To understand the function of membrane proteins, the knowledge of their structure, especially the knowledge of the position of transmembrane segments (TMSs) and of their membrane topology (i.e., orientation of TMSs across the membrane), is crucial. Since most TMSs of α-type polytopic (i.e., having multiple TMSs) membrane proteins are composed of hydrophobic amino acids, they are usually detecte...

Directional overcurrent relays (DOCRs) are widely used to protect power systems. For optimal coordination of DOCRs, several techniques have been proposed to solve this problem. A common way of optimal coordination of DOCRs is using evolutionary algorithms such as genetic algorithm (GA). In this paper, a novel strategy for DOCRs coordination is proposed. In the proposed strategy, a new objective...

The current diffusion-retention model for protein trafficking to the inner nuclear membrane (INM) proposes that INM proteins diffuse laterally from the membrane of the endoplasmic reticulum into the INM and are then retained in the INM by binding to nuclear proteins or DNA. Because some data indicate that the sorting of baculovirus envelope proteins to the INM is protein-mediated, we have exami...

In this work we compare the hydrothermal stability performance of a Templated Molecular Sieve Silica (TMSS) membrane against a standard, non-templated Molecular Sieve Silica (MSS) membrane. The tests were carried under dry and wet (steam) conditions and characterised using pure gases (He, H2, CO and CO2) at 1-2 atm membrane pressure drop at 200°C. Single gas TMSS membrane H2, permeance and H2/C...

The initial steps in the biogenesis of membrane proteins parallel that of secretory proteins. The translocation of membrane proteins, however, must be interrupted prior to the complete traversal of the membrane. This is followed by their folding and integrating into the lipid bilayer. We have previously shown that as each latent transmembrane segment (TMS) in a polytopic membrane protein emerge...

Mechanosensitive (MS) channels that provide protection against hypoosmotic shock are found in the membranes of organisms from the three domains of life: bacteria, archaea, and eucarya. Two families of ubiquitous MS channels are recognized, and these have been designated the MscL and MscS families. A high-resolution X-ray crystallographic structure is available for a member of the MscL family, a...

A truth maintenance system (TMS) is a general problem solving facility designed to work in tandem with an inference engine. Justification-based TMSs (the most commonly used TMSs) have not a sufficient expressive power for many applications. Logic-based TMSs overcome this limitation but are untractable. So, McAllester, or Forbus and de Kleer have proposed to encode formulae in clauses and to run...

The microbial rhodopsins (MR) are homologous to putative chaperone and retinal-binding proteins of fungi. These proteins comprise a coherent family that we have termed the MR family. We have used modeling techniques to predict the structure of one of the putative yeast chaperone proteins, YRO2, based on homology with bacteriorhodopsins (BR). Availability of the structure allowed depiction of co...

How reliable and useful are predictions of transmembrane segments(TMSs) of membrane proteins from the amino acid sequences? It remains still under debate. Kyte and Doolittle proposed a simple scheme for the prediction of TMSs [1]. It is based on the hydropathy plot and is widely accepted as a basic and standard method. Since then, a large number of more sophisticated predictive algorithms have ...

In this paper an analysis of 175 currently sequenced transport proteins that comprise the amino acid/polyamine/organocation (APC) superfamily is reported. Members of this superfamily fall into 10 well-defined families that are either prokaryote specific, eukaryote specific or ubiquitous. Most of these proteins exhibit 12 probable transmembrane spanners (TMSs), but members of two of these famili...