Randomly-generated constraint satisfaction problems go through a phase transition as the constraint tightness varies. Loose constraints give an `easy-soluble' region, where problems have many solutions and are almost always easy to solve. However, in this region, systematic search algorithms may occasionally encounter problems which are extremely expensive to solve. It has been suggested that i...

pH sensors are widely used in chemical and biological applications. Metal oxides-based pH sensors have many attractive features including insolubility, stability, mechanical strength, electrocatalyst and manufacturing technology. Various metal oxide thin films prepared by radio frequency (R.F.) magnetron sputtering have attractive features, including high pH sensitivity, fast response, high res...

Episodic ataxia type 1 (EA-1) is a neurological disorder arising from mutations in the Kv1.1 potassium channel alpha-subunit. EA-1 patients exhibit substantial phenotypic variability resulting from at least 14 distinct EA-1 point mutations. We found that EA-1 missense mutations generate mutant Kv1.1 subunits with folding and intracellular trafficking properties indistinguishable from wild-type ...

The inhalation of noxious fumes causes damage to the air passages and alveolar walls. The response covers a wide range, depending upon the nature of the gas, its concentration in the lungs, and the duration of exposure. Certain irritant gases, notably chlorine and ammonia, have an immediate effect on the upper respiratory tract, with intense burning in the throat, choking, and attacks of laryng...

A carboxymethyl starch (CMS) film was prepared by a process in which gelatinized CMS was dried, and subsequently treated with water-soluble carbodiimide in the presence of zein in 70% ethanol or 70% acetone to form acid-amide cross-linkages in order to increase the hydrophobicity of the surface of the film. A small amount of zein protein was found to be present on the surface of the zein-CMS co...

The kinetics of activation of saturated fatty acids by long chain acyl-CoA synthetase from rat liver microsomes has been studied with a method of selective extraction of free fatty acids based on the insolubility of acyl-CoA in diethyl ether. Saturated fatty acids with a chain length ranging from Cl* to Co were assayed at concentrations varying from 0.5 to 10 PM. Under these conditions, Vm,, is...

Many NP-complete constraint satisfaction problems appear to undergo a “phase transition” from solubility to insolubility when the constraint density passes through a critical threshold. In all such cases it is easy to derive upper bounds on the location of the threshold by showing that above a certain density the first moment (expectation) of the number of solutions tends to zero. We show that ...

Rat liver chromatin has been fractionated by different solubility in solvents of 155 mM ionic strength in soluble S and insoluble I-chromatin. Histone H1 content is lower in S as compared to I-chromatin. The HMG1/2 nonhistone proteins are observed in S-chromatin and in the nuclear pelleted residue from the chromatin isolation procedure, but no amount can be detected in I-chromatin. Thermal dena...

Hyaluronic acid (HA) has currently several therapeutic applications: in ophthalmology, osteoarthritis, wound healing, tissue regeneration, postoperative anti-adhesion and anesthetic medicine. In the last ten years, it has also been successfully investigated in the field of drug delivery, in the form of conjugates or hydrogel depot systems. HAylation, the covalent conjugation of HA to bioactive ...

Insolubility of recombinant proteins in Escherichia coli is a major impediment to their production for structural and functional studies. One way to circumvent this problem is to fuse an aggregation-prone protein to a highly soluble partner. E. coli maltose-binding protein (MBP) has emerged as one of the most effective solubilizing agents. In this chapter, we describe how to construct combinato...