Network rewiring is an important mechanism of gene essentiality change.

Gene essentiality changes are crucial for organismal evolution. However, it is unclear how essentiality of orthologs varies across species. We investigated the underlying mechanism of gene essentiality changes between yeast and mouse based on the framework of network evolution and comparative genomic analysis. We found that yeast nonessential genes become essential in mouse when their network connections rapidly increase through engagement in protein complexes. The increased interactions allowed the previously nonessential genes to become members of vital pathways. By accounting for changes in gene essentiality, we firmly reestablished the centrality-lethality rule, which proposed the relationship of essential genes and network hubs. Furthermore, we discovered that the number of connections associated with essential and non-essential genes depends on whether they were essential in ancestral species. Our study describes for the first time how network evolution occurs to change gene essentiality

Metazoans evolved by taking domains from soluble proteins to expand intercellular communication network.

A central question in animal evolution is how multicellular animals evolved from unicellular ancestors. We hypothesize that membrane proteins must be key players in the development of multicellularity because they are well positioned to form the cell-cell contacts and to provide the intercellular communication required for the creation of complex organisms. Here we find that a major mechanism for the necessary increase in membrane protein complexity in the transition from non-metazoan to metazoan life was the new incorporation of domains from soluble proteins. The membrane proteins that have incorporated soluble domains in metazoans are enriched in many of the functions unique to multicellular organisms such as cell-cell adhesion, signaling, immune defense and developmental processes. They also show enhanced protein-protein interaction (PPI) network complexity and centrality, suggesting an important role in the cellular diversification found in complex organisms. Our results expose an evolutionary mechanism that contributed to the development of higher life forms

Potential contributions of noncontact atomic force microscopy for the future Casimir force measurements

Surface electric noise, i.e., the non-uniform distribution of charges and potentials on a surface, poses a great experimental challenge in modern precision force measurements. Such a challenge is encountered in a number of different experimental circumstances. The scientists employing atomic force microscopy (AFM) have long focused their efforts to understand the surface-related noise issues via variants of AFM techniques, such as Kelvin probe force microscopy or electric force microscopy. Recently, the physicists investigating quantum vacuum fluctuation phenomena between two closely-spaced objects have also begun to collect experimental evidence indicating a presence of surface effects neglected in their previous analyses. It now appears that the two seemingly disparate science communities are encountering effects rooted in the same surface phenomena. In this report, we suggest specific experimental tasks to be performed in the near future that are crucial not only for fostering needed collaborations between the two communities, but also for providing valuable data on the surface effects in order to draw the most realistic conclusion about the actual contribution of the Casimir force (or van der Waals force) between a pair of real materials.Comment: The paper appeared in the Proceedings to the 12th International Conference on Noncontact Atomic Force Microscopy (NC-AFM 2009) and Casimir 2009 Satellite Worksho

Climate change impacts on hydrology and water resources of the Upper Blue Nile River Basin, Ethiopia

Climate change / Hydrology / River basins / Runoff / Precipitation / Models / Dams / Operating policies / Water power / Drought / Analysis / Africa / Ethiopia / Egypt / Sudan / Upper Blue Nile River Basin

Higher-order relativistic corrections to gluon fragmentation into spin-triplet S-wave quarkonium

We compute the relative-order-v^4 contribution to gluon fragmentation into quarkonium in the 3S1 color-singlet channel, using the nonrelativistic QCD (NRQCD) factorization approach. The QCD fragmentation process contains infrared divergences that produce single and double poles in epsilon in 4-2epsilon dimensions. We devise subtractions that isolate the pole contributions, which ultimately are absorbed into long-distance NRQCD matrix elements in the NRQCD matching procedure. The matching procedure involves two-loop renormalizations of the NRQCD operators. The subtractions are integrated over the phase space analytically in 4-2epsilon dimensions, and the remainder is integrated over the phase-space numerically. We find that the order-v^4 contribution is enhanced relative to the order-v^0 contribution. However, the order-v^4 contribution is not important numerically at the current level of precision of quarkonium-hadroproduction phenomenology. We also estimate the contribution to hadroproduction from gluon fragmentation into quarkonium in the 3PJ color-octet channel and find that it is significant in comparison to the complete next-to-leading-order-in-alpha_s contribution in that channel.Comment: 41 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables, minor corrections, version published in JHE