An Elastic Organic Crystal Enables Macroscopic Photoinduced Crystal Elongation.

Among the various types of photomechanical deformations of organic crystals, photoinduced elongation of millimeter-scale crystals has yet to be demonstrated. Here we report that the millimeter-sized crystalline rods of an anthracene-pentiptycene hybrid organic π-system (1) are highly elastic and able to elongate up to 21.6% or 0.40 mm without fragmentation upon undergoing [4 + 4] photodimerization reactions. Both the mechanical and photomechanical effects reveal a strong cohesion of the system, even at the interface of 1 and its photodimer 2 and under the conditions of randomized molecular packing, representing a new class of mechanically adaptive organic crystals.

Noise propagation with interlinked feed-forward pathways.

Functionally similar pathways are often seen in biological systems, forming feed-forward controls. The robustness in network motifs such as feed-forward loops (FFLs) has been reported previously. In this work, we studied noise propagation in a development network that has multiple interlinked FFLs. A FFL has the potential of asymmetric noise-filtering (i.e., it works at either the "ON" or the "OFF" state in the target gene). With multiple, interlinked FFLs, we show that the propagated noises are largely filtered regardless of the states in the input genes. The noise-filtering property of an interlinked FFL can be largely derived from that of the individual FFLs, and with interlinked FFLs, it is possible to filter noises in both "ON" and "OFF" states in the output. We demonstrated the noise filtering effect in the developmental regulatory network of Caenorhabditis elegans that controls the timing of distal tip cell (DTC) migration. The roles of positive feedback loops involving blmp-1 and the degradation regulation of DRE-1 also studied. Our analyses allow for better inference from network structures to noise-filtering properties, and provide insights into the mechanisms behind the precise DTC migration controls in space and time.

Structural Rheology of the Smectic Phase.

In this review article, we discuss the rheological properties of the thermotropic smectic liquid crystal 8CB with focal conic domains (FCDs) from the viewpoint of structural rheology. It is known that the unbinding of the dislocation loops in the smectic phase drives the smectic-nematic transition. Here we discuss how the unbinding of the dislocation loops affects the evolution of the FCD size, linear and nonlinear rheological behaviors of the smectic phase. By studying the FCD formation from the perpendicularly oriented smectic layers, we also argue that dislocations play a key role in the structural development in layered systems. Furthermore, similarities in the rheological behavior between the FCDs in the smectic phase and the onion structures in the lyotropic lamellar phase suggest that these systems share a common physical origin for the elasticity.

A density functional theory of chiral block copolymer melts.

A density functional theory is developed for the diblock copolymer melt, where one block contains the segment orientation dependent chiral interaction. In addition to the standard (scalar) pair interaction between the two types of monomers, the chiral block has the additional pairwise interaction, which is linear in the tangent vectors of the segments. We construct a density functional, which contains both the scalar density field and the vector chain alignment field. The quadratic part of the density functional comes from the mean field theory of the microscopic model, whereas the fourth order terms are introduced phenomenologically in the spatially local form. From the stability analysis of this model, we find that the additional chiral interaction shifts the order-disorder transition, which is consistent with the behavior of experimental system. Further numerical calculation reveals a new metastable chiral helical cylinder structure, which is similar to the one found experimentally. Another similar metastable structure but with zigzag modulation is also observed. As the helical and zigzag structures disappear when the chiral interaction is switched off, we understand that the chiral effect is the driving force for the formation of these exotic metastable structures.

Uniform mesoporous silica hexagon and its two-dimensional colloidal crystal.

Well-ordered mesoporous silica nanoparticles with uniform hexagonal disk shapes are synthesized under dilute alkaline conditions with a two-step process, separating the nucleation and growth process. The resulting monodisperse hexagons can be arranged in a 2-dimensional (2D) ordered periodical super-structure. The hexagonal symmetry is similar in both scales. A statistical mechanical cell model is applied to analyze consequences of the interesting packing structure, including osmotic bulk modulus, phase separation and defects.

Steric zipper of the amyloid fibrils formed by residues 109-122 of the Syrian hamster prion protein.

We report the results of atomic force microscopy, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance, and molecular dynamics (MD) calculations for amyloid fibrils formed by residues 109-122 of the Syrian hamster prion protein (H1). Our data reveal that H1 fibrils contain no more than two beta-sheet layers. The peptide strands of H1 fibrils are antiparallel with the A117 residues aligned to form a linear chain in the direction of the fibril axis. The molecular structure of the H1 fibrils, which adopts the motif of steric zipper, is highly uniform in the region of the palindrome sequence AGAAAAGA. The closest distance between the two adjacent beta-sheet layers is found to be about 5 A. The structural features of the molecular model of H1 fibrils obtained by MD simulations are consistent with the experimental results. Overall, our solid-state NMR and MD simulation data indicate that a steric zipper, which was first observed in the crystals of fibril-forming peptides, can be formed in H1 fibrils near the region of the palindrome sequence.