Cloning And Characterization Of A Geranylgeranyl Diphosphate Synthase Gene From Taxus Chinensis

Taxol(Paclitaxel)is a diterpene from Taxus species and has been used in treatment of various kinds of cancers.Geranylgeranyl diphosphate synthase(GGPPS)catalyzes the formation of geranylgeranyl diphosphate(GGPP,the common precursor for diterpenes and plays a key role in taxol biosynthesis.Here we report a functional GGPPS gene from Taxus chinensis(designated TcGGPPS).TcGGPPS is an intron free gene and has a 1,182-bp open reading frame encoding a polypeptide of 393 amino acid residues with a calculated molecular mass of 42.63 kDa and an isoelectric point of 5.58.The catalytic activity of TcGGPPS for production of GGPP was verified by a color enhancement assay in the Escherichia coli cells harboring plasmid pAC-BETA.Multiple sequence alignment indicates that TcGGPPS is a little different in sequence from the functional GGPPS genes from other Taxus species such as T.canadensis,T.media and T.wallichiana,which are almost identical to each other.Protein structure prediction by using bioinformatics reveals that TcGGPPS consists of 52.2%α-helix,10.9%extended strand,8.4%β-turn and 28.5%random coil,and has a three-dimensional structure highly similar to the structurally known Sinapis alba GGPPS.In silicon predictions also demonstrate that TcGGPPS has a plastid-targeting peptide at the N-terminus,suggesting it is responsible for the synthesis of GGPP in plastids.

Surjective Lp-isometries on Grassmann spaces

Letϕ:Pc(M1)→Pc(M2)be a surjective Lp-isometry between Grassmann spaces of projections with the trace value c in semifinite factors M1 and M2.Based on the characterization of surjective Lp-isometries of unitary groups in finite factors,we show thatϕor I−ϕcan be extended to a∗-isomorphism or a∗-antiisomorphism.In particular,ϕis given by a∗-(anti-)isomorphism unless M1 and M2 are finite and c=12.

The main anammox-based processes, the involved microbes and the novel process concept from the application perspective

Anammox technology has been widely researched over the past 40-year from the laboratory-scale to full-scale. It is well-known that in actual applications, the solo application of anammox is not feasible. Since both ammonium and nitrite are prerequisites based on the reaction mechanism, the pre-treatment of wastewater is necessary. With the combination of anammox process and other pre-treatment processes to treat the actual wastewater, many types of anammox-based processes have been developed with distinct nitrogen removal performance. Thus, in order to heighten the awareness of researchers to the developments and accelerate the application of these processes to the treatment of actual wastewater, the main anammox-based processes are reviewed in this paper. It includes the partial nitritation/anammox process, the denitratation/anammox (PD/A) process, the denitrifying anaerobic methane oxidation/anammox (DAMO/A) process, and more complex deuterogenic processes. These processes have made the breakthroughs in the application of the anammox technology, such as the combination of nitrification and PD/A process can achieve stability and reliability of nitrogen removal in the treatment of mainstream wastewater, the PD/A process and the DAMO/A have brought about further improvements in the total nitrogen removal efficiency of wastewater. The diversity of functional microbe characteristics under the specific condition indicate the wide application potential of anammox-based processes, and further exploration is necessary. A whole waste treatment system concept is proposed through the effective allocation of above mentioned processes, with the maximum recovery of energy and resources, and minimal environmental impact.