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Pitchers are modified leaves used by carnivorous plants for trapping prey. Their fluids contain digestive enzymes from the plant and they harbor abundant microbes. In this study, the diversity of bacterial communities was assessed in Nepenthes pitcher fluids and the composition of the bacterial community was compared to that in other environments, including the phyllosphere of Arabidopsis, animal guts and another pitcher plant, Sarracenia. Diversity was measured by 454 pyrosequencing of 16S rRNA gene amplicons. A total of 232,823 sequences were obtained after chimera and singleton removal that clustered into 3260 distinct operational taxonomic units (OTUs) (3% dissimilarity), which were taxonomically distributed over 17 phyla, 25 classes, 45 orders, 100 families, and 195 genera. Pyrosequencing and fluorescence in situ hybridization yielded similar estimates of community composition. Most pitchers contained high proportions of unique OTUs, and only 22 OTUs (

We investigated the substrate specificity of farnesyl diphosphate (FPP) synthase derived from Bacillus stearothermophilus and porcine liver by examining the reactivities of two cyclic substrate homologs, cyclohexylideneethyl diphosphate and cyclohexenylethyl diphosphate. Reaction of geranyl diphosphate with 2-cyclohexenylethyl diphosphate using bacterial or porcine liver FPP synthase produced (S)-geranylcyclohexylideneethyl diphosphate, with relative yields of 13.6% for the bacterial enzyme and 42.2% for the porcine liver enzyme. Reaction of cyclohexylideneethyl diphosphate with isopentenyl diphosphate produced 10-cyclohexyliden-3,7-dimethyldeca-2,6-dien-1-ol as a double condensation product, with relative yields of 23.1% (bacterial enzyme) and 3.0% (porcine liver enzyme). Reaction of cyclohexylideneethyl diphosphate with 2-cyclohexenylethyl diphosphate using bacterial enzyme produced (cyclohexylideneethyl)-cyclohexylideneethyl diphosphate (0.8% yield).

In magnesia cement, phase 3, a broad and strong infrared band was observed with the maximum at ∼1300 and 1050 cm −1 in the H and D systems, respectively. To clarify the origin of the 1300 cm −1 band the temperature dependency of the infrared spectra of the H system was observed and the spectra analyzed on the basis of a strong vibrational coupling of the OH stretching with lattice modes. The fitting was quite well, giving rise to the origin of the 1300 cm −1 band of the OH stretching.

The theoretical study on the mechanism of butane oxidation using model complexes of vanadyl pyrophosphate has been investigated using density functional theory (DFT) method. The monomeric complex VO(OH) 2 (OH 2 ) 2 was selected as a fundamental structure. The complexes bearing one phosphoric residue were selected for clarifying the effect of pyrophosphoric moieties on the catalyst. The complexes having two vanadium units were selected as two-layer models of the catalyst for clarifying the influence of the presence or absence of lattice oxygen and the effect of the oxidation states of the inner vanadium atom. The introduction of a phosphoric moiety on one of the hydroxy groups strongly stabilizes the lower oxidation states of the complexes. This result suggests that the surface vanadium species having the higher 5+ oxidation state should possess stronger oxidation ability. The presence of the vanadium (4+) atom at the lower layer relatively destabilizes the V 3+ state of the upper vanadium complexes, and stabilizes the peroxo-vanadium (4+) complexes, which suggests that the lattice oxo-oxygen in vanadyl pyrophosphate may play an important role in the activation of molecular oxygen.

Introduction of fluorine atom(s) at the γ- and δ-positions of alkyl iodides increased the selectivities toward palladium-catalyzed cross-coupling reaction with organostannanes. A similar effect of fluorine substituents on the selectivities was also observed in the palladium-catalyzed carbonylative coupling reaction of alkyl iodides with phenyltributyltin under CO pressure.

Branchio-oto (BO) syndrome is complicated with congenital preauricular fistulae, branchial fistulae (cysts), and hearing loss (sensorineural, conductive or mixed). As well as branchio-oto-renal (BOR) syndrome, it is known to be an autosomal dominant hereditary disorder. Since mutations in the EYA1 gene have been identified in both BO and BOR syndromes, mutation screening of this gene has been drawing attention as a genetic test to diagnose BOR/BO syndromes. In this study, we genetically investigated the presence of EYA1 mutations in a BO syndrome family in which we observed congenital preauricular fistulae, branchial fistulae (cysts) and hearing loss in four generations. Whereas there was a variety of phenotype expressions in this family, all subjects tested had a nonsense mutation (R264X) in exon 8 of the EYA1 gene. The present report adds further examples to support the usefulness of molecular genetic testing for the diagnosis of patients with BO syndrome.

β-Perfluoroalkyl-substituted alkyl halides reacted with organostamnanes such as allylphenylethynyl-, β-phenylethenyl-, and phenyl-tributyltin in the presence of palladium-phosphine complexes to give the corresponding cross-coupling products in good yields. When the reaction was carried out under CO pressure, carbonylative coupling of the halides took place affording the corresponding fluorine-contaming ketones in good yields.

Coupling reaction of β-perfluoroalkyl-substituted alkyl halides with Grignard reagents such as phenyl-, vinyl-, allyl-, benzyl-, and alkyl-magnesium halides was catalyzed by copper salts or complexes to give the corresponding cross-coupling products in good yields. α,ω-Diiodoalkane bearing a polyfluoroalkylene moiety also reacted with 2 equiv. of Grignard reagent in the presence of copper catalyst to give α,ω-bi-functionalized product.

1,2,3,4-Tetra-t-butylnaphthalene (2), a highly crowded naphthalene derivative, has been synthesized. Upon irradiation, 2 underwent photovalence isomerization to afford 1,2,5,6-tetra-t-butyl-3,4-benzo-3-tricyclo[3.1.0.02,6]-hexene (3). The synthesis of 1,4,5,6-tetra-t-butyl-2,3-benzo-2,5-bicyclo[2.2.0]hexadiene (1), which was used for the synthesis of 2, is also described.