Involvement in surface antigen expression by a moonlighting FG-repeat nucleoporin in trypanosomes

Components of the nuclear periphery coordinate a multitude of activities, including macromolecular transport, cell-cycle progression, and chromatin organization. Nuclear pore complexes (NPCs) mediate nucleocytoplasmic transport, mRNA processing, and transcriptional regulation, and NPC components can define regions of high transcriptional activity in some organisms at the nuclear periphery and nucleoplasm. Lineage-specific features underpin several core nuclear functions and in trypanosomatids, which branched very early from other eukaryotes, unique protein components constitute the lamina, kinetochores, and parts of the NPCs. Here we describe a phenylalanine-glycine (FG)-repeat nucleoporin, TbNup53b, that has dual localizations within the nucleoplasm and NPC. In addition to association with nucleoporins, TbNup53b interacts with a known trans-splicing component, TSR1, and has a role in controlling expression of surface proteins including the nucleolar periphery-located, procyclin genes. Significantly, while several nucleoporins are implicated in intranuclear transcriptional regulation in metazoa, TbNup53b appears orthologous to components of the yeast/human Nup49/Nup58 complex, for which no transcriptional functions are known. These data suggest that FG-Nups are frequently co-opted to transcriptional functions during evolution and extend the presence of FG-repeat nucleoporin control of gene expression to trypanosomes, suggesting that this is a widespread and ancient eukaryotic feature, as well as underscoring once more flexibility within nucleoporin function

Grid reliability management tools

To summarize, Consortium for Electric Reliability Technology Solutions (CERTS) is engaged in a multi-year program of public interest R&D to develop and prototype software tools that will enhance system reliability during the transition to competitive markets. The core philosophy embedded in the design of these tools is the recognition that in the future reliability will be provided through market operations, not the decisions of central planners. Embracing this philosophy calls for tools that: (1) Recognize that the game has moved from modeling machine and engineering analysis to simulating markets to understand the impacts on reliability (and vice versa); (2) Provide real-time data and support information transparency toward enhancing the ability of operators and market participants to quickly grasp, analyze, and act effectively on information; (3) Allow operators, in particular, to measure, monitor, assess, and predict both system performance as well as the performance of market participants; and (4) Allow rapid incorporation of the latest sensing, data communication, computing, visualization, and algorithmic techniques and technologies

Enhanced Light Trapping in Thin Film Solar Cells Using a Plasmonic Fishnet Structure

Incorporating plasmonic structures into the back spacer layer of thin film solar cells (TFSCs) is an efficient way to improve their performance. The fishnet structure is used to enhance light trapping. Unlike other previously suggested discrete plasmonic particles, the fishnet is an electrically connected wire mesh that does not result in light field localization, which leads to high absorption losses. The design was verified experimentally. A silver fishnet structure was fabricated using electron beam lithography (EBL) and thermal evaporation. The final fabricated structure optically resembles a TFSC. The results predicted by numerical simulations were reproduced experimentally on a fabricated sample. We show that light absorption in the a-Si absorber layer is enhanced by a factor of 10.6 at the design wavelength of 690 nm due to the presence of the fishnet structure. Furthermore, the total absorption over all wavelengths was increased by a factor of 3.2. The short-circuit current of the TFSC was increased by 30% as a result of including the fishnet

Performance Limitations of mc-Si Solar Cells Caused by Defect Clusters: Preprint

This paper presents a combination of numerical and experimental methods used to characterize defect clusters in multicrystalline silicon solar cells