Fibrillar fibronectin plays a key role as nucleator of collagen I polymerization during macromolecular crowding-enhanced matrix assembly.

Macromolecular crowding is used by tissue engineers to accelerate extracellular matrix assembly in vitro, however, most mechanistic studies focus on the impact of crowding on collagen fiber assembly and largely ignore the highly abundant provisional matrix protein fibronectin. We show that the accelerated collagen I assembly as induced by the neutral crowding molecule Ficoll is regulated by cell access to fibronectin. Ficoll treatment leads to significant increases in the amount of surface adherent fibronectin, which can readily be harvested by cells to speed up fibrillogenesis.

Complete Genome Sequences of a Diverse Group of 13 Propionibacterium acnes Bacteriophages Isolated from Urban Raw Sewage.

We present complete genome sequences of 13 phages isolated from urban raw sewage. They belong to the family , have genome sizes of 29,450.6 ± 256.

Going with the Flow: Water Flux and Cell Shape during Cytokinesis.

Cell shape changes during cytokinesis in eukaryotic cells have been attributed to contractile forces from the actomyosin ring and the actomyosin cortex. Here we propose an additional mechanism where active pumping of ions and water at the cell poles and the division furrow can also achieve the same type of shape change during cytokinesis without myosin contraction. We develop a general mathematical model to examine shape changes in a permeable object subject to boundary fluxes.

Complete Genome Sequence of Strain a523 Isolated from Urban Raw Sewage.

We report here the first complete circularly closed genome sequence of strain a523 isolated from raw urban sewage. This genome contains 2,646,250 bp with a G+C content of 36.8%, 2,499 genes, 2,370 protein-coding sequences, 6 rRNA operons, 65 tRNAs, and 6 clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeat arrays.

Detection of familial adenomatous polyposis with orthogonal polarized spectroscopy of the oral mucosa vasculature.

Familial Adenomatous Polyposis (FAP) is an autosomal dominant disease characterized by the development of multiple colonic polyps at younger age with a near 100% lifetime risk of colorectal cancer. The determination of FAP is made after extensive clinical evaluation and genetic testing of at risk individuals. We investigated a novel spectro-polarimetric imaging system capable of capturing high-resolution images of the oral mucosa at different wavelengths in an attempt to distinguish patients with FAP from controls.