1,720,957 research outputs found
Decoding bacterial p450 cytochromes catalytic diversity by informatic methods
Get PDFLos citocromos p450 bacterianos (CYPs) son una familia de enzimas que poseen una enorme diversidad funcional y una amplia capacidad para llevar a cabo diferentes reacciones de oxidación sobre sus sustratos, que van desde pequeñas moléculas aromáticas como el alcanfor, pasando por algunas más grandes como el colesterol o la vitamina D, hasta moléculas enomes como los antibióticos macrólidos. Lo cierto es que estas enzimas contribuyen de manera significativa a la generación de una gran variedad de productos naturales, muchos de ellos con un enorme potencial biotecnológico. Es por ello que determinar el rol de los CYPs en la producción de estos metabolitos es esencial para comprender su biosíntesis y posible rol fisiológico. Considerando que los CYPs desarrollan funciones sumamente importantes para la vida de los microorganismos, comprender su función constituye un objetivo de alta relevancia biológica. De la vasta cantidad de reacciones que son capaces de catalizar estas enzimas, algunas han sido ya extensamente estudiadas, pero muchas otras permanecen aún completamente desconocidas. Por esta razón, en la presente tesis, se procedió en primer término al estudio del mecanismo de reacción de un CYP esencial para la viabilidad de Mycobacterium tuberculosis, -denominado CYP121- cuya reacción es poco común en esta familia de enzimas. Mediante la aplicación de diversas técnicas de simulación computacional se consiguió arribar a una propuesta mecanística detallada de su funcionamiento con una mirada fisicoquímica. A continuación, se procedió a realizar un estudio general de los determinantes estructurales que dan lugar a la diversidad funcional en los CYPs, con el objeto de poder predecir in-silico el rango de sustratos y reacciones catalizadas por estas enzimas. Conseguir hacer tales predicciones es un objetivo clave, dado que el reciente crecimiento exponencial en la secuenciación de diferentes microorganismos ha resultado en la anotación de miles de secuencias a este grupo de proteínas, las cuales en su mayoría carecen de información funcional. Este estudio derivó en el desarrollo de un pipeline bioinformático que tomando como punto de partida la secuencia de un dado CYP y analizando una serie de propiedades, permite predecir la reacción que éste cataliza. En su conjunto, la presente tesis presenta un estudio detallado del mecanismo de reacción del CYP121 de Mycobacterium tuberculosis, el cual dada la esencialidad de esta enzima, podría resultar importante para el desarrollo de drogas para el tratamiento de la tuberculosis; junto con una caracterización de la diversidad funcional de la familia de los citocromos p450s bacterianos y una herramienta que permite predecir la función de un determinado CYP partiendo solamente de su estructura primaria.Bacterial p450 cytochromes (CYPs) are a family of enzymes that have an enormous functional diversity and great capacity to carry out different oxidation reactions on their substrates, which vary from small aromatic molecules such as camphor, to some larger as cholesterol or vitamin D up to huge molecules such as macrolide antibiotics. The fact is that these enzymes contribute significantly to the generation of a variety of natural products, many of them with huge potential biotechnological applications. Therefore, determining the CYPs’ role in the production of these metabolites is essential to understand their biosynthesis and potential physiological role. Whereas the CYPs develop extremely important functions for microorganisms life, understand their function is of uttermost biological relevance. Among the vast amount of reactions which are capable of catalyzing these enzymes, some have already been extensively studied, but many others remain still unknown. For this reason, in this thesis, we proceeded first to the study of the reaction mechanism of a CYP essential for the viability of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, -called CYP121- whose reaction is unusual in this family of enzymes. By applying different computer simulation techniques we were able to arrive at a detailed mechanistic proposal for the role of this enzyme. Following we proceeded to conduct a comprehensive study of the structural determinants that lead to functional diversity in CYPs, in order to be able to predict in-silico the range of substrates and reactions catalyzed by these enzymes. Becoming able to make such predictions is a key objective, since the recent exponential growth in the sequencing of different microorganisms has resulted in the entry of thousands of sequences to this group of proteins, mostly lacking of functional information. This study led to the development of a bioinformatic pipeline that taking as a starting point a given CYP’s sequence and by analyzing a number of properties, is able topredict what reaction it catalyzes. As a whole, this thesis presents a detailed study of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis CYP121 reaction mechanism, which given the essential nature of this enzyme, it may be important for the development of drugs for tuberculosis treatment; along with a characterization of the functional diversity of bacterial cytochrome P450s’ family and a tool for predicting a particular CYP’s function based only on its primary structure.Fil: Dumas, Victoria Gisel. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina
Decoding bacterial p450 cytochromes catalytic diversity by informatic methods
No full textLos citocromos p450 bacterianos (CYPs) son una familia de enzimas que poseen una enorme diversidad funcional y una amplia capacidad para llevar a cabo diferentes reacciones de oxidación sobre sus sustratos, que van desde pequeñas moléculas aromáticas como el alcanfor, pasando por algunas más grandes como el colesterol o la vitamina D, hasta moléculas enomes como los antibióticos macrólidos. Lo cierto es que estas enzimas contribuyen de manera significativa a la generación de una gran variedad de productos naturales, muchos de ellos con un enorme potencial biotecnológico. Es por ello que determinar el rol de los CYPs en la producción de estos metabolitos es esencial para comprender su biosíntesis y posible rol fisiológico. Considerando que los CYPs desarrollan funciones sumamente importantes para la vida de los microorganismos, comprender su función constituye un objetivo de alta relevancia biológica. De la vasta cantidad de reacciones que son capaces de catalizar estas enzimas, algunas han sido ya extensamente estudiadas, pero muchas otras permanecen aún completamente desconocidas. Por esta razón, en la presente tesis, se procedió en primer término al estudio del mecanismo de reacción de un CYP esencial para la viabilidad de Mycobacterium tuberculosis, -denominado CYP121- cuya reacción es poco común en esta familia de enzimas. Mediante la aplicación de diversas técnicas de simulación computacional se consiguió arribar a una propuesta mecanística detallada de su funcionamiento con una mirada fisicoquímica. A continuación, se procedió a realizar un estudio general de los determinantes estructurales que dan lugar a la diversidad funcional en los CYPs, con el objeto de poder predecir in-silico el rango de sustratos y reacciones catalizadas por estas enzimas. Conseguir hacer tales predicciones es un objetivo clave, dado que el reciente crecimiento exponencial en la secuenciación de diferentes microorganismos ha resultado en la anotación de miles de secuencias a este grupo de proteínas, las cuales en su mayoría carecen de información funcional. Este estudio derivó en el desarrollo de un pipeline bioinformático que tomando como punto de partida la secuencia de un dado CYP y analizando una serie de propiedades, permite predecir la reacción que éste cataliza. En su conjunto, la presente tesis presenta un estudio detallado del mecanismo de reacción del CYP121 de Mycobacterium tuberculosis, el cual dada la esencialidad de esta enzima, podría resultar importante para el desarrollo de drogas para el tratamiento de la tuberculosis; junto con una caracterización de la diversidad funcional de la familia de los citocromos p450s bacterianos y una herramienta que permite predecir la función de un determinado CYP partiendo solamente de su estructura primaria.Bacterial p450 cytochromes (CYPs) are a family of enzymes that have an enormous functional diversity and great capacity to carry out different oxidation reactions on their substrates, which vary from small aromatic molecules such as camphor, to some larger as cholesterol or vitamin D up to huge molecules such as macrolide antibiotics. The fact is that these enzymes contribute significantly to the generation of a variety of natural products, many of them with huge potential biotechnological applications. Therefore, determining the CYPs’ role in the production of these metabolites is essential to understand their biosynthesis and potential physiological role. Whereas the CYPs develop extremely important functions for microorganisms life, understand their function is of uttermost biological relevance. Among the vast amount of reactions which are capable of catalyzing these enzymes, some have already been extensively studied, but many others remain still unknown. For this reason, in this thesis, we proceeded first to the study of the reaction mechanism of a CYP essential for the viability of Mycobacterium tuberculosis, -called CYP121- whose reaction is unusual in this family of enzymes. By applying different computer simulation techniques we were able to arrive at a detailed mechanistic proposal for the role of this enzyme. Following we proceeded to conduct a comprehensive study of the structural determinants that lead to functional diversity in CYPs, in order to be able to predict in-silico the range of substrates and reactions catalyzed by these enzymes. Becoming able to make such predictions is a key objective, since the recent exponential growth in the sequencing of different microorganisms has resulted in the entry of thousands of sequences to this group of proteins, mostly lacking of functional information. This study led to the development of a bioinformatic pipeline that taking as a starting point a given CYP’s sequence and by analyzing a number of properties, is able topredict what reaction it catalyzes. As a whole, this thesis presents a detailed study of the Mycobacterium tuberculosis CYP121 reaction mechanism, which given the essential nature of this enzyme, it may be important for the development of drugs for tuberculosis treatment; along with a characterization of the functional diversity of bacterial cytochrome P450s’ family and a tool for predicting a particular CYP’s function based only on its primary structure.Fil: Dumas, Victoria Gisel. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentina
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
WATCLUST: a tool for improving the design of drugs based on protein-water interactions
Get PDFMotivation: Water molecules are key players for protein folding and function. On the protein surface, water is not placed randomly, but display instead a particular structure evidenced by the presence of specific water sites (WS). These WS can be derived and characterized using explicit water Molecular Dynamics simulations, providing useful information for ligand binding prediction and design. Here we present WATCLUST, a WS determination and analysis tool running on the VMD platform. The tool also allows direct transfer of the WS information to Autodock program to perform biased docking. Availability and implementation: The WATCLUST plugin and documentation are freely available at http://sbg.qb.fcen.uba.ar/watclust/.Fil: Lopez, Elias Daniel. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Química Biológica; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Arcon, Juan Pablo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química, Física de los Materiales, Medioambiente y Energía. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química, Física de los Materiales, Medioambiente y Energía; ArgentinaFil: Gauto, Diego Fernando. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química, Física de los Materiales, Medioambiente y Energía. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química, Física de los Materiales, Medioambiente y Energía; ArgentinaFil: Petruk, Ariel Alcides. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química, Física de los Materiales, Medioambiente y Energía. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química, Física de los Materiales, Medioambiente y Energía; ArgentinaFil: Modenutti, Carlos Pablo. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Departamento de Química Biológica; Argentina. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Dumas, Victoria Gisel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; ArgentinaFil: Marti, Marcelo Adrian. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; ArgentinaFil: Turjanski, Adrian. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Ciudad Universitaria. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Instituto de Química Biológica de la Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales; Argentin
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
koamabayili/VECTRON-author-checklist: VECTRON author checklist
No full textWe have done our best to complete the author checklist relating to the use of animals in the hut study. Note that the objective for the hut study was to evaluate the IRS treatment applications for residual efficacy against Anopheles mosquitoes, including the local An. coluzzii mosquito population. Cows were only used to attract mosquitoes into the huts and no tests were carried out directly on the cows. The author checklist is intended for use with studies where experiments are carried out on animals, which is why we have had such difficulty in completing this for the hut study, as many of the questions do not relate to how the cows were used
- …
