829 research outputs found
Influence of M-phase chromatin on the anisotropy of microtubule asters
In many eukaryotic cells going through M-phase, a bipolar spindle is formed by microtubules nucleated from centrosomes. These microtubules, in addition to being "captured" by kinetochores, may be stabilized by chromatin in two different ways: short-range stabilization effects may affect microtubules in close contact with the chromatin, while long-range stabilization effects may "guide" microtubule growth towards the chromatin (e.g., by introducing a diffusive gradient of an enzymatic activity that affects microtubule assembly). Here, we use both meiotic and mitotic extracts from Xenopus laevis eggs to study microtubule aster formation and microtubule dynamics in the presence of chromatin. In "low-speed" meiotic extracts, in the presence of salmon sperm chromatin, we find that short-range stabilization effects lead to a strong anisotropy of the microtubule asters. Analysis of the dynamic parameters of microtubule growth show that this anisotropy arises from a decrease in the catastrophe frequency, an increase in the rescue frequency and a decrease in the growth velocity. In this system we also find evidence for long-range "guidance" effects, which lead to a weak anisotropy of the asters. Statistically relevant results on these long-range effects are obtained in "high-speed" mitotic extracts in the presence of artificially constructed chromatin stripes. We find that aster anisotropy is biased in the direction of the chromatin and that the catastrophe frequency is reduced in its vicinity. In this system we also find a surprising dependence of the catastrophe and the rescue frequencies on the length of microtubules nucleated from centrosomes: the catastrophe frequency increase and the rescue frequency decreases with microtubule length
Path integrals for stiff polymers applied to membrane physics
Path integrals similar to those describing stiff polymers arise in the
Helfrich model for membranes. We show how these types of path integrals can be
evaluated and apply our results to study the thermodynamics of a minority
stripe phase in a bulk membrane. The fluctuation induced contribution to the
line tension between the stripe and the bulk phase is computed, as well as the
effective interaction between the two phases in the tensionless case where the
two phases have differing bending rigidities.Comment: 11 pages RevTex, 4 figure
Dynamics of active membranes with internal noise
We study the time-dependent height fluctuations of an active membrane
containing energy-dissipating pumps that drive the membrane out of equilibrium.
Unlike previous investigations based on models that neglect either curvature
couplings or random fluctuations in pump activities, our formulation explores
two new models that take both of these effects into account. In the first
model, the magnitude of the nonequilibrium forces generated by the pumps is
allowed to fluctuate temporally. In the second model, the pumps are allowed to
switch between "on" and "off" states. We compute the mean squared displacement
of a membrane point for both models, and show that they exhibit distinct
dynamical behaviors from previous models, and in particular, a superdiffusive
regime specifically arising from the shot noise.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure
Printing Multistrain Bacterial Patterns with a Piezoelectric Inkjet Printer
Many studies involving interacting microorganisms would benefit from simple devices able to deposit cells in precisely defined patterns. We describe an inexpensive bacterial piezoelectric inkjet printer (adapted from the design of the POSaM oligonucleotide microarrayer) that can be used to “print out” different strains of bacteria or chemicals in small droplets onto a flat surface at high resolution. The capabilities of this device are demonstrated by printing ordered arrays comprising two bacterial strains labeled with different fluorescent proteins. We also characterized several properties of this piezoelectric printer, such as the droplet volume (of the order of tens of pl), the distribution of number of cells in each droplet, and the dependence of droplet volume on printing frequency. We established the limits of the printing resolution, and determined that the printed viability of Escherichia coli exceeded 98.5%
Decrumpling membranes by quantum effects
The phase diagram of an incompressible fluid membrane subject to quantum and
thermal fluctuations is calculated exactly in a large number of dimensions of
configuration space. At zero temperature, a crumpling transition is found at a
critical bending rigidity . For membranes of fixed lateral
size, a crumpling transition occurs at nonzero temperatures in an auxiliary
mean field approximation. As the lateral size L of the membrane becomes large,
the flat regime shrinks with .Comment: 9 pages, 4 figure
Fluctuation induced interactions between domains in membranes
We study a model lipid bilayer composed of a mixture of two incompatible
lipid types which have a natural tendency to segregate in the absence of
membrane fluctuations. The membrane is mechanically characterized by a local
bending rigidity which varies with the average local lipid
composition . We show, in the case where varies weakly with
, that the effective interaction between lipids of the same type can
either be everywhere attractive or can have a repulsive component at
intermediate distances greater than the typical lipid size. When this
interaction has a repulsive component, it can prevent macro-phase separation
and lead to separation in mesophases with a finite domain size. This effect
could be relevant to certain experimental and numerical observations of
mesoscopic domains in such systems.Comment: 9 pages RevTex, 1 eps figur
Theoretical model for the formation of caveolae and similar membrane invaginations
We study a physical model for the formation of bud-like invaginations on fluid lipid membranes under tension, and apply this model to caveolae formation. We demonstrate that budding can be driven by membrane-bound proteins, provided that they exert asymmetric forces on the membrane that give rise to bending moments. In particular, caveolae formation does not necessarily require forces to be applied by the cytoskeleton. Our theoretical model is able to explain several features observed experimentally in caveolae, where proteins in the caveolin family are known to play a crucial role in the formation of caveolae buds. These include 1), the formation of caveolae buds with sizes in the 100-nm range and 2), that certain N- and C-termini deletion mutants result in vesicles that are an order-of-magnitude larger. Finally, we discuss the possible origin of the morphological striations that are observed on the surfaces of the caveolae
Interfaces of Modulated Phases
Numerically minimizing a continuous free-energy functional which yields
several modulated phases, we obtain the order-parameter profiles and
interfacial free energies of symmetric and non-symmetric tilt boundaries within
the lamellar phase, and of interfaces between coexisting lamellar, hexagonal,
and disordered phases. Our findings agree well with chevron, omega, and
T-junction tilt-boundary morphologies observed in diblock copolymers and
magnetic garnet films.Comment: 4 page
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