The Kenyan-Tanzanian coastal region in the western Indian Ocean faces several environmental challenges including coral reef conservation, fisheries management, coastal erosion, and nearshore pollution. The region lacks hydrodynamic records and oceanographic studies at adequate spatial and temporal scales to provide information relevant to the local environmental issues. We have developed...
Rising atmospheric [CO₂], cₐ, is expected to affect stomatal regulation of leaf gas-exchange of woody plants, thus influencing energy fluxes as well as carbon (C), water, and nutrient cycling of forests. Researchers have proposed various strategies for stomatal regulation of leaf gas-exchange that include maintaining a constant leaf internal [CO₂],...
The increase in atmospheric concentrations of water vapor with global warming is a large positive feedback in the climate system. Thus, even relatively small errors in its magnitude can lead to large uncertainties in predicting climate response to anthropogenic forcing. This study incorporates observed variability of water vapor over 2002–2009...
Small, low-head diversion dams are capable of withdrawing much of the flow of a river, often resulting in elevated water temperatures. Accelerated growth and development of aquatic invertebrates has been demonstrated in warmer temperatures, suggesting that the timing of insect emergence and adult body size may be significantly altered by...
In some bacteria, cysteine is converted to cysteine sulfinic acid by cysteine dioxygenases (CDO) that are only ∼15–30% identical in sequence to mammalian CDOs. Among bacterial proteins having this range of sequence similarity to mammalian CDO are some that conserve an active site Arg residue (“Arg-type” enzymes) and some having...
The site-specific incorporation of non-canonical amino acids (ncAAs) into proteins is an important tool for understanding biological function. Traditionally, each new ncAA targeted requires a resource-consuming process of generating new ncAA aminoacyl tRNA synthetase/tRNACUA pairs. However, the discovery that some tRNA synthetases are “permissive,” in that they can incorporate multiple...
Ideal values of bond angles and lengths used as external restraints are crucial for the successful
refinement of protein crystal structures at all but the highest of resolutions. The restraints in
common usage today have been designed based on the assumption that each type of bond or
angle has a...
Water scarcity in semiarid environments provides a model system to evaluate the role of mesic resources in structuring the distribution and abundance of wildlife. We used remote sensing and point process analyses to evaluate spatio–temporal variability in limited mesic resources in relation to greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus) distributions in Oregon,...