Interfacial viscoelasticity in oscillating drops of cyclodextrin-surfactant aqueous solution: experiments and theory.

We present experiments involving oscillating droplets in aqueous cyclodextrin-surfactant solutions. In these experiments, α-cyclodextrin (αCD) and anionic surfactants exhibit remarkable viscoelasticity at the liquid/air interface, with dilatational modulus varying across orders of magnitude. This rheological response depends on the concentrations of different complexes in the solution, particularly of the 2 : 1 inclusion complexes formed by two αCD molecules (αCD), and one surfactant (S).

Termites and subsocial roaches inherited many bacterial-borne carbohydrate-active enzymes (CAZymes) from their common ancestor.

Termites digest wood using Carbohydrate-Active Enzymes (CAZymes) produced by gut bacteria with whom they have cospeciated at geological timescales. Whether CAZymes were encoded in the genomes of their ancestor's gut bacteria and transmitted to modern termites or acquired more recently from bacteria not associated with termites is unclear. We used gut metagenomes from 195 termites and one Cryptocercus, the sister group of termites, to investigate the evolution of termite gut bacterial CAZymes.

A multiscale model of the role of microenvironmental factors in cell segregation and heterogeneity in breast cancer development.

We analyzed a quantitative multiscale model that describes the epigenetic dynamics during the growth and evolution of an avascular tumor. A gene regulatory network (GRN) formed by a set of ten genes that are believed to play an important role in breast cancer development was kinetically coupled to the microenvironmental agents: glucose, estrogens, and oxygen. The dynamics of spontaneous mutations was described by a Yule-Furry master equation whose solution represents the probability that a given cell in the tissue undergoes a certain number of mutations at a given time.