173 research outputs found
Theory of Myelin Coiling
A new model is proposed to explain coiling of myelins composed of fluid
bilayers. This model allows the constituent bilayer cylinders of a myelin to be
non-coaxial and the bilayer lateral tension to vary from bilayer to bilayer.
The calculations show that a myelin would bend or coil to lower its free energy
when the bilayer lateral tension is sufficiently large. From a mechanical point
of view, the proposed coiling mechanism is analogous to the classical Euler
buckling of a thin elastic rod under axial compression. The analysis of a
simple two-bilayer case suggests that a bilayer lateral tension of about 1
dyne/cm can easily induce coiling of myelins of typical lipid bilayers. This
model signifies the importance of bilayer lateral tension in determining the
morphology of myelinic structures.Comment: 17 pages, 8 figures, submitted to Eur. Phys. J.
Protein-DNA computation by stochastic assembly cascade
The assembly of RecA on single-stranded DNA is measured and interpreted as a
stochastic finite-state machine that is able to discriminate fine differences
between sequences, a basic computational operation. RecA filaments efficiently
scan DNA sequence through a cascade of random nucleation and disassembly events
that is mechanistically similar to the dynamic instability of microtubules.
This iterative cascade is a multistage kinetic proofreading process that
amplifies minute differences, even a single base change. Our measurements
suggest that this stochastic Turing-like machine can compute certain integral
transforms.Comment: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC129313/
http://www.pnas.org/content/99/18/11589.abstrac
Dynamic Fluctuation Phenomena in Double Membrane Films
Dynamics of double membrane films is investigated in the long-wavelength
limit including the overdamped squeezing mode. We demonstrate that thermal
fluctuations essentially modify the character of the mode due to its nonlinear
coupling to the transversal shear hydrodynamic mode. The corresponding Green
function acquires as a function of the frequency a cut along the imaginary
semi-axis. Fluctuations lead to increasing the attenuation of the squeezing
mode it becomes larger than the `bare' value.Comment: 7 pages, Revte
Numerical Observation of a Tubular Phase in Anisotropic Membranes
We provide the first numerical evidence for the existence of a tubular phase,
predicted by Radzihovsky and Toner (RT), for anisotropic tethered membranes
without self-avoidance. Incorporating anisotropy into the bending rigidity of a
simple model of a tethered membrane with free boundary conditions, we show that
the model indeed has two phase transitions corresponding to the flat-to-tubular
and tubular-to-crumpled transitions. For the tubular phase we measure the Flory
exponent and the roughness exponent . We find
and , which are in reasonable agreement with the theoretical
predictions of RT --- and .Comment: 8 pages, LaTeX, REVTEX, final published versio
W Doping in Ni12P5as a Platform to Enhance Overall Electrochemical Water Splitting
Bifunctional electrocatalysts for efficient hydrogen generation from water splitting must overcome both the sluggish water dissociation step of the alkaline hydrogen evolution half-reaction (HER) and the kinetic barrier of the anodic oxygen evolution half-reaction (OER). Nickel phosphides are a promising catalysts family and are known to develop a thin active layer of oxidized Ni in an alkaline medium. Here, Ni12P5 was recognized as a suitable platform for the electrochemical production of γ-NiOOH-a particularly active phase-because of its matching crystallographic structure. The incorporation of tungsten by doping produces additional surface roughness, increases the electrochemical surface area (ESCA), and reduces the energy barrier for electron-coupled water dissociation (the Volmer step for the formation of Hads). When serving as both the anode and cathode, the 15% W-Ni12P5 catalyst provides an overall water splitting current density of 10 mA cm-2 at a cell voltage of only 1.73 V with good durability, making it a promising bifunctional catalyst for practical water electrolysis. © 2021 American Chemical Society.S.G. and S.K. thank the financial support of the Kreitman Post- Doctoral fellowship at the BGU. This center of excellence was supported by The Israel Science Foundation (grant no. 1212/21)
Universal Algebraic Relaxation of Velocity and Phase in Pulled Fronts generating Periodic or Chaotic States
We investigate the asymptotic relaxation of so-called pulled fronts
propagating into an unstable state. The ``leading edge representation'' of the
equation of motion reveals the universal nature of their propagation mechanism
and allows us to generalize the universal algebraic velocity relaxation of
uniformly translating fronts to fronts, that generate periodic or even chaotic
states. Such fronts in addition exhibit a universal algebraic phase relaxation.
We numerically verify our analytical predictions for the Swift-Hohenberg and
the Complex Ginzburg Landau equation.Comment: 4 pages Revtex, 2 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev. Let
Cell adhesion and cortex contractility determine cell patterning in the Drosophila retina
Hayashi and Carthew (Nature 431 [2004], 647) have shown that the packing of
cone cells in the Drosophila retina resembles soap bubble packing, and that
changing E- and N-cadherin expression can change this packing, as well as cell
shape.
The analogy with bubbles suggests that cell packing is driven by surface
minimization. We find that this assumption is insufficient to model the
experimentally observed shapes and packing of the cells based on their cadherin
expression. We then consider a model in which adhesion leads to a surface
increase, balanced by cell cortex contraction. Using the experimentally
observed distributions of E- and N-cadherin, we simulate the packing and cell
shapes in the wildtype eye. Furthermore, by changing only the corresponding
parameters, this model can describe the mutants with different numbers of
cells, or changes in cadherin expression.Comment: revised manuscript; 8 pages, 6 figures; supplementary information not
include
Coiling Instabilities in Multilamellar Tubes
Myelin figures are densely packed stacks of coaxial cylindrical bilayers that
are unstable to the formation of coils or double helices. These myelin figures
appear to have no intrinsic chirality. We show that such cylindrical membrane
stacks can develop an instability when they acquire a spontaneous curvature or
when the equilibrium distance between membranes is decreased. This instability
breaks the chiral symmetry of the stack and may result in coiling. A
unilamellar cylindrical vesicle, on the other hand, will develop an
axisymmetric instability, possibly related to the pearling instability.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figure
Instability of Myelin Tubes under Dehydration: deswelling of layered cylindrical structures
We report experimental observations of an undulational instability of myelin
figures. Motivated by this, we examine theoretically the deformation and
possible instability of concentric, cylindrical, multi-lamellar membrane
structures. Under conditions of osmotic stress (swelling or dehydration), we
find a stable, deformed state in which the layer deformation is given by \delta
R ~ r^{\sqrt{B_A/(hB)}}, where B_A is the area compression modulus, B is the
inter-layer compression modulus, and h is the repeat distance of layers. Also,
above a finite threshold of dehydration (or osmotic stress), we find that the
system becomes unstable to undulations, first with a characteristic wavelength
of order \sqrt{xi d_0}, where xi is the standard smectic penetration depth and
d_0 is the thickness of dehydrated region.Comment: 5 pages + 3 figures [revtex 4
Maximal entropy inference of oncogenicity from phosphorylation signaling
Point mutations in the phosphorylation domain of the Bcr-Abl fusion oncogene give rise to drug resistance in chronic myelogenous leukemia patients. These mutations alter kinase-mediated signaling function and phenotypic outcome. An information theoretic analysis of the correlation of phosphoproteomic profiling and transformation potency of the oncogene in different mutants is presented. The theory seeks to predict the leukemic transformation potency from the observed signaling by constructing a distribution of maximal entropy of site-specific phosphorylation events. The theory is developed with special reference to systems biology where high throughput measurements are typical. We seek sets of phosphorylation events most contributory to predicting the phenotype by determining the constraints on the signaling system. The relevance of a constraint is measured by how much it reduces the value of the entropy from its global maximum, where all events are equally likely. Application to experimental phospho-proteomics data for kinase inhibitor-resistant mutants shows that there is one dominant constraint and that other constraints are not relevant to a similar extent. This single constraint accounts for much of the correlation of phosphorylation events with the oncogenic potency and thereby usefully predicts the trends in the phenotypic output. An additional constraint possibly accounts for biological fine structure
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