First characterization of cultivable extremophile isolates from a solar panel.

Introduction: Microorganisms colonize a wide range of natural and artificial environments. Even though most of them are unculturable in laboratory conditions, some ecosystems are ideal niches for bioprospecting extremophiles with unique properties. Up today, there are few reports concerning microbial communities found on solar panels, a widespread, artificial, extreme habitat.

Ab initio reconstruction from one-dimensional crystal diffraction data.

Filamentary and rod-like assemblies are ubiquitous in biological systems, and single such assemblies can form one-dimensional (1D) crystals. New, intense X-ray sources, such as X-ray free-electron lasers, make it feasible to measure diffraction data from single 1D crystals. Such experiments would present some advantages, since cylindrical averaging of the diffraction data in conventional fiber diffraction analysis is avoided, there is coherent signal amplification relative to single-particle imaging, and the diffraction data are oversampled compared with those from a 3D crystal so that the phase problem is better determined than for a 3D crystal [Millane (2017).

Macromolecular phasing using diffraction from multiple crystal forms.

A phasing algorithm for macromolecular crystallography is proposed that utilizes diffraction data from multiple crystal forms - crystals of the same molecule with different unit-cell packings (different unit-cell parameters or space-group symmetries). The approach is based on the method of iterated projections, starting with no initial phase information. The practicality of the method is demonstrated by simulation using known structures that exist in multiple crystal forms, assuming some information on the molecular envelope and positional relationships between the molecules in the different unit cells.

Prevalence and predictors of penile nodules in French Guiana's sole prison facility.

Purpose: Penile implants or nodules are objects inserted beneath the skin of the penis mostly for erotic purposes. The procedure is painful and there may be complications. It is often associated with prison.

The phase problem for two-dimensional crystals. II. Simulations.

Phasing of diffraction data from two-dimensional crystals using only minimal molecular envelope information is investigated by simulation. Two-dimensional crystals are an attractive target for studying membrane proteins using X-ray free-electron lasers, particularly for dynamic studies at room temperature. Simulations using an iterative projection algorithm show that phasing is feasible with fairly minimal molecular envelope information, supporting recent uniqueness results for this problem [Arnal & Millane (2017).