National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology

About: National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology is a government organization based out in Tsukuba, Ibaraki, Japan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Catalysis & Thin film. The organization has 22114 authors who have published 65856 publications receiving 1669827 citations. The organization is also known as: Sangyō Gijutsu Sōgō Kenkyū-sho.

Impact of the DISC1 Ser704Cys polymorphism on risk for major depression, brain morphology and ERK signaling

Abstract: Disrupted-in-schizophrenia 1 (DISC1), identified in a pedigree with a familial psychosis with the chromosome translocation (1:11), is a putative susceptibility gene for psychoses such as schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Although there are a number of patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) in the family members with the chromosome translocation, the possible association with MDD has not yet been studied. We therefore performed an association study of the DISC1 gene with MDD and schizophrenia. We found that Cys704 allele of the Ser704Cys single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) was associated with an increased risk of developing MDD (P=0.005, odds ratio=1.46) and stronger evidence for association in a multi-marker haplotype analysis containing this SNP (P=0.002). We also explored possible impact of Ser704Cys on brain morphology in healthy volunteers using MR imaging. We found a reduction in gray matter volume in cingulate cortex and a decreased fractional anisotropy in prefrontal white matter of individuals carrying the Cys704 allele compared with Ser/Ser704 subjects. In primary neuronal culture, knockdown of endogenous DISC1 protein by small interfering RNA resulted in the suppression of phosphorylation of ERK and Akt, whose signaling pathways are implicated in MDD. When effects of sDISC1 (Ser704) and cDISC1 (Cys704) proteins were examined separately, phosphorylation of ERK was greater in sDISC1 compared with cDISC1. A possible biological mechanism of MDD might be implicated by these convergent data that Cys704 DISC1 is associated with the lower biological activity on ERK signaling, reduced brain gray matter volume and an increased risk for MDD.

Inter-residue interactions in protein folding and stability.

Abstract: During the process of protein folding, the amino acid residues along the polypeptide chain interact with each other in a cooperative manner to form the stable native structure. The knowledge about inter-residue interactions in protein structures is very helpful to understand the mechanism of protein folding and stability. In this review, we introduce the classification of inter-residue interactions into short, medium and long range based on a simple geometric approach. The features of these interactions in different structural classes of globular and membrane proteins, and in various folds have been delineated. The development of contact potentials and the application of inter-residue contacts for predicting the structural class and secondary structures of globular proteins, solvent accessibility, fold recognition and ab initio tertiary structure prediction have been evaluated. Further, the relationship between inter-residue contacts and protein-folding rates has been highlighted. Moreover, the importance of inter-residue interactions in protein-folding kinetics and for understanding the stability of proteins has been discussed. In essence, the information gained from the studies on inter-residue interactions provides valuable insights for understanding protein folding and de novo protein design.

JNAS: Japanese speech corpus for large vocabulary continuous speech recognition research

Abstract: In this paper we present the first public Japanese speech corpus for large vocabulary continuous speech recognition (LVCSR) technology, which we have titled JNAS (Japanese Newspaper Article Sentences). We designed it to be comparable to the corpora used in the American and European LVCSR projects. The corpus contains speech recordings (60 h) and their orthographic transcriptions for 306 speakers (153 males and 153 females) reading excerpts from the newspaper's articles and phonetically balanced (PB) sentences. This corpus contains utterances of about 45, 000 sentences as a whole with each speaker reading about 150 sentences. JNAS is being distributed on 16 CD-ROMs.

Phase equilibria and phase transformations in new B2-type ferromagnetic shape memory alloys of Co-Ni-Ga and Co-Ni-Al systems

Abstract: The phase equilibria, the martensitic and magnetic phase transformations in the β (B2) phase region of the Co-Ni-Ga and Co-Ni-Al systems have been investigated. It is shown that some compositions in the range Co-(15-30)at%Ni-30 at%Ga and Co-(30-40)at%Ni-30 at%Al exhibit both the β to β' (L1 0 ) thermoelastic martensitic transformation and the para/ferromagnetic transition. Some of these undergo the martensitic transformation from the paramagnetic β to the ferromagnetic β'. The introduction of a small amount of the y phase into the β phase by heat treatment, based on the results of the β/γ phase equilibria study in these systems, is shown to significantly improve the ductility in both alloy systems. The new β single phase and β + y two-phase ferromagnetic shape memory alloys (FSMAs) of the Co-Ni-Ga and Co-Ni-Al systems hold great promise as new smart materials.