TY - JOUR A1 - Stange, Maike A1 - Hintsche, Marius A1 - Sachse, Kirsten A1 - Gerhardt, Matthias A1 - Valleriani, Angelo A1 - Beta, Carsten T1 - Analyzing the spatial positioning of nuclei in polynuclear giant cells JF - Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics N2 - How cells establish and maintain a well-defined size is a fundamental question of cell biology. Here we investigated to what extent the microtubule cytoskeleton can set a predefined cell size, independent of an enclosing cell membrane. We used electropulse-induced cell fusion to form giant multinuclear cells of the social amoeba Dictyostelium discoideum. Based on dual-color confocal imaging of cells that expressed fluorescent markers for the cell nucleus and the microtubules, we determined the subcellular distributions of nuclei and centrosomes in the giant cells. Our two- and three-dimensional imaging results showed that the positions of nuclei in giant cells do not fall onto a regular lattice. However, a comparison with model predictions for random positioning showed that the subcellular arrangement of nuclei maintains a low but still detectable degree of ordering. This can be explained by the steric requirements of the microtubule cytoskeleton, as confirmed by the effect of a microtubule degrading drug. KW - Dictyostelium KW - cell nucleus KW - positioning KW - imaging KW - spatial poisson distribution Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6463/aa8da0 SN - 0022-3727 SN - 1361-6463 VL - 50 IS - 46 PB - IOP Publ. Ltd. CY - Bristol ER - TY - JOUR A1 - El-Nagar, Gumaa A. A1 - Sarhan, Radwan Mohamed A1 - Abouserie, Ahed A1 - Maticiuc, Natalia A1 - Bargheer, Matias A1 - Lauermann, Iver A1 - Roth, Christina T1 - Efficient 3D-Silver Flower-like Microstructures for Non-Enzymatic Hydrogen Peroxide (H2O2) Amperometric Detection JF - Scientific reports Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-017-11965-9 SN - 2045-2322 VL - 7 PB - Nature Publ. Group CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Goychuk, Igor T1 - Fractional Bhatnagar-Gross-Krook kinetic equation JF - The European physical journal : B, Condensed matter and complex systems N2 - The linear Boltzmann equation approach is generalized to describe fractional superdiffusive transport of the Levy walk type in external force fields. The time distribution between scattering events is assumed to have a finite mean value and infinite variance. It is completely characterized by the two scattering rates, one fractional and a normal one, which defines also the mean scattering rate. We formulate a general fractional linear Boltzmann equation approach and exemplify it with a particularly simple case of the Bohm and Gross scattering integral leading to a fractional generalization of the Bhatnagar, Gross and Krook kinetic equation. Here, at each scattering event the particle velocity is completely randomized and takes a value from equilibrium Maxwell distribution at a given fixed temperature. We show that the retardation effects are indispensable even in the limit of infinite mean scattering rate and argue that this novel fractional kinetic equation provides a viable alternative to the fractional Kramers-Fokker-Planck (KFP) equation by Barkai and Silbey and its generalization by Friedrich et al. based on the picture of divergent mean time between scattering events. The case of divergent mean time is also discussed at length and compared with the earlier results obtained within the fractional KFP. Also a phenomenological fractional BGK equation without retardation effects is proposed in the limit of infinite scattering rates. It cannot be, however, rigorously derived from a scattering model, being rather clever postulated. It this respect, this retardationless equation is similar to the fractional KFP by Barkai and Silbey. However, it corresponds to the opposite, much more physical limit and, therefore, also presents a viable alternative. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2017-80297-x SN - 1434-6028 SN - 1434-6036 VL - 90 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Delle Side, Domenico A1 - Nassisi, Vincenzo A1 - Pennetta, Cecilia A1 - Alifano, Pietro A1 - Di Salvo, Marco A1 - Tala, Adelfia A1 - Chechkin, Aleksei V. A1 - Seno, Flavio A1 - Trovato, Antonio T1 - Bacterial bioluminescence onset and quenching: a dynamical model for a quorum sensing-mediated property JF - Royal Society Open Science N2 - We present an effective dynamical model for the onset of bacterial bioluminescence, one of the most studied quorum sensing-mediated traits. Our model is built upon simple equations that describe the growth of the bacterial colony, the production and accumulation of autoinducer signal molecules, their sensing within bacterial cells, and the ensuing quorum activation mechanism that triggers bioluminescent emission. The model is directly tested to quantitatively reproduce the experimental distributions of photon emission times, previously measured for bacterial colonies of Vibrio jasicida, a luminescent bacterium belonging to the Harveyi clade, growing in a highly drying environment. A distinctive and novel feature of the proposed model is bioluminescence ‘quenching’ after a given time elapsed from activation. Using an advanced fitting procedure based on the simulated annealing algorithm, we are able to infer from the experimental observations the biochemical parameters used in the model. Such parameters are in good agreement with the literature data. As a further result, we find that, at least in our experimental conditions, light emission in bioluminescent bacteria appears to originate from a subtle balance between colony growth and quorum activation due to autoinducers diffusion, with the two phenomena occurring on the same time scale. This finding is consistent with a negative feedback mechanism previously reported for Vibrio harveyi. KW - quorum sensing KW - bioluminescence KW - biophysical model KW - Vibrio Harveyi clade KW - oxygen quenching KW - Gompertz growth function Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.171586 SN - 2054-5703 VL - 4 PB - Royal Society CY - London ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Collado-Fregoso, Elisa A1 - Hood, Samantha N. A1 - Shoaee, Safa A1 - Schröder, Bob C. A1 - McCulloch, Iain A1 - Kassal, Ivan A1 - Neher, Dieter A1 - Durrant, James R. T1 - Intercalated vs Nonintercalated Morphologies in Donor-Acceptor Bulk Heterojunction Solar Cells: PBTTT:Fullerene Charge Generation and Recombination Revisited JF - The journal of physical chemistry letters N2 - In this Letter, we study the role of the donor:acceptor interface nanostructure upon charge separation and recombination in organic photovoltaic devices and blend films, using mixtures of PBTTT and two different fullerene derivatives (PC70BM and ICTA) as models for intercalated and nonintercalated morphologies, respectively. Thermodynamic simulations show that while the completely intercalated system exhibits a large free-energy barrier for charge separation, this barrier is significantly lower in the nonintercalated system and almost vanishes when energetic disorder is included in the model. Despite these differences, both femtosecond-resolved transient absorption spectroscopy (TAS) and time-delayed collection field (TDCF) exhibit extensive first-order losses in both systems, suggesting that geminate pairs are the primary product of photoexcitation. In contrast, the system that comprises a combination of fully intercalated polymer:fullerene areas and fullerene-aggregated domains (1:4 PBTTT:PC70BM) is the only one that shows slow, second-order recombination of free charges, resulting in devices with an overall higher short-circuit current and fill factor. This study therefore provides a novel consideration of the role of the interfacial nanostructure and the nature of bound charges and their impact upon charge generation and recombination. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b01571 SN - 1948-7185 VL - 8 SP - 4061 EP - 4068 PB - American Chemical Society CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Javanainen, Matti A1 - Martinez-Seara, Hector A1 - Metzler, Ralf A1 - Vattulainen, Ilpo T1 - Diffusion of Integral Membrane Proteins in Protein-Rich Membranes JF - The journal of physical chemistry letters N2 - The lateral diffusion of embedded proteins along lipid membranes in protein-poor conditions has been successfully described in terms of the Saffman-Delbruck (SD) model, which predicts that the protein diffusion coefficient D is weakly dependent on its radius R as D proportional to ln(1/R). However, instead of being protein-poor, native cell membranes are extremely crowded with proteins. On the basis of extensive molecular simulations, we here demonstrate that protein crowding of the membrane at physiological levels leads to deviations from the SD relation and to the emergence of a stronger Stokes-like dependence D proportional to 1/R. We propose that this 1/R law mainly arises due to geometrical factors: smaller proteins are able to avoid confinement effects much better than their larger counterparts. The results highlight that the lateral dynamics in the crowded setting found in native membranes is radically different from protein-poor conditions and plays a significant role in formation of functional multiprotein complexes. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jpclett.7b01758 SN - 1948-7185 VL - 8 SP - 4308 EP - 4313 PB - American Chemical Society CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Palyulin, Vladimir V. A1 - Mantsevich, Vladimir N. A1 - Klages, Rainer A1 - Metzler, Ralf A1 - Chechkin, Aleksei V. T1 - Comparison of pure and combined search strategies for single and multiple targets JF - The European physical journal : B, Condensed matter and complex systems N2 - We address the generic problem of random search for a point-like target on a line. Using the measures of search reliability and efficiency to quantify the random search quality, we compare Brownian search with Levy search based on long-tailed jump length distributions. We then compare these results with a search process combined of two different long-tailed jump length distributions. Moreover, we study the case of multiple targets located by a Levy searcher. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2017-80372-4 SN - 1434-6028 SN - 1434-6036 VL - 90 SP - 20 EP - 37 PB - Springer CY - New York ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Caetano, Daniel L. Z. A1 - de Carvalho, Sidney J. A1 - Metzler, Ralf A1 - Cherstvy, Andrey G. T1 - Critical adsorption of periodic and random polyampholytes onto charged surfaces JF - Physical chemistry, chemical physics : a journal of European Chemical Societies N2 - How different are the properties of critical adsorption of polyampholytes and polyelectrolytes onto charged surfaces? How important are the details of polyampholyte charge distribution on the onset of critical adsorption transition? What are the scaling relations governing the dependence of critical surface charge density on salt concentration in the surrounding solution? Here, we employ Metropolis Monte Carlo simulations and uncover the scaling relations for critical adsorption for quenched periodic and random charge distributions along the polyampholyte chains. We also evaluate and discuss the dependence of the adsorbed layer width on solution salinity and details of the charge distribution. We contrast our findings to the known results for polyelectrolyte adsorption onto oppositely charged surfaces, in particular, their dependence on electrolyte concentration. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1039/c7cp04040g SN - 1463-9076 SN - 1463-9084 VL - 19 SP - 23397 EP - 23413 PB - Royal Society of Chemistry CY - Cambridge ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Muench, Thomas A1 - Kipfstuhl, Sepp A1 - Freitag, Johannes A1 - Meyer, Hanno A1 - Laepple, Thomas T1 - Constraints on post-depositional isotope modifications in East Antarctic firn from analysing temporal changes of isotope profiles JF - The Cryosphere : TC ; an interactive open access journal of the European Geosciences Union N2 - The isotopic composition of water in ice sheets is extensively used to infer past climate changes. In low-accumulation regions their interpretation is, however, challenged by poorly constrained effects that may influence the initial isotope signal during and after deposition of the snow. This is reflected in snow-pit isotope data from Kohnen Station, Antarctica, which exhibit a seasonal cycle but also strong interannual variations that contradict local temperature observations. These inconsistencies persist even after averaging many profiles and are thus not explained by local stratigraphic noise. Previous studies have suggested that post-depositional processes may significantly influence the isotopic composition of East Antarctic firn. Here, we investigate the importance of post-depositional processes within the open-porous firn (greater than or similar to 10 cm depth) at Kohnen Station by separating spatial from temporal variability. To this end, we analyse 22 isotope profiles obtained from two snow trenches and examine the temporal isotope modifications by comparing the new data with published trench data extracted 2 years earlier. The initial isotope profiles undergo changes over time due to downward advection, firn diffusion and densification in magnitudes consistent with independent estimates. Beyond that, we find further modifications of the original isotope record to be unlikely or small in magnitude (<< 1 parts per thousand RMSD). These results show that the discrepancy between local temperatures and isotopes most likely originates from spatially coherent processes prior to or during deposition, such as precipitation intermittency or systematic isotope modifications acting on drifting or loose surface snow. Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.5194/tc-11-2175-2017 SN - 1994-0416 SN - 1994-0424 VL - 11 SP - 2175 EP - 2188 PB - Copernicus CY - Göttingen ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Starkenburg, Else A1 - Martin, Nicolas A1 - Youakim, Kris A1 - Aguado, David S. A1 - Allende Prieto, Carlos A1 - Arentsen, Anke A1 - Bernard, Edouard J. A1 - Bonifacio, Piercarlo A1 - Caffau, Elisabetta A1 - Carlberg, Raymond G. A1 - Cote, Patrick A1 - Fouesneau, Morgan A1 - Francois, Patrick A1 - Franke, Oliver A1 - Gonzalez Hernandez, Jonay I. A1 - Gwyn, Stephen D. J. A1 - Hill, Vanessa A1 - Ibata, Rodrigo A. A1 - Jablonka, Pascale A1 - Longeard, Nicolas A1 - McConnachie, Alan W. A1 - Navarro, Julio F. A1 - Sanchez-Janssen, Ruben A1 - Tolstoy, Eline A1 - Venn, Kim A. T1 - The Pristine survey - I. Mining the Galaxy for the most metal-poor stars JF - Monthly notices of the Royal Astronomical Society N2 - We present the Pristine survey, a new narrow-band photometric survey focused on the metallicity-sensitive Ca H&K lines and conducted in the Northern hemisphere with the wide-field imager MegaCam on the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope. This paper reviews our overall survey strategy and discusses the data processing and metallicity calibration. Additionally we review the application of these data to the main aims of the survey, which are to gather a large sample of the most metal-poor stars in the Galaxy, to further characterize the faintest Milky Way satellites, and to map the (metal-poor) substructure in the Galactic halo. The current Pristine footprint comprises over 1000 deg(2) in the Galactic halo ranging from b similar to 30 degrees to similar to 78 degrees and covers many known stellar substructures. We demonstrate that, for Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) stellar objects, we can calibrate the photometry at the 0.02-mag level. The comparison with existing spectroscopic metallicities from SDSS/Sloan Extension for Galactic Understanding and Exploration (SEGUE) and Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope shows that, when combined with SDSS broad-band g and i photometry, we can use the CaHK photometry to infer photometric metallicities with an accuracy of similar to 0.2 dex from [Fe/H] = -0.5 down to the extremely metal-poor regime ([Fe/H] < -3.0). After the removal of various contaminants, we can efficiently select metal-poor stars and build a very complete sample with high purity. The success rate of uncovering [Fe/H](SEGUE) < -3.0 stars among [Fe/H](Pristine) < -3.0 selected stars is 24 per cent, and 85 per cent of the remaining candidates are still very metal poor ([Fe/H]<-2.0). We further demonstrate that Pristine is well suited to identify the very rare and pristine Galactic stars with [Fe/H] < -4.0, which can teach us valuable lessons about the early Universe. KW - stars: abundances KW - Galaxy: abundances KW - Galaxy: evolution KW - Galaxy: formation KW - Galaxy: halo KW - galaxies: dwarf Y1 - 2017 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1093/mnras/stx1068 SN - 0035-8711 SN - 1365-2966 VL - 471 SP - 2587 EP - 2604 PB - Oxford Univ. Press CY - Oxford ER -