Genetic approaches to protein purification

A gene fusion system based on the protein A gene from Staphylococcus aureus has been developed to facilitate purification of recombinant proteins, both in large and small scale. Due to the strong interaction with IgG, it is possible to recover gene products fused to various protein A derivatives, in a one-step procedure with high yield and in purity. Site-directed mutagenesis was used to introduce enzymatic and chemical cleavage sites at the fusion point between the protein A derivative and the desired protein. The protein A “tail” can thereby be removed from the affinity purified fusion protein by the appropriate cleavage, releasing biologically active molecules. Recently, the system was improved by designing a synthetic DNA fragment encoding two IgG-binding domains derived from staphylococcal protein A which are resistant to various chemical cleavages. The gene fusion product is secreted to the culture medium of E.coli and can be recovered simply by passing the clarified culture medium through an IgG Fast Flow Sepharose. The system has been used to immobilize enzymes, to obtain monoclonal and polyclonal antibodies and to produce biologically active human peptide hormones in pilot plant scale.     

Galois theory and commutators

We prove that the relative commutator with respect to a subvariety of a variety of Ω-groups introduced by the first author can be described in terms of categorical Galois theory. This extends the known correspondence between the Fröhlich–Lue and the Janelidze–Kelly notions of central extension. As an example outside the context of Ω-groups we study the reflection of the category of loops to the category of groups where we obtain an interpretation of the associator as a relative commutator.     

Finite-Codimensional Compressions of Symmetric and Self-Adjoint Linear Relations in Krein Spaces

Theorems due to Stenger (Bull Am Math Soc 74:369–372, 1968) and Nudelman (Int Equ Oper Theory 70:301–305, 2011) in Hilbert spaces and their generalizations to Krein spaces in Azizov and Dijksma (Int Equ Oper Theory 74(2):259–269, 2012) and Azizov et al. (Linear Algebra Appl 439:771–792, 2013) generate additional questions about properties a finite-codimensional compression \({T_0}\) of a symmetric or self-adjoint linear relation \({T}\) may or may not inherit from \({T}\). These questions concern existence of invariant maximal nonnegative subspaces, definitizability, singular critical points and defect indices.     

The Asymptotic Behaviour of a Stochastic 3D LANS-α Model

The long-time behaviour of a stochastic 3D LANS-α model on a bounded domain is analysed. First, we reformulate the model as an abstract problem. Next, we establish sufficient conditions ensuring the existence of stationary (steady state) solutions of this abstract nonlinear stochastic evolution equation, and study the stability properties of the model. Finally, we analyse the effects produced by stochastic perturbations in the deterministic version of the system (persistence of exponential stability as well as possible stabilisation effects produced by the noise). The general results are applied to our stochastic LANS-α system throughout the paper.     

Enclosing all zeros of an analytic function — A rigorous approach

We present a method to find all zeros of an analytic function in a rectangular domain. The approach is based on finding guaranteed enclosures rather than approximations of the zeros. Well-isolated simple zeros are determined fast and with high accuracy. Clusters of zeros can in many cases be distinguished from multiple zeros by applying the argument principle to sufficiently high-order derivatives of the function. We illustrate the proposed method through five examples of varying levels of complexity.     

Diophantine approximation of the orbit of 1 in the dynamical system of beta expansions

We consider the distribution of the orbits of the number 1 under the $\beta $ -transformations $T_\beta $ as $\beta $ varies. Mainly, the size of the set of $\beta >1$ for which a given point can be well approximated by the orbit of 1 is measured by its Hausdorff dimension. The dimension of the following set $E\big (\{\ell _n\}_{n\ge 1}, x_0\big )=\Big \{\,\beta >1: |T^n_{\beta }1-x_0|<\beta ^{-\ell _n}, \hbox { for infinitely many}, \, n\in \mathbb{N }\,\Big \}$ is determined, where $x_0$ is a given point in $[0,1]$ and $\{\ell _n\}_{n\ge 1}$ is a sequence of integers tending to infinity as $n\rightarrow \infty $ . For the proof of this result, the notion of the recurrence time of a word in symbolic space is introduced to characterise the lengths and the distribution of cylinders (the set of $\beta $ with a common prefix in the expansion of 1) in the parameter space $\{\,\beta \in \mathbb{R }: \beta >1\,\}$ .     

Spectrum of the Magnetic Schrödinger Operator in a Waveguide with Combined Boundary Conditions

We consider the magnetic Schrödinger operator in a two-dimensional strip. On the boundary of the strip the Dirichlet boundary condition is imposed except for a fixed segment (window), where it switches to magnetic Neumann {For the definition of magnetic Neumann boundary conditions see Section 2, Eq. (2.2)}. We deal with a smooth compactly supported field as well as with the Aharonov-Bohm field. We give an estimate on the maximal length of the window, for which the discrete spectrum of the considered operator will be empty. In the case of a compactly supported field we also give a sufficient condition for the presence of eigenvalues below the essential spectrum.submitted 11/05/04, accepted 21/09/04     

Visualizing elements of order two in the Weil-Châtelet group

Let E be an elliptic curve over an infinite field K with characteristic ≠2, and σ∈H¹(G_K,E)[2] a two-torsion element of its Weil-Châtelet group. We prove that σ is always visible in infinitely many abelian surfaces up to isomorphism, in the sense put forward by Cremona and Mazur in their article (J. Exp. Math. 9(1) (2000) 13). Our argument is a variant of Mazur's proof, given in (Asian J. Math. 3(1) (1999) 221), for the analogous statement about three-torsion elements of the Shafarevich-Tate group in the setting where K is a number field. In particular, instead of the universal elliptic curve with full level-three-structure, our proof makes use of the universal elliptic curve with full level-two-structure and an invariant differential.     

Optical analogue of the spin Hall effect in a photonic cavity

We observe anisotropy in the polarization flux generated in a GaAs/AlAs photonic cavity by optical illumination, equivalent to spin currents in strongly coupled microcavities. Polarization rotation of the scattered photons around the Rayleigh ring is due to the TE-TM splitting of the cavity mode. Resolving the circular polarization components of the transmission reveals a separation of the polarization flux in momentum space. These observations constitute the optical analogue of the spin Hall effect.     

Snaking states on a cylindrical surface in a perpendicular magnetic field

We calculate electronic states on a closed cylindrical surface as a model of a core-shell nanowire. The length of the cylinder can be infinite or finite. We define cardinal points on the circumference of the cylinder and consider a spatially uniform magnetic field perpendicular to the cylinder axis, in the direction South-North. The orbital motion of the electrons depends on the radial component of the field which is nonuniform around the circumference: it is equal to the total field at North and South, but vanishes at the West and East sides. For a strong field, when the magnetic length is comparable to the radius of the cylinder, the electronic states at North and South become localized cyclotron orbits, whereas at East and West the states become long and narrow snaking orbits propagating along the cylinder. The energy of the cyclotron states increases with the magnetic field whereas the energy of the snaking states is stable. Consequently, at high magnetic fields the electron density vanishes at North and South and concentrates at East and West. We include spin-orbit interaction with linear Rashba and Dresselhaus models. For a cylinder of finite length the Dresselhaus interaction produces an axial twist of the charge density relative to the center of the wire, which may be amplified in the presence of the Rashba interaction.