Genome shuffling leads to rapid phenotypic improvement in bacteria

For millennia, selective breeding, on the basis of biparental mating, has led to the successful improvement of plants and animals to meet societal needs. At a molecular level, DNA shuffling mimics, yet accelerates, evolutionary processes, and allows the breeding and improvement of individual genes and subgenomic DNA fragments. We describe here whole-genome shuffling; a process that combines the advantage of multi-parental crossing allowed by DNA shuffling with the recombination of entire genomes normally associated with conventional breeding. We show that recursive genomic recombination within a population of bacteria can efficiently generate combinatorial libraries of new strains. When applied to a population of phenotypically selected bacteria, many of these new strains show marked improvements in the selected phenotype. We demonstrate the use of this approach through the rapid improvement of tylosin production from Streptomyces fradiae. This approach has the potential to facilitate cell and metabolic engineering and provide a non-recombinant alternative to the rapid production of improved organisms.     

A somitic Wnt16/Notch pathway specifies haematopoietic stem cells

Haematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) are a self-renewing population of cells that continuously replenish all blood and immune cells during the lifetime of an individual. HSCs are used clinically to treat a wide array of diseases, including acute leukaemias and congenital blood disorders, but obtaining suitable numbers of cells and finding immune-compatible donors remain serious problems. These difficulties have led to an interest in the conversion of embryonic stem cells or induced pluripotent stem cells into HSCs, which is not possible using current methodologies. To accomplish this goal, it is critical to understand the native mechanisms involved in the specification of HSCs during embryonic development. Here we demonstrate in zebrafish that Wnt16 controls a novel genetic regulatory network required for HSC specification. Non-canonical signalling by Wnt16 is required for somitic expression of the Notch ligands deltaC (dlc) and deltaD (dld), and these ligands are, in turn, required for the establishment of definitive haematopoiesis. Notch signalling downstream of Dlc and Dld is earlier than, and distinct from, known cell-autonomous requirements for Notch, strongly suggesting that novel Notch-dependent relay signal(s) induce the first HSCs in parallel to other established pathways. Our results demonstrate that somite-specific gene expression is required for the production of haemogenic endothelium.     

Direct imaging of the pores and cages of three-dimensional mesoporous materials

Mesostructured composite materials, with features ranging from 20 to 500 A in size, are obtained by the kinetically controlled competitive assembly of organic and inorganic species into nanostructured domains. Short-range order is limited, and long-range order is determined by weak forces such as van der Waals or hydrogen-bonding. Three-dimensional mesoporous materials obtained by removing the organic phase are of particular interest for applications such as catalysis and chemical sensing or separation, for which structural features such as cavity shape, connectivity and ordered bimodal porosity are critical. But atomic-scale structural characterization by the usual diffraction techniques is challenging for these partially ordered materials because of the difficulty in obtaining large (> 10 microm) single crystals, and because large repeat spacings cause diffraction intensities to fall off rapidly with scattering angle so that only limited small-angle data are available. Here we present a general approach for the direct determination of three-dimensional mesoporous structures by electron microscopy. The structure solutions are obtained uniquely without pre-assumed models or parametrization. We report high-resolution details of cage and pore structures of periodically ordered mesoporous materials, which reveal a highly ordered dual micro- and mesoscale pore structure.     

Recent advances in hydrogen storage technologies based on nanoporous carbon materials

Hydrogen is a promising energy carrier that can potentially facilitate a transition from fossil fuels to sustainable energy sources without producing harmful by-products. Prior to realizing a hydrogen economy, however, viable hydrogen storage materials must be developed. Physical adsorption in porous solids provides an opportunity for hydrogen storage under low-stringency conditions. Physically adsorbed hydrogen molecules are weakly bound to a surface and, hence, are easily released. Among the various surface candidates, porous carbons appear to provide efficient hydrogen storage, with the advantages that porous carbon is relatively low-cost to produce and is easily prepared. In this review, we summarize the preparation methods, pore characteristics, and hydrogen storage capacities of representative nanoporous carbons, including activated carbons, zeolite-templated carbon, and carbide-derived carbon. We focus particularly on a series of nanoporous carbons developed recently: metal–organic framework-derived carbons, which exhibit promising properties for use in hydrogen storage applications.     

Efficient and power-awareness query over sensor networks

Sensor networks consisted of low-cost, low-power, muhifunctional miniature sensor devices have played an important role in our daily life. Light and humidity monitoring, seismic and animal activity detection, environment and habitat monitoring are the most common applications. However, due to the limited power supply, ordinary query methods and algorithms can not be applied on sensor networks. Queries over sensor networks should be power-aware to guarantee the maximum power savings. The minimal power consumption by avoiding the expensive communication of the redundant sensor nodes is concentrated on. A lot of work have been done to reduce the participated nodes, but none of them have considered the overlapping minimum bounded rectangle （MBR） of sensors which make them impossible to reach the optimization solution. The proposed OMSI-tree and OMR algorithm can efficiently solve this problem by executing a given query only on the sensors involved. Experiments show that there is an obvious improvement compared with TinyDB and other spatial index, adopting the proposed schema and algorithm.     

Tristable nematic liquid-crystal device using micropatterned surface alignment

It has long been appreciated that liquid-crystal (LC) devices in which the LC molecules adopt multiple stable orientations could drastically reduce the power consumption required for high-information-content displays. But for the commonly used nematic LCs, which are intrinsically uniaxial in symmetry, no industrially feasible multi-stable LC device has been realized. Recently we demonstrated how bistability can be robustly engineered into a nematic LC device, by patterning a substrate with an orientational chequerboard pattern that enforces orthogonal LC alignment in neighbouring square domains. As a result of the four-fold symmetry of the pattern, the two diagonal axes of the chequerboard become equally stable macroscopic orientations. Here we extend this symmetry approach to obtain a tristable surface-aligned nematic LC. A microscopic pattern exhibiting six-fold symmetry is inscribed on a polyimide surface using the stylus of an atomic force microscope. The hexagonal symmetry of the microscopic orientational domains in turn gives rise to three stable macroscopic LC orientations, which are mutually switchable by an in-plane electric field. The resulting switching mode is surface driven, and hence should be compatible with demanding flexible display applications.     

Structural differences between a ras oncogene protein and the normal protein

One of the most commonly found transforming ras oncogenes in human tumours has a valine codon replacing the glycine codon at position 12 of the normal c-Ha-ras gene. To understand the structural reasons behind cell transformation arising from this single amino acid substitution, we have determined the crystal structure of the GDP-bound form of the mutant protein, p21(Val-12), encoded by this oncogene. We report here the overall structure of p21(Val-12) at 2.2 A resolution and compare it with the structure of the normal c-Ha-ras protein. One of the major differences is that the loop of the transforming ras protein that binds the beta-phosphate of the guanine nucleotide is enlarged. Such a change in the 'catalytic site' conformation could explain the reduced GTPase activity of the mutant, which keeps the protein in the GTP bound 'signal on' state for a prolonged period time, ultimately causing cell transformation.     

Emergent excitations in a geometrically frustrated magnet

Frustrated systems are ubiquitous, and they are interesting because their behaviour is difficult to predict; frustration can lead to macroscopic degeneracies and qualitatively new states of matter. Magnetic systems offer good examples in the form of spin lattices, where all interactions between spins cannot be simultaneously satisfied. Here we report how unusual composite spin degrees of freedom can emerge from frustrated magnetic interactions in the cubic spinel ZnCr(2)O(4). Upon cooling, groups of six spins self-organize into weakly interacting antiferromagnetic loops, whose directors -- the unique direction along which the spins are aligned, parallel or antiparallel -- govern all low-temperature dynamics. The experimental evidence comes from a measurement of the magnetic form factor by inelastic neutron scattering; the data show that neutrons scatter from hexagonal spin clusters rather than individual spins. The hexagon directors are, to a first approximation, decoupled from each other, and hence their reorientations embody the long-sought local zero energy modes for the pyrochlore lattice.     

Construction of protograph LDPC codes with circular generator matrices

The application of protograph low density parity check(LDPC) codes involves the encoding complexity problem.Since the generator matrices are dense,and if the positions of 1 s are irregularity,the encoder needs to store every 1 of the generator matrices by using huge chip area.In order to solve this problem,we need to design the protograph LDPC codes with circular generator matrices.A theorem concerning the circulating property of generator matrices of nonsingular protograph LDPC codes is proposed.The circulating property of generator matrix of nonsingular protograph LDPC codes can be obtained from the corresponding quasi-cyclic parity check matrix.This paper gives a scheme of constructing protograph LDPC codes with circulating generator matrices,and it reveals that the fast encoding algorithm of protograph LDPC codes has lower encoding complexity under the condition of the proposed theorem.Simulation results in additive white Gaussian noise(AWGN) channels show that the bit error rate(BER) performance of the designed codes based on the proposed theorem is much better than that of GB20600 LDPC codes and Tanner LDPC codes.