Neue Erkenntnisse zum geologischen Bau des “Kleinen Berges” zwischen Bad Laer und Bad Rothenfelde (südwestliches Niedersachsen) aufgrund der Ergebnisse der Tiefbohrung ‘Bad Laer Z 1’

The 2108,0 m deep exploration well "Bad Laer Z 1" (1993) has been carried down in order to investigate the deeper ground lying beneath the "Kleiner Berg" anticline, concerning the existence of reservoir beds which was postulated according to preceeding seismic investigations. This aim of the borehole was not attained, because no formations have been drilled suitable for the construction of an artificial gas reservoir. On the other hand the bore hole revealed a great amount of new regional geologic, stratigraphic, mining, coalification and coal bed gas data. Therefore, from a scientific point of view the exploration well must be considered successful. After the drilling of a stratigraphic succession, mainly consisting of cretaceous "Pläner" limestones (from Albian to Turonian), surprisingly in a depth of only 439 m productive Upper Carboniferous rocks formed by the Lembeck beds of uppermost Westfalian C have been found. In addition to this discovery, nearly the whole Westfalian C and B reaching down to the coal bed "Katharina" at the Westfalian A boundary were drilled through revealing over 66 partly minable coal beds. Investigations of the coalification pattern showed a more or less continuous increase of the rank gradient with depth reaching from the step of gas flame coal down to 700 m over that of gas coal down to 1600 m to that of fat coal down to the bottom of the borehole. An additional surprising result of the exploration well was the observation, that immediately below the base of the Cretaceous the coal beds revealed a high gas content without the presence of a desorption zone. This result must also be considered as success of the drilling with respect to the strong interest in a potential utilization of coal bed methane nowadays.

Complementation of the embryo-lethal T-DNA insertion mutant of AUXIN-BINDING-PROTEIN 1 (ABP1) with abp1 point mutated versions reveals crosstalk of ABP1 and phytochromes

The function of the extracytoplasmic AUXIN-BINDING-PROTEIN1 (ABP1) is largely enigmatic. We complemented a homozygous T-DNA insertion null mutant of ABP1 in Arabidopsis thaliana Wassilewskia with three mutated and one wild-type (wt) ABP1 cDNA, all tagged C-terminally with a strepII-FLAG tag upstream the KDEL signal. Based on in silico modelling, the abp1 mutants were predicted to have altered geometries of the auxin binding pocket and calculated auxin binding energies lower than the wt. Phenotypes linked to auxin transport were compromised in these three complemented abp1 mutants. Red light effects, such as elongation of hypocotyls in constant red (R) and far-red (FR) light, in white light supplemented by FR light simulating shade, and inhibition of gravitropism by R or FR, were all compromised in the complemented lines. Using auxin-or light-induced expression of marker genes, we showed that auxininduced expression was delayed already after 10 min, and light-induced expression within 60 min, even though TIR1/AFB or phyB are thought to act as receptors relevant for gene expression regulation. The expression of marker genes in seedlings responding to both auxin and shade showed that for both stimuli regulation of marker gene expression was altered after 10-20 min in the wild type and phyB mutant. The rapidity of expression responses provides a framework for the mechanics of functional interaction of ABP1 and phyB to trigger interwoven signalling pathways.

(SP,SP)-(–)-(E)-1,2-Bis(methyl­phenyl­phosphino­yl)ethene

The title compound, C(16)H(18)O(2)P(2), possesses two stereogenic P atoms and shows a distorted s-cis conformation of each O=P-C=C moiety. This has been suggested on the basis of the stereochemical result of 1,3-dipolar cyclo-additions with nitro-nes and is now confirmed by the present crystal structure analysis. There are two crystallographically independent molecules in the asymmetric unit.