Biomedical subjects

H. Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to H. Zhang.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed1996

Photosynthesis and Carbohydrate Partitioning for the C3 Desert Shrub Encelia farinosa under Current and Doubled CO2 Concentrations.

Changes in photosynthesis (A) and carbohydrate partitioning were studied for Encelia farinosa, a common C3 desert shrub in the southwestern United States, after a 3-month exposure to the current or a doubled CO2 concentration (750 [mu]L L-1). A remained unchanged under the current CO2 concentration but decreased during the day under the doubled CO2 concentration, resulting in a 46% enhancement in the early morning, 26% at midday, and 15% in the late afternoon by the elevated CO2. The decrease during the day under the doubled CO2 concentration may represent end-product inhibition, because the sucrose and the starch contents increased during the day proportionally more than under the current CO2 concentration. The 14CO2 activity in sink leaves was maximal 3 h after labeling under the doubled and at 5 h under the current CO2 concentration, indicating faster movement of photosynthate out of source leaves and into sink tissues under the doubled CO2 concentration, which may have been responsible for the sustained enhancement in A under the doubled CO2 concentration.

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PubMed1996

SOME NEW STRUCTURAL ASPECTS AND OLD CONTROVERSIES CONCERNING THE CYTOCHROME b6f COMPLEX OF OXYGENIC PHOTOSYNTHESIS.

The cytochrome b6f complex functions in oxygenic photosynthetic membranes as the redox link between the photosynthetic reaction center complexes II and I and also functions in proton translocation. It is an ideal integral membrane protein complex in which to study structure and function because of the existence of a large amount of primary sequence data, purified complex, the emergence of structures, and the ability of flash kinetic spectroscopy to assay function in a readily accessible ms-100 mus time domain. The redox active polypeptides are cytochromes f and b6 (organelle encoded) and the Rieske iron-sulfur protein (nuclear encoded) in a mol wt = 210,000 dimeric complex that is believed to contain 22-24 transmembrane helices. The high resolution structure of the lumen-side domain of cytochrome f shows it to be an elongate (75 A long) mostly beta-strand, two-domain protein, with the N-terminal alpha-amino group as orthogonal heme ligand and an internal linear 11-A bound water chain. An unusual electron transfer event, the oxidant-induced reduction of a significant fraction of the p (lumen)-side cytochrome b heme by plastosemiquinone indicates that the electron transfer pathway in the b6f complex can be described by a version of the Q-cycle mechanism, originally proposed to describe similar processes in the mitochondrial and bacterial bc1 complexes.

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PubMed1994

Expression of the Arabidopsis Gene Akr Coincides with Chloroplast Development.

Reduced expression of a nuclear gene of Arabidopsis thaliana, Akr, results in the formation of chlorotic plants due to a block in the proplastid-to-chloroplast development pathway (H. Zhang, D.C. Scheirer, W. Fowle, H.M. Goodman [1992] Plant Cell 4: 1575-1588). In an effort to discern the function of the Akr gene product in chloroplast development, transgenic plants containing an Akr::[beta]-glucuronidase gene fusion were constructed to monitor the spatial and temporal patterns of Akr expression. Akr is expressed only in chloroplast-containing tissues and maximal expression occurs during the seedling stage, coincident with chloroplast development. This result is consistent with the hypothesis that Akr is required at an early stage of chloroplast development. The effects of an AKR deficiency on the expression of nuclear and plastid genes required for photosynthetic activity were also examined. Within chloroplast-deficient leaves of plants in which Akr expression is limited by the presence of Akr antisense transgenes or truncated Akr sense transgenes, mRNAs for the nuclear genes Cab2, Cab4, RbcS, and GapA are present at wild-type levels; similarly, levels of mRNAs for the plastid genes rbcL and psbA are not affected by the AKR deficiency. Thus, although expression of these photosynthetic genes is tightly coordinated with the development and maintenance of chloroplasts in wild-type plants, their expression is unaffected in AKR-deficient chlorotic leaves. Therefore, we propose that Akr functions in a pathway different from the one controlling the expression and regulation of the photosynthetic genes during chloroplast development, and at a specific developmental stage after the putative plastid factor is made.

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PubMed1992

Coupled map lattices as computational systems.

The coupled map lattice (CML) as a mathematical model for a computer is considered. Using the theory of synchronous concurrent algorithms, it is shown that the CML is a valid new model for a parallel deterministic analog machine, but that, in principle, such a CML computer does not generate computations that cannot be reproduced by the standard mathematical models for computing on real numbers. The analysis is based on new general mathematical definitions of CMLs, and an axiomatic approach to determining which models of computation can be used to simulate CMLs.

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