No abstract

Nomadic groups of conquering Hungarians played a predominant role in Hungarian prehistory, but genetic data are available only from the immigrant elite strata. Most of the 10–11th century remains in the Carpathian Basin belong to common people, whose origin and relation to the immigrant elite have been widely debated. Mitogenome sequences were obtained from 202 individuals with next generation sequencing combined with hybridization capture. Median joining networks were used for phylogenetic analysis. The commoner population was compared to 87 ancient Eurasian populations with sequence-based (Fst) and haplogroup-based population genetic methods. The haplogroup composition of the commoner population markedly differs from that of the elite, and, in contrast to the elite, commoners cluster with European populations. Alongside this, detectable sub-haplogroup sharing indicates admixture between the elite and the commoners. The majority of the 10–11th century commoners most likely represent local populations of the Carpathian Basin, which admixed with the eastern immigrant groups (which included conquering Hungarians).

Basic principles of structural and functional requirements of photosynthetic energy conversion in hierarchically organized machineries are reviewed. Blueprints of photosynthesis, the energetic basis of virtually all life on Earth, can serve the basis for constructing artificial light energy-converting molecular devices. In photosynthetic organisms, the conversion of light energy into chemical energy takes places in highly organized fine-tunable systems with structural and functional hierarchy. The incident photons are absorbed by light-harvesting complexes, which funnel the excitation energy into reaction centre (RC) protein complexes containing redox-active chlorophyll molecules; the primary charge separations in the RCs are followed by vectorial transport of charges (electrons and protons) in the photosynthetic membrane. RCs possess properties that make their use in solar energy-converting and integrated optoelectronic systems feasible. Therefore, there is a large interest in many laboratories and in the industry toward their use in molecular devices. RCs have been bound to different carrier matrices, with their photophysical and photochemical activities largely retained in the nano-systems and with electronic connection to conducting surfaces. We show examples of RCs bound to carbon-based materials (functionalized and non-functionalized single- and multiwalled carbon nanotubes), transitional metal oxides (ITO) and conducting polymers and porous silicon and characterize their photochemical activities. Recently, we adapted several physical and chemical methods for binding RCs to different nanomaterials. It is generally found that the P+(QAQB)− charge pair, which is formed after single saturating light excitation is stabilized after the attachment of the RCs to the nanostructures, which is followed by slow reorganization of the protein structure. Measuring the electric conductivity in a direct contact mode or in electrochemical cell indicates that there is an electronic interaction between the protein and the inorganic carrier matrices. This can be a basis of sensing element of bio-hybrid device for biosensor and/or optoelectronic applications.

Background: Current state of art kinship analysis is capable to infer relatedness up to the 5-6th degree from deeply sequenced DNA if the proper reference population is known. Low coverage, partially genotyped, degraded archaic (or forensic) DNA and often unavailable or unknown reference population poses additional challenges, hence kinship analysis from low coverage archaic sequences so far has been possible up to the second degree with large uncertainties. Results: We performed extensive simulations to identify and correct the main factors of bias in kinship analysis from low coverage data. As a result, we introduce a new metric for correction and offer a guideline, which overcomes the difficulties associated with low coverage samples. We validated our methodology on experimental modern and archaic data with widely different genome coverages (0.12x-11.9x) using samples with known family relations and known or unknown population structure. Out of 2526 ancient individuals from the REICH data set we confirmed all 96 indicated, and identified 303 new relatives additionally. Conclusion: With the proposed workflow we provide the necessary additional tools to calculate the corrected kinship coefficient from the commonly used genome data formats. Our methodology allows to reliably identify relatedness up to the 4-5th degree from variable/low coverage archaic (or badly degraded forensic) WGS genome data.

An optoelectronic device, which converts light energy to electric potential, was designed and fabricated by using photosynthetic reaction centre (RC) proteins of purple bacterium Rhodobacter sphaeroides R‐26, based on the structure and function of the dye sensitised organic solar cells. First, an electrochemical cell with three electrodes was created especially for this measurement. ITO covered by the MWCNT‐RC containing sample served as the working electrode and the counter and the reference electrodes were platinum and Ag\AgCl, respectively. Water soluble ubiquinone‐0 and ferrocene, in some experiments were used as mediators. In another experiment, the presence of the RCs in the active layer under dried conditions assured tuneable wavelength sensitivity, in general in the visible, but specially, in the near infrared (700–1000 nm) spectral range. The lifetime of the primary charge separation is in the ps time scale and that of the charge stabilisation can be modulated (at least theoretically) between ps and seconds. A successful combination of RC protein with a light energy converter device in spectroelectrochemical cell (wet conditions in buffered electrolyte) and in dried multilayer structure will be presented here.