Proteomic Analyses Reveal Common Promiscuous Patterns of Cell Surface Proteins on Human Embryonic Stem Cells and Sperms

BACKGROUND: It has long been proposed that early embryos and reproductive organs exhibit similar gene expression profiles. However, whether this similarity is propagated to the protein level remains largely unknown. We have previously characterised the promiscuous expression pattern of cell surface proteins on mouse embryonic stem (mES) cells. As cell surface proteins also play critical functions in human embryonic stem (hES) cells and germ cells, it is important to reveal whether a promiscuous pattern of cell surface proteins also exists for these cells. METHODS AND PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Surface proteins of hES cells and human mature sperms (hSperms) were purified by biotin labelling and subjected to proteomic analyses. More than 1000 transmembrane or secreted cell surface proteins were identified on the two cell types, respectively. Proteins from both cell types covered a large variety of functional categories including signal transduction, adhesion and transporting. Moreover, both cell types promiscuously expressed a wide variety of tissue specific surface proteins, and some surface proteins were heterogeneously expressed. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: Our findings indicate that the promiscuous expression of functional and tissue specific cell surface proteins may be a common pattern in embryonic stem cells and germ cells. The conservation of gene expression patterns between early embryonic cells and reproductive cells is propagated to the protein level. These results have deep implications for the cell surface signature characterisation of pluripotent stem cells and germ cells and may lead the way to a new area of study, i.e., the functional significance of promiscuous gene expression in pluripotent and germ cells

Real-Space Mesh Techniques in Density Functional Theory

This review discusses progress in efficient solvers which have as their foundation a representation in real space, either through finite-difference or finite-element formulations. The relationship of real-space approaches to linear-scaling electrostatics and electronic structure methods is first discussed. Then the basic aspects of real-space representations are presented. Multigrid techniques for solving the discretized problems are covered; these numerical schemes allow for highly efficient solution of the grid-based equations. Applications to problems in electrostatics are discussed, in particular numerical solutions of Poisson and Poisson-Boltzmann equations. Next, methods for solving self-consistent eigenvalue problems in real space are presented; these techniques have been extensively applied to solutions of the Hartree-Fock and Kohn-Sham equations of electronic structure, and to eigenvalue problems arising in semiconductor and polymer physics. Finally, real-space methods have found recent application in computations of optical response and excited states in time-dependent density functional theory, and these computational developments are summarized. Multiscale solvers are competitive with the most efficient available plane-wave techniques in terms of the number of self-consistency steps required to reach the ground state, and they require less work in each self-consistency update on a uniform grid. Besides excellent efficiencies, the decided advantages of the real-space multiscale approach are 1) the near-locality of each function update, 2) the ability to handle global eigenfunction constraints and potential updates on coarse levels, and 3) the ability to incorporate adaptive local mesh refinements without loss of optimal multigrid efficiencies.Comment: 70 pages, 11 figures. To be published in Reviews of Modern Physic

A survey of 3DTV displays: Techniques and technologies

The display is the last component in a chain of activity from image acquisition, compression, coding transmission and reproduction of 3-D images through to the display itself. There are various schemes for 3-D display taxonomy; the basic categories adopted for this paper are: holography where the image is produced by wavefront reconstruction, volumetric where the image is produced within a volume of space and multiple image displays where two or more images are seen across the viewing field. In an ideal world a stereoscopic display would produce images in real time that exhibit all the characteristics of the original scene. This would require the wavefront to be reproduced accurately, but currently this can only be achieved using holographic techniques. Volumetric displays provide both vertical and horizontal parallax so that several viewers can see 3-D images that exhibit no accommodation/convergence rivalry. Multiple image displays fall within three fundamental types: holoform in which a large number of views give smooth motion parallax and hence a hologram-like appearance, multiview where a series of discrete views are presented across viewing field and binocular where only two views are presented in regions that may occupy fixed positions or follow viewers' eye positions by employing head tracking. Holography enables 3-D scenes to be encoded into an interference pattern, however, this places constraints on the display resolution necessary to reconstruct a scene. Although holography may ultimately offer the solution for 3DTV, the problem of capturing naturally lit scenes will first have to be solved and holography is unlikely to provide a short-term solution due to limitations in current enabling technologies. Liquid crystal, digital micromirror, optically addressed liquid crystal and acoustooptic spatial light modulators (SLMs) have been employed as suitable spatial light modulation devices in holography. Liquid crystal SLMs are generally favored owing to the c- - ommercial availability of high fill factor, high resolution addressable devices. Volumetric displays provide both vertical and horizontal parallax and several viewers are able to see a 3-D image that exhibits no accommodation/convergence rivalry. However, the principal disadvantages of these displays are: the images are generally transparent, the hardware tends to be complex and non-Lambertian intensity distribution cannot be displayed. Multiple image displays take many forms and it is likely that one or more of these will provide the solution(s) for the first generation of 3DTV displays