Hastingslyons6142

SARS-CoV-2 emerged from animals and is now easily transmitted between people. Sporadic detection of natural cases in animals alongside successful experimental infections of pets, such as cats, ferrets and dogs, raises questions about the susceptibility of animals under natural conditions of pet ownership. Here, we report a large-scale study to assess SARS-CoV-2 infection in 919 companion animals living in northern Italy, sampled at a time of frequent human infection. No animals tested PCR positive. However, 3.3% of dogs and 5.8% of cats had measurable SARS-CoV-2 neutralizing antibody titers, with dogs from COVID-19 positive households being significantly more likely to test positive than those from COVID-19 negative households. Understanding risk factors associated with this and their potential to infect other species requires urgent investigation.Although the taxonomic composition of the human microbiome varies tremendously across individuals, its gene composition or functional capacity is highly conserved - implying an ecological property known as functional redundancy. Such functional redundancy has been hypothesized to underlie the stability and resilience of the human microbiome, but this hypothesis has never been quantitatively tested. The origin of functional redundancy is still elusive. Here, we investigate the basis for functional redundancy in the human microbiome by analyzing its genomic content network - a bipartite graph that links microbes to the genes in their genomes. We find that this network exhibits several topological features that favor high functional redundancy. Furthermore, we develop a simple genome evolution model to generate genomic content network, finding that moderate selection pressure and high horizontal gene transfer rate are necessary to generate genomic content networks with key topological features that favor high functional redundancy. Finally, we analyze data from two published studies of fecal microbiota transplantation (FMT), finding that high functional redundancy of the recipient's pre-FMT microbiota raises barriers to donor microbiota engraftment. This work elucidates the potential ecological and evolutionary processes that create and maintain functional redundancy in the human microbiome and contribute to its resilience.Membrane proteins are among the most challenging systems to study with experimental structural biology techniques. The increased number of deposited structures of membrane proteins has opened the route to modeling their complexes by methods such as docking. Here, we present an integrative computational protocol for the modeling of membrane-associated protein assemblies. TNG908 inhibitor The information encoded by the membrane is represented by artificial beads, which allow targeting of the docking toward the binding-competent regions. It combines efficient, artificial intelligence-based rigid-body docking by LightDock with a flexible final refinement with HADDOCK to remove potential clashes at the interface. We demonstrate the performance of this protocol on eighteen membrane-associated complexes, whose interface lies between the membrane and either the cytosolic or periplasmic regions. In addition, we provide a comparison to another state-of-the-art docking software, ZDOCK. This protocol should shed light on the still dark fraction of the interactome consisting of membrane proteins.The nuclear lamina-a meshwork of intermediate filaments termed lamins-is primarily responsible for the mechanical stability of the nucleus in multicellular organisms. However, structural-mechanical characterization of lamin filaments assembled in situ remains elusive. Here, we apply an integrative approach combining atomic force microscopy, cryo-electron tomography, network analysis, and molecular dynamics simulations to directly measure the mechanical response of single lamin filaments in three-dimensional meshwork. Endogenous lamin filaments portray non-Hookean behavior - they deform reversibly at a few hundred picoNewtons and stiffen at nanoNewton forces. The filaments are extensible, strong and tough similar to natural silk and superior to the synthetic polymer Kevlar®. Graph theory analysis shows that the lamin meshwork is not a random arrangement of filaments but exhibits small-world properties. Our results suggest that lamin filaments arrange to form an emergent meshwork whose topology dictates the mechanical properties of individual filaments. The quantitative insights imply a role of meshwork topology in laminopathies.Power dissipation is a fundamental issue for future chip-based electronics. As promising channel materials, two-dimensional semiconductors show excellent capabilities of scaling dimensions and reducing off-state currents. However, field-effect transistors based on two-dimensional materials are still confronted with the fundamental thermionic limitation of the subthreshold swing of 60 mV decade-1 at room temperature. Here, we present an atomic threshold-switching field-effect transistor constructed by integrating a metal filamentary threshold switch with a two-dimensional MoS2 channel, and obtain abrupt steepness in the turn-on characteristics and 4.5 mV decade-1 subthreshold swing (over five decades). This is achieved by using the negative differential resistance effect from the threshold switch to induce an internal voltage amplification across the MoS2 channel. Notably, in such devices, the simultaneous achievement of efficient electrostatics, very small sub-thermionic subthreshold swings, and ultralow leakage currents, would be highly desirable for next-generation energy-efficient integrated circuits and ultralow-power applications.The importance of singlet oxygen (1O2) in the environmental and biomedical fields has motivated research for effective 1O2 production. Electrocatalytic processes hold great potential for highly-automated and scalable 1O2 synthesis, but they are energy- and chemical-intensive. Herein, we present a Janus electrocatalytic membrane realizing ultra-efficient 1O2 production (6.9 mmol per m3 of permeate) and very low energy consumption (13.3 Wh per m3 of permeate) via a fast, flow-through electro-filtration process without the addition of chemical precursors. We confirm that a superoxide-mediated chain reaction, initiated by electrocatalytic oxygen reduction on the cathodic membrane side and subsequently terminated by H2O2 oxidation on the anodic membrane side, is crucial for 1O2 generation. We further demonstrate that the high 1O2 production efficiency is mainly attributable to the enhanced mass and charge transfer imparted by nano- and micro-confinement effects within the porous membrane structure. Our findings highlight a new electro-filtration strategy and an innovative reactive membrane design for synthesizing 1O2 for a broad range of potential applications including environmental remediation.