Subcellular optogenetic activation of Cdc42 controls local and distal signaling to drive immune cell migration

Migratory immune cells use intracellular signaling networks to generate and orient spatially polarized responses to extracellular cues. The monomeric G protein Cdc42 is believed to play an important role in controlling the polarized responses, but it has been difficult to determine directly the consequences of localized Cdc42 activation within an immune cell. Here we used subcellular optogenetics to determine how Cdc42 activation at one side of a cell affects both cell behavior and dynamic molecular responses throughout the cell. We found that localized Cdc42 activation is sufficient to generate polarized signaling and directional cell migration. The optically activated region becomes the leading edge of the cell, with Cdc42 activating Rac and generating membrane protrusions driven by the actin cytoskeleton. Cdc42 also exerts long-range effects that cause myosin accumulation at the opposite side of the cell and actomyosin-mediated retraction of the cell rear. This process requires the RhoA-activated kinase ROCK, suggesting that Cdc42 activation at one side of a cell triggers increased RhoA signaling at the opposite side. Our results demonstrate how dynamic, subcellular perturbation of an individual signaling protein can help to determine its role in controlling polarized cellular responses

A Conformational Switch Regulates Receptor-G Protein Interaction

AbstractA peptide specific to a G protein γ subunit C terminus undergoes a conformational shift concordant with receptor activation, providing direct support for a long-standing proposal that a conformational switch in the γ subunit tail mediates G protein activation by a receptor

Scalar sector properties of two-Higgs-doublet models with a global U(1) symmetry

We analyze the scalar sector properties of a general class of two-Higgs-doublet models which has a global U(1) symmetry in the quartic terms. We find constraints on the parameters of the potential from the considerations of unitarity of scattering amplitudes, the global stability of the potential and the $\rho$-parameter. We concentrate on the spectrum of the non-standard scalar masses in the decoupling limit which is preferred by the Higgs data at the LHC. We exhibit charged-Higgs induced contributions to the diphoton decay width of the 125\,GeV Higgs boson and its correlation with the corresponding $Z\gamma$ width.Comment: 12 pages, 15 eps figure files; minor modifications made and a few references adde

Optical waveguide arrays: quantum effects and PT symmetry breaking

Over the last two decades, advances in fabrication have led to significant progress in creating patterned heterostructures that support either carriers, such as electrons or holes, with specific band structure or electromagnetic waves with a given mode structure and dispersion. In this article, we review the properties of light in coupled optical waveguides that support specific energy spectra, with or without the effects of disorder, that are well-described by a Hermitian tight-binding model. We show that with a judicious choice of the initial wave packet, this system displays the characteristics of a quantum particle, including transverse photonic transport and localization, and that of a classical particle. We extend the analysis to non-Hermitian, parity and time-reversal ($\mathcal{PT}$) symmetric Hamiltonians which physically represent waveguide arrays with spatially separated, balanced absorption or amplification. We show that coupled waveguides are an ideal candidate to simulate $\mathcal{PT}$-symmetric Hamiltonians and the transition from a purely real energy spectrum to a spectrum with complex conjugate eigenvalues that occurs in them.Comment: 16 pages, 12 figures, Invited Review for European Physics Journal - Applied Physic

Neutrinos from Stellar Collapse: Comparison of signatures in water and heavy water detectors

Signatures of neutrino and antineutrino signals from stellar collapse in heavy water detectors are contrasted with those in water detectors. The effects of mixing, especially due to the highly dense matter in the supernova core, are studied. The mixing parameters used are those sets allowed by current understanding of available neutrino data: from solar, atmospheric and laboratory neutrino experiments. Signals at a heavy water detector, especially the dominant charged current reactions on deuteron, are very sensitive to some of these sets of allowed mixing parameters. Theoretical uncertainties on supernova neutrino spectra notwithstanding, a combination of supernova measurements with water and heavy water detectors may be able to distinguish many of these mixing possibilities and thus help in ruling out many of them.Comment: 36 pages Latex file, with 13 postscript figures; important improvements in the analysis and more detailed presentation of results. To appear in Phys. Rev.

Tunable waveguide lattices with non-uniform parity-symmetric tunneling

We investigate the single-particle time evolution and two-particle quantum correlations in a one-dimensional $N$-site lattice with a site-dependent nearest neighbor tunneling function $t_\alpha(k)=t_0[k(N-k)]^{\alpha/2}$. Since the bandwidth and the energy levels spacings for such a lattice both depend upon $\alpha$, we show that the observable properties of a wavepacket, such as its spread and the relative phases of its constitutents, vary dramatically as $\alpha$ is varied from positive to negative values. We also find that the quantum correlations are exquisitely sensitive to the form of the tunneling function. Our results suggest that arrays of waveguides with position-dependent evanascent couplings will show rich dynamics with no counterpart in present-day, traditional systems.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure

Exact Persistence Exponent for One-dimensional Potts Models with Parallel Dynamics

We obtain \theta_p(q) = 2\theta_s(q) for one-dimensional q-state ferromagnetic Potts models evolving under parallel dynamics at zero temperature from an initially disordered state, where \theta_p(q) is the persistence exponent for parallel dynamics and \theta_s(q) = -{1/8}+ \frac{2}{\pi^2}[cos^{-1}{(2-q)/q\sqrt{2}}]^2 [PRL, {\bf 75}, 751, (1995)], the persistence exponent under serial dynamics. This result is a consequence of an exact, albeit non-trivial, mapping of the evolution of configurations of Potts spins under parallel dynamics to the dynamics of two decoupled reaction diffusion systems.Comment: 13 pages Latex file, 5 postscript figure

The logic and linguistic model for automatic extraction of collocation similarity

The article discusses the process of automatic identification of collocation similarity. The semantic analysis is one of the most advanced as well as the most difficult NLP task. The main problem of semantic processing is the determination of polysemy and synonymy of linguistic units. In addition, the task becomes complicated in case of word collocations. The paper suggests a logical and linguistic model for automatic determining semantic similarity between colocations in Ukraine and English languages. The proposed model formalizes semantic equivalence of collocations by means of semantic and grammatical characteristics of collocates. The basic idea of this approach is that morphological, syntactic and semantic characteristics of lexical units are to be taken into account for the identification of collocation similarity. Basic mathematical means of our model are logical-algebraic equations of the finite predicates algebra. Verb-noun and noun-adjective collocations in Ukrainian and English languages consist of words belonged to main parts of speech. These collocations are examined in the model. The model allows extracting semantically equivalent collocations from semi-structured and non-structured texts. Implementations of the model will allow to automatically recognize semantically equivalent collocations. Usage of the model allows increasing the effectiveness of natural language processing tasks such as information extraction, ontology generation, sentiment analysis and some others