Induction of systemic resistance in different varieties of Solanum tuberosum by pure and crude elicitor treatment.

A 10 kD elicitor protein (infestin) produced by Phytopthora infestans was purified and its efficacy for induction of systemic resistance in resistant and susceptible varieties of Solanum tuberosum was studied. Culture filtrates from P. infestans with and without purified elicitor (infestin) were used as elicitors to understand the effect of purified elicitor (infestin) on development of systemic resistance. Culture filtrate and purified elicitor (infestin) were found to induce hypersensitive reaction on the leaves of resistant varieties, but not on susceptible varieties after 48 h. Culture filtrate devoid of purified elicitor (infestin) did not induce any necrotic spots even on resistant variety. Purified elicitor (infestin) was found to induce glucose oxidase, NADPH oxidase, superoxide dismutase, glutathione reductase, catalase and peroxidase enzymes in resistant S. tuberosum plants, however the induction of these enzymes was low in susceptible varieties. The oxidative enzymes were found to induce earlier than antioxidative enzymes and there was negative correlation between these two groups of enzymes. Levels of salicylic acid, phenylalanine ammonia lyase (PAL), beta-1, 3 glucanase and chitinase activities were also found higher in resistant than in susceptible varieties. It was observed that purified elicitor (infestin) was superior to crude culture filtrate, but was not capable of inducing systemic resistance in susceptible varieties.

An efficient approach for low latency processing in stream data.

Stream data is the data that is generated continuously from the different data sources and ideally defined as the data that has no discrete beginning or end. Processing the stream data is a part of big data analytics that aims at querying the continuously arriving data and extracting meaningful information from the stream. Although earlier processing of such stream was using batch analytics, nowadays there are applications like the stock market, patient monitoring, and traffic analysis which can cause a drastic difference in processing, if the output is generated in levels of hours and minutes. The primary goal of any real-time stream processing system is to process the stream data as soon as it arrives. Correspondingly, analytics of the stream data also needs consideration of surrounding dependent data. For example, stock market analytics results are often useless if we do not consider their associated or dependent parameters which affect the result. In a real-world application, these dependent stream data usually arrive from the distributed environment. Hence, the stream processing system has to be designed, which can deal with the delay in the arrival of such data from distributed sources. We have designed the stream processing model which can deal with all the possible latency and provide an end-to-end low latency system. We have performed the stock market prediction by considering affecting parameters, such as USD, OIL Price, and Gold Price with an equal arrival rate. We have calculated the Normalized Root Mean Square Error (NRMSE) which simplifies the comparison among models with different scales. A comparative analysis of the experiment presented in the report shows a significant improvement in the result when considering the affecting parameters. In this work, we have used the statistical approach to forecast the probability of possible data latency arrives from distributed sources. Moreover, we have performed preprocessing of stream data to ensure at-least-once delivery semantics. In the direction towards providing low latency in processing, we have also implemented exactly-once processing semantics. Extensive experiments have been performed with varying sizes of the window and data arrival rate. We have concluded that system latency can be reduced when the window size is equal to the data arrival rate.

High-throughput sequencing of peptoids and peptide-peptoid hybrids by partial edman degradation and mass spectrometry.

A method for the rapid sequence determination of peptoids [oligo(N-substituted glycines)] and peptide-peptoid hybrids selected from one-bead-one-compound combinatorial libraries has been developed. In this method, beads carrying unique peptoid (or peptide-peptoid) sequences were subjected to multiple cycles of partial Edman degradation (PED) by treatment with a 1:3 (mol/mol) mixture of phenyl isothiocyanate (PITC) and 9-fluorenylmethyl chloroformate (Fmoc-Cl) to generate a series of N-terminal truncation products for each resin-bound peptoid. After PED, the Fmoc group was removed from the N-terminus and any reacted side chains via piperidine treatment. The resulting mixture of the full-length peptoid and its truncation products was analyzed by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry, to reveal the sequence of the full-length peptoid. With a slight modification, the method was also effective in the sequence determination of peptide-peptoid hybrids. This rapid, high-throughput, sensitive, and inexpensive sequencing method should greatly expand the utility of combinatorial peptoid libraries in biomedical and materials research.

Global analysis of peptide cyclization efficiency.

Cyclic peptides are of considerable interest in drug discovery and nanotechnology. However, macrocyclization of peptides and other compounds has often been perceived as synthetically challenging and the cyclization yields are affected by several factors including the ring size, peptide sequence, and the reaction conditions. Through the screening of combinatorial peptide libraries, we analyzed the cyclization efficiency of >2 million peptide sequences to determine the effect of ring size, peptide sequence, and solvent on the backbone (N-to-C) cyclization of peptides. Our results show that on-resin cyclization of medium- and large-sized rings (cyclohexapeptides and above) with PyBOP is essentially quantitative for ≥ 99.96% of the sequences, with small amounts of dimer formation observed for <4% of these sequences. Cyclization of small rings (cyclotetrapeptides and cyclopentapeptides) is considerably more difficult and accompanied by significant cyclic dimer formation. Peptides that are difficult to cyclize are generally rich in Lys(Boc) and Arg(Pbf) residues as well as sterically hindered residues [e.g., Thr(tBu)] at the N-terminus. The majority of these difficult sequences can be cyclized to completion by the addition of aqueous additives to the cyclization reaction.

Screening nonspecific interactions of peptides without background interference.

The need to discover new peptide sequences to perform particular tasks has lead to a variety of peptide screening methods: phage display, yeast display, bacterial display and resin display. These are effective screening methods because the role of background binding is often insignificant. In the field of nonfouling materials, however, a premium is placed on chemistries that have extremely low levels of nonspecific binding. Due to the presence of background binding, it is not possible to use traditional peptide screening methods to select for nonfouling chemistries. Here, we developed a peptide screening method, as compared to traditional methods, that can successfully evaluate the effectiveness of nonfouling peptide sequences. We have tested the effect of different peptide lengths and chemistries on the adsorption of protein. The order of residues within a single sequence was also adjusted to determine the effect of charge segregation on protein adsorption.

Synthesis of 3,5-difluorotyrosine-containing peptides: application in substrate profiling of protein tyrosine phosphatases.

Fully protected 3,5-difluorotyrosine (F2Y), Fmoc-F2Y(tBu)-OH, is efficiently prepared by a chemoenzymatic process and incorporated into individual peptides and combinatorial peptide libraries. The F2Y-containing peptides display kinetic properties toward protein tyrosine phosphatases (PTPs) similar to their corresponding tyrosine-containing counterparts but are resistant to tyrosinase action. These properties make F2Y a useful tyrosine surrogate during peptide library screening for optimal PTP substrates.

Traceless capping agent for peptide sequencing by partial edman degradation and mass spectrometry.

An improved method for the rapid sequence determination of biologically active peptides selected from one-bead-one-peptide combinatorial libraries has been developed. In this method, beads carrying unique peptide sequences were subjected to multiple cycles of partial Edman degradation (PED) by the treatment with a 15-30:1 mixture of phenyl isothiocyanate and N-(9-fluorenylmethoxycarbonyloxy)succinimide (Fmoc-OSU), to generate a series of sequence-specific truncation products (a peptide ladder) for each resin-bound peptide. Following PED, the Fmoc group was removed from the N-terminus and any reacted side chains by piperidine treatment. The sequence of the full-length peptide on each bead was then determined by matrix-assisted laser desorption ionization mass spectrometry. The use of Fmoc-OSU as a traceless capping agent resulted in cleaner MS spectra and improved reliability for sequence assignment. This rapid, sensitive, and inexpensive sequencing method should further expand the utility of combinatorial peptide libraries in biomedical research.