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“The main objective of this study was to determine the effect of intracrystalline and intercrystalline swelling agents and reactive dyes on the accessibility of cotton cellulose to commercial cellulase enzymes. Both types of swelling agents improved the accessibility, and intracrystalline swelling agents showed

better results, as the accessibility to difficult-to-reach crystalline regions was increased. CB-839 cell line As expected, the reactive dyes inhibited the accessibility of the enzymes to some extent. (C) 2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 121:1946-1950, 2011″
“Due to technical difficulties, the genetic transformation of mitochondria in mammalian cells is still a challenge. In this report, we described our attempts to transform mammalian mitochondria with an engineered mitochondrial genome based on selection using a drug resistance gene. Because the standard

drug-resistant neomycin phosphotransferase confers resistance to high concentrations of G418 when targeted to the mitochondria, we generated a recoded neomycin resistance gene that uses the mammalian mitochondrial genetic code to direct the synthesis of this protein in the mitochondria, but not in the nucleus (mitochondrial version). We also generated a universal version of the recoded neomycin resistance gene that allows synthesis of the drug-resistant proteins both in the mitochondria and nucleus. When we transfected these recoded neomycin resistance genes that were incorporated into the mouse mitochondrial genome clones into mouse tissue culture cells by electroporation, no DNA constructs were delivered into the mitochondria. We found that the universal PRN1371 supplier version of the recoded selleck kinase inhibitor neomycin resistance gene was expressed in the nucleus and thus conferred drug resistance to G418 selection, while the synthetic mitochondrial version of the gene produced no background drug-resistant

cells from nuclear transformation. These recoded synthetic drug-resistant genes could be a useful tool for selecting mitochondrial genetic transformants as a precise technology for mitochondrial transformation is developed.”
“The promoter regions of many genes contain multiple binding sites for the same transcription factor (TF). One possibility is that this multiplicity evolved through transitional forms showing redundant cis-regulation. To evaluate this hypothesis, we must disentangle the relative contributions of different evolutionary mechanisms to the evolution of binding site multiplicity. Here, we attempt to do this using a model of binding site evolution. Our model considers binding sequences and their interactions with TFs explicitly, and allows us to cast the evolution of gene networks into a neutral network framework. We then test some of the model’s predictions using data from yeast. Analysis of the model suggested three candidate nonadaptive processes favoring the evolution of cis-regulatory element redundancy and multiplicity: neutral evolution in long promoters, recombination and TF promiscuity.