Towards conformationally-locked difluorosugar analogues : an unexpected sense of dihydroxylation

Difluorinated cyclooctenones, synthesised using RCM, can be used as templates for stereoselective oxidative transformations to products that undergo transannular reactions to afford conformationally-locked analogues of 2-deoxy-2,2-difluorosugars with different stereochemical relationships between the C-2 and C-3 hydroxyl groups

Supergiant Shells and Molecular Cloud Formation in the LMC

We investigate the influence of large-scale stellar feedback on the formation of molecular clouds in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Examining the relationship between HI and 12CO(J=1-0) in supergiant shells (SGSs), we find that the molecular fraction in the total volume occupied by SGSs is not enhanced with respect to the rest of the LMC disk. However, the majority of objects (~70% by mass) are more molecular than their local surroundings, implying that the presence of a supergiant shell does on average have a positive effect on the molecular gas fraction. Averaged over the full SGS sample, our results suggest that ~12-25% of the molecular mass in supergiant shell systems was formed as a direct result of the stellar feedback that created the shells. This corresponds to ~4-11% of the total molecular mass of the galaxy. These figures are an approximate lower limit to the total contribution of stellar feedback to molecular cloud formation in the LMC, and constitute one of the first quantitative measurements of feedback-triggered molecular cloud formation in a galactic system.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures. Accepted for publication in Ap

Using single-cell genomics to understand developmental processes and cell fate decisions.

High-throughput -omics techniques have revolutionised biology, allowing for thorough and unbiased characterisation of the molecular states of biological systems. However, cellular decision-making is inherently a unicellular process to which "bulk" -omics techniques are poorly suited, as they capture ensemble averages of cell states. Recently developed single-cell methods bridge this gap, allowing high-throughput molecular surveys of individual cells. In this review, we cover core concepts of analysis of single-cell gene expression data and highlight areas of developmental biology where single-cell techniques have made important contributions. These include understanding of cell-to-cell heterogeneity, the tracing of differentiation pathways, quantification of gene expression from specific alleles, and the future directions of cell lineage tracing and spatial gene expression analysis.J.A.G. was supported by Wellcome Trust Grant “Systematic Identification of Lineage Specification in Murine Gastrulation” (109081/Z/15/A). A.S. was supported by Wellcome Trust Grant “Tracing early mammalian lineage decisions by single cell genomics” (105031/B/14/Z). J.C.M. was supported by core funding from Cancer Research UK (award no. A17197) and EMBL

Mosaic autosomal aneuploidies are detectable from single-cell RNAseq data.

BACKGROUND: Aneuploidies are copy number variants that affect entire chromosomes. They are seen commonly in cancer, embryonic stem cells, human embryos, and in various trisomic diseases. Aneuploidies frequently affect only a subset of cells in a sample; this is known as "mosaic" aneuploidy. A cell that harbours an aneuploidy exhibits disrupted gene expression patterns which can alter its behaviour. However, detection of aneuploidies using conventional single-cell DNA-sequencing protocols is slow and expensive. METHODS: We have developed a method that uses chromosome-wide expression imbalances to identify aneuploidies from single-cell RNA-seq data. The method provides quantitative aneuploidy calls, and is integrated into an R software package available on GitHub and as an Additional file of this manuscript. RESULTS: We validate our approach using data with known copy number, identifying the vast majority of aneuploidies with a low rate of false discovery. We show further support for the method's efficacy by exploiting allele-specific gene expression levels, and differential expression analyses. CONCLUSIONS: The method is quick and easy to apply, straightforward to interpret, and represents a substantial cost saving compared to single-cell genome sequencing techniques. However, the method is less well suited to data where gene expression is highly variable. The results obtained from the method can be used to investigate the consequences of aneuploidy itself, or to exclude aneuploidy-affected expression values from conventional scRNA-seq data analysis

Particle formation and interaction

A wide variety of experiments can be conducted on the Space Station that involve the physics of small particles of planetary significance. Processes of interest include nucleation and condensation of particles from a gas, aggregation of small particles into larger ones, and low velocity collisions of particles. All of these processes could be investigated with a general purpose facility on the Space Station. The microgravity environment would be necessary to perform many experiments, as they generally require that particles be suspended for periods substantially longer than are practical at 1 g. Only experiments relevant to planetary processes will be discussed in detail here, but it is important to stress that a particle facility will be useful to a wide variety of scientific disciplines, and can be used to address many scientific problems

Fitting Together the HI Absorption and Emission in the SGPS

In this paper we study 21-cm absorption spectra and the corresponding emission spectra toward bright continuum sources in the test region (326deg< l < 333 deg) of the Southern Galactic Plane Survey. This survey combines the high resolution of the Australia Telescope Compact Array with the full brightness temperature information of the Parkes single dish telescope. In particular, we focus on the abundance and temperature of the cool atomic clouds in the inner galaxy. The resulting mean opacity of the HI, , is measured as a function of Galactic radius; it increases going in from the solar circle, to a peak in the molecular ring of about four times its local value. This suggests that the cool phase is more abundant there, and colder, than it is locally. The distribution of cool phase temperatures is derived in three different ways. The naive, ``spin temperature'' technique overestimates the cloud temperatures, as expected. Using two alternative approaches we get good agreement on a histogram of the cloud temperatures, T(cool), corrected for blending with warm phase gas. The median temperature is about 65 K, but there is a long tail reaching down to temperatures below 20 K. Clouds with temperatures below 40 K are common, though not as common as warmer clouds (40 to 100 K). Using these results we discuss two related quantities, the peak brightness temperature seen in emission surveys, and the incidence of clouds seen in HI self-absorption. Both phenomena match what would be expected based on our measurements of and T(cool).Comment: 50 pages, 20 figure

Hubble Space Telescope Imaging of the Circumstellar Nebulosity of T Tauri

Short-exposure Planetary Camera images of T Tauri have been obtained using broadband filters spanning the wavelength range 0.55-0.80 μm. The optically visible star lies very close to an arc of reflection nebulosity. The arc's northern arm extends approximately 5" from the star, while its southwestern arm appears brighter and extends only 2". The arc shows an approximate symmetry along an axis toward the west-northwest, the direction of Hind's Nebula and the blueshifted molecular outflow. The morphology of the reflected light is similar to models of scattered light within an illuminated, axisymmetric outflow cavity in a circumbinary envelope, viewed ≈ 45° from the outflow axis. However, our model images do not successfully account for the amount of limb brightening that is seen. No optical counterpart to the infrared companion is seen to a limiting magnitude of V = 19.6, which suggests A_V > 7 mag toward this source. There is no evidence for an optical tertiary, to a limiting ΔV = 5.1 mag fainter than the primary, at the position where such an object has been previously reported

HI Emission and Absorption in the Southern Galactic Plane Survey

We present preliminary results from the Southern Galactic Plane Survey (SGPS) Test Region and Parkes data. As part of the pilot project for the Southern Galactic Plane Survey, observations of a Test Region (325.5 deg < l < 333.5 deg; -0.5 deg < b < 3.5 deg) were completed in December 1998. Single dish observations of the full survey region (253 deg < l < 358 deg; |b| <1 deg) with the Parkes Radio Telescope were completed in March 2000. We present a sample of SGPS HI data with particular attention to the smallest and largest scale structures seen in absorption and emission, respectively. On the large scale, we detect many prominent HI shells. On the small scale, we note extremely compact, cold clouds seen in HI self-absorption. We explore how these two classes of objects probe opposite ends of the HI spatial power spectrum.Comment: 9 pages, 3 embedded postscript & 4 jpeg figures. Presented at the Astronomical Society of Australia, Hobart, Tasmania, July 4-7 2000. To appear in PASA Vol. 18(1