1,368 research outputs found
Applications of microsatellite markers for the characterization of olive genetic resources of tunisia
Among the countries of the Mediterranean Basin, Tunisia is located at the crossroad for the immigration of several civilizations over the last two millennia, becoming a strategic place for gene flow, and a secondary center of diversity for olive species. Olive is one of the principal crop species in Tunisia and now it strongly characterizes the rural landscape of the country. In recent years, collecting missions on farm and in situ were carried out by various institutes, with special emphasis given to ex situ collections serving as a reference for the identification of olive germplasm. Simple Sequence Repeats (SSRs) represent the easiest and cheapest markers for olive genetic fingerprinting and have been the tool of choice for studying the genetic diversity of this crop in Tunisia, to resolve cases of homonymy and synonymy among the commercialized varieties, to identify rare cultivars, to improve knowledge about the genetic variability of this crop, to identify a hot spot of olive biodiversity in the Tunisian oasis of Degache, and to enrich the national reference collection of olive varieties. The present review describes the state of the art of the genetic characterization of the Tunisian olive germplasm and illustrate the progress obtained through the SSR markers, in individuating interesting genotypes that could be used for facing incoming problems determined by climate changes
Fission of a multiphase membrane tube
A common mechanism for intracellular transport is the use of controlled
deformations of the membrane to create spherical or tubular buds. While the
basic physical properties of homogeneous membranes are relatively well-known,
the effects of inhomogeneities within membranes are very much an active field
of study. Membrane domains enriched in certain lipids in particular are
attracting much attention, and in this Letter we investigate the effect of such
domains on the shape and fate of membrane tubes. Recent experiments have
demonstrated that forced lipid phase separation can trigger tube fission, and
we demonstrate how this can be understood purely from the difference in elastic
constants between the domains. Moreover, the proposed model predicts timescales
for fission that agree well with experimental findings
Phase transition in an asymmetric generalization of the zero-temperature q-state Potts model
An asymmetric generalization of the zero-temperature q-state Potts model on a
one dimensional lattice, with and without boundaries, has been studied. The
dynamics of the particle number, and specially the large time behavior of the
system has been analyzed. In the thermodynamic limit, the system exhibits two
kinds of phase transitions, a static and a dynamic phase transition.Comment: 11 pages, LaTeX2
Phase transition in an asymmetric generalization of the zero-temperature Glauber model
An asymmetric generalization of the zero-temperature Glauber model on a
lattice is introduced. The dynamics of the particle-density and specially the
large-time behavior of the system is studied. It is shown that the system
exhibits two kinds of phase transition, a static one and a dynamic one.Comment: LaTeX, 9 pages, to appear in Phys. Rev. E (2001
Crossover effects in a discrete deposition model with Kardar-Parisi-Zhang scaling
We simulated a growth model in 1+1 dimensions in which particles are
aggregated according to the rules of ballistic deposition with probability p or
according to the rules of random deposition with surface relaxation (Family
model) with probability 1-p. For any p>0, this system is in the
Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ) universality class, but it presents a slow crossover
from the Edwards-Wilkinson class (EW) for small p. From the scaling of the
growth velocity, the parameter p is connected to the coefficient of the
nonlinear term of the KPZ equation, lambda, giving lambda ~ p^gamma, with gamma
= 2.1 +- 0.2. Our numerical results confirm the interface width scaling in the
growth regime as W ~ lambda^beta t^beta, and the scaling of the saturation time
as tau ~ lambda^(-1) L^z, with the expected exponents beta =1/3 and z=3/2 and
strong corrections to scaling for small lambda. This picture is consistent with
a crossover time from EW to KPZ growth in the form t_c ~ lambda^(-4) ~ p^(-8),
in agreement with scaling theories and renormalization group analysis. Some
consequences of the slow crossover in this problem are discussed and may help
investigations of more complex models.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figures; to appear in Phys. Rev.
Generalized Smoluchowski equation with correlation between clusters
In this paper we compute new reaction rates of the Smoluchowski equation
which takes into account correlations. The new rate K = KMF + KC is the sum of
two terms. The first term is the known Smoluchowski rate with the mean-field
approximation. The second takes into account a correlation between clusters.
For this purpose we introduce the average path of a cluster. We relate the
length of this path to the reaction rate of the Smoluchowski equation. We solve
the implicit dependence between the average path and the density of clusters.
We show that this correlation length is the same for all clusters. Our result
depends strongly on the spatial dimension d. The mean-field term KMFi,j = (Di +
Dj)(rj + ri)d-2, which vanishes for d = 1 and is valid up to logarithmic
correction for d = 2, is the usual rate found with the Smoluchowski model
without correlation (where ri is the radius and Di is the diffusion constant of
the cluster). We compute a new rate: the correlation rate K_{i,j}^{C}
(D_i+D_j)(r_j+r_i)^{d-1}M{\big(\frac{d-1}{d_f}}\big) is valid for d \leq
1(where M(\alpha) = \sum+\infty i=1i\alphaNi is the moment of the density of
clusters and df is the fractal dimension of the cluster). The result is valid
for a large class of diffusion processes and mass radius relations. This
approach confirms some analytical solutions in d 1 found with other methods. We
also show Monte Carlo simulations which illustrate some exact new solvable
models
Recovery, assessment, and molecular characterization of minor olive genotypes in Tunisia
Olive is one of the oldest cultivated species in the Mediterranean Basin, including Tunisia, where it has a wide diversity, with more than 200 cultivars, of both wild and feral forms. Many minor cultivars are still present in marginal areas of Tunisia, where they are maintained by farmers in small local groves, but they are poorly characterized and evaluated. In order to recover this neglected germplasm, surveys were conducted in different areas, and 31 genotypes were collected, molecularly characterized with 12 nuclear microsatellite (simple sequence repeat (SSR)) markers, and compared with 26 reference cultivars present in the Tunisian National Olive collection. The analysis revealed an overall high genetic diversity of this olive’s germplasm, but also discovered the presence of synonymies and homonymies among the commercialized varieties. The structure analysis showed the presence of different gene pools in the analyzed germplasm. In particular, the marginal germplasm from Ras Jbal and Azmour is characterized by gene pools not present in commercial (Nurseries) varieties, pointing out the very narrow genetic base of the commercialized olive material in Tunisia, and the need to broaden it to avoid the risk of genetic erosion of this species in this country
Evanescent wave approach to diffractive phenomena in convex billiards with corners
What we are going to call in this paper "diffractive phenomena" in billiards
is far from being deeply understood. These are sorts of singularities that, for
example, some kind of corners introduce in the energy eigenfunctions. In this
paper we use the well-known scaling quantization procedure to study them. We
show how the scaling method can be applied to convex billiards with corners,
taking into account the strong diffraction at them and the techniques needed to
solve their Helmholtz equation. As an example we study a classically
pseudointegrable billiard, the truncated triangle. Then we focus our attention
on the spectral behavior. A numerical study of the statistical properties of
high-lying energy levels is carried out. It is found that all computed
statistical quantities are roughly described by the so-called semi-Poisson
statistics, but it is not clear whether the semi-Poisson statistics is the
correct one in the semiclassical limit.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figure
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