Small inverted repeats (small palindromes) on plasmids have been shown to mediate a recombinational rearrangement event in Escherichia coli leading to the formation of inverted dimers (giant palindromes). This recombinational rearrangement event is efficient and independent of RecA and RecBCD. In this report, we propose a cruciform-dumbbell model to explain the inverted dimer formation mediated...

Disease The “hot cross bun” sign refers to pontine cruciform hyperintensity on long TR sequences, which can be observed in multiple-system atrophy, spinocerebellar atrophy types 2 and 3, and in parkinsonism secondary to vasculitis. It has not been previously demonstrated in variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease (vCJD), to our knowledge. A 16-year-old girl, diagnosed with vCJD at age 14 years and de...

The photophysical and spectroscopic properties of a new class of oligothiophene derivatives, designated as cruciform oligomers, have been investigated in solution (room and low temperature) and in the solid state (as thin films in Zeonex matrixes). The study comprises absorption, emission, and triplet-triplet absorption spectra, together with quantitative measurements of quantum yields (fluores...