Major progress has been made in the past decade towards understanding of the biosynthesis of red carotenoid astaxanthin and its roles in stress response while exploiting microalgae-based astaxanthin as a potent antioxidant for human health and as a coloring agent for aquaculture applications. In this review, astaxanthin-producing green microalgae are briefly summarized with Haematococcus pluvialis and Chlorella zofingiensis recognized to be the most popular astaxanthin-producers. Two distinct pathways for astaxanthin synthesis along with associated cellular, physiological, and biochemical changes are elucidated using H. pluvialis and C. zofingiensis as the model systems. Interactions between astaxanthin biosynthesis and photosynthesis, fatty acid biosynthesis and enzymatic defense systems are described in the context of multiple lines of defense mechanisms working in concert against photooxidative stress. Major pros and cons of mass cultivation of H. pluvialis and C. zofingiensis in phototrophic, heterotrophic, and mixotrophic culture modes are analyzed. Recent progress in genetic engineering of plants and microalgae for astaxanthin production is presented. Future advancement in microalgal astaxanthin research will depend largely on genome sequencing of H pluvialis and C. zofingiensis and genetic toolbox development. Continuous effort along the heterotrophic-phototrophic culture mode could lead to major expansion of the micro algal astaxanthin industry.

Nitrogen availability and cell density each affects growth and cellular astaxanthin content of Haematococcus pluvialis, but possible combined effects of these two factors on the content and productivity of astaxanthin, especially under outdoor culture conditions, is less understood. In this study, the effects of the initial biomass densities IBDs of 0.1, 0.5, 0.8, 1.5, 2.7, 3.5, and 5.0 g L-1 DW and initial nitrogen concentrations of 0, 4.4, 8.8, and 17.6 mM nitrate on growth and cellular astaxanthin content of H. pluvialis Flotow K-0084 were investigated in outdoor glass column photobioreactors in a batch culture mode. A low IBD of 0.1 g L-1 DW led to photo-bleaching of the culture within 1-2 days. When the IBD was 0.5 g L-1 and above, the rate at which the increase in biomass density and the astaxanthin content on a per cell basis was higher at lower IBD. When the IBD was optimal (i.e., 0.8 g L-1), the maximum astaxanthin content of 3.8% of DW was obtained in the absence of nitrogen, whereas the maximum astaxanthin productivity of 16.0 mg L-1 d(-1) was obtained in the same IBD culture containing 4.4 mM nitrogen. The strategies for achieving maximum Haematococcus biomass productivity and for maximum cellular astaxanthin content are discussed.

In this paper, we study oscillating solutions of the 1D-quintic nonlinear Schrödinger equation with the help of Wigner's quasiprobability distribution in quantum phase space. An "absolute squeezing property," namely a periodic in time total localization of wave packets at some finite spatial points without violation of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, is analyzed in this nonlinear model.

Explicit solutions of the inhomogeneous paraxial wave equation in a linear and quadratic approximation are applied to wave fields with invariant features, such as oscillating laser beams in a parabolic waveguide and spiral light beams in varying media. A similar effect of superfocusing of particle beams in a thin monocrystal film, harmonic oscillations of cold trapped atoms, and motion in magnetic field are also mentioned.

The mission of the DNASU Plasmid Repository is to accelerate research by providing high-quality, annotated plasmid samples and online plasmid resources to the research community through the curated DNASU database, website and repository (http://dnasu.asu.edu or http://dnasu.org). The collection includes plasmids from grant-funded, high-throughput cloning projects performed in our laboratory, plasmids from external researchers, and large collections from consortia such as the ORFeome Collaboration and the NIGMS-funded Protein Structure Initiative: Biology (PSI:Biology). Through DNASU, researchers can search for and access detailed information about each plasmid such as the full length gene insert sequence, vector information, associated publications, and links to external resources that provide additional protein annotations and experimental protocols. Plasmids can be requested directly through the DNASU website. DNASU and the PSI:Biology-Materials Repositories were previously described in the 2010 NAR Database Issue (Cormier, C.Y., Mohr, S.E., Zuo, D., Hu, Y., Rolfs, A., Kramer, J., Taycher, E., Kelley, F., Fiacco, M., Turnbull, G. et al. (2010) Protein Structure Initiative Material Repository: an open shared public resource of structural genomics plasmids for the biological community. Nucleic Acids Res., 38, D743–D749.). In this update we will describe the plasmid collection and highlight the new features in the website redesign, including new browse/search options, plasmid annotations and a dynamic vector mapping feature that was developed in collaboration with LabGenius. Overall, these plasmid resources continue to enable research with the goal of elucidating the role of proteins in both normal biological processes and disease.

An interesting occurrence of a Rossby wave breaking event observed during the VORCORE experiment is presented and explained. Twenty-seven balloons were launched inside the Antarctic polar vortex. Almost all of these balloons evolved in the stratosphere around 500K within the vortex, except the one launched on 28 October 2005. In this case, the balloon was caught within a tongue of high potential vorticity (PV), and was ejected from the polar vortex. The evolution of this event is studied for the period between 19 and 25 November 2005. It is found that at the beginning of this period, the polar vortex experienced distortions due to the presence of Rossby waves. Then, these waves break and a tongue of high PV develops. On 25 November, the tongue became separated from the vortex and the balloon was ejected into the surf zone. Lagrangian simulations demonstrate that the air masses surrounding the balloon after its ejection were originating from the vortex edge. The wave breaking and the development of the tongue are confined within a region where a planetary Quasi-Stationary Wave 1 (QSW1) induces wind speeds with weaker values. The QSW1 causes asymmetry in the wind speed and the horizontal PV gradient along the edge of the polar vortex, resulting in a localized jet. Rossby waves with smaller scales propagating on top of this jet amplify as they enter the jet exit region and then break. The role of the QSW1 on the formation of the weak flow conditions that caused the non-linear wave breaking observed near the vortex edge is confirmed by three-dimensional numerical simulations using forcing with and without the contribution of the QSW1.

Rationale: Cell-free protein microarrays display naturally-folded proteins based on just-in-time in situ synthesis, and have made important contributions to basic and translational research. However, the risk of spot-to-spot cross-talk from protein diffusion during expression has limited the feature density of these arrays.

Methods: In this work, we developed the Multiplexed Nucleic Acid Programmable Protein Array (M-NAPPA), which significantly increases the number of displayed proteins by multiplexing as many as five different gene plasmids within a printed spot.

Results: Even when proteins of different sizes were displayed within the same feature, they were readily detected using protein-specific antibodies. Protein-protein interactions and serological antibody assays using human viral proteome microarrays demonstrated that comparable hits were detected by M-NAPPA and non-multiplexed NAPPA arrays. An ultra-high density proteome microarray displaying > 16k proteins on a single microscope slide was produced by combining M-NAPPA with a photolithography-based silicon nano-well platform. Finally, four new tuberculosis-related antigens in guinea pigs vaccinated with Bacillus Calmette-Guerin (BCG) were identified with M-NAPPA and validated with ELISA.

Conclusion: All data demonstrate that multiplexing features on a protein microarray offer a cost-effective fabrication approach and have the potential to facilitate high throughput translational research.

The lack of lipidome analytical tools has limited our ability to gain new knowledge about lipid metabolism in microalgae, especially for membrane glycerolipids. An electrospray ionization mass spectrometry-based lipidomics method was developed for Nannochloropsis oceanica IMET1, which resolved 41 membrane glycerolipids molecular species belonging to eight classes. Changes in membrane glycerolipids under nitrogen deprivation and high-light (HL) conditions were uncovered. The results showed that the amount of plastidial membrane lipids including monogalactosyldiacylglycerol, phosphatidylglycerol, and the extraplastidic lipids diacylglyceryl-O-4′-(N, N, N,-trimethyl) homoserine and phosphatidylcholine decreased drastically under HL and nitrogen deprivation stresses. Algal cells accumulated considerably more digalactosyldiacylglycerol and sulfoquinovosyldiacylglycerols under stresses. The genes encoding enzymes responsible for biosynthesis, modification and degradation of glycerolipids were identified by mining a time-course global RNA-seq data set. It suggested that reduction in lipid contents under nitrogen deprivation is not attributable to the retarded biosynthesis processes, at least at the gene expression level, as most genes involved in their biosynthesis were unaffected by nitrogen supply, yet several genes were significantly up-regulated. Additionally, a conceptual eicosapentaenoic acid (EPA) biosynthesis network is proposed based on the lipidomic and transcriptomic data, which underlined import of EPA from cytosolic glycerolipids to the plastid for synthesizing EPA-containing chloroplast membrane lipids.

In this study, WRF-Chem is utilized at high resolution (1.333 km grid spacing for the innermost domain) to investigate impacts of southern California anthropogenic emissions (SoCal) on Phoenix ground-level ozone concentrations ([O³]) for a pair of recent exceedance episodes. First, WRF-Chem control simulations, based on the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) 2005 National Emissions Inventories (NEI05), are conducted to evaluate model performance. Compared with surface observations of hourly ozone, CO, NO^X, and wind fields, the control simulations reproduce observed variability well. Simulated [O³] are comparable with the previous studies in this region. Next, the relative contribution of SoCal and Arizona local anthropogenic emissions (AZ) to ozone exceedances within the Phoenix metropolitan area is investigated via a trio of sensitivity simulations: (1) SoCal emissions are excluded, with all other emissions as in Control; (2) AZ emissions are excluded with all other emissions as in Control; and (3) SoCal and AZ emissions are excluded (i.e., all anthropogenic emissions are eliminated) to account only for Biogenic emissions and lateral boundary inflow (BILB). Based on the USEPA NEI05, results for the selected events indicate the impacts of AZ emissions are dominant on daily maximum 8 h average (DMA8) [O³] in Phoenix. SoCal contributions to DMA8 [O³] for the Phoenix metropolitan area range from a few ppbv to over 30 ppbv (10–30 % relative to Control experiments). [O³] from SoCal and AZ emissions exhibit the expected diurnal characteristics that are determined by physical and photochemical processes, while BILB contributions to DMA8 [O³] in Phoenix also play a key role.