In the processes of protein synthesis and folding, newly synthesized polypeptides are tightly connected to the macromolecules, such as ribosomes, lipid bilayers, or cotranslationally folded domains in multidomain proteins, representing a hallmark of de novo protein folding environments in vivo. Such linkage effects on the aggregation of endogenous polypeptides have been largely neglected, altho...

The function(s) of sleep remains a major unanswered question in biology. We assessed changes in gene expression in the mouse cerebral cortex and hypothalamus following different durations of sleep and periods of sleep deprivation. There were significant differences in gene expression between behavioral states; we identified 3,988 genes in the cerebral cortex and 823 genes in the hypothalamus wi...

A kind of spin crossover-macromolecule polymer composite material, [Fe(NH(2)trz)(3)(ClO(4))(2)]-PVP (NH(2)trz is 4-amino-1,2,4-triazole and PVP is polyvinylpyrrolidone), appears as homogeneous film with a regular structure in nano-scale and shows the spin crossover (SC) phenomenon.

The adsorption thermodynamics of copolymers, based on ethylene oxide (EO) and propylene oxide (PO) units, at the laponite (RD) clay/liquid interface was determined at 298 K. The copolymer nature was tuned at molecular level by changing the hydrophilicity, the architecture and the molecular weight (Mw) keeping constant the EO/PO ratio. Polyethylene (PEGs) and polypropylene (PPGs) glycols with va...

Density difference fluid flows and sedimentation of growing crystals are greatly reduced when crystallization takes place in a reduced gravity environment. In the case of macromolecular crystallography a crystal of a biological macromolecule is used for diffraction experiments (x-ray or neutron) so as to determine the three-dimensional structure of the macromolecule. The better the internal ord...

A detailed understanding of the function of a biological macromolecule requires knowledge of its three-dimensional structure. Most atomic-resolution structures of biological macromolecules have been solved either by X-ray diffraction in single crystals or by nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) in solution. This review surveys the method of NMR structure determination. First, a brief introduction t...