Illusion Media: Generating Virtual Objects Using Realizable Metamaterials

We propose a class of optical transformation media, illusion media, which render the enclosed object invisible and generate one or more virtual objects as desired. We apply the proposed media to design a microwave device, which transforms an actual object into two virtual objects. Such an illusion device exhibits unusual electromagnetic behavior as verified by full-wave simulations. Different from the published illusion devices which are composed of left-handed materials with simultaneously negative permittivity and permeability, the proposed illusion media have finite and positive permittivity and permeability. Hence the designed device could be realizable using artificial metamaterials.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, published in Appl. Phys. Lett

A class of line-transformed cloaks with easily-realizable constitutive parameters

We propose a class of line-transformed cylindrical cloaks which have easily-realizable constitutive parameters. The scattering properties of such cloaks have been investigated numerically for both transverse-electric (TE) and transverse-magnetic (TM) incidences of plane waves. A line-transformed invisibility cloak with a perfectly electric conducting (PEC) inner boundary is actually a reshaping of a PEC line to which the cloaked object is crushed. The numerical results of near-field distributions and far-field scattering properties have verified the above conclusions. We also investigate the relationship between the constitutive parameters of a line-transformed cloak and the length of the corresponding line. The changing range of constitutive parameters is large when the line is short, while the changing range becomes small when the line is long. The above conclusion provides an efficient way to realize the invisibility cloaks using artificial metamaterials.Comment: 15 pages, 6 figure

Fast and accurate simulations of transmission-line metamaterials using transmission-matrix method

Recently, two-dimensional (2D) periodically L and C loaded transmission-line (TL) networks have been applied to represent metamaterials. The commercial Agilent's Advanced Design System (ADS) is a commonly-used tool to simulate the TL metamaterials. However, it takes a lot of time to set up the TL network and perform numerical simulations using ADS, making the metamaterial analysis inefficient, especially for large-scale TL networks. In this paper, we propose transmission-matrix method (TMM) to simulate and analyze the TL-network metamaterials efficiently. Compared to the ADS commercial software, TMM provides nearly the same simulation results for the same networks. However, the model-process and simulation time has been greatly reduced. The proposed TMM can serve as an efficient tool to study the TL-network metamaterials.Comment: 15 pages, 13 figure

Malat1 as an evolutionarily conserved lncRNA, plays a positive role in regulating proliferation and maintaining undifferentiated status of early-stage hematopoietic cells

Background: The metastasis-associated lung adenocarcinoma transcription 1 (Malat1) is a highly conserved long non-coding RNA (lncRNA) gene. Previous studies showed that Malat1 is abundantly expressed in many tissues and involves in promoting tumor growth and metastasis by modulating gene expression and target protein activities. However, little is known about the biological function and regulation mechanism of Malat1 in normal cell proliferation. Results: In this study we conformed that Malat1 is highly conserved across vast evolutionary distances amongst 20 species of mammals in terms of sequence, and found that mouse Malat1 expresses in tissues of liver, kidney, lung, heart, testis, spleen and brain, but not in skeletal muscle. After treating erythroid myeloid lymphoid (EML) cells with All-trans Retinoic Acid (ATRA), we investigated the expression and regulation of Malat1 during hematopoietic differentiation, the results showed that ATRA significantly down regulates Malat1 expression during the differentiation of EML cells. Mouse LRH (Lin-Rhodamine low Hoechst low ) cells that represent the early-stage progenitor cells show a high level of Malat1 expression, while LRB (Lin − Hoechst Low Rhodamine Bright ) cells that represent the late-stage progenitor cells had no detectable expression of Malat1. Knockdown experiment showed that depletion of Malat1 inhibits the EML cell proliferation. Along with the down regulation of Malat1, the tumor suppressor gene p53 was up regulated during the differentiation. Interestingly, we found two p53 binding motifs with help of bioinformatic tools, and the following chromatin immunoprecipitation (ChIP) test conformed that p53 acts as a transcription repressor that binds to Malat1’s promoter. Furthermore, we testified that p53 over expression in EML cells causes down regulation of Malat1. Conclusions: In summary, this study indicates Malat1 plays a critical role in maintaining the proliferation potential of early-stage hematopoietic cells. In addition to its biological function, the study also uncovers the regulation pattern of Malat1 expression mediated by p53 in hematopoietic differentiation. Our research shed a light on exploring the Malat1 biological role including therapeutic significance to inhibit the proliferation potential of malignant cells

Substrate specificity provides insights into the sugar donor recognition mechanism of O-GlcNAc transferase (OGT).

O-Linked β-N-acetylglucosaminyl transferase (OGT) plays an important role in the glycosylation of proteins, which is involved in various cellular events. In human, three isoforms of OGT (short OGT [sOGT]; mitochondrial OGT [mOGT]; and nucleocytoplasmic OGT [ncOGT]) share the same catalytic domain, implying that they might adopt a similar catalytic mechanism, including sugar donor recognition. In this work, the sugar-nucleotide tolerance of sOGT was investigated. Among a series of uridine 5'-diphosphate-N-acetylglucosamine (UDP-GlcNAc) analogs tested using the casein kinase II (CKII) peptide as the sugar acceptor, four compounds could be used by sOGT, including UDP-6-deoxy-GlcNAc, UDP-GlcNPr, UDP-6-deoxy-GalNAc and UDP-4-deoxy-GlcNAc. Determined values of Km showed that the substitution of the N-acyl group, deoxy modification of C6/C4-OH or epimerization of C4-OH of the GlcNAc in UDP-GlcNAc decreased its affinity to sOGT. A molecular docking study combined with site-directed mutagenesis indicated that the backbone carbonyl oxygen of Leu653 and the hydroxyl group of Thr560 in sOGT contributed to the recognition of the sugar moiety via hydrogen bonds. The close vicinity between Met501 and the N-acyl group of GlcNPr, as well as the hydrophobic environment near Met501, were responsible for the selective binding of UDP-GlcNPr. These findings illustrate the interaction of OGT and sugar nucleotide donor, providing insights into the OGT catalytic mechanism

A survey of overlooked viral infections in biological experiment systems

It is commonly accepted that there are many unknown viruses on the planet. For the known viruses, do we know their prevalence, even in our experimental systems? Here we report a virus survey using recently published small (s)RNA sequencing datasets. The sRNA reads were assembled and contigs were screened for virus homologues against the NCBI nucleotide (nt) database using the BLASTn program. To our surprise, approximately 30% (28 out of 94) of publications had highly scored viral sequences in their datasets. Among them, only two publications reported virus infections. Though viral vectors were used in some of the publications, virus sequences without any identifiable source appeared in more than 20 publications. By determining the distributions of viral reads and the antiviral RNA interference (RNAi) pathways using the sRNA profiles, we showed evidence that many of the viruses identified were indeed infecting and generated host RNAi responses. As virus infections affect many aspects of host molecular biology and metabolism, the presence and impact of viruses needs to be actively investigated in experimental systems