856 research outputs found
Transmembrane helix dynamics of bacterial chemoreceptors supports a piston model of signalling.
Transmembrane α-helices play a key role in many receptors, transmitting a signal from one side to the other of the lipid bilayer membrane. Bacterial chemoreceptors are one of the best studied such systems, with a wealth of biophysical and mutational data indicating a key role for the TM2 helix in signalling. In particular, aromatic (Trp and Tyr) and basic (Arg) residues help to lock α-helices into a membrane. Mutants in TM2 of E. coli Tar and related chemoreceptors involving these residues implicate changes in helix location and/or orientation in signalling. We have investigated the detailed structural basis of this via high throughput coarse-grained molecular dynamics (CG-MD) of Tar TM2 and its mutants in lipid bilayers. We focus on the position (shift) and orientation (tilt, rotation) of TM2 relative to the bilayer and how these are perturbed in mutants relative to the wildtype. The simulations reveal a clear correlation between small (ca. 1.5 Å) shift in position of TM2 along the bilayer normal and downstream changes in signalling activity. Weaker correlations are seen with helix tilt, and little/none between signalling and helix twist. This analysis of relatively subtle changes was only possible because the high throughput simulation method allowed us to run large (n = 100) ensembles for substantial numbers of different helix sequences, amounting to ca. 2000 simulations in total. Overall, this analysis supports a swinging-piston model of transmembrane signalling by Tar and related chemoreceptors
Images of the Early Universe from the BOOMERanG experiment
The CMB is the fundamental tool to study the properties of the early universe and of the
universe at large scales. In the framework of the Hot Big Bang model, when we look to
the CMB we look back in time to the end of the plasma era, at a redshift ~ 1000, when
the universe was ~ 50000 times younger, ~ 1000 times hotter and ~ 10^9 times denser
than today. The image of the CMB can be used to study the physical processes there, to
infer what happened before, and also to study the background geometry of our Universe
ℓ-space spectroscopy of the Cosmic Microwave Background with the BOOMERanG experiment
The BOOMERanG experiment has recently produced detailed maps of the Cosmic Microwave Background, where sub-horizon structures are resolved with good signal to noise ratio. A power spectrum (spherical harmonics) analysis of the maps detects three peaks, at multipoles ℓ = (213_(-13)^(+10)),(541_(-32)^(+20))(845_(-25)^(+12)). In this paper we discuss the data analysis and the implications of these results for cosmology
Clues from nearby galaxies to a better theory of cosmic evolution
The great advances in the network of cosmological tests show that the
relativistic Big Bang theory is a good description of our expanding universe.
But the properties of nearby galaxies that can be observed in greatest detail
suggest a still better theory would more rapidly gather matter into galaxies
and groups of galaxies. This happens in theoretical ideas now under discussion.Comment: published in Natur
Characteristic Energy of the Coulomb Interactions and the Pileup of States
Tunneling data on crystals confirm
Coulomb interaction effects through the dependence of the
density of states. Importantly, the data and analysis at high energy, E, show a
pileup of states: most of the states removed from near the Fermi level are
found between ~40 and 130 meV, from which we infer the possibility of universal
behavior. The agreement of our tunneling data with recent photoemission results
further confirms our analysis.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, submitted to PR
Politicians lie, so do I
This research analyzed whether political leaders make people lie via priming experiments. Priming is a non-conscious and implicit memory effect in which exposure to one stimulus affects the response to another stimulus. Following priming theories, we proposed an innovative concept that people who perceive leaders to be dishonest (such as liar) are likely to lie themselves. We designed three experiments to analyze and critically discussed the potential influence of prime effect on lying behavior, through the prime effect of French political leaders (inc. general politicians, presidents and parties). Experiment 1 discovered that participants with non-politician-prime were less likely to lie (compared to politician-prime). Experiment 2A discovered that, compared to Hollande-prime, Sarkozy-prime led to lying behavior both in gravity (i.e. bigger lies) and frequency (i.e. lying more frequently). Experiment 2B discovered that Republicans-prime yielded an impact on more lying behavior, and Sarkozy-prime made such impact even stronger. Overall, the research findings suggest that lying can be triggered by external influencers such as leaders, presidents and politicians in the organizations. Our findings have provided valuable insights to organizational leaders and managers in their personnel management practice, especially in the intervention of lying behavior. Our findings also have offered new insights to explain non-conscious lying behavior
Cold gas accretion in galaxies
Evidence for the accretion of cold gas in galaxies has been rapidly
accumulating in the past years. HI observations of galaxies and their
environment have brought to light new facts and phenomena which are evidence of
ongoing or recent accretion:
1) A large number of galaxies are accompanied by gas-rich dwarfs or are
surrounded by HI cloud complexes, tails and filaments. It may be regarded as
direct evidence of cold gas accretion in the local universe. It is probably the
same kind of phenomenon of material infall as the stellar streams observed in
the halos of our galaxy and M31. 2) Considerable amounts of extra-planar HI
have been found in nearby spiral galaxies. While a large fraction of this gas
is produced by galactic fountains, it is likely that a part of it is of
extragalactic origin. 3) Spirals are known to have extended and warped outer
layers of HI. It is not clear how these have formed, and how and for how long
the warps can be sustained. Gas infall has been proposed as the origin. 4) The
majority of galactic disks are lopsided in their morphology as well as in their
kinematics. Also here recent accretion has been advocated as a possible cause.
In our view, accretion takes place both through the arrival and merging of
gas-rich satellites and through gas infall from the intergalactic medium (IGM).
The infall may have observable effects on the disk such as bursts of star
formation and lopsidedness. We infer a mean ``visible'' accretion rate of cold
gas in galaxies of at least 0.2 Msol/yr. In order to reach the accretion rates
needed to sustain the observed star formation (~1 Msol/yr), additional infall
of large amounts of gas from the IGM seems to be required.Comment: To appear in Astronomy & Astrophysics Reviews. 34 pages.
Full-resolution version available at
http://www.astron.nl/~oosterlo/accretionRevie
The Cosmological Constant
This is a review of the physics and cosmology of the cosmological constant.
Focusing on recent developments, I present a pedagogical overview of cosmology
in the presence of a cosmological constant, observational constraints on its
magnitude, and the physics of a small (and potentially nonzero) vacuum energy.Comment: 50 pages. Submitted to Living Reviews in Relativity
(http://www.livingreviews.org/), December 199
A genome for gnetophytes and early evolution of seed plants
Genome sequencing, assembly and annotation were conducted by the Novogene Bioinformatics Institute, Beijing, China; mutual contracts were No. NHT140016 and NVT140016004. This work was supported by funding from the Scientific Project of Shenzhen Urban Administration (201519) and a Major Technical Research Project of the Innovation of Science and Technology Commission of Shenzhen (JSGG20140515164852417). Additional funding was provided in particular by the Scientific Research Program of Sino-Africa Joint Research Center (SAJL201607). We thank X.Q. Wang, G.W. Hu, Z.D. Chen and Y.H. Guo for comments on gnetophyte phylogenetic relationships and ecological issues; H. Wu and X.P. Ning for discussion of related organ development; K.K. Wan and S. Sun for additional help on the analysis of repeats. We also thank X.Y. for support of funding coordination. Y.V.d.P. acknowledges the Multidisciplinary Research Partnership ‘Bioinformatics: from nucleotides to networks’ Project (no. 01MR0310W) of Ghent University, and funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under European Research Council Advanced Grant Agreement 322739-DOUBLEUP
Planck intermediate results. XLI. A map of lensing-induced B-modes
The secondary cosmic microwave background (CMB) -modes stem from the
post-decoupling distortion of the polarization -modes due to the
gravitational lensing effect of large-scale structures. These lensing-induced
-modes constitute both a valuable probe of the dark matter distribution and
an important contaminant for the extraction of the primary CMB -modes from
inflation. Planck provides accurate nearly all-sky measurements of both the
polarization -modes and the integrated mass distribution via the
reconstruction of the CMB lensing potential. By combining these two data
products, we have produced an all-sky template map of the lensing-induced
-modes using a real-space algorithm that minimizes the impact of sky masks.
The cross-correlation of this template with an observed (primordial and
secondary) -mode map can be used to measure the lensing -mode power
spectrum at multipoles up to . In particular, when cross-correlating with
the -mode contribution directly derived from the Planck polarization maps,
we obtain lensing-induced -mode power spectrum measurement at a significance
level of , which agrees with the theoretical expectation derived
from the Planck best-fit CDM model. This unique nearly all-sky
secondary -mode template, which includes the lensing-induced information
from intermediate to small () angular scales, is
delivered as part of the Planck 2015 public data release. It will be
particularly useful for experiments searching for primordial -modes, such as
BICEP2/Keck Array or LiteBIRD, since it will enable an estimate to be made of
the lensing-induced contribution to the measured total CMB -modes.Comment: 20 pages, 12 figures; Accepted for publication in A&A; The B-mode map
is part of the PR2-2015 Cosmology Products; available as Lensing Products in
the Planck Legacy Archive http://pla.esac.esa.int/pla/#cosmology; and
described in the 'Explanatory Supplement'
https://wiki.cosmos.esa.int/planckpla2015/index.php/Specially_processed_maps#2015_Lensing-induced_B-mode_ma
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