Protestant letter networks in the reign of Mary I: A quantitative approach

Sebastian E. Ahnert was supported by The Royal Society, UK

Millimolar concentrations of free magnesium enhance exocytosis from permeabilized rat pheochromocytoma (PC 12) cells

The role of Mg2+ during the final steps of exocytosis was investigated using rat pheochromocytoma cells (PC12) permeabilized with bacterial pore forming toxins. Concentrations of free Mg2+ between 0.2 and 2 mM slightly lowered the basal but greatly enhanced the [3H]dopamine release elicited by 8 μM free Ca2+. Maximal effects were obtained at approximately 1 mM free Mg2+. At higher concentrations Mg2+ was less potent. Similar effects of Mg2+ were obtained in cells permeabilized either for small molecules (by α-toxin) or for large ones (by streptolysin O). It is concluded that millimolar concentrations of cytoplasmic Mg2+ play an important role in Ca2+ triggered exocytosis

Reductive chain separation of botulinum A toxin — a prerequisite to its inhibitory action on exocytosis in chromaffin cells

Cleavage of the disulfide bond linking the heavy and the light chains of tetanus toxin is necessary for its inhibitory action on exocytotic release ofcatecholamines from permeabi1ized chromaffin cells [(1989) FEBS Lett. 242, 245-248; (1989) J. Neurochern., in press]. The related botulinum A toxin also consists of a heavy and a light chain linked by a disulfide bond. The actions ofboth neurotoxins on exocytosis were presently compared using streptolysin O-permeabilized bovine adrenal chromaffin cells. Botulinum A toxin inhibited Ca2 +-stimulated catecholamine release from these cells. Addition of dithiothreitollowered the effective doses to values below 5 nM. Under the same conditions, the effective doses of tetanus toxin were decreased by a factor of five. This indicates that the interchain S-S bond of botulinum A toxin must also be split before the neurotoxin can exert its effect on exocytosis

Odeint - Solving ordinary differential equations in C++

Many physical, biological or chemical systems are modeled by ordinary differential equations (ODEs) and finding their solution is an every-day-task for many scientists. Here, we introduce a new C++ library dedicated to find numerical solutions of initial value problems of ODEs: odeint (www.odeint.com). odeint is implemented in a highly generic way and provides extensive interoperability at top performance. For example, due to it's modular design it can be easily parallized with OpenMP and even runs on CUDA GPUs. Despite that, it provides a convenient interface that allows for a simple and easy usage.Comment: 4 pages, 1 figur

Models for the two-phase flow of concentrated suspensions

A new two-phase model for concentrated suspensions is derived that incorporates a constitutive law combining the rheology for non-Brownian suspension and granular flow. The resulting model exhibits a yield-stress behavior for the solid phase depending on the collision pressure. This property is investigated for the simple geometry of plane Poiseuille flow, where an unyielded or jammed zone of finite width arises in the center of the channel. For the steady states of this problem, the governing equations are reduced to a boundary value problem for a system of ordinary differential equations and the conditions for existence of solutions with jammed regions are investigated using phase-space methods. For the general time-dependent case a new drift-flux model is derived using matched asymptotic expansions that takes into account the boundary layers at the walls and the interface between the yielded and unyielded region. The drift-flux model is used to numerically study the dynamic behavior of the suspension flow including the appearance and evolution of an unyielded or jammed region