2,252 research outputs found
Optimality of mutation and selection in germinal centers
The population dynamics theory of B cells in a typical germinal center could
play an important role in revealing how affinity maturation is achieved.
However, the existing models encountered some conflicts with experiments. To
resolve these conflicts, we present a coarse-grained model to calculate the B
cell population development in affinity maturation, which allows a
comprehensive analysis of its parameter space to look for optimal values of
mutation rate, selection strength, and initial antibody-antigen binding level
that maximize the affinity improvement. With these optimized parameters, the
model is compatible with the experimental observations such as the ~100-fold
affinity improvements, the number of mutations, the hypermutation rate, and the
"all or none" phenomenon. Moreover, we study the reasons behind the optimal
parameters. The optimal mutation rate, in agreement with the hypermutation rate
in vivo, results from a tradeoff between accumulating enough beneficial
mutations and avoiding too many deleterious or lethal mutations. The optimal
selection strength evolves as a balance between the need for affinity
improvement and the requirement to pass the population bottleneck. These
findings point to the conclusion that germinal centers have been optimized by
evolution to generate strong affinity antibodies effectively and rapidly. In
addition, we study the enhancement of affinity improvement due to B cell
migration between germinal centers. These results could enhance our
understandings to the functions of germinal centers.Comment: 5 figures in main text, and 4 figures in Supplementary Informatio
Matched sizes of activating and inhibitory receptor/ligand pairs are required for optimal signal integration by human Natural Killer cells
It has been suggested that receptor-ligand complexes segregate or co-localise within immune synapses according to their size, and this is important for receptor signaling. Here, we set out to test the importance of receptor-ligand complex dimensions for immune surveillance of target cells by human Natural Killer (NK) cells. NK cell activation is regulated by integrating signals from activating receptors, such as NKG2D, and inhibitory receptors, such as KIR2DL1. Elongating the NKG2D ligand MICA reduced its ability to trigger NK cell activation. Conversely, elongation of KIR2DL1 ligand HLA-C reduced its ability to inhibit NK cells. Whereas normal-sized HLA-C was most effective at inhibiting activation by normal-length MICA, only elongated HLA-C could inhibit activation by elongated MICA. Moreover, HLA-C and MICA that were matched in size co-localised, whereas HLA-C and MICA that were different in size were segregated. These results demonstrate that receptor-ligand dimensions are important in NK cell recognition, and suggest that optimal integration of activating and inhibitory receptor signals requires the receptor-ligand complexes to have similar dimensions
Electrochemical atomic layer epitaxy deposition of ultrathin SnTe films.
Tin telluride (SnTe) ultrathin films were deposited electrochemically on polycrystalline and monocrystalline gold substrates using the electrochemical atomic layer epitaxy (ECALE) method. The electrochemical behaviors of Sn and Te were studied systematically by means of cyclic voltammetry. Cyclic voltammetry curves for Sn displayed a broad peak in the region between -0.15 V and -0.35 V, which was related to the under-potential deposition (UPD), while the curves for Te displayed a peak at 0.3 V for Te UPD. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray diffraction (XRD), Raman spectroscopy, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were employed for the characterization of the ultrathin SnTe films. XRD and Raman spectroscopy confirmed the deposition of a single SnTe phase, while SEM revealed that the deposits were composed of nanocrystallites
Long-term TNT and DNT contamination: 1-D modeling of natural attenuation in the vadose zone: case study, Portugal
The vadose zone of a trinitrotoluene (TNT) and dinitrotoluene (DNT) contaminated site was investigated to assess the mobility of those explosives under natural conditions. Located in the left margin of the River Tejo Basin, Portugal, the site is located on unconsolidated sediments. Wastewaters associated with the 50-year explosives production were disposed in excavated ponds, from where water would infiltrate and pollute the unsaturated and saturated parts of the local aquifers. Two boreholes were drilled to 9 m depth in such a former waste pond to investigate the contaminant's fate in the vadose zone. Sediment samples were taken every 1-2 m for analysis of the polynitroaromatics (p-NACs) and organic volatile compounds, pH, organic carbon content, cation exchange capacity and grain size analysis. The main contaminant was TNT representing >70 % of the total p-NACs concentration that peaked approximately 7 mg/kg in one borehole, even if the median in both boreholes was of similar to 1 mg/kg. DNT was 4-30 % of the total p-NACs and nitrotoluene (NT), up to 5 %. No other (volatile) organic compound was detected. The predominance of TNT as the main contaminant implies that any natural mass reduction has been inefficient to clean the site. Several 1-D model simulations of p-NACs cleaning of the vadose zone under natural conditions indicated that the most probable scenario of combined advection and partitioning will only remove TNT after 10's of years, whereas DNT and NT will hardly be removed. Such low concentrations and long times for the p-NACs removal, suggest that by now those compounds have been washed-out to a level below standard limits
Development and characterization of titanium dioxide ceramic substrates with high dielectric permittivities.
Titanium dioxide substrates have been synthesized by means of solid-state reactions with
sintering temperatures varying from 1150 ?C up to 1350 ?C. X-ray diffraction and scanning electron
microscopy (SEM) where employed to investigate the crystal structure, grain size and porosity of
the resulting samples. The obtained ceramics are tetragonal (rutile phase) with average grain sizes
varying from 2.94 ?m up to 5.81 ?m. The average grain size of samples increases with increasing
temperature, while the porosity decreases. The effect of microstructure on the dielectric properties
has been also studied. The reduction of porosity of samples significantly improves the dielectric
parameters (relative dielectric permittivity and loss tangent) in comparison to those of commercial
substrates, indicating that the obtained ceramic substrates could be useful in the miniaturization of
telecommunication devices
Measurement of the cross-section and charge asymmetry of bosons produced in proton-proton collisions at TeV with the ATLAS detector
This paper presents measurements of the and cross-sections and the associated charge asymmetry as a
function of the absolute pseudorapidity of the decay muon. The data were
collected in proton--proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 8 TeV with
the ATLAS experiment at the LHC and correspond to a total integrated luminosity
of 20.2~\mbox{fb^{-1}}. The precision of the cross-section measurements
varies between 0.8% to 1.5% as a function of the pseudorapidity, excluding the
1.9% uncertainty on the integrated luminosity. The charge asymmetry is measured
with an uncertainty between 0.002 and 0.003. The results are compared with
predictions based on next-to-next-to-leading-order calculations with various
parton distribution functions and have the sensitivity to discriminate between
them.Comment: 38 pages in total, author list starting page 22, 5 figures, 4 tables,
submitted to EPJC. All figures including auxiliary figures are available at
https://atlas.web.cern.ch/Atlas/GROUPS/PHYSICS/PAPERS/STDM-2017-13
Search for squarks and gluinos in events with isolated leptons, jets and missing transverse momentum at s√=8 TeV with the ATLAS detector
The results of a search for supersymmetry in final states containing at least one isolated lepton (electron or muon), jets and large missing transverse momentum with the ATLAS detector at the Large Hadron Collider are reported. The search is based on proton-proton collision data at a centre-of-mass energy s√=8 TeV collected in 2012, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 20 fb−1. No significant excess above the Standard Model expectation is observed. Limits are set on supersymmetric particle masses for various supersymmetric models. Depending on the model, the search excludes gluino masses up to 1.32 TeV and squark masses up to 840 GeV. Limits are also set on the parameters of a minimal universal extra dimension model, excluding a compactification radius of 1/R c = 950 GeV for a cut-off scale times radius (ΛR c) of approximately 30
- …