Preparation and characterization of a bifunctional aldolase/kinase enzyme. A more efficient biocatalyst for C-C bond formation

“This is the pre-peer reviewed version of the following article: Iturrate, L., Sánchez-Moreno, I., Oroz-Guinea, I., Pérez-Gil, J., García-Junceda, E. (2010) “Preparation and characterization of a bifunctional aldolase/kinase enzyme. A more efficient biocatalyst for C-C bond formation“ Chem. Eur. J., 16, 4018-4030, which has been published in final form at http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/chem.200903096/abstract”A bifunctional aldolase/kinase enzyme named DLF has been constructed by gene fusion through overlap extension. This fusion enzyme consists of monomeric fructose-1,6-bisphosphate aldolase (FBPA) from Staphylococcus carnosus and the homodimeric dihydroxyacetone kinase (DHAK) from Citrobacter freundii CECT 4626 with an intervening five amino acid linker. The fusion protein was expressed soluble and retained both kinase and aldolase activities. The secondary structure of the bifuctional enzyme has been analysed by CD spectroscopy, as well as that of the parental enzymes, in order to study the effect of the covalent coupling of the two parent proteins on the structure of the fused enzyme. Since S. carnosus FBPA is a thermostable protein, the effect of the fusion on the thermal stability of the bifunctional enzyme has also been studied. The proximity of the active centres in the fused enzyme promotes a kinetic advantage as the 20-fold increment in the initial velocity of the overall aldol reaction indicates. Experimental evidence supports that this increase in the reaction rate can be explained in terms of substrate channellingWe thank the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación for financial support (Grant CTQ2007-67403/BQU). J. P.-G. has been supported by grants BIO2009-09694 and CSD2007-00010. L. Iturrate and I. Sánchez-Moreno acknowledges the Predoctoral Fellowship from Comunidad de Madrid. I. Oroz-Guinea is a JAEPredoc fellow from CSIC. We thank E. G. Doyagüez for her assistance on NMR characterization

Validación de productos MODIS relacionados con la estimación de flujos de carbono en un ecosistema de dehesa

En este trabajo se validan diferentes productos MODIS a partir de mediciones de campo. Se ha empleado una serie temporal de los productos de índice de vegetación de diferencia normalizada (NDVI, MOD/MYD13Q1), índice de área foliar (LAI, MOD/MYD/MCD15A2) y productividad primaria bruta (GPP, MOD/MY17A2) adquiridos entre los años 2009 y 2011 en una dehesa de Cáceres que dispone de una torre de medición de flujos incluida en la red internacional FLUXNET. Los resultados obtenidos muestran correlaciones significativas (P-valor<0,01) para NDVI (r2=0,91), LAI (r2=0,73) y GPP (r2=0,79). A pesar de que MODIS recoge bien las dinámicas temporales en el ecosistema, se observaron importantes diferencias, el error medio cuadrático relativo (RRMSE) fue menor para el NDVI (7,5%) que para los productos más complejos LAI (30,1%) y GPP (59,5%).Este trabajo ha sido financiado por el Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad a través de los proyecto Biospec (CGL2008-02301/CLI) y Fluxpec (CGL2012-34383) y por el CSIC a través del programa JAE-TECPeer reviewe

La higiene bucal y el dentista en el western norteamericano

Los norteamericanos han mostrado en su cine todos los aspectos de su cultura. Aspectos tan cotidianos como la higiene bucal se pueden ver en cualquiera de los filmes que vemos en nuestras carteleras. Sin duda es más probable ver este hecho que no verlo. Desde el nacimiento del cine, la higiene bucal y el dentista han estado presentes, a medida que nos hemos ido acercando al siglo XXI se ha incrementado tanto las muestras higiénicas como la presencia del odontólogo. En el western, la higiene bucal es casi una anécdota, no así la presencia del dentista, que está mucho más vinculado al dolor que a su tarea del cuidado de la boca.The North American cinema has usually shown so many differents aspects of its own culture; Dental Check Up is one of them. From the very beginning of the cinema history there was always a dentist around in so many films. In this paper we’ve tried to study the importance of this profession in the Westerns

BCI-Based Navigation in Virtual and Real Environments

A Brain-Computer Interface (BCI) is a system that enables people to control an external device with their brain activity, without the need of any muscular activity. Researchers in the BCI field aim to develop applications to improve the quality of life of severely disabled patients, for whom a BCI can be a useful channel for interaction with their environment. Some of these systems are intended to control a mobile device (e. g. a wheelchair). Virtual Reality is a powerful tool that can provide the subjects with an opportunity to train and to test different applications in a safe environment. This technical review will focus on systems aimed at navigation, both in virtual and real environments.This work was partially supported by the Innovation, Science and Enterprise Council of the Junta de Andalucía (Spain), project P07-TIC-03310, the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation, project TEC 2011-26395 and by the European fund ERDF

Quick Setup of Force-Controlled Industrial Gluing Tasks Using Learning From Demonstration

This paper presents a framework for programming in-contact tasks using learning by demonstration. The framework is demonstrated on an industrial gluing task, showing that a high quality robot behavior can be programmed using a single demonstration. A unified controller structure is proposed for the demonstration and execution of in-contact tasks that eases the transition from admittance controller for demonstration to parallel force/position control for the execution. The proposed controller is adapted according to the geometry of the task constraints, which is estimated online during the demonstration. In addition, the controller gains are adapted to the human behavior during demonstration to improve the quality of the demonstration. The considered gluing task requires the robot to alternate between free motion and in-contact motion; hence, an approach for minimizing contact forces during the switching between the two situations is presented. We evaluate our proposed system in a series of experiments, where we show that we are able to estimate the geometry of a curved surface, that our adaptive controller for demonstration allows users to achieve higher accuracy in a shorter demonstration duration when compared to an off-the-shelf controller for teaching implemented on a collaborative robot, and that our execution controller is able to reduce impact forces and apply a constant process force while adapting to the surface geometry

La higiene bucal y el dentista en el western norteamericano

The North American cinema has usually shown so many differents aspects of its own culture; Dental Check Up is one of them. From the very beginning of the cinema history there was always a dentist around in so many films. In this paper we’ve tried to study the importance of this profession in the Westerns.Los norteamericanos han mostrado en su cine todos los aspectos de su cultura. Aspectos tan cotidianos como la higiene bucal se pueden ver en cualquiera de los filmes que vemos en nuestras carteleras. Sin duda es más probable ver este hecho que no verlo. Desde el nacimiento del cine, la higiene bucal y el dentista han estado presentes, a medida que nos hemos ido acercando al siglo XXI se ha incrementado tanto las muestras higiénicas como la presencia del odontólogo. En el western, la higiene bucal es casi una anécdota, no así la presencia del dentista, que está mucho más vinculado al dolor que a su tarea del cuidado de la boca

Safety-Ensured Robotic Control Framework for Cutting Task Automation in Endoscopic Submucosal Dissection

There is growing interest in automating surgical tasks using robotic systems, such as endoscopy for treating gastrointestinal (GI) cancer. However, previous studies have primarily focused on detecting and analyzing objects or robots, with limited attention to ensuring safety, which is critical for clinical applications, where accidents can be caused by unsafe robot motions. In this study, we propose a new control framework that can formally ensure the safety of automating the cutting task in endoscopic submucosal dissection (ESD), a representative endoscopic surgical method for the treatment of early GI cancer, by using an endoscopic robot. The proposed framework utilizes Control Barrier Functions (CBFs) to accurately identify the boundaries of individual tumors, even in close proximity within the GI tract, ensuring precise treatment and removal while preserving the surrounding normal tissue. Additionally, by adopting a model-free control scheme, safety assurance is made possible even in endoscopic robotic systems where dynamic modeling is challenging. We demonstrate the proposed framework in a simulation-based experimental environment, where the tumors to be removed are close to each other, and show that the safety constraints are enforced. We show that the model-free CBF-based controlled robot eliminates one tumor completely without damaging it, while not invading another nearby tumor.</p

Estimation of Human Compliance Parameters During Robot Kinesthetic Teaching by Compensation of the Dynamics of the Force-Torque Sensor

This paper presents a method for estimating the compliance of the human arm in a robot kinesthetic teaching scenario, while taking into account the dynamics of the force-torque sensor. We model the dynamics of the sensor as a second order system and identify this experimentally. With the estimated transfer function, the sensor dynamics can be removed from the measurements of the human-robot interaction experiment, such that only the human dynamics is measured. Once the signal has been filtered, we use regularized Dynamic Regressor Extension and Mixing to estimate these parameters with better convergence characteristics than previously-used estimators. We validate our results both in simulation and experimentally on a real robot