Attomole microarray detection of microRNAs by nanoparticle-amplified SPR imaging measurements of surface polyadenylation reactions

Multiple microRNAs (miRNAs) are detected in a microarray format using a novel approach that combines a surface enzyme reaction with nanoparticle-amplified SPR imaging (SPRI). The surface reaction of poly(A) polymerase creates poly(A) tails on miRNAs hybridized onto locked nucleic acid (LNA) microarrays. DNA-modified nanoparticles are then adsorbed onto the poly(A) tails and detected with SPRI. This ultrasensitive nanoparticle-amplified SPRI methodology can be used for miRNA profiling at attomole levels.     

Microfluidic technologies as platforms for performing quantitative cellular analyses in an in vitro environment

Quite often, important cellular events occur in environments that are either not amenable to implanted sensors or other types of molecular probes. In such cases, a viable alternative to taking the sensor or probe to the biological sample of interest is to bring the sample of interest out of its natural environment to one that is more conducive to the measurement scheme. The disadvantage of the latter approach is that the sample may not behave in the same manner in vitro as it does in vivo, or that the agonists and other stimuli to which the sample is subjected to in vivo are no longer present. In this Tutorial Review, the authors attempt to provide some guidance, based on their own experiences and those of other scientists, to performing cellular measurements in a quantitative manner under in vitro conditions. Due to the expansive literature on analyses involving cells, the authors have limited this Tutorial Review to those methods involving microfluidic technologies, both in microbore tubing and in microfabricated channels. Initial reports of analyses involving cells in microbore tubing were first reported nearly two decades ago, while those in microfabricated fluidic devices appeared over a decade ago. However, more recently, the complexity of cell analyses using fabricated microfluidic devices (as opposed to microbore tubing) has increased due in part to the improvements in fabrication technologies, fluid handling and delivery capabilities, advances in coatings of the channels within the microfluidic device, and integrated detection schemes. Examples of cellular analyses in microbore tubing and in fabricated microfluidic devices will be given, as well as associated advantages and challenges. Finally, the authors' thoughts on cellular analyses are presented here using the classical steps in an analysis as a guide.     

Wedged etalon tuning for miniature and monolithic lasers

We present an architecture permitting broad tuning of monolithic microchip lasers by using a wedged etalon. Full tuning from 282 to 314 nm is demonstrated by using a miniature Ce:LiCAF laser design, where tuning is achieved by translating the entire Ce laser cavity relative to the pump beam. The application of this technique to a range of microchip lasers will lead to extremely robust tunable monolithic lasers.     

On finite simple images of triangle groups

For a simple algebraic group G in characteristic p, a triple (a, b, c) of positive integers is said to be rigid for G if the dimensions of the subvarieties of G of elements of order dividing a, b, c sum to 2 dim G. In this paper we complete the proof of a conjecture of the third author, that for a rigid triple (a, b, c) for G with p > 0, the triangle group T_a,b,c has only finitely many simple images of the form G(p^r). We also obtain further results on the more general form of the conjecture, where the images G(p^r) can be arbitrary quasisimple groups of type G.     

Kinetics of chalcone oxidation by peroxide anion catalysed by poly-l-leucine

An insight into the kinetics, mechanism and optimum reaction conditions of the Julia-Colonna epoxidation has been gained using a soluble polyleucine catalyst.     

Cellular resolutions of noncommutative toric algebras from superpotentials

This paper constructs cellular resolutions for classes of noncommutative algebras, analogous to those introduced by Bayer and Sturmfels (1998) [2] in the commutative case. To achieve this we generalise the dimer model construction of noncommutative crepant resolutions of three-dimensional toric algebras by associating a superpotential and a notion of consistency to toric algebras of arbitrary dimension. For abelian skew group algebras and algebraically consistent dimer model algebras, we introduce a cell complex Δ in a real torus whose cells describe uniformly all maps in the minimal projective bimodule resolution of A. We illustrate the general construction of Δ for an example in dimension four arising from a tilting bundle on a smooth toric Fano threefold to highlight the importance of the incidence function on Δ.     

The maximum modulus set of a quasiregular map

Geometriae Dedicata - We study, for the first time, the maximum modulus set of a quasiregular map. It is easy to see that these sets are necessarily closed, and contain at least one point of each...