The role of Chip Implementation Center (CIC), founded in 1992 under the National Science Council (NSC) of Taiwan R.O.C., is to provide the services for the fabrication of multi-project chip (MPC), the procurement/integration of software CAD tools, and the promotion of IC and FPGA design/testing/CAD software technology for academia in Taiwan. To date, CIC assisted 86 universities and polytechnic...

Biological membranes are versatile in composition and host intriguing molecular processes. In order to be able to study these systems, an accurate model Hamiltonian or force field (FF) is a necessity. Here, we report the results of our extension of earlier developed all-atomistic FF parameters for fully saturated phospholipids that complements an earlier parameter set for saturated phosphatidyl...

The mitotic stability of the linear plasmid-prophage N15 of Escherichia coli depends on a partition system closely related to that of the F plasmid SopABC. The two Sop systems are distinguished mainly by the arrangement of their centromeric SopB-binding sites, clustered in F (sopC) and dispersed in N15 (IR1 to IR4). Because two of the N15 inverted repeat (IR) sites are located close to elements...

Field induced droplet ionization mass spectrometry (FIDI-MS) comprises a soft ionization method to sample ions from the surface of microliter droplets. A pulsed electric field stretches neutral droplets until they develop dual Taylor cones, emitting streams of positively and negatively charged submicrometer droplets in opposite directions, with the desired polarity being directed into a mass sp...

Due to its net positive charge histone H1 readily associates with liposomes containing acidic phospholipids, such as phosphatidylserine (PS). Interestingly, circular dichroism reveals that while histone H1 in aqueous solutions appears as a random coil, its binding to liposomes containing PS is associated with a pronounced increase in alpha-helicity and beta-sheet content, estimated at 7% and 24...

The role of Chip Implementation Center (CIC), founded in 1992 under the National Science Council (NSC) of Taiwan R.O.C.. is to provide [he services for the fabrication of multi-project chip (MPC). the procurementlintegration of software CAD tools. and the promotion of IC and FPGA design/tesling/CAD software technology for academia in Taiwan. To date, CIC assisted 86 Universities and polytechnic...

Unlike the mitotic segregation of eukaryotic sister chromatids, DNA partitioning in bacteria is still not well understood. Bacterial high–copy-number plasmids can be stably maintained by random distribution of their copies during cell division. In contrast, the faithful transmission of low–copy-number plasmids and many chromosomes depends on an active process mediated by conserved, tripartite s...

We use a liquid-crystal model to predict that hybrid lipids (lipids that have one saturated and one unsaturated tail) can stabilize line interfaces between domains in mixed membranes of saturated lipids, hybrid lipids, and cholesterol (SHC membranes). The model predicts the phase separation of SHC membranes with both parabolic and loop binodals depending on the cholesterol concentration, modele...

Remarkably little is known about how bacterial chromosomes and their plasmids are partitioned to daughter cells prior to cell division, despite extensive experimentation and bioinformatic analysis. An in vitro study described in the current issue of The EMBO Journal recapitulates many features of plasmid partition in vivo and provides insight into how protein patterning on the nucleoid, determi...