Fungi occupy diverse environments where they are constantly challenged by stressors such as extreme pH, temperature, UV exposure, and nutrient deprivation. Nitrogen is an essential requirement for growth, and the ability to metabolize a wide variety of nitrogen sources enables fungi to colonize different environmental niches and survive nutrient limitations. Favored nitrogen sources, particular...

Iron-sulfur clusters are a universal biological motif. They carry out electron transfer, redox chemistry and even oxygen sensing, in diverse processes including nitrogen fixation, respiration and photosynthesis. Their low-lying electronic states are key to their remarkable reactivity, but they cannot be directly observed. Here, we present the first ever quantum calculation of the electronic lev...

Polyynes are alternations of single and triple bonds between carbon atoms, while cumulenes successions double bonds. Since the bond is strongest two recent preoccupations included synthesizing condensing cyclic polyynes their clusters. Density functional theory calculations predicted stable monocyclic rings formation for a number C atoms equal to or higher than 16. Alternative series Carbon Bor...

Different environmental nitrogen sources play selective roles in the development of cyanobacterial blooms and noxious effects are often exacerbated when toxic cyanobacteria are dominant. Cylindrospermopsis raciborskii CS-505 (heterocystous, nitrogen fixing) and Raphidiopsis brookii D9 (non-N₂ fixing) produce the nitrogenous toxins cylindrospermopsin (CYN) and paralytic shellfish toxins (PSTs), ...

We perform first-principles density-functional theory calculations to investigate the structural and electronic properties and the formation energies of nitrogen vacancies in wurtzite InN. We report an extensive and systematic study of the favorable atomic and electronic configurations of up to six vacancies in large supercells. The isolated vacancy acts as a donor in a p-type material where th...

Rnf proteins are proposed to form membrane-protein complexes involved in the reduction of target proteins such as the transcriptional regulator SoxR or the dinitrogenase reductase component of nitrogenase. In this work, we investigate the role of rnf genes in the nitrogen-fixing bacterium Azotobacter vinelandii. We show that A. vinelandii has two clusters of rnf-like genes: rnf1, whose expressi...

A series of experiments was set up to examine the effects of nitrogen on rice (Oryza sativa L.) resistance against Nilaparvata lugens (Stål) and Sogatella furcifera (Horváth). Egg laying by N. lugens was reduced on the indica variety IR60. Nymph biomass (N. lugens and S. furcifera) was also lower on IR60: this was associated with low honeydew production and a high proportion of xylem-derived ho...

The filamentous cyanobacterium Anabaena variabilis ATCC 29413 fixes nitrogen under aerobic conditions in specialized cells called heterocysts that form in response to an environmental deficiency in combined nitrogen. Nitrogen fixation is mediated by the enzyme nitrogenase, which is very sensitive to oxygen. Heterocysts are microxic cells that allow nitrogenase to function in a filament comprise...

Salt-like cluster ions of the ([cation](n)[anion](n-1))(+) type are commonly composed of mono-atomic, inorganic components. Clusters containing organic ions are also known, with nitrogen-centred cations being particularly prominent. However, sulphur-centred analogues, such as organic sulphonium salts, represent a notable exception. Fast atom bombardment and liquid secondary ion mass spectrometr...