Cell surface crowding is a tunable biophysical barrier to cell-cell fusion.

Cell-cell fusion is fundamental to developmental processes such as muscle formation, as well as to viral infections that cause pathological syncytia. An essential step in fusion is close membrane apposition, but cell membranes are crowded with proteins, glycoproteins, and glycolipids, all of which must be cleared before a fusion pore can be nucleated. Here, we find that cell surface crowding drastically reduces fusogenicity in multiple systems, independent of the method for driving fusion.

The thermoluminescence glow curves of LiF:Mg,Ti: characteristics and mechanisms.

The features of the glow curves of LiF:Mg,Ti are dependent on many parameters of irradiation, storage, ionisation density and readout. These are presented herein with emphasis on their complexity. Successful applications require some understanding of the great diversity of the glow curves.

The structures of salt-inducible kinase 3 in complex with inhibitors reveal determinants for binding and selectivity.

The salt-inducible kinases (SIKs) 1 to 3, belonging to the AMPK-related kinase family, serve as master regulators orchestrating a diverse set of physiological processes such as metabolism, bone formation, immune response, oncogenesis, and cardiac rhythm. Owing to its key regulatory role, the SIK kinases have emerged as compelling targets for pharmacological intervention across a diverse set of indications. Therefore, there is interest in developing SIK inhibitors with defined selectivity profiles both to further dissect the downstream biology and for treating disease.

Discovery and Characterization of a Bicyclic Peptide (Bicycle) Binder to Thymic Stromal Lymphopoietin.

Thymic stromal lymphopoietin (TSLP) is an epithelial-derived pro-inflammatory cytokine involved in the development of asthma and other atopic diseases. We used Bicycle Therapeutics' proprietary phage display platform to identify bicyclic peptides (Bicycles) with high affinity for TSLP, a target that is difficult to drug with conventional small molecules due to the extended protein-protein interactions it forms with both receptors. The hit series was shown to bind to TSLP in a hotspot, that is also used by IL-7Rα.

The effect of cooling rate on the precision of measurement of glow peak 5 in the thermoluminescence of LiF:Mg,Ti (TLD-100).

The effect of natural rapid cooling and oven slow cooling on the precision of thermoluminescence measurements of LiF:Mg,Ti is investigated. Three separate series of measurements resulted in average precisions of 5.1 and 5.