173 research outputs found
Localization of antimicrobial peptides in the tunic of Ciona intestinalis ( Ascidiacea, Tunicata) and their involvement in local inflammatory-like reactions
Tunicates comprising a wide variety of different species synthesize antimicrobial peptides as important
effector molecules of the innate immune system. Recently, two putative gene families coding for
antimicrobial peptides were identified in the expressed sequence tag database of the tunicate Ciona
intestinalis. Two synthetic peptides representing the cationic core region of one member of each of the
families displayed potent antibacterial and antifungal activities. Moreover, the natural peptides were
demonstrated to be synthesized and stored in distinct hemocyte types. Here, we investigated the
presence of these natural peptides, namely Ci-MAM-A and Ci-PAP-A, in the tunic of C. intestinalis
considering that the ascidian tunic is a body surface barrier exposed to constant microbial assault.
Furthermore, as the tunic may represent a major route of entry for pathogen invasion after its damage
we monitored the location of these peptides upon a local inflammatory-like reaction induced by
injection of foreign cells. Using immunocytochemistry and electron microscopy both peptides were
localized to the tunic and were massively present in granulocytes of inflamed tissue. Conclusively,
antimicrobial peptides may constitute a chemical barrier within the tunic of urochordates
Exact results for the reactivity of a single-file system
We derive analytical expressions for the reactivity of a Single-File System
with fast diffusion and adsorption and desorption at one end. If the conversion
reaction is fast, then the reactivity depends only very weakly on the system
size, and the conversion is about 100%. If the reaction is slow, then the
reactivity becomes proportional to the system size, the loading, and the
reaction rate constant. If the system size increases the reactivity goes to the
geometric mean of the reaction rate constant and the rate of adsorption and
desorption. For large systems the number of nonconverted particles decreases
exponentially with distance from the adsorption/desorption end.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure
Anomalous tag diffusion in the asymmetric exclusion model with particles of arbitrary sizes
Anomalous behavior of correlation functions of tagged particles are studied
in generalizations of the one dimensional asymmetric exclusion problem. In
these generalized models the range of the hard-core interactions are changed
and the restriction of relative ordering of the particles is partially brocken.
The models probing these effects are those of biased diffusion of particles
having size S=0,1,2,..., or an effective negative "size" S=-1,-2,..., in units
of lattice space. Our numerical simulations show that irrespective of the range
of the hard-core potential, as long some relative ordering of particles are
kept, we find suitable sliding-tag correlation functions whose fluctuations
growth with time anomalously slow (), when compared with the normal
diffusive behavior (). These results indicate that the critical
behavior of these stochastic models are in the Kardar-Parisi-Zhang (KPZ)
universality class. Moreover a previous Bethe-ansatz calculation of the
dynamical critical exponent , for size particles is extended to
the case and the KPZ result is predicted for all values of .Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure
Event-based relaxation of continuous disordered systems
A computational approach is presented to obtain energy-minimized structures
in glassy materials. This approach, the activation-relaxation technique (ART),
achieves its efficiency by focusing on significant changes in the microscopic
structure (events). The application of ART is illustrated with two examples:
the structure of amorphous silicon, and the structure of Ni80P20, a metallic
glass.Comment: 4 pages, revtex, epsf.sty, 3 figure
Molecular Spiders in One Dimension
Molecular spiders are synthetic bio-molecular systems which have "legs" made
of short single-stranded segments of DNA. Spiders move on a surface covered
with single-stranded DNA segments complementary to legs. Different mappings are
established between various models of spiders and simple exclusion processes.
For spiders with simple gait and varying number of legs we compute the
diffusion coefficient; when the hopping is biased we also compute their
velocity.Comment: 14 pages, 2 figure
Spin and charge excitations in incommensurate spin density waves
Collective excitations both for spin- and charge-channels are investigated in
incommensurate spin density wave (or stripe) states on two-dimensional Hubbard
model. By random phase approximation, the dynamical susceptibility
\chi(q,\omega) is calculated for full range of (q,\omega) with including all
higher harmonics components. An intricate landscape of the spectra in
\chi(q,\omega) is obtained. We discuss the anisotropy of the dispersion cones
for spin wave excitations, and for the phason excitation related to the motion
of the stripe line. Inelastic neutron experiments on Cr and its alloys and
stripe states of underdoped cuprates are proposed
Effect of hydrogen on ground state structures of small silicon clusters
We present results for ground state structures of small SiH (2 \leq
\emph{n} \leq 10) clusters using the Car-Parrinello molecular dynamics. In
particular, we focus on how the addition of a hydrogen atom affects the ground
state geometry, total energy and the first excited electronic level gap of an
Si cluster. We discuss the nature of bonding of hydrogen in these
clusters. We find that hydrogen bonds with two silicon atoms only in SiH,
SiH and SiH clusters, while in other clusters (i.e. SiH,
SiH, SiH, SiH, SiH and SiH) hydrogen is bonded
to only one silicon atom. Also in the case of a compact and closed silicon
cluster hydrogen bonds to the cluster from outside. We find that the first
excited electronic level gap of Si and SiH fluctuates as a function
of size and this may provide a first principles basis for the short-range
potential fluctuations in hydrogenated amorphous silicon. Our results show that
the addition of a single hydrogen can cause large changes in the electronic
structure of a silicon cluster, though the geometry is not much affected. Our
calculation of the lowest energy fragmentation products of SiH clusters
shows that hydrogen is easily removed from SiH clusters.Comment: one latex file named script.tex including table and figure caption.
Six postscript figure files. figure_1a.ps and figure_1b.ps are files
representing Fig. 1 in the main tex
Magnetic correlations and quantum criticality in the insulating antiferromagnetic, insulating spin liquid, renormalized Fermi liquid, and metallic antiferromagnetic phases of the Mott system V_2O_3
Magnetic correlations in all four phases of pure and doped vanadium
sesquioxide V_2O_3 have been examined by magnetic thermal neutron scattering.
While the antiferromagnetic insulator can be accounted for by a Heisenberg
localized spin model, the long range order in the antiferromagnetic metal is an
incommensurate spin-density-wave, resulting from a Fermi surface nesting
instability. Spin dynamics in the strongly correlated metal are dominated by
spin fluctuations in the Stoner electron-hole continuum. Furthermore, our
results in metallic V_2O_3 represent an unprecedentedly complete
characterization of the spin fluctuations near a metallic quantum critical
point, and provide quantitative support for the SCR theory for itinerant
antiferromagnets in the small moment limit. Dynamic magnetic correlations for
energy smaller than k_BT in the paramagnetic insulator carry substantial
magnetic spectral weight. However, the correlation length extends only to the
nearest neighbor distance. The phase transition to the antiferromagnetic
insulator introduces a sudden switching of magnetic correlations to a different
spatial periodicity which indicates a sudden change in the underlying spin
Hamiltonian. To describe this phase transition and also the unusual short range
order in the paramagnetic state, it seems necessary to take into account the
orbital degrees of freedom associated with the degenerate d-orbitals at the
Fermi level in V_2O_3.Comment: Postscript file, 24 pages, 26 figures, 2 tables, accepted by Phys.
Rev.
Interplay between Anomalous Transport and Catalytic Reaction Kinetics in Single-File Nanoporous Systems
Functionalized nanoporous materials have broad utility for catalysis applications. However, the kinetics of catalytic reaction processes in these systems can be strongly impacted by the anomalous transport. The most extreme case corresponds to single-file diffusion for narrow pores in which species cannot pass each other. For conversion reactions with a single-file constraint, traditional mean-field-type reaction-diffusion equations fail to capture the initial evolution of concentration profiles, and they cannot describe the scaling behavior of steady-state reactivity. Hydrodynamic reaction-diffusion equations accounting for the single-file aspects of chemical diffusion can describe such initial evolution, but additional refinements are needed to incorporate fluctuation effects controlling, for example, steady-state reactivity localized near pore openings. For polymerization reactions with a single-file constraint, initial behavior depends strongly on system details such as catalytic site loading and reaction rate. However, long-time behavior often involves the formation of a dominant large polymer near each end of the pore, initially within the pore but subsequently partly extruding. In this partial extrusion regime, the kinetics is governed by the special features of the random walk describing the motion of the end of the partly extruded polymer, noting that this extruded end must return within the pore for further growth
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