Recent Advances in Fluorescent Labeling Techniques for Fluorescence Microscopy

Tremendous progress in recent computer-controlled systems for fluorescence and laser-confocal microscopy has provided us with powerful tools to visualize and analyze molecular events in the cells. Various fluorescent staining and labeling techniques have also been developed to be used with these powerful instruments. Fluorescent proteins such as green fluorescent protein (GFP) allow us to directly label particular proteins of interest in living cells. This technique has been extended over a large area of cell biology, and a variety of fluorescent protein-derived techniques have been developed to visualize the functions and conditions of the molecules within living cells. In this review, we summarize the techniques for fluorescent staining and labeling for recent fluorescence microscopy

Lepton Flavor Violation in SUSY GUT Model with Non-universal Sfermion Masses

We analyze lepton flavor violating $\tau \to \mu \gamma$ and $\mu \to e \gamma$ processes in SUSY GUT model in which sfermions have special mass spectrum. It is assumed that only third generation sfermions which are contained in ${\bf 10}(Q, U^c, E^c)$ of SU(5) can have a different mass from the others. This mass spectrum is led from $E_6$ GUT model with horizontal symmetries. It is shown that branching ratios of $\tau \to \mu \gamma$ and $\mu \to e \gamma$ depend strongly on a right-handed stau mass. The weak scale stability requires the light stau, so large decay rates can be expected in this scenario. When stau is around 150 GeV and $\tan \beta \sim 10$, the branching ratios can be larger than $Br(\tau \to \mu \gamma) \simeq 10^{-8}$ and $Br(\mu \to e \gamma) \simeq 5\times 10^{-12}$, which are within reach of future experiments. In addition, this model has an interesting feature that the final state charged lepton tends to have the right-handed chirality.Comment: 17 pages, 12 figures, v3 a reference adde

Immunohistochemical Localization of the Aquaporins AQP1, AQP3, AQP4, and AQP5 in the Mouse Respiratory System

Aquaporins are membrane water channel proteins that function mainly in water transfer across cellular membranes. In our present study, we investigated the immunohistochemical distribution of aquaporin 1 (AQP1), AQP3, AQP4, and AQP5 in the mouse respiratory system by immunofluorescence, immunoperoxidase, and immunoelectron microscopy. AQP3, AQP4, and AQP5 are expressed in epithelial cells, whereas AQP1 is expressed in subepithelial connective tissues and capillaries. In the airway surface epithelia from the nasal cavity to the intrapulmonary bronchioles, AQP5 was found to be mainly localized to the luminal side and both AQP3 and AQP4 to the abluminal side. In the alveolar epithelium, AQP5 is localized to the apical membranes of both type I and type II alveolar cells. Compared with the previous studies on the rat respiratory system, in which AQP5 is restricted to the alveolar type I cells and absent from the airway surface epithelia, we found that AQP5 in the mouse is much more widely distributed throughout the surface epithelia. These results suggest that AQP5 has a critical role in water-handling, such as the maintenance of airway surface liquid and clearance of alveolar fluid in the mouse respiratory system

A Solution for Little Hierarchy Problem and b --> s gamma

We show that all the parameters which destabilize the weak scale can be taken around the weak scale in the MSSM without conflicting with the SM Higgs mass bound set by LEP experiment. The essential point is that if the lightest CP-even Higgs h in the MSSM has only a small coupling to Z boson, g_{ZZh}, LEP cannot generate the Higgs sufficiently. In the scenario, the SM Higgs mass bound constrains the mass of the heaviest CP-even Higgs H which has the SM like g_{ZZH} coupling. However, it is easier to make the heaviest Higgs heavy by the effect of off-diagonal elements of the mass matrix of the CP-even Higgs because the larger eigenvalue of 2 times 2 matrix becomes larger by introducing off-diagonal elements. Thus, the smaller stop masses can be consistent with the LEP constraints. Moreover, the two excesses observed at LEP Higgs search can naturally be explained as the signals of the MSSM Higgs h and H in this scenario. One of the most interesting results in the scenario is that all the Higgs in the MSSM have the weak scale masses. For example, the charged Higgs mass should be around 130 GeV. This looks inconsistent with the lower bound obtained by the b --> s gamma process as m_{H^\pm}>350GeV. However, we show that the amplitude induced by the charged Higgs can naturally be compensated by that of the chargino if we take the mass parameters by which the little hierarchy problem can be solved. The point is that the both amplitudes have the same order of magnitudes when all the fields in the both loops have the same order of masses.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, input parameter slightly changed, figures replaced, references correcte