Despite decades of research, the structure and assembly of the nuclear pore complex (NPC), which is composed of ∼30 nucleoporins (Nups), remain elusive. Here, we report the genome of the thermophilic fungus Chaetomium thermophilum (ct) and identify the complete repertoire of Nups therein. The thermophilic proteins show improved properties for structural and biochemical studies compared to their...

Understanding how proteins adapt to function at high temperatures is important for deciphering the energetics that dictate protein stability and folding. While multiple principles important for thermostability have been identified, we lack a unified understanding of how internal protein structural and chemical environment determine qualitative or quantitative impact of evolutionary mutations. I...

An open question of great interest in biophysics is whether variations in structure cause protein folds to differ in the number of amino acid sequences that can fold to them stably, i.e., in their designability. Recently, we have shown that a novel quantitative measure of a fold's tertiary topology, called its contact trace, strongly correlates with the fold's designability. Here, we investigat...

Thermophilic fungi are a small assemblage in mycota that have a minimum temperature of growth at or above 20 degrees C and a maximum temperature of growth extending up to 60 to 62 degrees C. As the only representatives of eukaryotic organisms that can grow at temperatures above 45 degrees C, the thermophilic fungi are valuable experimental systems for investigations of mechanisms that allow gro...

In his famous 1959 review, Walter Kauzmann clarified important features of the thermodynamic stabilities of proteins. The hydrophobic effect is recognised as an important contributor to the stability of proteins and an important determinant of their structural patterns. As generally understood, it depends on the unusual properties of cold water and its interactions with nonpolar solutes. Here w...

Thermophilic bacteria are one of the most attractive forms of life, and their adaptation mechanisms to elevated temperatures have been extensively studied over the years. Thermal adaptations of cell components such as proteins and RNA are well studied, but adaptations of interactions between these components must be also vital for the thermophiles. Protein-DNA interactions play crucial roles in...

Starting from two datasets of codon usage in coding sequences from mesophilic and thermophilic bacteria, we used internal correspondence analysis to study the variability of codon usage within and between species, and within and between amino acids. The first dataset included 18,958,458 codons from 58,482 coding sequences from completely sequenced genomes of 25 species, along with 6,793,581 din...

We describe the stabilization by pressure of enzymes, including a hydrogenase from Methanococcus jannaschii, an extremely thermophilic deep-sea methanogen. This is the first published report of proteins from thermophiles being stabilized by pressure. Inactivation studies of partially purified hydrogenases from an extreme thermophile (Methanococcus igneus), a moderate thermophile (Methanococcus ...

anaerobic digestion of organic solid waste (osw) from kitchen was conducted in completely stirred tank reactors (cstrs) under both mesophilic and thermophilic conditions. the lab-scale reactors were fed with the osw containing 10% of total solids (ts) at a hydraulic retention time (hrt) of 30 days (3.0-3.5 g-ts/l/d of volumetric loading rate). both mesophilic and thermophilic reactors exhibited...