Microchip electrophoresis for specific gene detection of the pathogenic bacteria V. cholerae by circle-to-circle amplification.

We have developed a new method for a fast and precise analysis of circle-to-circle amplification (C2CA) product for specific gene detection by microchip electrophoresis. In this method, we have added a new enzymatic step to the C2CA reaction, which could be carried out isothermally at 37 degrees C. Compared to the original single-stranded DNA, the double-stranded DNA that is produced by this enzymatic reaction is more reliable for analysis by microchip electrophoresis. C2CA product was detected within 55 s with high reproducibility by this method which was successfully applied to the detection of 10-ng genomic DNA of the pathogenic bacteria Vibrio. cholerae within 110 s. Purification was found to be an indispensable step for the analysis of the C2CA product of genomic DNA samples.     

The effect of pressure and temperature of self-diffusion coefficients in several concentrated deuterium oxide diamagnetic electrolyte solutions

The pressure dependences of the self-diffusion coefficients of deuterium oxide in 4.5m solutions of LiCl–D₂O and CsCl–D₂O (also 7m) and 3.06m CaCl₂–D₂O have been measured by the NMR spin-echo method at 30°C, 60°C, and 90°C. Shear viscosities and densities of these solutions have also been determined over the same range of experimental conditions. The experimental data show that the diffusion constantD decreases with the increasing structure-making ability of the electrolyte cation Ca⁺²>Li⁺. In contrast, the diffusion coefficient for D₂O in the 4.5 and 7m CsCl solutions is equal to that for pure D₂O at 30°C but lower at 60°C and 90°C. It has been found that the Stokes-Einstein equation relates well the diffusion coefficients to shear viscosity in these concentrated electrolyte solutions.     

23Na NMR study of ionic mesophases in molten sodium carboxylates

The ²³Na NMR lineshapes are reported for the ionic mesophase and isotropic phase of the melts of sodium n-butyrate and sodium isovalerate. The powder pattern for the central transition typical for the second-order quadrupole effect observed in the mesophase melts is of particular interest. Some analogies to ²³Na behavior in sodium β-alumina are pointed out.     

Bier Spheres and Posets

In 1992 Thomas Bier presented a strikingly simple method to produce a huge number of simplicial (n – 2)-spheres on 2n vertices, as deleted joins of a simplicial complex on n vertices with its combinatorial Alexander dual. Here we interpret his construction as giving the poset of all the intervals in a boolean algebra that “cut across an ideal.” Thus we arrive at a substantial generalization of Bier’s construction: the Bier posets Bier(P, I) of an arbitrary bounded poset P of finite length. In the case of face posets of PL spheres this yields cellular “generalized Bier spheres.” In the case of Eulerian or Cohen–Macaulay posets P we show that the Bier posets Bier(P, I) inherit these properties. In the boolean case originally considered by Bier, we show that all the spheres produced by his construction are shellable, which yields “many shellable spheres,” most of which lack convex realization. Finally, we present simple explicit formulas for the g-vectors of these simplicial spheres and verify that they satisfy a strong form of the g-conjecture for spheres.