1,568 research outputs found
Chemically engineering ligand selectivity at the free fatty acid receptor 2 based on pharmacological variation between species orthologs
When it is difficult to develop selective ligands within a family of related G-protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), chemically engineered receptors activated solely by synthetic ligands (RASSLs) are useful alternatives for probing receptor function. In the present work, we explored whether a RASSL of the free fatty acid receptor 2 (FFA2) could be developed on the basis of pharmacological variation between species orthologs. For this, bovine FFA2 was characterized, revealing distinct ligand selectivity compared with human FFA2. Homology modeling and mutational analysis demonstrated a single mutation in human FFA2 of C4.57G resulted in a human FFA2 receptor with ligand selectivity similar to the bovine receptor. This was exploited to generate human FFA2-RASSL by the addition of a second mutation at a known orthosteric ligand interaction site, H6.55Q. The resulting FFA2-RASSL displayed a >100-fold loss of activity to endogenous ligands, while responding to the distinct ligand sorbic acid with pEC(50) values for inhibition of cAMP, 5.83 ± 0.11; Ca(2+) mobilization, 4.63 ± 0.05; ERK phosphorylation, 5.61 ± 0.06; and dynamic mass redistribution, 5.35 ± 0.06. This FFA2-RASSL will be useful in future studies on this receptor and demonstrates that exploitation of pharmacological variation between species orthologs is a powerful method to generate novel chemically engineered GPCRs
Photon Momentum Transfer in Single-Photon Double Ionization of Helium
We theoretically and experimentally investigate the photon momentum transfer in single-photon double ionization of helium at various large photon energies. We find that the forward shifts of the momenta along the light propagation of the two photoelectrons are roughly proportional to their fraction of the excess energy. The mean value of the forward momentum is about 8/5 of the electron energy divided by the speed of light. This holds for fast and slow electrons despite the fact that the energy sharing is highly asymmetric and the slow electron is known to be ejected by secondary processes of shake off and knockout rather than directly taking its energy from the photon. The biggest deviations from this rule are found for the region of equal energy sharing where the quasifree mechanism dominates double ionization
Effect of deconfinement on resonant transport in quantum wires
The effect of deconfinement due to finite band offsets on transport through
quantum wires with two constrictions is investigated. It is shown that the
increase in resonance linewidth becomes increasingly important as the size is
reduced and ultimately places an upper limit on the energy (temperature) scale
for which resonances may be observed.Comment: 6 pages, 6 postscript files with figures; uses REVTe
Influence of symmetry and Coulomb-correlation effects on the optical properties of nitride quantum dots
The electronic and optical properties of self-assembled InN/GaN quantum dots
(QDs) are investigated by means of a tight-binding model combined with
configuration interaction calculations. Tight-binding single particle wave
functions are used as a basis for computing Coulomb and dipole matrix elements.
Within this framework, we analyze multi-exciton emission spectra for two
different sizes of a lens-shaped InN/GaN QD with wurtzite crystal structure.
The impact of the symmetry of the involved electron and hole one-particle
states on the optical spectra is discussed in detail. Furthermore we show how
the characteristic features of the spectra can be interpreted using a
simplified Hamiltonian which provides analytical results for the interacting
multi-exciton complexes. We predict a vanishing exciton and biexciton ground
state emission for small lens-shaped InN/GaN QDs. For larger systems we report
a bright ground state emission but with drastically reduced oscillator
strengths caused by the quantum confined Stark effect.Comment: 15 pages, 17 figure
Exciton and negative trion dissociation by an external electric field in vertically coupled quantum dots
We study the Stark effect for an exciton confined in a pair of vertically
coupled quantum dots. A single-band approximation for the hole and a parabolic
lateral confinement potential are adopted which allows for the separation of
the lateral center-of-mass motion and consequently for an exact numerical
solution of the Schr\"odinger equation. We show that for intermediate tunnel
coupling the external electric field leads to the dissociation of the exciton
via an avoided crossing of bright and dark exciton energy levels which results
in an atypical form of the Stark shift. The electric-field-induced dissociation
of the negative trion is studied using the approximation of frozen lateral
degrees of freedom. It is shown that in a symmetric system of coupled dots the
trion is more stable against dissociation than the exciton. For an asymmetric
system of coupled dots the trion dissociation is accompanied by a positive
curvature of the recombination energy line as a function of the electric field.Comment: PRB - in prin
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