The original amber has a special esthetic value and for that is more and more commercialized on market as jewelry, articles for gifts, souvenirs, art pieces and décor objects. The amber quality is the result of its aspect (especialyl natural inclusions), shape, color, gloss, dimensions, processing methods and others. The modern technologies have permitted to fake the amber with some materials. ...

The precise engineering of proteins in bacteria via the amber codon has been hampered by the poor incorporation of unnatural amino acid (UAA). Here we explored the amber assignment as a sense codon for UAA by CRISPRi targeting release factor 1 (RF1). Scanning of RF1 gene with sgRNAs identified target loci that differentiate RF1 repressions. Quantitation of RF1 repressions versus UAA incorporati...

Multiple variants of the AMBER all-atom force field were quantitatively evaluated with respect to their ability to accurately characterize helix-coil equilibria in explicit solvent simulations. Using a global distributed computing network, absolute conformational convergence was achieved for large ensembles of the capped A(21) and F(s) helical peptides. Further assessment of these AMBER variant...

A new genus and species of ibis fly is described from an isolated wing in amber from the Late Albian-Early Cenomanian of Charentes, southwestern France. Galloatherix incompletus gen. et sp. n., is the first Athericidae fossilized in Cretaceous amber, and only the eighth Mesozoic species. It adds to the diverse aquatic and semiaquatic paleobiota already identified from Charentese amber. 

Background: It has been shown that short-wavelength blue component of the visible light spectrum can alter the circadian rhythm and suppress the level of melatonin hormone. The short-wavelength light emitted by smartphones’ screens can affect the sleep quality of the people who use these devices at night through suppression of melatonin.Objectives: In this study, we examined the effects of co...

Hepatitis delta virus (HDV) requires host RNA editing at the viral RNA amber/W site. Of the two host genes responsible for RNA editing via deamination of adenosines in double-stranded RNAs, short inhibitory RNA-mediated knockdown of host ADAR1 expression but not that of ADAR2 led to decreased HDV amber/W editing and virus production. Despite substantial sequence and structural variation among t...

We describe the synthesis, cloning, expression, and in vivo function of a suppressor tRNA gene in mammalian cells. By using "primer-directed mutagenesis" on a Xenopus laevis tyrosine tRNA gene cloned into the recombinant single-strand phage M13mp5, we have generated an amber suppressor tRNA gene that has a nucleotide change--GTA leads to CTA--in the anticodon sequence. The suppressor (Su) tRNA ...

Amber from a Lower Cretaceous outcrop at San Just, located in the Eastern Iberian Peninsula (Escucha Formation, Maestrat Basin), was investigated to evaluate its physico-chemical properties. Thermogravimetric (TG) and Differential Thermogravimetric (DTG) analyses, infra-red spectroscopy, elemental and C-isotope analyses were performed. Physico-chemical differences between the internal light nuc...

Nine amber suppressor mutations were isolated in the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans by reverting amber alleles of a sex-determining gene, tra-3. One suppressor maps to a known locus, sup-5 III , but the other eight map to three new loci, sup-21 X (five alleles), sup-22 IV (two alleles) and sup-23 IV (one allele). Amber alleles of tra-3 and of a dumpy gene, dpy-20, were used to measure the effi...

One new genus and three new species of Lygistorrhinidae in early Eocene Cambay amber from India are described, which significantly increases our knowledge about this group in the Eocene. Lygistorrhina indica n. sp. is the oldest fossil known from this extant genus. Indorrhina sahnii n. gen. et sp. shows morphological similarities to each of the two extant genera Lygistorrhina and Asiorrhina. Pa...