BACKGROUND The lateral segregation of Ras proteins into transient plasma membrane nanoclusters is essential for high-fidelity signal transmission by the Ras mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) cascade. In this spatially constrained signaling system, the dynamics of Ras nanocluster assembly and disassembly control MAPK signal output. RESULTS We show here that BRaf inhibitors paradoxically ...

Ras-induced senescence mediated through ASPP2 represents a barrier to tumour formation. It is initiated by ASPP2's interaction with Ras at the plasma membrane, which stimulates the Raf/MEK/ERK signaling cascade. Ras to Raf signalling requires Ras to be organized in nanoscale signalling complexes, called nanocluster. We therefore wanted to investigate whether ASPP2 affects Ras nanoclustering. He...

In spite of much research progress in the science and synthesis of carbon nanotubes (CNTs), control over the location and orientation of CNTs on substrates remains a major challenge. A key breakthrough was the synthesis of vertically aligned CNT (VA-CNT) arrays using thermal chemical vapor deposition (CVD) and plasma-enhanced CVD, where the CNTs self-orient perpendicular to the substrate surfac...

Nitric oxide (NO) reduction pathways are systematically studied on a (111) facet of the octahedral nickel (Ni85) nanocluster in the presence/absence of hydrogen. Thermodynamic (reaction free energies) and kinetic (free energy barriers, and temperature dependent reaction rates) parameters are investigated to find out the most favoured reduction pathway for NO reduction. The catalytic activity of...

Nanoclusters of noble metals like Ag and Au have attracted great attention as they form a missing link between isolated metal atoms and nanoparticles. Their particular properties like luminescence in the visible range and nontoxicity make them attractive for bioimaging and biolabelling purposes, especially with use of proteins as stabilising agents. In this context, this study intends the synth...

Monodisperse silicon nanowires were synthesized by exploiting well-defined gold nanoclusters as catalysts for one-dimensional growth via a vapor–liquid–solid mechanism. Transmission electron microscopy studies of the materials grown from 5, 10, 20, and 30 nm nanocluster catalysts showed that the nanowires had mean diameters of 6, 12, 20, and 31 nm, respectively, and were thus well defined by th...

in this work, we dissect the performance of  two modern perdew-burke-ernzerhof (pbe)-based double-hybrid (dh) density functionals to predict the isotropic and anisotropic polarizabilities of water nanoclusters (h2o)n [n = 2-6]. the considered models include the cubic integrand (ci) and quadratic integrand (qi) functions as well as the spin-opposite-scaled (sos) scheme for perturbative correlati...

A soluble Pt nanocluster catalyst (Pt-GLY) is efficient in the absence of base for aqueous-phase aerobic oxidation of, in particular, non-activated alcohols with high recyclability.

adsorption of nh3 and h2o molecules on pristine and b–doped al12n12 nano–cage was investigated using density functional theory, by means of b3lyp and x3lyp functionals. both nh3 and h2o molecules were found to bind to an al atom of al12n12 via chemisorption, releasing energies ranging from –1.48 to –1.53 and –1.16 to –1.22 ev, respectively. the binding energies of x3lyp functional are somewhat ...

It is well known that the fluorescence of metal nanoclusters is strongly dependent of the protecting ligand and reports of phenylethanethiolated metal nanoclusters with distinct fluorescence are rare. Herein, a fluorescent phenylethanethiolated gold nanocluster is synthesized using an unexpected pseudo-AGR method (AGR: anti-galvanic reduction). The cluster is precisely determined to be Au24(SC2...