Peristaltic waves of the ureteric smooth muscles move urine down from the kidney, a process that is commonly defective in congenital diseases. To study the mechanisms that control the initiation and direction of contractions, we used video microscopy and optical mapping techniques and found that electrical and contractile waves began in a region where the renal pelvis joined the connective tiss...

Intercellular tight junctions form selectively permeable barriers that seal the paracellular space. Trans-tight junction flux has been measured across large epithelial surfaces, but conductance across individual channels has never been measured. We report a novel trans-tight junction patch clamp technique that detects flux across individual claudin-2 channels within the tight junction of cultur...

The functional diversity of gap junction intercellular channels arising from the large number of connexin isoforms is significantly increased by heterotypic interactions between members of this family. This is particularly evident in the rectifying behavior of Cx26/Cx32 heterotypic channels (. Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. USA. 88:8410-8414). The channel properties responsible for producing the rectif...

Neuromuscular Junction (NMJ) is the place where the neuron meets with muscle fiber crating a synapse to propagate the electrochemical signals. The infolds of the endplate of muscle fiber play a vital role containing a huge number of sodium channels in contraction of NMJ transmission mechanism. We have studied here the entanglement of sodium channel activation particle (‘m’ particle). Through th...

We investigate the photocurrent generation mechanisms at a vertical p-n heterojunction between black phosphorus (BP) and molybdenum disulfide (MoS2) flakes through polarization-, wavelength-, and gate-dependent scanning photocurrent measurements. When incident photon energy is above the direct band gap of MoS2, the photocurrent response demonstrates a competitive effect between MoS2 and BP in t...

The activity of gap junction channels between pairs of neonatal rat heart cells in culture was studied under control conditions and during uncoupling procedures by using dual whole-cell voltage clamp techniques. Under control conditions gap junctional conductance ranged from 0.05 to 35 nS. In cell pairs exhibiting low gap junctional conductance (less than 500 pS), single-channel events with a u...

The Top-Hat hot electron light emission and lasing in semiconductor heterostructure (HELLISH)-vertical cavity semiconductor optical amplifier (VCSOA) is a modified version of a HELLISH-VCSOA device. It has a shorter p-channel and longer n-channel. The device studied in this work consists of a simple GaAs p-i-n junction, containing 11 Ga0.35In0.65 N0.02As0.08/GaAs multiple quantum wells in its i...

In vertebrates, connexins (Cxs) and pannexins (Panxs) are proteins that form gap junction channels and/or hemichannels located at cell-cell interfaces and cell surface, respectively. Similar channel types are formed by innexins in invertebrate cells. These channels serve as pathways for cellular communication that coordinate diverse physiologic processes. However, it is known that many acquired...

We present a new approach to enhance mixing in T-type micromixers by introducing a constriction in the microchannel under periodic electro-osmotic flow. Two sinusoidal ac electric fields with 180 degrees phase difference and similar dc bias are applied at the two inlets. The out of phase ac electric field induces oscillation of fluid interface at the junction of the two inlet channels and the c...

A new design of particle sorting chip is presented. The device employs a dielectrophoretic gate that deflects particles into one of two microfluidic channels at high speed. The device operates by focussing particles into the central streamline of the main flow channel using dielectrophoretic focussing. At the sorting junction (T- or Y-junction) two sets of electrodes produce a small dielectroph...