Coenzyme Q10 trapping in mitochondrial complex I underlies Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy.

How does a single amino acid mutation occurring in the blinding disease, Leber's hereditary optic neuropathy (LHON), impair electron shuttling in mitochondria? We investigated changes induced by the m.3460 G>A mutation in mitochondrial protein ND1 using the tools of Molecular Dynamics and Free Energy Perturbation simulations, with the goal of determining the mechanism by which this mutation affects mitochondrial function. A recent analysis suggested that the mutation's replacement of alanine A52 with a threonine perturbs the stability of a region where binding of the electron shuttling protein, Coenzyme Q10, occurs.

Place-cell capacity and volatility with grid-like inputs.

What factors constrain the arrangement of the multiple fields of a place cell? By modeling place cells as perceptrons that act on multiscale periodic grid-cell inputs, we analytically enumerate a place cell's - how many field arrangements it can realize without external cues while its grid inputs are unique - and derive its - the spatial range over which it can achieve any field arrangement. We show that the repertoire is very large and relatively noise-robust. However, the repertoire is a vanishing fraction of all arrangements, while capacity scales only as the sum of the grid periods so field arrangements are constrained over larger distances.

Effects of Latency on Estimates of the COVID-19 Replication Number.

There is continued uncertainty in how long it takes a person infected by the COVID-19 virus to become infectious. In this paper, we quantify how this uncertainty affects estimates of the basic replication number [Formula: see text], and thus estimates of the fraction of the population that would become infected in the absence of effective interventions. The analysis is general, and applies to all SEIR-based models, not only those associated with COVID-19.

Most stable structure for hard spheres.

The hard sphere model is known to show a liquid-solid phase transition, with the solid expected to be either face centered cubic or hexagonal close packed. The differences in free energy of the two structures are very small and various attempts have been made to determine which structure is the more stable. We contrast the different approaches and extend one.

Structure of the hard sphere solid.

We show that near densest packing the perturbations of the hexagonal close packed (hcp) structure yield higher entropy than perturbations of any other densest packing. The difference between the various structures shows up in the correlations between motions of nearest neighbors. In the hcp structure random motion of each sphere impinges slightly less on the motion of its nearest neighbors than in the other structures.