Synchrony dynamics during initiation, failure, and rescue of the segmentation clock

The "segmentation clock" is thought to coordinate sequential segmentation of the body axis in vertebrate embryos. This clock comprises a multicellular genetic network of synchronized oscillators, coupled by intercellular Delta-Notch signaling. How this synchrony is established and how its loss determines the position of segmentation defects in Delta and Notch mutants are unknown. We analyzed the clock's synchrony dynamics by varying strength and timing of Notch coupling in zebra-fish embryos with techniques for quantitative perturbation of gene function. We developed a physical theory based on coupled phase oscillators explaining the observed onset and rescue of segmentation defects, the clock's robustness against developmental noise, and a critical point beyond which synchrony decays. We conclude that synchrony among these genetic oscillators can be established by simultaneous initiation and self-organization and that the segmentation defect position is determined by the difference between coupling strength and noise.     

Continuous and discontinuous perturbations

Perturbations of quantum systems ranging from oscillators to fields can be either continuous or discontinuous functions of the coupling. Even nonrenormalizable fields may now find a natural interpretation.     

The effect of electrical coupling on the frequency of model neuronal oscillators

Neurons with oscillatory properties are a common feature of the nervous system, but little is known about how neural oscillators shape the behavior of neuronal networks or how network interactions influence the properties of neural oscillators. Mathematical models are used to examine the effect of electrically coupling an oscillatory neuron to a second neuron that is either silent or tonically firing. Models of oscillatory neurons with varying degrees of complexity show that this coupling can either increase or decrease the frequency of an oscillator, depending on its membrane potential wave form, the state of the neuron to which it is coupled, and the strength of the coupling. Thus, electrical coupling provides a flexible mechanism for modifying the behavior of an oscillatory neural network.     

Cavity optomechanics with a Bose-Einstein condensate

Cavity optomechanics studies the coupling between a mechanical oscillator and the electromagnetic field in a cavity. We report on a cavity optomechanical system in which a collective density excitation of a Bose-Einstein condensate serves as the mechanical oscillator coupled to the cavity field. A few photons inside the ultrahigh-finesse cavity trigger strongly driven back-action dynamics, in quantitative agreement with a cavity optomechanical model. We approach the strong coupling regime of cavity optomechanics, where a single excitation of the mechanical oscillator substantially influences the cavity field. The results open up new directions for investigating mechanical oscillators in the quantum regime and the border between classical and quantum physics.     

Temperature as a universal resetting cue for mammalian circadian oscillators

Environmental temperature cycles are a universal entraining cue for all circadian systems at the organismal level with the exception of homeothermic vertebrates. We report here that resistance to temperature entrainment is a property of the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) network and is not a cell-autonomous property of mammalian clocks. This differential sensitivity to temperature allows the SCN to drive circadian rhythms in body temperature, which can then act as a universal cue for the entrainment of cell-autonomous oscillators throughout the body. Pharmacological experiments show that network interactions in the SCN are required for temperature resistance and that the heat shock pathway is integral to temperature resetting and temperature compensation in mammalian cells. These results suggest that the evolutionarily ancient temperature resetting response can be used in homeothermic animals to enhance internal circadian synchronization.     

Entrainment of the circadian clock in the liver by feeding

Circadian rhythms of behavior are driven by oscillators in the brain that are coupled to the environmental light cycle. Circadian rhythms of gene expression occur widely in peripheral organs. It is unclear how these multiple rhythms are coupled together to form a coherent system. To study such coupling, we investigated the effects of cycles of food availability (which exert powerful entraining effects on behavior) on the rhythms of gene expression in the liver, lung, and suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN). We used a transgenic rat model whose tissues express luciferase in vitro. Although rhythmicity in the SCN remained phase-locked to the light-dark cycle, restricted feeding rapidly entrained the liver, shifting its rhythm by 10 hours within 2 days. Our results demonstrate that feeding cycles can entrain the liver independently of the SCN and the light cycle, and they suggest the need to reexamine the mammalian circadian hierarchy. They also raise the possibility that peripheral circadian oscillators like those in the liver may be coupled to the SCN primarily through rhythmic behavior, such as feeding.     

Coupling quantum tunneling with cavity photons

Tunneling of electrons through a potential barrier is fundamental to chemical reactions, electronic transport in semiconductors and superconductors, magnetism, and devices such as terahertz oscillators. Whereas tunneling is typically controlled by electric fields, a completely different approach is to bind electrons into bosonic quasiparticles with a photonic component. Quasiparticles made of such light-matter microcavity polaritons have recently been demonstrated to Bose-condense into superfluids, whereas spatially separated Coulomb-bound electrons and holes possess strong dipole interactions. We use tunneling polaritons to connect these two realms, producing bosonic quasiparticles with static dipole moments. Our resulting three-state system yields dark polaritons analogous to those in atomic systems or optical waveguides, thereby offering new possibilities for electromagnetically induced transparency, room-temperature condensation, and adiabatic photon-to-electron transfer.     

The extent of non-Born-Oppenheimer coupling in the reaction of Cl(2P) with para-H2

Elementary triatomic reactions offer a compelling test of our understanding of the extent of electron-nuclear coupling in chemical reactions, which is neglected in the widely applied Born-Oppenheimer (BO) approximation. The BO approximation predicts that in reactions between chlorine (Cl) atoms and molecular hydrogen, the excited spin-orbit state (Cl*) should not participate to a notable extent. We report molecular beam experiments, based on hydrogen-atom Rydberg tagging detection, that reveal only a minor role of Cl*. These results are in excellent agreement with fully quantum-reactive scattering calculations based on two sets of ab initio potential energy surfaces. This study resolves a previous disagreement between theory and experiment and confirms our ability to simulate accurately chemical reactions on multiple potential energy surfaces.     

Antiphase oscillation of the left and right suprachiasmatic nuclei

An unusual property of the circadian timekeeping systems of animals is rhythm "splitting," in which a single daily period of physical activity (usually measured as wheel running) dissociates into two stably coupled components about 12 hours apart; this behavior has been ascribed to a clock composed of two circadian oscillators cycling in antiphase. We analyzed gene expression in the hypothalamic circadian clock, the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), of behaviorally "split" hamsters housed in constant light. The results show that the two oscillators underlying the split condition correspond to the left and right sides of the bilaterally paired SCN.     

Regulation of oceanic silicon and carbon preservation by temperature control on bacteria

We demonstrated in laboratory experiments that temperature control of marine bacteria action on diatoms strongly influences the coupling of biogenic silica and organic carbon preservation. Low temperature intensified the selective regeneration of organic matter by marine bacteria as the silicon:carbon preservation ratio gradually increased from approximately 1 at 33 degrees C to approximately 6 at -1.8 degrees C. Temperature control of bacteria-mediated selective preservation of silicon versus carbon should help to interpret and model the variable coupling of silicon and carbon sinking fluxes and the spatial patterns of opal accumulation in oceanic systems with different temperature regimes.     

Testosterone induces "splitting" of circadian locomotor activity rhythms in birds

Under the influence of testosterone, the free-running circadian rhythm of locomotor activity of the starling, Sturnus vulgaris, tends to "split" into two components which temporarily run with different circadian frequencies: "splitting" occurred in intact birds whose testes grew, and in castrated birds that were injected with testosterone. Since "splitting" most probably reflects the temporal separation of two (or two groups of) circadian oscillators, these results suggest that testosterone affects the mutual coupling of circadian oscillators controlling locomotor activity.     

Diels-alder in aqueous molecular hosts: unusual regioselectivity and efficient catalysis

Self-assembled, hollow molecular structures are appealing as synthetic hosts for mediating chemical reactions. However, product binding has inhibited catalytic turnover in such systems, and selectivity has rarely approached the levels observed in more structurally elaborate natural enzymes. We found that an aqueous organopalladium cage induces highly unusual regioselectivity in the Diels-Alder coupling of anthracene and phthalimide guests, promoting reaction at a terminal rather than central anthracene ring. Moreover, a similar bowl-shaped host attains efficient catalytic turnover in coupling the same substrates (although with the conventional regiochemistry), most likely because the product geometry inhibits the aromatic stacking interactions that attract the planar reagents to the host.     

Entrainment of a population of synthetic genetic oscillators

Biological clocks are self-sustained oscillators that adjust their phase to the daily environmental cycles in a process known as entrainment. Molecular dissection and mathematical modeling of biological oscillators have progressed quite far, but quantitative insights on the entrainment of clocks are relatively sparse. We simultaneously tracked the phases of hundreds of synthetic genetic oscillators relative to a common external stimulus to map the entrainment regions predicted by a detailed model of the clock. Synthetic oscillators were frequency-locked in wide intervals of the external period and showed higher-order resonance. Computational simulations indicated that natural oscillators may contain a positive-feedback loop to robustly adapt to environmental cycles.     

Regulation of circadian rhythmicity

Daily rhythms in many behavioral, physiological, and biochemical functions are generated by endogenous oscillators that function as internal 24-hour clocks. Under natural conditions, these oscillators are synchronized to the daily environmental cycle of light and darkness. Recent advances in locating circadian pacemakers in the brain and in establishing model systems promise to shed light on the cellular and biochemical mechanisms involved in the generation and regulation of circadian rhythms.     

Epidermal electronics

We report classes of electronic systems that achieve thicknesses, effective elastic moduli, bending stiffnesses, and areal mass densities matched to the epidermis. Unlike traditional wafer-based technologies, laminating such devices onto the skin leads to conformal contact and adequate adhesion based on van der Waals interactions alone, in a manner that is mechanically invisible to the user. We describe systems incorporating electrophysiological, temperature, and strain sensors, as well as transistors, light-emitting diodes, photodetectors, radio frequency inductors, capacitors, oscillators, and rectifying diodes. Solar cells and wireless coils provide options for power supply. We used this type of technology to measure electrical activity produced by the heart, brain, and skeletal muscles and show that the resulting data contain sufficient information for an unusual type of computer game controller.     

Stretchable and foldable silicon integrated circuits

We have developed a simple approach to high-performance, stretchable, and foldable integrated circuits. The systems integrate inorganic electronic materials, including aligned arrays of nanoribbons of single crystalline silicon, with ultrathin plastic and elastomeric substrates. The designs combine multilayer neutral mechanical plane layouts and "wavy" structural configurations in silicon complementary logic gates, ring oscillators, and differential amplifiers. We performed three-dimensional analytical and computational modeling of the mechanics and the electronic behaviors of these integrated circuits. Collectively, the results represent routes to devices, such as personal health monitors and other biomedical devices, that require extreme mechanical deformations during installation/use and electronic properties approaching those of conventional systems built on brittle semiconductor wafers.     

Engineering complex dynamical structures: sequential patterns and desynchronization

We used phase models to describe and tune complex dynamic structures to desired states; weak, nondestructive signals are used to alter interactions among nonlinear rhythmic elements. Experiments on electrochemical reactions on electrode arrays were used to demonstrate the power of mild model-engineered feedback to achieve a desired response. Applications are made to the generation of sequentially visited dynamic cluster patterns similar to reproducible sequences seen in biological systems and to the design of a nonlinear antipacemaker for the destruction of pathological synchronization of a population of interacting oscillators.     

Vibrational modes and the dynamic solvent effect in electron and proton transfer

This article primarily reviews recent work on ultrafast experiments on excited state intramolecular electron and proton transfer, with an emphasis on experiments on chemical systems that have been analyzed theoretically. In particular, those systems that have been quantitatively characterized by static spectroscopy, which provides detailed information about the reaction potential energy surface and about other parameters that are necessary to make a direct comparison to theoretical predictions, are described.     

Periodicity and chaos in coupled nonlinear oscillators

A system of coupled tunnel diode relaxation oscillators shows a variety of complex periodic states as the external voltage is varied. The existence of chaotic or nonperiodic states is more dependent on the nature of the coupling than on the number of degrees of freedom. A simple but accurate numerical model shows many of the phenomena observed experimentally.     

Ultrastrong coupling of the cyclotron transition of a 2D electron gas to a THz metamaterial

Artificial cavity photon resonators with ultrastrong light-matter interactions are attracting interest both in semiconductor and superconducting systems because of the possibility of manipulating the cavity quantum electrodynamic ground state with controllable physical properties. We report here experiments showing ultrastrong light-matter coupling in a terahertz (THz) metamaterial where the cyclotron transition of a high-mobility two-dimensional electron gas (2DEG) is coupled to the photonic modes of an array of electronic split-ring resonators. We observe a normalized coupling ratio, Ω/ω(c) = 0.58, between the vacuum Rabi frequency, ?, and the cyclotron frequency, ω(c). Our system appears to be scalable in frequency and could be brought to the microwave spectral range with the potential of strongly controlling the magnetotransport properties of a high-mobility 2DEG.