Period: 2021-08-02 ~ 2021-08-09

Jul. 27-Aug. 9: Only open to AS staff wearing I.D. badges.

New Canonical Signaling Pathway
Updates to four existing Canonical Signaling Pathways
>300,000 new findings (bringing the total in IPA to over 8.1 million)
>6000 new datasets (for a total of >96,000) are now available in Analysis Match, Activity Plot and Pattern Search

Turnitin will have a scheduled system maintenance Aug 14, 2021 from 23:00pm. – Aug 15, 2021 from 01:00am. Due to the maintenance, Turnitin will be unavailable between those times.

Dr. Shang-Te Danny Hsu explained the current status and research of SARS-CoV-2 Variants in an English teaching podcast show “英文小宇宙”.

Topic：Comparative analyses of cultivated, primitive and wild rice – focusing on domestication
Speaker：Mr. Cheng-Chieh Wu
Date：2021-08-10 11:00
Place：Presented by Webex Meeting

Topic：Anti-interferon-γ autoantibodies underlie the adult immune dysregulations: from antibodies to infections
Speaker：Dr. Cheng-Lung Ku
Date：Tue, Aug 10, 11:00am
Place：Online Webex

Topic 1：Unraveling the regulatory roles of the clock protein LWD1 in gene expression regulation underlying Arabidopsis photomorphogenesis and photoperiodic flowering
Speaker：Dr. Chun-Kai Huang
Topic 2: Big data analyses for identifying direct target genes of the clock protein LWD1
Speaker：Dr. Chun-Kai Huang
Date：2021-08-13 10:30
Place：Presented by Webex Meeting

Time: 8/5 12:10 - 13:10
Sponsor: Shou Ray Information Service

Date: August 26, 2021 Time: 15:00-17:00 pm. Organizer: CONCERT、Chem Library、ACS Co-organizer: iGroup Taiwan

Research from Wolfgang Schmidt’s lab showed that ectopic expression of the IRONMAN peptides IMA1 and IMA2 improves growth on calcareous soil by inducing the biosynthesis and secretion of the catecholic coumarin fraxetin (7,8-dihydroxy-6-methoxycoumarin) through increased expression of MYB72 and SCOPOLETIN 8-HYDROXYLASE (S8H), a response which is strictly dependent on elevated environmental pH (pHe) (Gautam et al., 2021).

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U. maydis rely on delivering a large arsenal of effectors to cause smut disease in maize. The molecular mechanisms of most effectors are unknown which significantly hamper our understanding of fungal virulence mechanisms. One of the novel effectors, Vp1 acquires a specialized function via sequence divergence to support fungal colonization and virulence in host plants. It is not clear why this effector requires a C-terminal processing in plant apoplast. However, the processing determines its virulence function and is likely essential for the plant nucleus localization of Vp1 proteins.

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Prion protein is composed of a structure-unsolved N-terminal domain and a globular C-terminal domain. Under limited trypsin digestion, mouse recombinant prion protein can be cleaved into two parts at residue Lys105. Here, we termed these two fragments as the N-domain (sequence 23-105) and the C-domain (sequence 106-230). In this study, the structural properties of the N-domain, the C-domain, and the full-length protein were explored using small-angle X-ray scattering, analytical ultracentrifugation, circular dichroism spectroscopy, and the 8-anilino-1-naphthalenesulfonic acid binding assay. The conformation and size of the prion protein were found to change sensitively under the solvent conditions.

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Avocado consumption is associated with numerous health benefits. Avocadyne is a terminally unsaturated, 17-carbon long acetogenin found almost exclusively in avocados with noted anti-leukemia and anti-viral properties. In this study, specific structural features such as the terminal triple bond, odd number of carbons, and stereochemistry are shown to be critical to its ability to suppress mitochondrial fatty acid oxidation and impart selective activity in vitro and in vivo. Together, this is the first study to conduct a structure-activity analysis on avocadyne and outline the chemical moieties critical to fatty acid oxidation suppression.

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The sample grids for cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) experiments are usually prepared at a temperature optimal for the storage of biological samples, mostly at 4 °C and occasionally at room temperature. Recently, we discovered that the protein structure solved at low temperature may not be functionally relevant, particularly for proteins from thermophilic archaea. A procedure was developed to prepare protein samples at higher temperatures (up to 70 °C) for cryo-EM analysis.

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The semi-fossil and pit-less Azemiops feae is possibly the most primitive crotalid species. Here, we have cloned and sequenced cDNAs encoding four serine proteases (vSPs) from the venom glands of Chinese A. feae. Full amino-acid sequences of the major vSP (designated as AzKNa) and three minor vSPs (designated as AzKNb, AzKNc and Az-PA) were deduced. Using Protein-BLAST search, the ten most-similar vSPs for each Azemiops vSP have been selected for multiple sequence alignment, and all the homologs are crotalid vSPs.

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SARS-CoV-2 infects humans through the binding of viral S-protein (spike protein) to human ACE2 (angiotensin I converting enzyme 2). There are 27 ACE2 amino acid residues that bind to S-protein. From human sequence databases, we identified 9 ACE2 variants at ACE2-S-protein binding sites. We used both experimental assays and protein structure analysis to evaluate the effect of each variant on the binding affinity of ACE2 to S-protein. We found that all 9 variants change the binding affinity of ACE2 to S-protein: six of them reduce the binding affinity significantly or even completely while the other three increase the binding affinity form 50 to 100%.