Chiba Institute of Technology

About: Chiba Institute of Technology is a education organization based out in Narashino, Japan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: RNA & Magnet. The organization has 2663 authors who have published 4999 publications receiving 56870 citations. The organization is also known as: Chiba kōgyō daigaku & Kōa Institute of Technology.

Initial products of Akatsuki 1-μm camera

Abstract: The status and initial products of the 1-μm camera onboard the Akatsuki mission to Venus are presented. After the successful retrial of Venus’ orbit insertion on Dec. 2015 (5 years after the failure in Dec. 2010), and after a long cruise under intense radiation, damage in the detector seems small and fortunately insignificant in the final quality of the images. More than 600 dayside images have been obtained since the beginning of regular operation on Apr. 2016 although nightside images are less numerous (about 150 in total at three wavelengths) due to the light scattered from the bright dayside. However, data acquisition stopped after December 07, 2016, due to malfunction of the electronics and has not been resumed since then. The 0.90-µm dayside images are of sufficient quality for the cloud-tracking procedure to retrieve wind field in the cloud region. The results appear to be similar to those reported by previous 1-μm imaging by Galileo and Venus Express. The representative altitude sampled for such dayside images is estimated to be 51–55 km. Also, the quality of the nightside 1.01-µm images is sufficient for a search for active volcanism, since interference due to cloud inhomogeneity appears to be insignificant. The quality of the 0.97-µm images may be insufficient to achieve the expected spatial resolution for the near-surface H2O mixing ratio retrievals.

NMR analysis of intra- and inter-molecular stems in the dimerization initiation site of the HIV-1 genome.

Abstract: Two positive-strand HIV-1 genomic RNAs form a dimer in virion particles through interaction of the dimerization initiation sites (DIS). The DIS RNA fragment spontaneously formed a "loose-dimer" and was converted into a "tight-dimer" by supplementation with nucleocapsid protein NCp7. This two-step dimerization reaction requires the whole DIS sequence [Takahashi et al. (2000) RNA 6, 96-102]. In the present study, we measured imino proton resonances to investigate the secondary structures of the two types of dimers in a 39-mer RNA covering the entire DIS (DIS39), including discrimination between intra- and inter-molecular base pairing. Both the presence and absence of inter-molecular NOE between (15)N-labeled and unlabeled DIS39 were unambiguously detected in an equimolar mixture of (15)N-labeled and unlabeled DIS39. The stem-bulge-stem structures in both dimers were confirmed and found to be very close to each other from clear superimposition of the NMR spectra in the two dimeric states. Nevertheless, the modes of base pairing in the stems of the loose- and tight-dimers were intra- and inter-molecular, respectively. Our results suggest a large structural alteration of genomic RNA occurs during virion maturation.