O108 Barlow, K. P158 Barnea, MCC950 mw E. O135 Barraclough, R. P4 Barron, D. O65 Barry-Hamilton, V. P221 Bar-Shavit, R. O26 Barsky, S. H. P155 Barthel, R. P203 Barzilay, L. O152 Basaldua, F. P123 Bassani-Sternberg, M. O135 Battle, M. O187 Bauwens, S. P161, P224 Bay, J.-O. P68 Beaskoetxea, J. O151 Beaujouin, M. P42 Becker, R. P55 Beckett, M. O79 Beer, I. O135 Behan, J. O67 Bell, J. P195 Bellet, D. O66 Bell-McGuinn, K. O179 Bellon, G. P63 Ben-Baruch, A. O14 Benchimol, D. P202 Benharroch, D. P45 Benito, J. O58 Benlalam, H. O19 Bensoussan, E. O95, P142 Bensussan,

A. O122 Berger, A. P176 Berger, M. P68 Bergh, A. P11, P47, P174 Bernardo, M. O97 Bernhard, E. O176 Berns, E. M.J.J. P79 Berrebi, A. O10 Bert, A. G. P28 Berthet, C. P69 Bertoni, F. O116 Bertrand, F. O66 Betancourt, A. find protocol M. O112 Betsholtz, C. O39 Bettache, N. P42 Beug, H. P138 Bharati, I. P97 Bhojani, M. S. P56 Bhowmick, N. P100 Bianchi, A. O153 Bianchi, P. P166 Biard, D. P44 Bieblová, J. P162 Bieche, I. O66

Bienvenu, G. P36 Biermann, D. P221 Bigot, L. P69 Billard, H. P214 Bindea, G. P176 Biola-Vidamment, A. O86 Bioulac-Sage, P. P182 Birgisson, H. P57 Birnbaum, D. P17, P202, P203 Biroccio, A. P161 Birrer, M. P113 Bissell, M. O77 Bittan, H. O12 Bitterman, H. O136 Bizzini, B. O122 Bjerkvig, R. O181, P64, P83 Blay, J. P20, P35, P50 Blecharz, P. P120 Bochet, L. O38, P144 Bodaghi, B. P168 Boeckx, A. P124 Bomsztyk, E. O160 Bonilla, F. P10 Borg, Å. P141 Borg, J. P. O85 Borsig, L. P196

Bortman, R. P. P31 Bos, P. O169 Bossard, C. O30, O107 Bosserhoff, A. P49 Botta, F. O130 Boucontet, L. P171 Boudreau, N. O77 Bouquet, F. P44 Bousquet, C. O84 Boussioutas, A. O33 Bowtell, D. O33, P23 Box, A. P6 Bradic Lindh, M. P57, P99 Braguer, PD184352 (CI-1040) D. P192 Brahimi, M. C. O59 Brahimi-Horn, C. O7 Brar, S. P6 Brauer, H. A. P58 Brehm, S. P29 Brellier, F. O25 Brentani, M. M. P22, P31 Bretz, N. P59 Briffod, M. O66 Briggs, S. O126 Brockton, N. P6 Bronckaers, A. P21 Brons, R. O181 Brostjan, C. O133 Brousset, P. O168 Bruno, A. P69 Brzezicha, B. O103 Buache, E. O83 Bubeník, J. O44, P162 Buchbinder, N. P108 Budd, W. O31 Bueso-Ramos, C. O58 Bürck, C. P55 Burden, R. P190 Bussink, J. O137 Butturini, A. O67 Byun, Y. P197 Bziouech, H. P203 Cachaço, A. S. P60 Cai, S. O126 Caiado, F. P136 Caldefie-Chezet, F. P214 Calkins, P. O113 Calligaris, D. P192 Calvo, F. O167 Camargo, A. P61 Cambien, B. P203 Campbell, I. O33 Cantemir-Stone, C. Z. P155 Cao, W. P205 Cao, X. P39, P177 Carbery, K. P29 Carbonell, W. S. O154 Carduner, L. P72 Carlson, L. O27, O28 Carmi, Y. O20, O162 Carreiras, F. P72 Carvalho, T. P136 Casal, C. P30 Casal, J. I. P10 Casalini, P. P222 Casalou, C. P136 Caserta, E. P155 Casu, B. P142 Cavalher, F. P61 Cavallaro, U. O64 Cédric, R. O174 Celesti, G. P166 Celhay, O. P183 Cerwenka, A. P170 Chaffanet, M. P17 Chambers, A. F. P76, P131 Chan, D. O8 Chan, M. O114 Chang, P.-L. O110 Charbonneau, M. P54 Charnley, M. P148 Chassagne, J.

For example, Li’s group have resoundingly synthesized sub-20 nm [13] and sub-10 nm [14] water-stable Lu-UCNPs, which can be an ideal choice for multimodal imaging (UCL/CT/MRI/PET) agents. Notably, the sub-20 nm NaLuF4 co-doped Yb3+and Er3+(Tm3+) show about tenfold stronger UCL emission than that of corresponding hexagonal NaYF4-based nanocrystals with a 20-nm diameter, forecasting NaLuF4 an ideal host for multimodal bio-imaging probes [14, 15]. Up to date, great efforts have been devoted to the synthesis of high-quality UCNPs typically through hydrothermal reaction and thermal decomposition of RE organic precursors, selleck chemicals two most commonly used synthetic methods. However, they still

have their respective defects albeit successful in some respects. For instance, typical synthetic methods generally need complicated post surface modification to couple with functional groups for hydrophily and biocompatibility [16], which is a two-step synthesis. Recently, our group has introduced a novel oleic acid-ionic liquids (OA-ILs) dual phase synthesis method, by which hydrophilic and hydrophobic Ln-doped upconversion

crystals could be selectively synthetized buy SU5402 in a one-pot approach [17–19]. In fact, the hydrophilic products obtained by dual-phase method are poorly dispersed and easy to get aggregated in solution because of the complicated surface groups coming from ILs. In a word, one-step synthesis method can simplify the reaction procedure, while products by the two-step synthesis can have better uniformity and monodispersity. As we know that some hydrophilic agents can participate in ligand exchange reaction to endow nanomaterial with hydrophilia and good monodispersity,

including sodium citrate [20], polyethylene glycol (PEG) [21], EDTA [22, 23], 6-aminohexanoic acid (AA) [24], etc. Herein, we introduced a representative surfactants into OA-ILs two-phase reaction system to improve the dispersity, by using the notion of OA-ILs two-phase approach Astemizole (the advantage of one-pot strategy) and ligand exchange functionalization (the advantage of better dispersity). Sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS) and dodecyl dimethyl benzyl ammonium chloride (DDBAC) represent anionic and cationic surfactants, while PEG and sodium citrate (Cit-Na) present non-ionic surfactants with hydroxyl and carboxyl, respectively. Cit-Na is regarded as a good chelating agent in order to prevent further aggregation of particles [22]. SDS has a comparatively high HLB (up to 40) [25], which means that it is able to provide considerable anionic hydrophilic groups. DDBAC, the positively charged quaternary ammonium salt can make itself absorbed on the surface with negative charge [26]. PEG is a polymer comes from polyhydric alcohols with relatively large viscosity.

The RECIST criteria were used to evaluate clinical response [12], and all objective responses were confirmed by CT scans at least 4 weeks after the initial documentation of response. TTP and OS were calculated from the date of first chemotherapy cycle to the date of disease progression, death or last follow-up evaluation, respectively. Toxicity was assessed in each treatment cycle using the National Cancer Institute Common Toxicity Criteria (version 3.0). Peripheral sensitive neuropathy was graded according

to an oxaliplatin-specific scale as described previously [13]. Statistical Methods The primary end point of this study was to estimate the overall response rate of the regimen. Secondary end points were TTP, OS and safety. The Simon’s two-stage phase II design was used to determine the sample size [14]. An interim analysis was carried out when the first 18 assessable see more patients had been recruited. If more than 4 responses were observed, 15 additional patients were to be recruited; otherwise, the study was to be terminated. If more than 10 responses were observed in the 33 patients, the regimen was considered sufficiently active with a significance level of 5% and power of 80% to be submitted for further

evaluation. Seven additional patients were recruited in order to improve the statistical power. TTP and OS were analyzed according this website to the Kaplan-Meier method, and were updated to 31 December 2008. Results Patients over Characteristics From June 2006 to February 2008, 40 patients with metastatic gastric or GEJ cancer were enrolled by three oncologic Italian centres. All patients were evaluable for efficacy and toxicity. The pre-treatment characteristics of patients are listed in Table 1. None of the patients had previously received chemotherapy for advanced disease; six patients had received adjuvant chemotherapy without docetaxel or oxaliplatin several months before they entered this study (median,

12 months; range, 8–20 months). Table 1 Patient characteristics Characteristic No. of patients % Patients evaluable 40 100 Age, years        Median 65      Range 34–75   Sex        Male 24 60    Female 16 40 ECOG PS        0 6 15    1 27 67.5    2 7 17.5 Disease location        Gastric 30 75    GEJ 10 25 Histologic type        Diffuse 19 47.5    Intestinal 15 37.5    Unspecified 6 15 Previous adjuvant chemotherapy 6 15 Status of primary tumor        Unresected 28 70    Resected 12 30 Predominant site of disease        Liver 24 60    Peritoneum 8 20    Nodes 4 10    Lung 2 5    Bone 2 5 No. of metastatic sites        1 11 27.5    2 19 47.5    ≥ 3 10 25 Abbreviations: ECOG PS, Eastern Cooperative Oncology Group Performance Status; GEJ, gastroesophageal junction Efficacy Among 40 assessable patients, we observed two (5%) complete responses (CRs) and 17 (42.5%) partial responses (PRs), for an overall response rate of 47.5% (95% CI, 32–63).

It is likely that K. pneumoniae also produces outer membrane vesicles. In fact, the extracellular toxic complex described by Straus [5, 24] could be considered a preparation of outer membrane vesicles. It is then tempting to speculate that outer membrane vesicles could be associated with K. pneumoniae cytotoxicity

described in our study. Future studies will aim to address this possibility. On the other hand, our results clearly establish that CPS is necessary for the induction of cytotoxicity. CPS is a virulence factor for several pathogens, including Streptococcus PARP inhibitor review pneumoniae, Neisseria meningitidis, Haemophilus influenzae type b and E. coli K1 [32–34]. Of note, no previous reports link the presence of CPS to cytotoxicity. However, just the presence of CPS is not sufficient for K. pneumoniae-induced cytotoxicity because capsulated UV-killed bacteria or purified CPS did not induce this effect. Given the limited current knowledge about K. pneumoniae virulence factors, we can only speculate on the

nature of bacterial factor(s) that, together with CPS, could promote cytotoxicity in the host. Signature-tagged mutagenesis approaches have identified several virulence factors [35, 36], but none of them resemble those triggering the cytotoxicity by other bacterial pathogens. All K. pneumoniae STI571 clinical isolates are capsulated, inferring the importance of CPS for virulence. Likewise, CPS is necessary for virulence in an in vivo pneumonia model [15, 35] and for Klebsiella-induced cytotoxicity (this work). However, our data indicate that CPS-dependent cytoxicity is necessary but not sufficient for Klebsiella virulence because strains Docetaxel in vivo 43816 and 1850 are less virulent

than strain 52145 and the three of them trigger cytotoxicity. This could be explained by differences in the amount of CPS expressed by these strains, although strain 43816 is also considered to be heavily capsulated. The absence of complete correlation between in vitro and in vivo studies has been previously described for other K. pneumoniae isolates. Struve et al., showed that CPS expression reduced K. pneumoniae adhesion to gut and bladder epithelium, when compared to a noncapsulated mutant. However, the presence/absence of CPS had no effect on the colonisation of the gastrointestinal tract, but did play a role in colonisation of the urinary tract [37]. On the other hand, it has been recently postulated that there is an association between CPS serotype, virulence in mice and humans, and frequency of isolation in clinical settings [38]. However, the bacterial strains tested in this study express CPS belonging to serotypes considered to have high potential of causing disease [38], and strains 52145 and 43816 express the same CPS serotype. Nevertheless, Klebsiella infections should be looked at as the outcome of specific interactions between pathogen and host cells. Indeed, factors on both pathogen and host sides may be involved in the progression of the infection.

The reason is that with the decrease of the nanoparticle size, the resonance peak will shift towards the shorter wavelength and uniform size will cause narrow extinction bands [31], which correspond to our experimental results. Supporting evidence for the function of MW of PVP In this section, we show the reason why PVP can affect the silver nanostructure, and it is because PVP prefers to adsorb on the (100) facets of silver nanocrystals in EG [32].

The GSK3326595 interaction process can be given by Equation 1. To determine the strength of adsorption between Ag+ ions and different PVPs, we resort to FT-IR analysis. Figure 5 presents the FT-IR spectra of pure PVP and Ag/PVP. In the spectra of pure PVP, the absorption peak locates at around 1,660 cm-1 Transmembrane Transporters modulator ascribed to the stretching vibration of C = O which is slightly dependent on the MW of PVP. Compared with the free C = O stretching band of pure PVP, the adsorption peaks of Ag/PVP all shift towards the lower wave number due to the coordination between Ag+ ions and carbonyl oxygen. The positions of free and coordinated C = O bands in Ag/PVP with four kinds of MW are shown in Table 2. Because the strength of the coordination interaction between Ag+ ions and PVP can be estimated in terms of the magnitude

of band shifts [33], the sequence of the strength of the coordination interaction between Ag+ ions and PVP occurs as follows: 5-Fluoracil mw PVPMW=1,300,000 > PVPMW=40,000 > PVPMW=8,000 > PVPMW=29,000.

The larger extent of blue shift band indicates a stronger selective adsorption on the (100) facets of silver nanocrystals, which is one of the important factors giving rise to the different morphologies of silver nanocrystals produced with different PVPs. As can be seen in Figure 5a,c,d, there is a peak at about 880 cm-1 assigned to the breathing vibration of the pyrrolidone ring, indicating that the pyrrolidone ring may be tilted on the surface of silver nanowires [34]. In addition, in these three figures, the peak at 2,970 cm-1 ascribed to asymmetric stretching vibration of CH2 in the skeletal chain of PVP, which implies that the CH2 chain is close to the surface of silver nanowires. Therefore, the conformation of PVP makes the fine and close adsorption on the (100) facets of silver nanocrystals. Conversely, both peaks in Figure 5b are weak, leading to the formation of high-yield silver nanospheres which is consistent with the result shown in Figure 1b. (1) Figure 5 FT-IR spectra of pure PVP and Ag/PVP with different MWs. (a) MW = 8,000. (b) MW = 29,000. (c) MW = 40,000. (d) MW = 1,300,000. Table 2 Positions of free and coordinated C = O bands in Ag/PVP with four kinds of MWs System MW   8,000 29,000 40,000 1,300,000 FT-IR (cm-1) 1,640 1,644 1,636 1,633 Redshift (cm-1) 20 16 24 27 Another factor influencing the morphology of silver nanocrystals with different PVPs is the steric effect.

This inhibits vapour phase reactions and allows a very homogeneous and self-limiting film growth within one reaction cycle [16]. Additionally, plasma-enhanced atomic layer deposition (PEALD) reduces the process time at temperatures below 100℃ since there is no need to remove residual water molecules. Furthermore, for AlO x , a higher growth per cycle (GPC) can be achieved compared to the thermal ALD (TALD) process. A benefit of hybrid multilayers (ML) is that the separation into several oxide layers leads to a decoupling of morphological 4SC-202 defects, e. g. caused by particles, which prolongs the permeation path trough the barrier [8].

A more detailed introduction into moisture P505-15 concentration barrier layers is given elsewhere [17]. A popular method to measure the WVTR of permeation barriers is the electrical calcium test [18–20]. Calcium (Ca) heavily hydroxylates at contact with water. At temperatures below 70℃, the dominating

reaction is (3) An oxidation caused by molecular oxygen can be neglected [21–23]. Whereas pure calcium has a good electrical conductivity, Ca(O H)2 is an insulator. If a current is applied to a thin calcium film, its corrosion can easily be detected as a change of the resistance which allows an immediate calculation of the WVTR. Since the deposition of hybrid multilayers by TALD/plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (PECVD) has already been shown [24], in this paper, the preparation of MLs by PEALD/PECVD, carried out in one reactor, will be demonstrated. The WVTRs of moisture barrier layers were

measured with electrical Ca tests. A correlation of the barrier performance of aluminium oxide layers and their impurity content will also be discussed. Methods Sample preparation In order to determine the WVTR, the thin film of interest was coated on a 200- μm-thick polyethylene naphthalate substrate (Teonex Q65, DuPont Teijin Films, Luxembourg) with a size of 25 × 25 mm 2. The polymer foils were cleaned before with acetone, isopropanol and ultrasonic treatments. Prior to deposition, the substrates were stored in the reactor for 72 h at 120℃ to remove residual water in the polymer. Layer deposition The AlO x and the plasma polymer (PP) films were 4-Aminobutyrate aminotransferase deposited in a newly developed plasma system from SENTECH Instruments (patent pending), placed in an ISO class 6 clean room environment. The system was developed and designed for both inductively coupled plasma-enhanced chemical vapour deposition (ICPECVD) and ALD in the same reactor using flexible system architecture. The used plasma source is an inductively coupled planar triple spiral antenna (ICP PTSA 200). A high radio-frequency current flows from the centre through the three arms to the periphery and induces the electric field for generating the high-density plasma [25].

J Microbiol Biotechnol 2009, 19:1127–1134.PubMedCrossRef 47. Fong SS, Nanchen A, Palsson BO, Sauer U: Latent pathway activation and increased pathway Epacadostat purchase capacity enable Escherichia coli adaptation to loss of key metabolic enzymes. J Biol Chem 2006, 281:8024–8033.PubMedCrossRef 48. Kinnersley MA, Holben WE, Rosenzweig F: E unibus plurum: Genomic analysis of an experimentally evolved polymorphism

in Escherichia coli. PLOS Genet 2009, 5:e1000713.PubMedCrossRef 49. Notley-McRobb L, Ferenci T: The generation of multiple co-existing mal-regulatory mutations through polygenic evolution in glucose-limited populations of Escherichia coli. Environ Microbiol 1999, 1:45–52.PubMedCrossRef 50. Blattner FR, Plunkett G, Bloch CA, Perna NT, Burland V, et al.: The complete genome sequence of Escherichia coli K-12. Science 1997, 277:1453–1462.PubMedCrossRef 51. Tsuru S, Ichinose J, Kashiwagi A, Ying BW, Kaneko K, et al.: Noisy cell growth rate leads to fluctuating protein concentration in bacteria. Phys Biol 2009, 6:036015.PubMedCrossRef 52. Freed NE, Silander OK, Stecher B, Böhm A, Hardt WD, et al.: A simple screen to identify promoters conferring high levels of phenotypic noise. PLOS Genet 2008, 4:e1000307.PubMedCrossRef Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Selleck Defactinib Authors’ contributions Conceived and designed the experiments: NN MA. Performed the experiments: NN TB. Analyzed

click here the data: NN TB MA. Wrote the manuscript: NN MA. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
“Background With the widespread use of culture-independent, high-throughput sequencing

technologies, ecologists have begun to describe the diversity of microbial communities that were previously difficult to detect e.g., [1–3]. Given the newness of these data types and the fact that the aims and goals of microbial studies are usually similar to those of macro-ecology, microbial ecologists often use methods from classical community ecology to analyze their data. These include Shannon’s H [4], Berger-Parker Evenness [5], rarefaction, and ordination [6]. While the use of established ecological metrics to analyze microbial diversity may sometimes be appropriate [7], the data produced by ecologists surveying macro-organismal communities differ from data obtained by high-throughput sequencing of microbial communities in three key ways. First, in contrast to plant and animal assemblages, microbial assemblages are typically made up of more than one domain of life, thus necessitating the ability to quantify diversity across very disparate organism types. Second, many classical indices assume ecological communities are composed of unique species. However, traditional biological species concepts do not fit the natural histories of many microbial taxa that routinely undergo non-homologous recombination [8–10] and sometimes lack sexual reproduction.

Table 2 U266 cells express opioid and somatostatin binding sites. [Diprenorphine] (nM) CPM [Somatostatin] (nM) CPM 0,5

44 ± 32 0,025 139 ± 66 1 127 ± 84 0,05 506 ± 313 2,5 157 ± 90 0,076 628 ± 92 5 197 ± 78 0,1 677 ± 326 10 552 ± 276 0,25 987 ± 483 20 2746 ± 1382 0,5 2464 ± 869 Crude membrane fraction was incubated with [125I-Tyr0] somatostatin Cyclosporin A or [3H]diprenorphine as described in materials and methods. Data represent mean ± S.E.M. (n = 3–4) of specific binding expressed in CPM. Figure 1 Expression of SSTRs and opioid receptors in malignant haematological cell lines. A-F, RNAs were extracted from various hemopathy cell lines, reverse transcribed, and cDNAs encoding for SSTR1 to 5 were amplified by PCR. PCR products were separated on agarose gel and stained with ethidium bromide. St : 100 pb ladder, 1 : Jurkat, 2 : Nalm6, 3 : RPMI-8226, 4 : Ramos, 5 : MCF-7, 6 : NCI-H929, 7 : LP-1, 8 : SH-SY5Y, 9 : 697, 10 : U266, C : negative control. * corresponds to the band of the expected size. G, opioid receptors (KOP-, DOP- and MOP-R) were amplified by PCR. St : 100 pb ladder, 1 : U266, 2 : SH-SY5Y, C : negative control. H, expression of opioid receptors (KOP-, DOP- and MOP-R) was studied by western-blot selleck in U266 cells (lane 1) and in positive controls (lane 2): human placenta (KOP-R), SH-SY5Y (MOP-R) and SK-N-BE

cells (DOP-R). Data are representative of three independent experiments. Thus, the U266 cell line represents a suitable model for exploring putative interactions between somatostatin and opioid receptors to modulate cellular proliferation and apoptosis [29–33]. Effect of SSTR and opioid agonists on U266 cell viability Cell viability was then evaluated using Resveratrol XTT assays. All experiments were done in culture medium containing FCS. U266 cells were treated or not (control) in the presence of either Sst or Oct, a SSTR2, 3 and 5 selective agonist [6, 34], ranging from 100 pM to 10 μM during 24, 48 or 72 h. As depicted on the Figure 2A,

Sst, even at high concentrations, was devoid of any significant effect on cell viability at 24, 48 or 72 h pretreatment. When cells were exposed to a selective SSTR antagonist, cyclosomatostatin (Css), alone or in combination with Sst, no significant effect was detected. Stimulation of SSTR2, 3 and 5 by Oct (100 pM to 10 μM) alone or in combination with 10 μM of Css for 24, 48 or 72 h was unable to promote any significant modification of cell viability (Figure 2B). Figure 2 Effect of Sst, Oct and Morph on U266 cell line viability. Exponentially growing cells were seeded and incubated for 24, 48 or 72 h with (A) somatostatin (Sst), (B) octreotide (Oct), (C) Sst alone or combined with 10 μM morphine (Morph). The SSTR antagonist cyclosomatostatin (Css) was also included. U266 cell viability was determined using the XTT assay and data were normalized to absorbance values obtained in control cells. Data are mean ± S.E.

CrossRef 12. Hafez H, Wu J, Lan Z, Li Q, Xie G, Lin J, Huang M, Huang Y, Abdel-Mottaleb

MS: Enhancing the photoelectrical performance of dye-sensitized solar cells using TiO 2 :Eu 3 + nanorods. Nanotechnology 2010, 21:415201–415206.CrossRef 13. Liu JF, Yao QH, Li YD: Effects of downconversion luminescent film in dye-sensitized solar cells. Appl Phys Lett 2006, 88:173119–173123.CrossRef 14. Yun JJ, Jung HS, Kim SH, Vaithianathan V, Jenekhe SA, Han EM: Chlorophyll-layer-inserted poly(3-hexyl-thiophene) solar cell having a high light-to-current conversion efficiency up to 1.48%. Appl Phys Lett 2005, 87:123102.CrossRef selleck kinase inhibitor 15. Huang XY, Wang JX, Yu DC, Ye S, Zhang QY: Spectral conversion for solar cell efficiency enhancement using YVO 4 :Bi 3+ , Ln 3+ (Ln = Dy, Er, Ho, Eu, Sm, and Yb) phosphors. J Appl Phys 2011,109(11):113526–113527.CrossRef 16. Chai R, Lian H, Yang P, Fan Y, Hou Z, Kang X, Lin J: In situ preparation and luminescent properties of LaPO 4 :Ce Compound C chemical structure 3+ , Tb 3+ nanoparticles and transparent LaPO 4 :Ce 3+ , Tb 3+ /PMMA nanocomposite. J Colloid Interface Sci 2009, 336:46–50.CrossRef 17. Song WS, Choi HN, Kim YS, Yang HS: Formation of green-emitting LaPO4:Ce, Tb nanophosphor layer and its application to highly transparent plasma displays. J Mater Chem 2010, 20:6929–6934.CrossRef 18. Pankratov V, Popov AI, Kotlov A, Feldmann C: Luminescence

of nano- and macrosized LaPO 4 :Ce, Tb excited by synchrotron radiation . Opt Mater

2011, 33:1102–1105.CrossRef 19. Guo W, Shen YH, Boschloo G, Hagfeldt A, Ma TL: Influence of nitrogen dopants on N-doped TiO 2 electrodes and their applications in dye-sensitized solar cells. Electrochim Acta 2011, 56:4611–4617.CrossRef 20. Xie GX, Lin JM, Wu JH, Lan Z, Li QH, Xiao YM, Yue GT, Yue HF, Huang ML: Application of upconversion luminescence in dye-sensitized solar cells. Chin Sci Bull 2011, 56:96–101.CrossRef Competing interests The authors declare that they have no competing interests. Authors’ contributions CKH and JJY performed UV–vis spectroscopic study and I-V result analysis. HSK fabricated the DSSCs. EMH performed the photoluminescence next analysis. KHP drafted the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.”
“Background One-dimensional semiconductor nanostructures such as nanotubes and nanowires (NWs) are being actively investigated for applications in electronic, photonic, and sensor devices [1]. Group IV semiconductor NW-based devices are attractive because of their compatibility with the existing Si complementary metal oxide semiconductor (CMOS) integrated circuit technology. Therefore, group IV NWs such as Ge/GeO x can also be used for nanoscale nonvolatile memory applications because they are compatible with CMOS technology. Resistive random access memory (RRAM) devices have received considerable interest recently because of their high performance and potential scalability [2–8].

pneumophila.

Discussion In the current study, LpΔclpP was shown to exhibit reduced growth BX-795 rate at high temperatures (Figure 2D) and impaired resistance to heat shock (Figure 3C) compared to the wild type. The LpΔclpP mutant also displayed impaired resistance to oxidative and low-pH conditions in stationary phase. As oxidative and acid stress are generally considered as harsh and detrimental to DNA [48, 49], ClpP homologue may play an important role in L. pneumophila DNA repair, consistent with its demonstrated function in E. coli [50], S. aureus [51] and Lactococcus lactis [52]. However, while several previous studies have demonstrated growth defect as a result of ClpP deficiency over a broad temperature range [34, 35, 51], deletion of clpP appeared to compromise the growth of L. pneumophila only at higher temperatures (Figure

2A to 2C), suggestive of a more restricted role independent of cold response. Attenuation of ClpP or Clp ATPase activities has been shown to lead to abnormal bacterial morphology such as filamentation, Dinaciclib cost aberrant cell wall structure and irregular cell division [29, 32, 53–55]. Likewise, results from SEM and cyro-TEM revealed that the LpΔclpP mutant cells were elongated and defective in cell division (Figure 4). Furthermore, SEM results also implicated a role of clpP in stress tolerance in L. pneumophila. In contrast to the defective cell surface observed in SEM (Figure 4D and 4E), largely normal cell surface were found by cyro-TEM in LpΔclpP mutant cells grown under normal conditions (Figure 4A to 4C), suggesting that the chemical

treatment during SEM sample preparation, not clpP Metalloexopeptidase deletion, may have resulted in the abnormal cell surface. How ClpP affects cell division is not fully understood. In C. crescentus, degradation of the cell cycle repressor CtrA by the ClpXP complex has been shown to contribute to G1-S transition, and deletion of clpP blocked cell division [54]. In B. subtilis, cells overproducing MurAA, an enzyme in peptidoglycan biosynthesis and a substrate of the Clp protease, displayed a filamentous, undivided morphology reminiscent of the clpP mutant cells, suggesting that degradation of MurAA by ClpP might contribute to normal cell segregation [56]. Furthermore, through a ClpP-independent pathway, the B. subtilis ClpX appeared to modulate the assembly of the tubulin-like protein FtsZ [57], which is known to be a key process in the replication and division of Gram-negative bacteria [58]. Identification of the substrate(s) for ClpP may shed light on the regulatory mechanism of cell division in L. pneumophila. ClpP proteolytic complexes play pivotal roles in protein degradation or modification [26, 31, 32]. During the transition of B. subtilis cells to stationary phase, ClpP degrades massive amounts of proteins previously produced in exponential growth phase [32]. Notably, L.