Search results for "BENI CULTURALI"

Conformational substates of ferricytochrome c revealed by combined optical absorption and electronic circular dichroism spectroscopy at cryogenic tem…

2010

We have investigated the heterogeneity of the Fe(III)–Met80 linkage of horse heart ferricytochrome c by probing the 695 nm charge transfer band with absorption and electronic circular dichroism (ECD) spectroscopy. In order to verify the connection between conformational substates of the Fe(III)–Met80 linkage and the 695 nm band spectral heterogeneity, we have performed experiments as a function of pH (neutral and acidic) and temperature (room and 20 K). At room temperature, the ECD spectrum is blue shifted with respect to the absorption one; the shift is more pronounced at acidic pH and is compatible with the presence of sub-bands. ECD measurements at 20 K highlighted the heterogeneous natu…

Bovine Serum Albumin protofibril-like aggregates formation: Solo but not simple mechanism

2011

We report an experimental study on the model protein Bovine Serum Albumin (BSA), with the aim of elucidating the mechanisms by which a fully folded globular protein undergoes different aggregation pathways leading to the formation of amyloid fibrils or amorphous aggregates. We observe thermally induced formation of fibrillar structures at pH far from the protein isoelectric point. The increase of electrostatic repulsion results in protein destabilization and in modifications of inter and intra-molecular interactions leading to the growth of fibril-like aggregates stabilized by inter-molecular-β sheets. The aggregation kinetics is studied by means of fluorescence techniques, light scattering…

Existence of metastable intermediate lysozyme conformation highlights the role of alcohols in altering protein stability.

2011

Alcohols have a manifold effect on the conformational and thermodynamic stability of native proteins. Here, we study the effect of moderate concentrations of trifluoroethanol (TFE) on the thermal stability of hen egg-white lysozyme (HEWL), by far-UV circular dichroism and by steady-state and time-resolved photoluminescence of intrinsic tryptophans. Our results highlight that TFE affects lysozyme stability by preferential solvation of the protein molecule. Furthermore, we discovered the existence at 20% TFE of an equilibrium partially folded state of lysozyme, intermediate between the native and the unfolded state. A three-state model is therefore used to interpolate the thermal denaturation…

Two Latent and Two Hyperstable Polymeric Forms of Human Neuroserpin

2010

AbstractHuman neuroserpin (hNS) is a serine protease inhibitor that belongs to the serpin superfamily and is expressed in nervous tissues. The serpin fold is generally characterized by a long exposed loop, termed the reactive center loop, that acts as bait for the target protease. Intramolecular insertion of the reactive center loop into the main serpin β-sheet leads to the serpin latent form. As with other known serpins, hNS pathological mutants have been shown to accumulate as polymers composed of quasi-native protein molecules. Although hNS polymerization has been intensely studied, a general agreement about serpin polymer organization is still lacking. Here we report a biophysical chara…

Stochastic models for wind speed forecasting

2011

Abstract This paper is concerned with the problem of developing a general class of stochastic models for hourly average wind speed time series. The proposed approach has been applied to the time series recorded during 4 years in two sites of Sicily, a region of Italy, and it has attained valuable results in terms both of modelling and forecasting. Moreover, the 24 h predictions obtained employing only 1-month time series are quite similar to those provided by a feed-forward artificial neural network trained on 2 years data.

Noise influence on electron dynamics in semiconductors driven by a periodic electric field

2008

Studies about the constructive aspects of noise and fluctuations in different non-linear systems have shown that the addition of external noise to systems with an intrinsic noise may result in a less noisy response. Recently, the possibility to reduce the diffusion noise in semiconductor bulk materials by adding a random fluctuating contribution to the driving static electric field has been tested. The present work extends the previous theories by considering the noise-induced effects on the electron transport dynamics in low-doped n-type GaAs samples driven by a high-frequency periodic electric field (cyclostationary conditions). By means of Monte Carlo simulations, we calculate the change…

Assessing the impact of copy number variants on miRNA genes in autism by Monte Carlo simulation.

2014

Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASDs) are childhood neurodevelopmental disorders with complex genetic origins. Previous studies have investigated the role of de novo Copy Number Variants (CNVs) and microRNAs as important but distinct etiological factors in ASD. We developed a novel computational procedure to assess the potential pathogenic role of microRNA genes overlapping de novo CNVs in ASD patients. Here we show that for chromosomes # 1, 2 and 22 the actual number of miRNA loci affected by de novo CNVs in patients was found significantly higher than that estimated by Monte Carlo simulation of random CNV events. Out of 24 miRNA genes over-represented in CNVs from these three chromosomes only …

La Colorimetria nei programmi di Conservazione e Restauro: il ruolo della Spettroradiometria

2011

Exon deletions of the PAH gene in Italian hyperphenylalaninemics

2010

A consistent finding of many studies describing the spectrum of mutant phenylalanine hydroxylase alleles underlying hyperphenylalaninemia is the impossibility of achieving a 100% mutation ascertainment rate using conventional gene-scanning methods such as Denaturing Gradient Gel Electrophoresis (DGGE), Denaturing High Performance Liquid Chromatography (DHPLC), direct sequencing. In recent years, it has been shown that a significant proportion of these undetermined alleles consist of large deletions overlapping one or more exons. These deletions have been difficult to detect in compound heterozygotes by gene-scanning methods due to the masking effect by the non-deleted allele. To date no sys…

Preface

2019

The Enrico Fermi Schools are a highly prestigious series of summer schools of the Italian Physical Society with a tradition of more than 60 years and with many Nobel laureates as lecturers (https://www.sif.it/attivita/scuola_fermi/). The International Schools devote special care in planning the program and produces proceedings of the school that have become classics. Recently an increasing number of interdisciplinary topics have been selected and our school fits into this trend. Our school will consider complex systems of social and economic origin by teaching and discussing concepts and topics of computational social science and econophysics. These are fields, where physicists, computer sc…