Hot tip yields insight

"Hot" surface activation of molecular complexes: insight from modeling studies.

Controlled tip wear on high roughness surfaces yields gradual broadening and rounding of cantilever tips

Tip size in atomic force microscopy (AFM) has a major impact on the resolution of images and on the results of nanoindentation experiments. Tip wear is therefore a key limitation in the application of AFM. Here we show, however, how wear can be turned into an advantage as it allows for directed tip shaping. We studied tip wear on high roughness polycrystalline titanium and diamond surfaces and ...

Phylogeny of endocytic components yields insight into the process of nonendosymbiotic organelle evolution.

The process by which some eukaryotic organelles, for example the endomembrane system, evolved without endosymbiotic input remains poorly understood. This problem largely arises because many major cellular systems predate the last common eukaryotic ancestor (LCEA) and thus do not provide examples of organellogenesis in progress. A model is emerging whereby gene duplication and divergence of mult...

Network wiring of pleiotropic kinases yields insight into protective role of diabetes on aneurysm.

Recent studies suggest a protective role of diabetes in the development of aneurysm, but the biological mechanisms behind this are still unknown. This type of association is not present in the case of diabetes and atherosclerosis despite similar risk factors for aneurysm and atherosclerosis. We postulate the existence of genes that disrupt the pathways needed for the onset of aneurysm in the pr...

High-Resolution Mapping of Expression-QTLs Yields Insight into Human Gene Regulation

Recent studies of the HapMap lymphoblastoid cell lines have identified large numbers of quantitative trait loci for gene expression (eQTLs). Reanalyzing these data using a novel Bayesian hierarchical model, we were able to create a surprisingly high-resolution map of the typical locations of sites that affect mRNA levels in cis. Strikingly, we found a strong enrichment of eQTLs in the 250 bp ju...