Further increase in energy density of lithium batteries is needed for zero emission vehicles. However, energy density is restricted by unavoidable theoretical limits for positive electrodes used in commercial applications. One possibility towards energy densities exceeding these limits is to utilize anion (oxide ion) redox, instead of classical transition metal redox. Nevertheless, origin of activation of the oxide ion and its stabilization mechanism are not fully understood. Here we demonstrate that the suppression of formation of superoxide-like species on lithium extraction results in reversible redox for oxide ions, which is stabilized by the presence of relatively less covalent character of Mn4+ with oxide ions without the sacrifice of electronic conductivity. On the basis of these findings, we report an electrode material, whose metallic constituents consist only of 3d transition metal elements. The material delivers a reversible capacity of 300 mAh g−1 based on solid-state redox reaction of oxide ions.

CdTe nanocrystals (NCs) passivated with chiral ligands d- and l-cysteinemethylester hydrochloride were prepared and observed to exhibit characteristic CD profiles with symmetrical mirror images depending on the chirality of the capping ligand. The optical activity of CdTe NCs is shown to originate from the distorted CdS shell including chiral capping molecules. The chirality of the NC surface is maintained even after ligand exchange with an achiral thiol, providing an unprecedented chiral memory effect.

Hausp is a deubiquitinase that has been shown to regulate the p53-Mdm2 pathway. Cotransfection of p53 and Hausp stabilizes p53 through the removal of ubiquitin moieties from polyubiquitinated p53. Interestingly, knockout or RNA interference-mediated knockdown of Hausp in human cells also resulted in the stabilization of p53 due to the destabilization of Mdm2, suggesting a dynamic role of Hausp in p53 activation. To understand the physiological functions of Hausp, we generated hausp knockout mice. Hausp knockout mice die during early embryonic development between embryonic days E6.5 and E7.5. The hausp knockout embryos showed p53 activation, but no apparent increase in apoptosis. Embryonic lethality was caused by a dramatic reduction in proliferation and termination in development, in part due to p53 activation and/or abrogation of p53-independent functions. Although deletion of p53 did not completely rescue the embryonic lethality of the hausp knockout, embryonic development was extended in both hausp and p53 double knockout embryos. These data show that Hausp has a critical role in regulating the p53-Mdm2 pathway.

SUMMARYTobacco cells (Nicotiana tabacum L.) accumulate harmful naphthols in the form of malonylated glucosides (Taguchi et al., 2005). Here, we showed that the malonylation of glucosides is a system to metabolize xenobiotics and is common to higher plants. Moreover, some plantlets including Arabidopsis thaliana excreted some of the incorporated naphthols into the culture media as their glucosides. In order to analyze the function of malonylation in the metabolism of these xenobiotics, we identified a malonyltransferase gene (At5g39050) responsible for the malonylation of these compounds in A. thaliana. The recombinant enzyme had malonyltransferase activity toward several phenolic glucosides including naphthol glucosides. A knockout mutant of At5g39050 (pmat1) exposed to naphthols accumulated only a few malonylglucosides in the cell, and released larger amounts of simple glucosides into the culture medium. In contrast, forced expression of At5g39050 in the pmat1 mutant resulted in increased malonylglucoside accumulation and decreased glucoside excretion to the media. The results provided clear evidence of whether the release of glucosides or the storage of malonylglucosides was determined by the At5g39050 expression level. A similar event in naphthol metabolism was observed in the tobacco mutant with a suppressed malonyltransferase gene (NtMaT1). These results suggested that malonylation could be a key reaction to separate the way of xenobiotics disposition, that is, release from cell surface or storage in vacuoles.