance between D710 and R715 increases resulting in H-bond destruction, but their interactions and proton transfer function are still restored. In addition, the rotation of Y44 in the S288T mutant leads to an obvious bend in the periplasmic domain channel and an increased number of contact residues, reducing substrate transport efficiency. This work not only provides a possible dual drug resistance mechanism of MmpL3 S288T mutant but also aids the development of novel anti-tuberculosis inhibitors. In this work, molecular dynamics (MD) and quantum mechanics (QM) simulations both were performed to compare inhibitor (i.e., SQ109) recognition, motion characteristics, and H-bond energy change of MmpL3 after S288T mutation. In addition, the WT_SQ109 complex structure was obtained by molecular docking program (Autodock 4.2); Molecular Mechanics/ Poisson Boltzmann Surface Area (MM-PBSA) and Solvated Interaction Energy (SIE) methods were used to calculate the binding free energies (∆Gbind); Geometric criteria were used to analyze the changes of hydrogen bond networks.

Diraxiogenesis

The family of Dirac Seesaw models offers an intriguing alternative explanation for the smallness of neutrino masses without necessarily requiring microscopic lepton number violation, when compared to the more familiar class of Majorana Seesaws. A global U(1)D symmetry, that is explicitly broken by a higher dimensional scalar operator, ensures that the right handed neutrino does not couple directly to the Standard Model like Higgs and an exact gauged or residual lepton number symmetry prohibits all Majorana masses. We demonstrate that all three Dirac Seesaws possess a Pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson associated with the U(1)D symmetry, that we call the Diraxion, whose cosmological dynamics have so far been left unexplored. Furthermore we illustrate that a Dirac-Leptogenesis version of the recently proposed Lepto-Axiogenesis scenario can be realized in this class of models, leading to a unified origin of the observed baryon asymmetry and dark matter relic abundance. Explaining only the baryon asymmetry can lead to potentially observable amounts of right handed neutrino dark radiation with ∆Neff. ≲ 0.028. On the other hand, if we only fix the dark matter abundance via the kinetic misalignment mechanism, this set-up could lead to detectable signatures in proposed cosmic neutrino background experiments via decays of eV-scale Diraxions to neutrinos. Here there is no domain wall problem, since topological defects decay to a subleading fraction of relic Diraxions. A key ingredient of all Axiogenesis scenarios is the dynamics of relatively light scalar called the Saxion, that in our case has a mass at the GeV-scale and which might reveal itself in heavy meson decays or collider searches. Our setup predicts isocurvature perturbations in baryons, dark matter and dark radiation sourced by fluctuations of the Saxion.

Area and delay efficient RNS-based FIR filter design using fast multipliers

In today's digital age, speed, and area are the primary design concerns. Increasing the rate at which multiplication and addition are performed has always been a need for developing cutting-edge technologies. Wallace multipliers, and Dadda multipliers, are one of the fastest multipliers used in many processors to accomplish fast arithmetic operations. A novel approach to design a LookUp Table (LUT) multiplier was proposed and implemented in Finite Impulse Response (FIR) filter. To improve the Residue Number System (RNS) based FIR filter's performance, several adders like Carry Look ahead (CLA) adder, Kogge Stone adder (KSA) and proposed adder architectures have been implemented. When compared with the 16 tap with 32 bit proposed adder with LUT multiplier, the hardware resource utilization (Logic Elements) is decreased by 5.97 % and in 32 tap with 16 bit combination, it decreases by 7.60 %.When compared with 32 tap with 4 bit word length, the proposed adder with LUT multiplier in the highlighted combinations, the Fmax is increased by 19.28 % and in 32 tap with 16 bit, it increases by 29.74 %. The Low-pass RNS FIR filter is designed for a cut-off frequency of 50 Hz and generated filter coefficients in MATLAB and implemented to denoising the ECG signal.

Precise redesign for improving enzyme robustness based on coevolutionary analysis and multidimensional virtual screening.

Natural enzymes are able to function effectively under optimal physiological conditions, but the intrinsic performance often fails to meet the demands of industrial production. Existing strategies are based mainly on the evaluation and subsequent combination of single-point mutations; however, this approach often suffers from a limited number of designable residues and from low accuracy. Here, we propose a strategy (Co-MdVS) based on coevolutionary analysis and multidimensional virtual screening for precise design to improve enzyme robustness, employing nattokinase as a model. Using this strategy, we efficiently screened 8 dual mutants with enhanced thermostability from a virtual mutation library containing 7980 mutants. After further iterative combination, the optimal mutant M6 exhibited a 31-fold increase in half-life at 55 °C, significantly enhanced acid resistance, and improved catalytic efficiency with different substrates. Molecular dynamics simulations indicated that the reduced flexibility of thermal and acid-sensitive regions resulted in a significantly increased robustness of M6. Furthermore, the potential of multidimensional virtual screening in enhancing design precision has been validated on l-rhamnose isomerase and PETase. Therefore, the Co-MdVS strategy introduced in this research may offer a viable approach for developing enzymes with enhanced robustness.

Analysis of the Effectiveness of Generative Adversarial Technology in Intelligent Buildings in terms of Design

Abstract This paper combines the training method of generative adversarial network and the robust row layout design method of building based on CGAN, and selects pix2pix model to carry out the spatial layout design of intelligent building, to explore the actual effect of intelligent building design. Using the building layout design of a generative adversarial network, different parameters and residual block numbers are set to compare the impact of building texture generation. The intelligent building using GAN technology is selected to carry out the spatial design characterization of both Light and shadow and luminance, and the SD spatial environment evaluation factor is used to refine the discussion of the spatial design experience of intelligent buildings designed using generative adversarial technology. The Light and shadow distribution of intelligent building design is mainly presented as four types, in which the light and shadow location types of reading room, hall, rest space and exhibition hall are primarily offered as horizontal division types. In a public intelligent building, the rest area is separated into 25% of the distance and 25% of the vertical division, with an improved design balance.

Impact of Plant and Animal Protein-Based Meals on Serum Fibroblast Growth Factor-23 Levels in Healthy Young Men: A Randomized Crossover Trial.

Fibroblast growth factor-23 (FGF23) is a phosphaturic hormone secreted by osteocytes in response to dietary phosphate intake. An increase in FGF23 level is an indicator of excess phosphate intake relative to the residual nephron number. Therefore, avoiding excessive phosphate intake and inhibiting the elevation of serum FGF23 levels are important to preserve the number of functional nephrons. This randomized crossover trial aimed to determine the potential differences in the impacts on serum FGF23 levels between plant protein and animal protein-based meals in individuals with normal renal function. Nine young men were administered plant (no animal protein) or animal protein-based meals (70% of their protein was from animal sources) with the same phosphate content. The test meals consisted of breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Blood samples were collected in the morning, after overnight fasting, and before and after eating the test meals (for two consecutive days at the same hour each day). Furthermore, a 24-h urine sample was obtained on the day the test meal was consumed. No significant interactions were found among serum phosphate, calcium, and 1,25-dihydroxyvitamin D levels. However, after eating plant protein-based meals, serum FGF23 levels decreased and serum intact parathyroid hormone levels increased (interaction, p<0.05). Additionally, urine 24-h phosphate excretion tended to be lower in individuals consuming plant protein-based meals than in those consuming animal protein-based meals (p=0.06). In individuals with normal renal function, plant protein-based meals may prevent an increase in serum FGF23 levels and kidney damage caused by phosphate loading.

An Improved DNA Cryptography Using Residue Number System

In this information rich era, data protection is needed to ensure swift and secure communication through a digital medium. Data need to be protected from unauthorized access and transmitted to the intended receiver with confidentiality, availability, integrity and authenticity. Several schemes have been proposed over the years toward ensuring that data sent over a digital medium is difficult to understand by an intruder by hiding or transforming the data from a plain-text to a DNA based form which is sent as the cipher-text. Although, some of the schemes performed to a certain level but high computational time is the problem of most of these techniques. Therefore, this research presented a method that incorporate cryptography in securing the data using residue number system and DNA cryptography. Firstly, residue number system is used in order to reduce the computational time by encrypting plain-text into a residue form, using the moduli set {2n-1, 2n, 2n+1}, then convert the residue to a DNA format. The DNA cryptography was done to hide the existence of the encrypted DNA by using two different reference sequence randomly generated. The proposed scheme produces the cipher text in both an encrypted and encoded DNA based form, which takes less computational time and attracts less attention of intruders.

An Application of Residue Number System (RNS) to a Next-Generation Sequencing -SOLiD

An Application of Residue Number System (RNS) to a Next-Generation Sequencing -SOLiD

Symmetric Encryption Algorithms in a Polynomial Residue Number System

In this paper, we develop the theoretical provisions of symmetric cryptographic algorithms based on the polynomial residue number system for the first time. The main feature of the proposed approach is that when reconstructing the polynomial based on the method of undetermined coefficients, multiplication is performed not on the found base numbers but on arbitrarily selected polynomials. The latter, together with pairwise coprime residues of the residue class system, serve as the keys of the cryptographic algorithm. Schemes and examples of the implementation of the developed polynomial symmetric encryption algorithm are presented. The analytical expressions of the cryptographic strength estimation are constructed, and their graphical dependence on the number of modules and polynomial powers is presented. Our studies show that the cryptanalysis of the proposed algorithm requires combinatorial complexity, which leads to an NP‐complete problem.

PaReNTT: Low-Latency Parallel Residue Number System and NTT-Based Long Polynomial Modular Multiplication for Homomorphic Encryption

PaReNTT: Low-Latency Parallel Residue Number System and NTT-Based Long Polynomial Modular Multiplication for Homomorphic Encryption

High Speed Method of Conversion Numbers from Residue Number System to Positional Notation

The Residue Number System is a widely used non-positional number system. Residue Number System can be effectively used in applications and systems with a predominant proportion of addition, subtraction and multiplication operations, due to the parallel execution of operations and the absence of inter-bit carries. The reverse conversion of a number from Residue Number System to positional notation requires the use of special algorithms. The main focus of this article lies in introducing the new conversion method, which incorporates Chinese Remainder Theorem, Akushsky Core Function and rank of number. The step-by-step procedure of the conversion process is detailed, accompanied by numerical examples. The proof of the relationship between the ranks of positional characteristics using the Chinese Remainder Theorem is presented. Through careful analysis and comparison with existing transformation methods, it is concluded that the presented approach takes on average 8 % less time than the Approximate Method.

Plasmodium, the Apicomplexa Outlier When It Comes to Protein Synthesis.

Plasmodium is an obligate intracellular parasite that has numerous interactions with different hosts during its elaborate life cycle. This is also the case for the other parasites belonging to the same phylum Apicomplexa. In this study, we bioinformatically identified the components of the multi-synthetase complexes (MSCs) of several Apicomplexa parasites and modelled their assembly using AlphaFold2. It appears that none of these MSCs resemble the two MSCs that we have identified and characterized in Plasmodium. Indeed, tRip, the central protein involved in the association of the two Plasmodium MSCs is different from its homologues, suggesting also that the tRip-dependent import of exogenous tRNAs is not conserved in other apicomplexan parasites. Based on this observation, we searched for obvious differences that could explain the singularity of Plasmodium protein synthesis by comparing tRNA genes and amino acid usage in the different genomes. We noted a contradiction between the large number of asparagine residues used in Plasmodium proteomes and the single gene encoding the tRNA that inserts them into proteins. This observation remains true for all the Plasmodia strains studied, even those that do not contain long asparagine homorepeats.

Effect of bisphosphonates and statins on the in vitro radiosensitivity of breast cancer cell lines.

Early-stage breast cancer is usually treated with breast-conserving surgery followed by adjuvant radiation therapy. Acute skin toxicity is a common radiation-induced side effect experienced by many patients. Recently, a combination of bisphosphonates (zoledronic acid) and statins (pravastatin), or ZOPRA, was shown to radio-protect normal tissues by enhancing DNA double-strand breaks (DSB) repair mechanism. However, there are no studies assessing the effect of ZOPRA on cancerous cells. The purpose of this study is to characterize the in vitro effect of the zoledronic acid (ZO), pravastatin (PRA), and ZOPRA treatment on the molecular and cellular radiosensitivity of breast cancer cell lines. Two breast cancer cell lines, MDA MB 231 and MCF-7, were tested. Cells were treated with different concentrations of pravastatin (PRA), zoledronate (ZO), as well as their ZOPRA combination, before irradiation. Anti-γH2AX and anti-pATM immunofluorescence were performed to study DNA DSB repair kinetics. MTT assay was performed to assess cell proliferation and viability, and flow cytometry was performed to analyze the effect of the drugs on the cell cycle distribution. The clonogenic assay was used to assess cell survival. ZO, PRA, and ZOPRA treatments were shown to increase the residual number of γH2AX foci for both cell lines. ZOPRA treatment was also shown to reduce the activity of the ATM kinase in MCF-7. ZOPRA induced a significant decrease in cell survival for both cell lines. Our findings show that pretreatment with ZOPRA can decrease the radioresistance of breast cancer cells at the molecular and cellular levels. The fact that ZOPRA was previously shown to radioprotect normal tissues, makes it a good candidate to become a therapeutic window-widening drug.

A Hybridized Honey Encryption for Data Security using Residue Number System

Different encryption algorithms such as Advanced Encryption Standard (AES), Rivest, Shamir, Adleman (RSA) were proposed to protect the privacy of the data. However, most of these existing methods are vulnerable to a brute-force attack because the cipher text remains unintelligible until the original data is found. Consequently, this problem prompted researchers to introduce honey encryption (HE). HE helps to withstand the vulnerability of the encryption algorithms in brute force attacks making transmitted data more secure and efficient. Hence to reduce processing time we proposed a hybridized HE with Residue Number System. Traditional Moduli Set {2n-1, 2n, 2n+1} was used to generate the Key while Chinese Remainder Theorem (CRT), and HE technique were used for decrypting the data, based on the Distribution Transformation Decoder. Thus, anytime an attacker tries to access the data, so long the length of the guessed key is the same as the original key, the HE algorithm will generate meaningful but fake data, this helps to deter an attacker from further threat. The result showed that the proposed system was able to withstand brute force attacks with less processing time compared to other systems. N-values for the moduli set used were varied against encryption and decryption time. Comparing the obtained results with the existing system, the proposed system processing time was faster and more secure.

Catalytic degradation of antibiotic sludge to produce formic acid by acidified red mud

As complex and difficult-to-degrade persistent organic pollutants (POPs), antibiotics have caous damage to the ecological enused serivironment. Because of the difficult degradation of antibiotics, sewage and sludge discharged by hospitals and pharmaceutical enterprises often contain a large number of antibiotic residues. Therefore, the harmless and resourceful treatment of antibiotic sludge is very meaningful. In this paper, amoxicillin was selected as a model compound for antibiotic sludge. Acidified red mud (ARM) was used to degrade antibiotic sludge and produce hydrogen energy carrier formic acid in catalytic wet peroxidation system (CWPO). Based on various characterization analyses, the reaction catalytic mechanism was demonstrated to be the result of the non-homogeneous Fanton reaction interaction between Fe3O4 on the ARM surface and H2O2 in solution. Formic acid is the product of the decarboxylation reaction of amoxicillin and its degradation of various organic acids. The formic acid was produced up to 792.38 mg L−1, under the optimal conditions of reaction temperature of 90 °C, reaction time of 30 min, H2O2 concentration of 20 mL L−1, ARM addition of 0.8 g L−1, pH = 7, and rotor speed of 500 rpm. This research aims to provide some references for promoting red mud utilization in antibiotic sludge degradation.