43,963 research outputs found
Emergence of highly-designable protein-backbone conformations in an off-lattice model
Despite the variety of protein sizes, shapes, and backbone configurations
found in nature, the design of novel protein folds remains an open problem.
Within simple lattice models it has been shown that all structures are not
equally suitable for design. Rather, certain structures are distinguished by
unusually high designability: the number of amino-acid sequences for which they
represent the unique ground state; sequences associated with such structures
possess both robustness to mutation and thermodynamic stability. Here we report
that highly designable backbone conformations also emerge in a realistic
off-lattice model. The highly designable conformations of a chain of 23 amino
acids are identified, and found to be remarkably insensitive to model
parameters. While some of these conformations correspond closely to known
natural protein folds, such as the zinc finger and the helix-turn-helix motifs,
others do not resemble known folds and may be candidates for novel fold design.Comment: 7 figure
Exact solutions for a mean-field Abelian sandpile
We introduce a model for a sandpile, with N sites, critical height N and each
site connected to every other site. It is thus a mean-field model in the
spin-glass sense. We find an exact solution for the steady state probability
distribution of avalanche sizes, and discuss its asymptotics for large N.Comment: 10 pages, LaTe
Interaction of Individual Skyrmions in Nanostructured Cubic Chiral Magnet
We report the direct evidence of field-dependent character of the interaction
between individual magnetic skyrmions as well as between skyrmions and edges in
B20-type FeGe nanostripes observed by means of high resolution Lorentz
transmission electron microscopy. It is shown that above certain critical
values of external magnetic field the character of such long-range skyrmion
interactions change from attraction to repulsion. Experimentally measured
equilibrium inter-skyrmion and skrymion-edge distances as function of applied
magnetic field shows quantitative agreement with the results of micromagnetic
simulations. Important role of demagnetizing fields and internal symmetry of
three-dimensional magnetic skyrmions are discussed in details.Comment: accepted in PR
Superconducting correlations in ultra-small metallic grains
To describe the crossover from the bulk BCS superconductivity to a
fluctuation-dominated regime in ultrasmall metallic grains, new order
parameters and correlation functions, such as ``parity gap'' and ``pair-mixing
correlation function'', have been recently introduced. In this paper, we
discuss the small-grain behaviour of the Penrose-Onsager-Yang off-diagonal
long-range order (ODLRO) parameter in a pseudo-spin representation. Relations
between the ODLRO parameter and those mentioned above are established through
analytical and numerical calculations.Comment: 7 pages, 1 figur
Structure Space of Model Proteins --A Principle Component Analysis
We study the space of all compact structures on a two-dimensional square
lattice of size . Each structure is mapped onto a vector in
-dimensions according to a hydrophobic model. Previous work has shown that
the designabilities of structures are closely related to the distribution of
the structure vectors in the -dimensional space, with highly designable
structures predominantly found in low density regions. We use principal
component analysis to probe and characterize the distribution of structure
vectors, and find a non-uniform density with a single peak. Interestingly, the
principal axes of this peak are almost aligned with Fourier eigenvectors, and
the corresponding Fourier eigenvalues go to zero continuously at the
wave-number for alternating patterns (). These observations provide a
stepping stone for an analytic description of the distribution of structural
points, and open the possibility of estimating designabilities of realistic
structures by simply Fourier transforming the hydrophobicities of the
corresponding sequences.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, Conclusion has been modifie
Symmetry and designability for lattice protein models
Native protein folds often have a high degree of symmetry. We study the
relationship between the symmetries of native proteins, and their
designabilities -- how many different sequences encode a given native
structure. Using a two-dimensional lattice protein model based on
hydrophobicity, we find that those native structures that are encoded by the
largest number of different sequences have high symmetry. However only certain
symmetries are enhanced, e.g. x/y-mirror symmetry and rotation, while
others are suppressed. If it takes a large number of mutations to destabilize
the native state of a protein, then, by definition, the state is highly
designable. Hence, our findings imply that insensitivity to mutation implies
high symmetry. It appears that the relationship between designability and
symmetry results because protein substructures are also designable. Native
protein folds may therefore be symmetric because they are composed of repeated
designable substructures.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figure
Nanoelectromechanical Resonator Arrays for Ultrafast, Gas-Phase Chromatographic Chemical Analysis
Miniaturized gas chromatography (GC) systems can provide fast, quantitative analysis of chemical vapors in an ultrasmall package. We describe a chemical sensor technology based on resonant nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS) mass detectors that provides the speed, sensitivity, specificity, and size required by the microscale GC paradigm. Such NEMS sensors have demonstrated detection of subparts per billion (ppb) concentrations of a phosphonate analyte. By combining two channels of NEMS detection with an ultrafast GC front-end, chromatographic analysis of 13 chemicals was performed within a 5 s time window
Noise Stabilization of Self-Organized Memories
We investigate a nonlinear dynamical system which ``remembers'' preselected
values of a system parameter. The deterministic version of the system can
encode many parameter values during a transient period, but in the limit of
long times, almost all of them are forgotten. Here we show that a certain type
of stochastic noise can stabilize multiple memories, enabling many parameter
values to be encoded permanently. We present analytic results that provide
insight both into the memory formation and into the noise-induced memory
stabilization. The relevance of our results to experiments on the
charge-density wave material is discussed.Comment: 29 pages, 6 figures, submitted to Physical Review
Nuclear Effects in Charmonium Production in QCD
It is shown that the nuclear shadowing of charmonium due to the modification
of the nuclear parton distribution is similar in the factorization approach
based on non relativistic QCD and in the color evaporation model. In the first
model, a separate study of the color octet and color singlet contributions to
the yields of the various charmonium states as well as the contributions of
these states to the total production is performed. It is found a clear
dependence of these contributions which can reproduce experimental data
for moderate .Comment: 11 pages, 5 Postscript figure
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