[Research progress of tunneling nanotube in bone biology].

Tunneling nanotube (TNT) is a newly discovered communication mode between animal cells in recent years, which have important physiological and pathological significance. However, the role of TNT in bone biology is still unclear. At present, there are many reports about tunneling nanotubes in bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells, osteoclast precursor cells, osteoblasts and immune cells. This review describes the research advances of TNT and its research progress in bone biology. It looks forward to the research direction of TNT in oral and maxillofacial bone development and bone biology, to provide new strategies for the maintenance of bone homeostasis and the treatment of bone diseases.

Composition formulas of binary eutectics.

The present paper addresses the long-standing composition puzzle of eutectic points by introducing a new structural tool for the description of short-range-order structural unit, the cluster-plus-glue-atom model. In this model, any structure is dissociated into a 1(st)-neighbor cluster and a few glue atoms between the clusters, expressed by a cluster formula [cluster]gluex. This model is applied here to establish the structural model for eutectic liquids, assuming that a eutectic liquid consist of two subunits issued from the relevant eutectic phases, each being expressed by the cluster formula for ideal metallic glasses, i.e., [cluster](glue atom)(1 or 3). A structural unit is then composed of two clusters from the relevant eutectic phases plus 2, 4, or 6 glue atoms. Such a dual cluster formulism is well validated in all boron-containing (except those located by the extreme phase diagram ends) and in some commonly-encountered binary eutectics, within accuracies below 1 at.%. The dual cluster formulas vary extensively and are rarely identical even for eutectics of close compositions. They are generally formed with two distinctly different cluster types, with special cluster matching rules such as cuboctahedron plus capped trigonal prism and rhombidodecahedron plus octahedral antiprism.