Evolutionary changes of noncoding elements associated with transition of sexual mode in nematodes.

The transition of the sexual mode occurs widely in animal evolution. In nematodes, androdioecy, a sexual polymorphism composed of males and hermaphrodites having the ability to self-fertilize, has evolved independently multiple times. While the modification of noncoding regulatory elements likely contributed to the evolution of hermaphroditism, little is known about these changes.

The impact of differential transposition activities of autonomous and nonautonomous hAT transposable elements on genome architecture and gene expression in Caenorhabditis inopinata.

Transposable elements are DNA sequences capable of moving within genomes and significantly influence genomic evolution. The nematode Caenorhabditis inopinata exhibits a much higher transposable element copy number than its sister species, Caenorhabditis elegans. In this study, we identified a novel autonomous transposable element belonging to the hAT superfamily from a spontaneous transposable element-insertion mutant in C.

Combinatorial characterization of metastable luminous silver cations.

Thermodynamically metastable glasses that can contain metastable species are important functional materials. X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) spectroscopy is an effective technique for determining the valence states of cations, especially for the doping element in phosphors. Herein, we first confirm the valence change of silver cations from monovalent to trivalent in aluminophosphate glasses by X-ray irradiation using a combination of Ag L-edge XANES, electron spin resonance, and simulated XANES spectra based on first-principles calculations.

Theoretical study on the mechanochemical reactivity in Diels-Alder reactions.

Mechanochemical reactions sometimes give different yields from those under solvent conditions, and such mechanochemical reactivities depend on the reactions. This study theoretically elucidates what governs mechanochemical reactivities, taking the Diels-Alder reactions as an example. Applying mechanical force can be regarded as the deformation of molecules, and the deformation in an orthogonal direction to a reaction mode can lower the reaction barrier.

Spontaneous-Symmetry-Breaking Charge Separation Induced by Pseudo-Jahn-Teller Distortion in Organic Photovoltaic Material.

The driving force of charge separation in the initial photovoltaic conversion process is theoretically investigated using ITIC, a nonfullerene acceptor material for organic photovoltaic devices. The density functional theory calculations show that the pseudo-Jahn-Teller (PJT) distortion of the S excimer state induces spontaneous symmetry-breaking charge separation between the identical ITIC molecules even without the asymmetry of the surrounding environment. The strong PJT effect arises from the vibronic coupling between the pseudodegenerate S and S excited states with different irreducible representations (irreps), i.