310 research outputs found
Echinocyte Shapes: Bending, Stretching and Shear Determine Spicule Shape and Spacing
We study the shapes of human red blood cells using continuum mechanics. In
particular, we model the crenated, echinocytic shapes and show how they may
arise from a competition between the bending energy of the plasma membrane and
the stretching/shear elastic energies of the membrane skeleton. In contrast to
earlier work, we calculate spicule shapes exactly by solving the equations of
continuum mechanics subject to appropriate boundary conditions. A simple
scaling analysis of this competition reveals an elastic length which sets the
length scale for the spicules and is, thus, related to the number of spicules
experimentally observed on the fully developed echinocyte.Comment: Revtex, 27 pages, 8 figures; some minor change
Mapping vesicle shapes into the phase diagram: A comparison of experiment and theory
Phase-contrast microscopy is used to monitor the shapes of micron-scale
fluid-phase phospholipid-bilayer vesicles in aqueous solution. At fixed
temperature, each vesicle undergoes thermal shape fluctuations. We are able
experimentally to characterize the thermal shape ensemble by digitizing the
vesicle outline in real time and storing the time-sequence of images. Analysis
of this ensemble using the area-difference-elasticity (ADE) model of vesicle
shapes allows us to associate (map) each time-sequence to a point in the
zero-temperature (shape) phase diagram. Changing the laboratory temperature
modifies the control parameters (area, volume, etc.) of each vesicle, so it
sweeps out a trajectory across the theoretical phase diagram. It is a
nontrivial test of the ADE model to check that these trajectories remain
confined to regions of the phase diagram where the corresponding shapes are
locally stable. In particular, we study the thermal trajectories of three
prolate vesicles which, upon heating, experienced a mechanical instability
leading to budding. We verify that the position of the observed instability and
the geometry of the budded shape are in reasonable accord with the theoretical
predictions. The inability of previous experiments to detect the ``hidden''
control parameters (relaxed area difference and spontaneous curvature) make
this the first direct quantitative confrontation between vesicle-shape theory
and experiment.Comment: submitted to PRE, LaTeX, 26 pages, 11 ps-fi
Origin of Native Driving Force in Protein Folding
We derive an expression with four adjustable parameters that reproduces well
the 20x20 Miyazawa-Jernigan potential matrix extracted from known protein
structures. The numerical values of the parameters can be approximately
computed from the surface tension of water, water-screened dipole interactions
between residues and water and among residues, and average exposures of
residues in folded proteins.Comment: LaTeX file, Postscript file; 4 pages, 1 figure (mij.eps), 2 table
Nonlocal Conductivity in the Vortex-Liquid Regime of a Two-Dimensional Superconductor
We have simulated the time-dependent Ginzburg-Landau equation with thermal
fluctuations, to study the nonlocal dc conductivity of a superconducting film.
Having examined points in the phase diagram at a wide range of temperatures and
fields below the mean-field upper critical field, we find a portion of the
vortex-liquid regime in which the nonlocal ohmic conductivity in real space is
negative over a distance several times the spacing between vortices. The effect
is suppressed when driven beyond linear response. Earlier work had predicted
the existence of such a regime, due to the high viscosity of a
strongly-correlated vortex liquid. This behavior is clearly distinguishable
from the monotonic spatial fall-off of the conductivity in the higher
temperature or field regimes approaching the normal state. The possibilities
for experimental study of the nonlocal transport properties are discussed.Comment: 18 pages, revtex, 6 postscript figure
Cumulant expansion of the periodic Anderson model in infinite dimension
The diagrammatic cumulant expansion for the periodic Anderson model with
infinite Coulomb repulsion () is considered here for an hypercubic
lattice of infinite dimension (). The same type of simplifications
obtained by Metzner for the cumulant expansion of the Hubbard model in the
limit of , are shown to be also valid for the periodic Anderson
model.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures.ps. To be published in J. Phys. A: Mathematical
and General (1997
Solitary Waves of Planar Ferromagnets and the Breakdown of the Spin-Polarized Quantum Hall Effect
A branch of uniformly-propagating solitary waves of planar ferromagnets is
identified. The energy dispersion and structures of the solitary waves are
determined for an isotropic ferromagnet as functions of a conserved momentum.
With increasing momentum, their structure undergoes a transition from a form
ressembling a droplet of spin-waves to a Skyrmion/anti-Skyrmion pair. An
instability to the formation of these solitary waves is shown to provide a
mechanism for the electric field-induced breakdown of the spin-polarized
quantum Hall effect.Comment: 5 pages, 3 eps-figures, revtex with epsf.tex and multicol.st
Critical Phenomena with Linked Cluster Expansions in a Finite Volume
Linked cluster expansions are generalized from an infinite to a finite
volume. They are performed to 20th order in the expansion parameter to approach
the critical region from the symmetric phase. A new criterion is proposed to
distinguish 1st from 2nd order transitions within a finite size scaling
analysis. The criterion applies also to other methods for investigating the
phase structure such as Monte Carlo simulations. Our computational tools are
illustrated at the example of scalar O(N) models with four and six-point
couplings for and in three dimensions. It is shown how to localize
the tricritical line in these models. We indicate some further applications of
our methods to the electroweak transition as well as to models for
superconductivity.Comment: 36 pages, latex2e, 7 eps figures included, uuencoded, gzipped and
tarred tex file hdth9607.te
Toll-like Receptor 7-Dependent Loss of B Cell Tolerance in Pathogenic Autoantibody Knockin Mice
SummarySystemic lupus erythematosus (SLE) is characterized by the production of autoantibodies that are frequently directed against nucleic acid-associated antigens. To better understand how B cells reactive with such antigens are regulated, we generated a model system in which heavy and light chain genes encoding 564 immunoglobulin have been targeted to the heavy and light chain loci of the nonautoimmune C57BL/6 mouse strain. This antibody recognizes RNA, single-stranded DNA, and nucleosomes. We show that B cells expressing this immunoglobulin were activated, producing class-switched autoantibody in vivo despite the apparently normal induction of anergy. This autoantibody production was largely dependent on Toll-like receptor 7 (TLR7). We further show that production of these autoantibodies was sufficient to cause kidney pathology in these mice. These results demonstrate that the particular threat of nucleic acid-containing autoantigens lies in their ability to bind both antigen receptor and TLR7
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