Sisters on the loose (SOLO) protein functions as a meiotic cohesin component critical for correct chromosome segregation in Drosophila.

Overfitting is a crucial problem in deep neural networks, even in the latest network architectures. In this paper, to relieve the overfitting effect of ResNet and its improvements (i.e., Wide ResNet, PyramidNet, and ResNeXt), we propose a new regularization method called ShakeDrop regularization. ShakeDrop is inspired by Shake-Shake, which is an effective regularization method, but can be applied to ResNeXt only. ShakeDrop is more effective than Shake-Shake and can be applied not only to ResNeXt but also ResNet, Wide ResNet, and PyramidNet. An important key is to achieve stability of training. Because effective regularization often causes unstable training, we introduce a training stabilizer, which is an unusual use of an existing regularizer. Through experiments under various conditions, we demonstrate the conditions under which ShakeDrop works well.

Accumulation of carbonyl derivatives of proteins (protein carbonyl) is taken as a biomarker of oxidative protein damage in aging and in various diseases. We detected protein carbonyls in situ in human diabetic arteriosclerotic tissues and characterized the formation of protein carbonyls. Protein carbonyls were identified in the thickened intima of arterial walls and co-localized with protein adducts formed by carbonyl amine chemistry between protein and carbonyl compounds derived from autoxidation of carbohydrates, lipids, and ascorbate, i.e. advanced glycation end products or glycoxidation products, such as carboxymethyllysine (CML) and pentosidine, and lipoxidation products, such as malondialdehyde (MDA) and 4-hydroxy-nonenal (HNE). In vitro incubation of proteins with ascorbic acid accelerated the production of protein carbonyls as well as CML and pentosidine, and incubation with arachidonate accelerated the production of protein carbonyls as well as CML, MDA, and HNE. By contrast, incubation of proteins with glucose resulted in the production of CML and pentosidine, but not protein carbonyls. Schiff base inhibitors, ( þ )-2-isopropylidenehydrazono-4-oxo-thiazolidin-5-ylacetanilide and aminoguanidine, inhibited the production of protein carbonyls after incubation with ascorbate and arachidonate. The present study suggests that ascorbate and polyunsaturated fatty acids, but not glucose, represent potential sources of protein carbonyls, and that both the glycoxidation and lipoxidation reactions contribute to protein carbonyl formation in aging and various diseases.z 1998 Federation of European Biochemical Societies.

From the intact cells of 66 strains of acetic acid bacteria, ubiquinones were extracted with ether-ethanol mixture (3:1) and purified by treatment with acetone, followed by thin-layer chromatography using silica gel plates and benzene. Mass spectrometric and paper chromatographic analyses of the ubiquinone system showed the characteristic existence of ubiquinone-10 in genus Gluconobacter and ubiquinone-10 and-9 in " peritrichously flagellated" intermediate strains, while that of ubiquinone-9 and-8 in genus Acetobacter as well as ubiquinone-8 and-7 in " polarly flagellated" intermediate strains. These results indicate that the kind of ubiquinone present may be used to distinguish the genera Gluconobacter and Acetobacter as one of simple and effective criteria. Some discussions are made on the taxonomical positions of the so-called intermediate strains.

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Zebrafish is becoming a powerful animal model for the study of vision but the genomic organization and variation of its visual opsins have not been fully characterized. We show here that zebrafish has two red (LWS-1 and LWS-2), four green (RH2-1, RH2-2, RH2-3, and RH2-4), and single blue (SWS2) and ultraviolet (SWS1) opsin genes in the genome, among which LWS-2, RH2-2, and RH2-3 are novel. SWS2, LWS-1, and LWS-2 are located in tandem and RH2-1, RH2-2, RH2-3, and RH2-4 form another tandem gene cluster. The peak absorption spectra (λmax) of the reconstituted photopigments from the opsin cDNAs differed markedly among them: 558 nm (LWS-1), 548 nm (LWS-2), 467 nm (RH2-1), 476 nm (RH2-2), 488 nm (RH2-3), 505 nm (RH2-4), 355 nm (SWS1), 416 nm (SWS2), and 501 nm (RH1, rod opsin). The quantitative RT-PCR revealed a considerable difference among the opsin genes in the expression level in the retina. The expression of the two red opsin genes and of three green opsin genes, RH2-1, RH2-3, and RH2-4, is significantly lower than that of RH2-2, SWS1, and SWS2. These findings must contribute to our comprehensive understanding of visual capabilities of zebrafish and the evolution of the fish visual system and should become a basis of further studies on expression and developmental regulation of the opsin genes.

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