Energy gaps in the failed high-Tc superconductor La1.875Ba0.125CuO4

A central issue on high-Tc superconductivity is the nature of the normal-state gap (pseudogap) in the underdoped regime and its relationship with superconductivity. Despite persistent efforts, theoretical ideas for the pseudogap evolve around fluctuating superconductivity, competing order and spectral weight suppression due to many-body effects. Recently, while some experiments in the superconducting state indicate a distinction between the superconducting gap and pseudogap, others in the normal state, either by extrapolation from high-temperature data or directly from La1.875Ba0.125CuO4 (LBCO-1/8) at low temperature, suggest the ground-state pseudogap is a single gap of d-wave form. Here we report angle-resolved photoemission (ARPES) data from LBCO-1/8, collected with improved experimental conditions, that reveal the ground-state pseudogap has a pronounced deviation from the simple d-wave form. It contains two distinct components: a d-wave component within an extended region around the node and the other abruptly enhanced close to the antinode, pointing to a dual nature of the pseudogap in this failed high-Tc superconductor which involves a possible precursor pairing energy scale around the node and another of different but unknown origin near the antinode.Comment: Nature Physics advance online publication, Dec. 21st 2008; Author's original version of the main text; for a better resolution of figures & Supplementary Information, visit Nature Physics' websit

Consensus guidelines for the use and interpretation of angiogenesis assays

The formation of new blood vessels, or angiogenesis, is a complex process that plays important roles in growth and development, tissue and organ regeneration, as well as numerous pathological conditions. Angiogenesis undergoes multiple discrete steps that can be individually evaluated and quantified by a large number of bioassays. These independent assessments hold advantages but also have limitations. This article describes in vivo, ex vivo, and in vitro bioassays that are available for the evaluation of angiogenesis and highlights critical aspects that are relevant for their execution and proper interpretation. As such, this collaborative work is the first edition of consensus guidelines on angiogenesis bioassays to serve for current and future reference

Retrospective evaluation of whole exome and genome mutation calls in 746 cancer samples

Funder: NCI U24CA211006Abstract: The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) and International Cancer Genome Consortium (ICGC) curated consensus somatic mutation calls using whole exome sequencing (WES) and whole genome sequencing (WGS), respectively. Here, as part of the ICGC/TCGA Pan-Cancer Analysis of Whole Genomes (PCAWG) Consortium, which aggregated whole genome sequencing data from 2,658 cancers across 38 tumour types, we compare WES and WGS side-by-side from 746 TCGA samples, finding that ~80% of mutations overlap in covered exonic regions. We estimate that low variant allele fraction (VAF < 15%) and clonal heterogeneity contribute up to 68% of private WGS mutations and 71% of private WES mutations. We observe that ~30% of private WGS mutations trace to mutations identified by a single variant caller in WES consensus efforts. WGS captures both ~50% more variation in exonic regions and un-observed mutations in loci with variable GC-content. Together, our analysis highlights technological divergences between two reproducible somatic variant detection efforts