TY - CONF AB - For a set of points in Rd, the Euclidean k-means problems consists of finding k centers such that the sum of distances squared from each data point to its closest center is minimized. Coresets are one the main tools developed recently to solve this problem in a big data context. They allow to compress the initial dataset while preserving its structure: running any algorithm on the coreset provides a guarantee almost equivalent to running it on the full data. In this work, we study coresets in a fully-dynamic setting: points are added and deleted with the goal to efficiently maintain a coreset with which a k-means solution can be computed. Based on an algorithm from Henzinger and Kale [ESA'20], we present an efficient and practical implementation of a fully dynamic coreset algorithm, that improves the running time by up to a factor of 20 compared to our non-optimized implementation of the algorithm by Henzinger and Kale, without sacrificing more than 7% on the quality of the k-means solution. AU - Henzinger, Monika H AU - Saulpic, David AU - Sidl, Leonhard ID - 14769 T2 - 2024 Proceedings of the Symposium on Algorithm Engineering and Experiments TI - Experimental evaluation of fully dynamic k-means via coresets ER - TY - JOUR AB - Since the commercialization of brine shrimp (genus Artemia) in the 1950s, this lineage, and in particular the model species Artemia franciscana, has been the subject of extensive research. However, our understanding of the genetic mechanisms underlying various aspects of their reproductive biology, including sex determination, is still lacking. This is partly due to the scarcity of genomic resources for Artemia species and crustaceans in general. Here, we present a chromosome-level genome assembly of A. franciscana (Kellogg 1906), from the Great Salt Lake, United States. The genome is 1 GB, and the majority of the genome (81%) is scaffolded into 21 linkage groups using a previously published high-density linkage map. We performed coverage and FST analyses using male and female genomic and transcriptomic reads to quantify the extent of differentiation between the Z and W chromosomes. Additionally, we quantified the expression levels in male and female heads and gonads and found further evidence for dosage compensation in this species. AU - Bett, Vincent K AU - Macon, Ariana AU - Vicoso, Beatriz AU - Elkrewi, Marwan N ID - 15009 IS - 1 JF - Genome Biology and Evolution TI - Chromosome-level assembly of Artemia franciscana sheds light on sex chromosome differentiation VL - 16 ER - TY - JOUR AB - The impulsive limit (the “sudden approximation”) has been widely employed to describe the interaction between molecules and short, far-off-resonant laser pulses. This approximation assumes that the timescale of the laser-molecule interaction is significantly shorter than the internal rotational period of the molecule, resulting in the rotational motion being instantaneously “frozen” during the interaction. This simplified description of the laser-molecule interaction is incorporated in various theoretical models predicting rotational dynamics of molecules driven by short laser pulses. In this theoretical work, we develop an effective theory for ultrashort laser pulses by examining the full time-evolution operator and solving the time-dependent Schrödinger equation at the operator level. Our findings reveal a critical angular momentum, lcrit, at which the impulsive limit breaks down. In other words, the validity of the sudden approximation depends not only on the pulse duration but also on its intensity, since the latter determines how many angular momentum states are populated. We explore both ultrashort multicycle (Gaussian) pulses and the somewhat less studied half-cycle pulses, which produce distinct effective potentials. We discuss the limitations of the impulsive limit and propose a method that rescales the effective matrix elements, enabling an improved and more accurate description of laser-molecule interactions. AU - Karle, Volker AU - Lemeshko, Mikhail ID - 15004 IS - 2 JF - Physical Review A SN - 2469-9926 TI - Modeling laser pulses as δ kicks: Reevaluating the impulsive limit in molecular rotational dynamics VL - 109 ER - TY - DATA AB - Since the commercialization of brine shrimp (genus Artemia) in the 1950s, this lineage, and in particular the model species Artemia franciscana, has been the subject of extensive research. However, our understanding of the genetic mechanisms underlying various aspects of their reproductive biology, including sex determination, are still lacking. This is partly due to the scarcity of genomic resources for Artemia species and crustaceans in general. Here, we present a chromosome-level genome assembly of Artemia franciscana (Kellogg 1906), from the Great Salt Lake, USA. The genome is 1GB, and the majority of the genome (81%) is scaffolded into 21 linkage groups using a previously published high-density linkage map. We performed coverage and FST analyses using male and female genomic and transcriptomic reads to quantify the extent of differentiation between the Z and W chromosomes. Additionally, we quantified the expression levels in male and female heads and gonads and found further evidence for dosage compensation in this species. AU - Elkrewi, Marwan N ID - 14705 KW - sex chromosome evolution KW - genome assembly KW - dosage compensation TI - Data from "Chromosome-level assembly of Artemia franciscana sheds light on sex-chromosome differentiation" ER - TY - JOUR AB - Magnetic frustration allows to access novel and intriguing properties of magnetic systems and has been explored mainly in planar triangular-like arrays of magnetic ions. In this work, we describe the phosphide Ce6Ni6P17, where the Ce+3 ions accommodate in a body-centered cubic lattice of Ce6 regular octahedra. From measurements of magnetization, specific heat, and resistivity, we determine a rich phase diagram as a function of temperature and magnetic field in which different magnetic phases are found. Besides clear evidence of magnetic frustration is obtained from entropy analysis. At zero field, a second-order antiferromagnetic transition occurs at TN1≈1 K followed by a first-order transition at TN2≈0.45 K. With magnetic field new magnetic phases appear, including a weakly first-order transition which ends in a classical critical point and a third magnetic phase. We also study the exact solution of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg model in an octahedron which allows us a qualitative understanding of the phase diagram and compare with the experimental results. AU - Franco, D. G. AU - Avalos, R. AU - Hafner, D. AU - Modic, Kimberly A AU - Prots, Yu AU - Stockert, O. AU - Hoser, A. AU - Moll, P. J.W. AU - Brando, M. AU - Aligia, A. A. AU - Geibel, C. ID - 15003 IS - 5 JF - Physical Review B SN - 2469-9950 TI - Frustrated magnetism in octahedra-based Ce6 Ni6 P17 VL - 109 ER - TY - JOUR AB - The epitaxial growth of a strained Ge layer, which is a promising candidate for the channel material of a hole spin qubit, has been demonstrated on 300 mm Si wafers using commercially available Si0.3Ge0.7 strain relaxed buffer (SRB) layers. The assessment of the layer and the interface qualities for a buried strained Ge layer embedded in Si0.3Ge0.7 layers is reported. The XRD reciprocal space mapping confirmed that the reduction of the growth temperature enables the 2-dimensional growth of the Ge layer fully strained with respect to the Si0.3Ge0.7. Nevertheless, dislocations at the top and/or bottom interface of the Ge layer were observed by means of electron channeling contrast imaging, suggesting the importance of the careful dislocation assessment. The interface abruptness does not depend on the selection of the precursor gases, but it is strongly influenced by the growth temperature which affects the coverage of the surface H-passivation. The mobility of 2.7 × 105 cm2/Vs is promising, while the low percolation density of 3 × 1010 /cm2 measured with a Hall-bar device at 7 K illustrates the high quality of the heterostructure thanks to the high Si0.3Ge0.7 SRB quality. AU - Shimura, Yosuke AU - Godfrin, Clement AU - Hikavyy, Andriy AU - Li, Roy AU - Aguilera Servin, Juan L AU - Katsaros, Georgios AU - Favia, Paola AU - Han, Han AU - Wan, Danny AU - de Greve, Kristiaan AU - Loo, Roger ID - 15018 IS - 5 JF - Materials Science in Semiconductor Processing KW - Mechanical Engineering KW - Mechanics of Materials KW - Condensed Matter Physics KW - General Materials Science SN - 1369-8001 TI - Compressively strained epitaxial Ge layers for quantum computing applications VL - 174 ER - TY - CONF AB - Pruning large language models (LLMs) from the BERT family has emerged as a standard compression benchmark, and several pruning methods have been proposed for this task. The recent “Sparsity May Cry” (SMC) benchmark put into question the validity of all existing methods, exhibiting a more complex setup where many known pruning methods appear to fail. We revisit the question of accurate BERT-pruning during fine-tuning on downstream datasets, and propose a set of general guidelines for successful pruning, even on the challenging SMC benchmark. First, we perform a cost-vs-benefits analysis of pruning model components, such as the embeddings and the classification head; second, we provide a simple-yet-general way of scaling training, sparsification and learning rate schedules relative to the desired target sparsity; finally, we investigate the importance of proper parametrization for Knowledge Distillation in the context of LLMs. Our simple insights lead to state-of-the-art results, both on classic BERT-pruning benchmarks, as well as on the SMC benchmark, showing that even classic gradual magnitude pruning (GMP) can yield competitive results, with the right approach. AU - Kurtic, Eldar AU - Hoefler, Torsten AU - Alistarh, Dan-Adrian ID - 15011 T2 - Proceedings of Machine Learning Research TI - How to prune your language model: Recovering accuracy on the "Sparsity May Cry" benchmark VL - 234 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Electrostatic correlations between ions dissolved in water are known to impact their transport properties in numerous ways, from conductivity to ion selectivity. The effects of these correlations on the solvent itself remain, however, much less clear. In particular, the addition of salt has been consistently reported to affect the solution’s viscosity, but most modeling attempts fail to reproduce experimental data even at moderate salt concentrations. Here, we use an approach based on stochastic density functional theory, which accurately captures charge fluctuations and correlations. We derive a simple analytical expression for the viscosity correction in concentrated electrolytes, by directly linking it to the liquid’s structure factor. Our prediction compares quantitatively to experimental data at all temperatures and all salt concentrations up to the saturation limit. This universal link between the microscopic structure and viscosity allows us to shed light on the nanoscale dynamics of water and ions under highly concentrated and correlated conditions. AU - Robin, Paul ID - 15024 IS - 6 JF - Journal of Chemical Physics SN - 0021-9606 TI - Correlation-induced viscous dissipation in concentrated electrolytes VL - 160 ER - TY - JOUR AB - We consider quadratic forms of deterministic matrices A evaluated at the random eigenvectors of a large N×N GOE or GUE matrix, or equivalently evaluated at the columns of a Haar-orthogonal or Haar-unitary random matrix. We prove that, as long as the deterministic matrix has rank much smaller than √N, the distributions of the extrema of these quadratic forms are asymptotically the same as if the eigenvectors were independent Gaussians. This reduces the problem to Gaussian computations, which we carry out in several cases to illustrate our result, finding Gumbel or Weibull limiting distributions depending on the signature of A. Our result also naturally applies to the eigenvectors of any invariant ensemble. AU - Erdös, László AU - McKenna, Benjamin ID - 15025 IS - 1B JF - Annals of Applied Probability SN - 1050-5164 TI - Extremal statistics of quadratic forms of GOE/GUE eigenvectors VL - 34 ER - TY - JOUR AB - The GNOM (GN) Guanine nucleotide Exchange Factor for ARF small GTPases (ARF-GEF) is among the best studied trafficking regulators in plants, playing crucial and unique developmental roles in patterning and polarity. The current models place GN at the Golgi apparatus (GA), where it mediates secretion/recycling, and at the plasma membrane (PM) presumably contributing to clathrin-mediated endocytosis (CME). The mechanistic basis of the developmental function of GN, distinct from the other ARF-GEFs including its closest homologue GNOM-LIKE1 (GNL1), remains elusive. Insights from this study largely extend the current notions of GN function. We show that GN, but not GNL1, localizes to the cell periphery at long-lived structures distinct from clathrin-coated pits, while CME and secretion proceed normally in gn knockouts. The functional GN mutant variant GNfewerroots, absent from the GA, suggests that the cell periphery is the major site of GN action responsible for its developmental function. Following inhibition by Brefeldin A, GN, but not GNL1, relocates to the PM likely on exocytic vesicles, suggesting selective molecular associations en route to the cell periphery. A study of GN-GNL1 chimeric ARF-GEFs indicates that all GN domains contribute to the specific GN function in a partially redundant manner. Together, this study offers significant steps toward the elucidation of the mechanism underlying unique cellular and development functions of GNOM. AU - Adamowski, Maciek AU - Matijevic, Ivana AU - Friml, Jiří ID - 15033 JF - eLife KW - General Immunology and Microbiology KW - General Biochemistry KW - Genetics and Molecular Biology KW - General Medicine KW - General Neuroscience SN - 2050-084X TI - Developmental patterning function of GNOM ARF-GEF mediated from the cell periphery VL - 13 ER - TY - JOUR AB - In animals, parasitic infections impose significant fitness costs.1,2,3,4,5,6 Infected animals can alter their feeding behavior to resist infection,7,8,9,10,11,12 but parasites can manipulate animal foraging behavior to their own benefits.13,14,15,16 How nutrition influences host-parasite interactions is not well understood, as studies have mainly focused on the host and less on the parasite.9,12,17,18,19,20,21,22,23 We used the nutritional geometry framework24 to investigate the role of amino acids (AA) and carbohydrates (C) in a host-parasite system: the Argentine ant, Linepithema humile, and the entomopathogenic fungus, Metarhizium brunneum. First, using 18 diets varying in AA:C composition, we established that the fungus performed best on the high-amino-acid diet 1:4. Second, we found that the fungus reached this optimal diet when given various diet pairings, revealing its ability to cope with nutritional challenges. Third, we showed that the optimal fungal diet reduced the lifespan of healthy ants when compared with a high-carbohydrate diet but had no effect on infected ants. Fourth, we revealed that infected ant colonies, given a choice between the optimal fungal diet and a high-carbohydrate diet, chose the optimal fungal diet, whereas healthy colonies avoided it. Lastly, by disentangling fungal infection from host immune response, we demonstrated that infected ants foraged on the optimal fungal diet in response to immune activation and not as a result of parasite manipulation. Therefore, we revealed that infected ant colonies chose a diet that is costly for survival in the long term but beneficial in the short term—a form of collective self-medication. AU - Csata, Eniko AU - Perez-Escudero, Alfonso AU - Laury, Emmanuel AU - Leitner, Hanna AU - Latil, Gerard AU - Heinze, Juerge AU - Simpson, Stephen AU - Cremer, Sylvia AU - Dussutour, Audrey ID - 14479 IS - 4 JF - Current Biology SN - 0960-9822 TI - Fungal infection alters collective nutritional intake of ant colonies VL - 34 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Coupling of orbital motion to a spin degree of freedom gives rise to various transport phenomena in quantum systems that are beyond the standard paradigms of classical physics. Here, we discuss features of spin-orbit dynamics that can be visualized using a classical model with two coupled angular degrees of freedom. Specifically, we demonstrate classical ‘spin’ filtering through our model and show that the interplay between angular degrees of freedom and dissipation can lead to asymmetric ‘spin’ transport. AU - Varshney, Atul AU - Ghazaryan, Areg AU - Volosniev, Artem ID - 15045 JF - Few-Body Systems KW - Atomic and Molecular Physics KW - and Optics SN - 1432-5411 TI - Classical ‘spin’ filtering with two degrees of freedom and dissipation VL - 65 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Atom-based quantum simulators have had many successes in tackling challenging quantum many-body problems, owing to the precise and dynamical control that they provide over the systems' parameters. They are, however, often optimized to address a specific type of problem. Here, we present the design and implementation of a 6Li-based quantum gas platform that provides wide-ranging capabilities and is able to address a variety of quantum many-body problems. Our two-chamber architecture relies on a robust combination of gray molasses and optical transport from a laser-cooling chamber to a glass cell with excellent optical access. There, we first create unitary Fermi superfluids in a three-dimensional axially symmetric harmonic trap and characterize them using in situ thermometry, reaching temperatures below 20 nK. This allows us to enter the deep superfluid regime with samples of extreme diluteness, where the interparticle spacing is sufficiently large for direct single-atom imaging. Second, we generate optical lattice potentials with triangular and honeycomb geometry in which we study diffraction of molecular Bose-Einstein condensates, and show how going beyond the Kapitza-Dirac regime allows us to unambiguously distinguish between the two geometries. With the ability to probe quantum many-body physics in both discrete and continuous space, and its suitability for bulk and single-atom imaging, our setup represents an important step towards achieving a wide-scope quantum simulator. AU - Jin, Shuwei AU - Dai, Kunlun AU - Verstraten, Joris AU - Dixmerias, Maxime AU - Al Hyder, Ragheed AU - Salomon, Christophe AU - Peaudecerf, Bruno AU - de Jongh, Tim AU - Yefsah, Tarik ID - 15053 IS - 1 JF - Physical Review Research KW - General Physics and Astronomy SN - 2643-1564 TI - Multipurpose platform for analog quantum simulation VL - 6 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Embryogenesis results from the coordinated activities of different signaling pathways controlling cell fate specification and morphogenesis. In vertebrate gastrulation, both Nodal and BMP signaling play key roles in germ layer specification and morphogenesis, yet their interplay to coordinate embryo patterning with morphogenesis is still insufficiently understood. Here, we took a reductionist approach using zebrafish embryonic explants to study the coordination of Nodal and BMP signaling for embryo patterning and morphogenesis. We show that Nodal signaling triggers explant elongation by inducing mesendodermal progenitors but also suppressing BMP signaling activity at the site of mesendoderm induction. Consistent with this, ectopic BMP signaling in the mesendoderm blocks cell alignment and oriented mesendoderm intercalations, key processes during explant elongation. Translating these ex vivo observations to the intact embryo showed that, similar to explants, Nodal signaling suppresses the effect of BMP signaling on cell intercalations in the dorsal domain, thus allowing robust embryonic axis elongation. These findings suggest a dual function of Nodal signaling in embryonic axis elongation by both inducing mesendoderm and suppressing BMP effects in the dorsal portion of the mesendoderm. AU - Schauer, Alexandra AU - Pranjic-Ferscha, Kornelija AU - Hauschild, Robert AU - Heisenberg, Carl-Philipp J ID - 15048 IS - 4 JF - Development SN - 0950-1991 TI - Robust axis elongation by Nodal-dependent restriction of BMP signaling VL - 151 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Substrate induces mechanical strain on perovskite devices, which can result in alterations to its lattice dynamics and thermal transport. Herein, we have performed a theoretical investigation on the anharmonic lattice dynamics and thermal property of perovskite Rb2SnBr6 and Cs2SnBr6 under strains using perturbation theory up to the fourth-order terms and the unified thermal transport theory. We demonstrate a pronounced hardening of low-frequency optical phonons as temperature increases, indicating strong lattice anharmonicity and the necessity of adopting temperature-dependent interatomic force constants in the lattice thermal conductivity ( κL) calculations. It is found that the low-lying optical phonon modes of Rb2SnBr6 are extremely soft and their phonon energies are almost strain independent, which ultimately lead to a lower κL and a weaker strain dependence than Cs2SnBr6. We further reveal that the strain dependence of these phonon modes in the A2XB6-type perovskites weakens as their ibrational frequency decreases. This study deepens the understanding of lattice thermal transport in perovskites A2XB6 and provides a perspective on the selection of materials that meet the expected thermal behaviors in practical applications. AU - Cheng, Ruihuan AU - Zeng, Zezhu AU - Wang, Chen AU - Ouyang, Niuchang AU - Chen, Yue ID - 15052 IS - 5 JF - Physical Review B SN - 2469-9950 TI - Impact of strain-insensitive low-frequency phonon modes on lattice thermal transport in AxXB6-type perovskites VL - 109 ER - TY - COMP AU - Hauschild, Robert ID - 14926 TI - Matlab script for analysis of clone dispersal ER - TY - JOUR AB - Tropical precipitation extremes and their changes with surface warming are investigated using global storm resolving simulations and high-resolution observations. The simulations demonstrate that the mesoscale organization of convection, a process that cannot be physically represented by conventional global climate models, is important for the variations of tropical daily accumulated precipitation extremes. In both the simulations and observations, daily precipitation extremes increase in a more organized state, in association with larger, but less frequent, storms. Repeating the simulations for a warmer climate results in a robust increase in monthly-mean daily precipitation extremes. Higher precipitation percentiles have a greater sensitivity to convective organization, which is predicted to increase with warming. Without changes in organization, the strongest daily precipitation extremes over the tropical oceans increase at a rate close to Clausius-Clapeyron (CC) scaling. Thus, in a future warmer state with increased organization, the strongest daily precipitation extremes over oceans increase at a faster rate than CC scaling. AU - Bao, Jiawei AU - Stevens, Bjorn AU - Kluft, Lukas AU - Muller, Caroline J ID - 15047 IS - 8 JF - Science Advances TI - Intensification of daily tropical precipitation extremes from more organized convection VL - 10 ER - TY - JOUR AB - The superior colliculus (SC) in the mammalian midbrain is essential for multisensory integration and is composed of a rich diversity of excitatory and inhibitory neurons and glia. However, the developmental principles directing the generation of SC cell-type diversity are not understood. Here, we pursued systematic cell lineage tracing in silico and in vivo, preserving full spatial information, using genetic mosaic analysis with double markers (MADM)-based clonal analysis with single-cell sequencing (MADM-CloneSeq). The analysis of clonally related cell lineages revealed that radial glial progenitors (RGPs) in SC are exceptionally multipotent. Individual resident RGPs have the capacity to produce all excitatory and inhibitory SC neuron types, even at the stage of terminal division. While individual clonal units show no pre-defined cellular composition, the establishment of appropriate relative proportions of distinct neuronal types occurs in a PTEN-dependent manner. Collectively, our findings provide an inaugural framework at the single-RGP/-cell level of the mammalian SC ontogeny. AU - Cheung, Giselle T AU - Pauler, Florian AU - Koppensteiner, Peter AU - Krausgruber, Thomas AU - Streicher, Carmen AU - Schrammel, Martin AU - Özgen, Natalie Y AU - Ivec, Alexis AU - Bock, Christoph AU - Shigemoto, Ryuichi AU - Hippenmeyer, Simon ID - 12875 IS - 2 JF - Neuron SN - 0896-6273 TI - Multipotent progenitors instruct ontogeny of the superior colliculus VL - 112 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Poxviruses are among the largest double-stranded DNA viruses, with members such as variola virus, monkeypox virus and the vaccination strain vaccinia virus (VACV). Knowledge about the structural proteins that form the viral core has remained sparse. While major core proteins have been annotated via indirect experimental evidence, their structures have remained elusive and they could not be assigned to individual core features. Hence, which proteins constitute which layers of the core, such as the palisade layer and the inner core wall, has remained enigmatic. Here we show, using a multi-modal cryo-electron microscopy (cryo-EM) approach in combination with AlphaFold molecular modeling, that trimers formed by the cleavage product of VACV protein A10 are the key component of the palisade layer. This allows us to place previously obtained descriptions of protein interactions within the core wall into perspective and to provide a detailed model of poxvirus core architecture. Importantly, we show that interactions within A10 trimers are likely generalizable over members of orthopox- and parapoxviruses. AU - Datler, Julia AU - Hansen, Jesse AU - Thader, Andreas AU - Schlögl, Alois AU - Bauer, Lukas W AU - Hodirnau, Victor-Valentin AU - Schur, Florian KM ID - 14979 JF - Nature Structural & Molecular Biology KW - Molecular Biology KW - Structural Biology SN - 1545-9993 TI - Multi-modal cryo-EM reveals trimers of protein A10 to form the palisade layer in poxvirus cores ER - TY - JOUR AB - Contraction and flow of the actin cell cortex have emerged as a common principle by which cells reorganize their cytoplasm and take shape. However, how these cortical flows interact with adjacent cytoplasmic components, changing their form and localization, and how this affects cytoplasmic organization and cell shape remains unclear. Here we show that in ascidian oocytes, the cooperative activities of cortical actomyosin flows and deformation of the adjacent mitochondria-rich myoplasm drive oocyte cytoplasmic reorganization and shape changes following fertilization. We show that vegetal-directed cortical actomyosin flows, established upon oocyte fertilization, lead to both the accumulation of cortical actin at the vegetal pole of the zygote and compression and local buckling of the adjacent elastic solid-like myoplasm layer due to friction forces generated at their interface. Once cortical flows have ceased, the multiple myoplasm buckles resolve into one larger buckle, which again drives the formation of the contraction pole—a protuberance of the zygote’s vegetal pole where maternal mRNAs accumulate. Thus, our findings reveal a mechanism where cortical actomyosin network flows determine cytoplasmic reorganization and cell shape by deforming adjacent cytoplasmic components through friction forces. AU - Caballero Mancebo, Silvia AU - Shinde, Rushikesh AU - Bolger-Munro, Madison AU - Peruzzo, Matilda AU - Szep, Gregory AU - Steccari, Irene AU - Labrousse Arias, David AU - Zheden, Vanessa AU - Merrin, Jack AU - Callan-Jones, Andrew AU - Voituriez, Raphaël AU - Heisenberg, Carl-Philipp J ID - 14846 JF - Nature Physics SN - 1745-2473 TI - Friction forces determine cytoplasmic reorganization and shape changes of ascidian oocytes upon fertilization ER - TY - JOUR AB - Key innovations are fundamental to biological diversification, but their genetic basis is poorly understood. A recent transition from egg-laying to live-bearing in marine snails (Littorina spp.) provides the opportunity to study the genetic architecture of an innovation that has evolved repeatedly across animals. Individuals do not cluster by reproductive mode in a genome-wide phylogeny, but local genealogical analysis revealed numerous small genomic regions where all live-bearers carry the same core haplotype. Candidate regions show evidence for live-bearer–specific positive selection and are enriched for genes that are differentially expressed between egg-laying and live-bearing reproductive systems. Ages of selective sweeps suggest that live-bearer–specific alleles accumulated over more than 200,000 generations. Our results suggest that new functions evolve through the recruitment of many alleles rather than in a single evolutionary step. AU - Stankowski, Sean AU - Zagrodzka, Zuzanna B. AU - Garlovsky, Martin D. AU - Pal, Arka AU - Shipilina, Daria AU - Garcia Castillo, Diego Fernando AU - Lifchitz, Hila AU - Le Moan, Alan AU - Leder, Erica AU - Reeve, James AU - Johannesson, Kerstin AU - Westram, Anja M AU - Butlin, Roger K. ID - 14796 IS - 6678 JF - Science TI - The genetic basis of a recent transition to live-bearing in marine snails VL - 383 ER - TY - THES AB - This thesis consists of four distinct pieces of work within theoretical biology, with two themes in common: the concept of optimization in biological systems, and the use of information-theoretic tools to quantify biological stochasticity and statistical uncertainty. Chapter 2 develops a statistical framework for studying biological systems which we believe to be optimized for a particular utility function, such as retinal neurons conveying information about visual stimuli. We formalize such beliefs as maximum-entropy Bayesian priors, constrained by the expected utility. We explore how such priors aid inference of system parameters with limited data and enable optimality hypothesis testing: is the utility higher than by chance? Chapter 3 examines the ultimate biological optimization process: evolution by natural selection. As some individuals survive and reproduce more successfully than others, populations evolve towards fitter genotypes and phenotypes. We formalize this as accumulation of genetic information, and use population genetics theory to study how much such information can be accumulated per generation and maintained in the face of random mutation and genetic drift. We identify the population size and fitness variance as the key quantities that control information accumulation and maintenance. Chapter 4 reuses the concept of genetic information from Chapter 3, but from a different perspective: we ask how much genetic information organisms actually need, in particular in the context of gene regulation. For example, how much information is needed to bind transcription factors at correct locations within the genome? Population genetics provides us with a refined answer: with an increasing population size, populations achieve higher fitness by maintaining more genetic information. Moreover, regulatory parameters experience selection pressure to optimize the fitness-information trade-off, i.e. minimize the information needed for a given fitness. This provides an evolutionary derivation of the optimization priors introduced in Chapter 2. Chapter 5 proves an upper bound on mutual information between a signal and a communication channel output (such as neural activity). Mutual information is an important utility measure for biological systems, but its practical use can be difficult due to the large dimensionality of many biological channels. Sometimes, a lower bound on mutual information is computed by replacing the high-dimensional channel outputs with decodes (signal estimates). Our result provides a corresponding upper bound, provided that the decodes are the maximum posterior estimates of the signal. AU - Hledik, Michal ID - 15020 KW - Theoretical biology KW - Optimality KW - Evolution KW - Information SN - 2663 - 337X TI - Genetic information and biological optimization ER - TY - GEN AB - Eva Benkova received a PhD in Biophysics at the Institute of Biophysics of the Czech Academy of Sciences in 1998. After working as a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute in Cologne and the Center for Plant Molecular Biology (ZMBP) in Tübingen, she became a group leader at the Plant Systems Biology Department of the Vlaams Instituut voor Biotechnologie (VIB) in Gent. In 2012, she transitioned to an Assistant Professor position at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (ISTA) where she was later promoted to Professor. Since 2021, she has served as the Dean of the ISTA Graduate School. As a plant developmental biologist, she focuses on unraveling the molecular mechanisms and principles that underlie hormonal interactions in plants. In her current work, she explores the intricate connections between hormones and regulatory pathways that mediate the perception of environmental stimuli, including abiotic stress and nitrate availability. AU - Benková, Eva ID - 14842 IS - 1 T2 - Current Biology TI - Eva Benkova VL - 34 ER - TY - JOUR AB - GABAB receptor (GBR) activation inhibits neurotransmitter release in axon terminals in the brain, except in medial habenula (MHb) terminals, which show robust potentiation. However, mechanisms underlying this enigmatic potentiation remain elusive. Here, we report that GBR activation on MHb terminals induces an activity-dependent transition from a facilitating, tonic to a depressing, phasic neurotransmitter release mode. This transition is accompanied by a 4.1-fold increase in readily releasable vesicle pool (RRP) size and a 3.5-fold increase of docked synaptic vesicles (SVs) at the presynaptic active zone (AZ). Strikingly, the depressing phasic release exhibits looser coupling distance than the tonic release. Furthermore, the tonic and phasic release are selectively affected by deletion of synaptoporin (SPO) and Ca 2+ -dependent activator protein for secretion 2 (CAPS2), respectively. SPO modulates augmentation, the short-term plasticity associated with tonic release, and CAPS2 retains the increased RRP for initial responses in phasic response trains. The cytosolic protein CAPS2 showed a SV-associated distribution similar to the vesicular transmembrane protein SPO, and they were colocalized in the same terminals. We developed the “Flash and Freeze-fracture” method, and revealed the release of SPO-associated vesicles in both tonic and phasic modes and activity-dependent recruitment of CAPS2 to the AZ during phasic release, which lasted several minutes. Overall, these results indicate that GBR activation translocates CAPS2 to the AZ along with the fusion of CAPS2-associated SVs, contributing to persistency of the RRP increase. Thus, we identified structural and molecular mechanisms underlying tonic and phasic neurotransmitter release and their transition by GBR activation in MHb terminals. AU - Koppensteiner, Peter AU - Bhandari, Pradeep AU - Önal, Hüseyin C AU - Borges Merjane, Carolina AU - Le Monnier, Elodie AU - Roy, Utsa AU - Nakamura, Yukihiro AU - Sadakata, Tetsushi AU - Sanbo, Makoto AU - Hirabayashi, Masumi AU - Rhee, JeongSeop AU - Brose, Nils AU - Jonas, Peter M AU - Shigemoto, Ryuichi ID - 15084 IS - 8 JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences SN - 0027-8424 TI - GABAB receptors induce phasic release from medial habenula terminals through activity-dependent recruitment of release-ready vesicles VL - 121 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Direct reciprocity is a powerful mechanism for cooperation in social dilemmas. The very logic of reciprocity, however, seems to require that individuals are symmetric, and that everyone has the same means to influence each others’ payoffs. Yet in many applications, individuals are asymmetric. Herein, we study the effect of asymmetry in linear public good games. Individuals may differ in their endowments (their ability to contribute to a public good) and in their productivities (how effective their contributions are). Given the individuals’ productivities, we ask which allocation of endowments is optimal for cooperation. To this end, we consider two notions of optimality. The first notion focuses on the resilience of cooperation. The respective endowment distribution ensures that full cooperation is feasible even under the most adverse conditions. The second notion focuses on efficiency. The corresponding endowment distribution maximizes group welfare. Using analytical methods, we fully characterize these two endowment distributions. This analysis reveals that both optimality notions favor some endowment inequality: More productive players ought to get higher endowments. Yet the two notions disagree on how unequal endowments are supposed to be. A focus on resilience results in less inequality. With additional simulations, we show that the optimal endowment allocation needs to account for both the resilience and the efficiency of cooperation. AU - Hübner, Valentin AU - Staab, Manuel AU - Hilbe, Christian AU - Chatterjee, Krishnendu AU - Kleshnina, Maria ID - 15083 IS - 10 JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences SN - 0027-8424 TI - Efficiency and resilience of cooperation in asymmetric social dilemmas VL - 121 ER - TY - GEN AB - in the research article "Efficiency and resilience of cooperation in asymmetric social dilemmas" (by Valentin Hübner, Manuel Staab, Christian Hilbe, Krishnendu Chatterjee, and Maria Kleshnina). We used different implementations for the case of two and three players, both described below. AU - Hübner, Valentin AU - Kleshnina, Maria ID - 15108 TI - Computer code for "Efficiency and resilience of cooperation in asymmetric social dilemmas" ER - TY - JOUR AB - Global storm-resolving models (GSRMs) use strongly refined horizontal grids compared with the climate models typically used in the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project (CMIP) but employ comparable vertical grid spacings. Here, we study how changes in the vertical grid spacing and adjustments to the integration time step affect the basic climate quantities simulated by the ICON-Sapphire atmospheric GSRM. Simulations are performed over a 45 d period for five different vertical grids with between 55 and 540 vertical layers and maximum tropospheric vertical grid spacings of between 800 and 50 m, respectively. The effects of changes in the vertical grid spacing are compared with the effects of reducing the horizontal grid spacing from 5 to 2.5 km. For most of the quantities considered, halving the vertical grid spacing has a smaller effect than halving the horizontal grid spacing, but it is not negligible. Each halving of the vertical grid spacing, along with the necessary reductions in time step length, increases cloud liquid water by about 7 %, compared with an approximate 16 % decrease for halving the horizontal grid spacing. The effect is due to both the vertical grid refinement and the time step reduction. There is no tendency toward convergence in the range of grid spacings tested here. The cloud ice amount also increases with a refinement in the vertical grid, but it is hardly affected by the time step length and does show a tendency to converge. While the effect on shortwave radiation is globally dominated by the altered reflection due to the change in the cloud liquid water content, the effect on longwave radiation is more difficult to interpret because changes in the cloud ice concentration and cloud fraction are anticorrelated in some regions. The simulations show that using a maximum tropospheric vertical grid spacing larger than 400 m would increase the truncation error strongly. Computing time investments in a further vertical grid refinement can affect the truncation errors of GSRMs similarly to comparable investments in horizontal refinement, because halving the vertical grid spacing is generally cheaper than halving the horizontal grid spacing. However, convergence of boundary layer cloud properties cannot be expected, even for the smallest maximum tropospheric grid spacing of 50 m used in this study. AU - Schmidt, Hauke AU - Rast, Sebastian AU - Bao, Jiawei AU - Cassim, Amrit AU - Fang, Shih Wei AU - Jimenez-De La Cuesta, Diego AU - Keil, Paul AU - Kluft, Lukas AU - Kroll, Clarissa AU - Lang, Theresa AU - Niemeier, Ulrike AU - Schneidereit, Andrea AU - Williams, Andrew I.L. AU - Stevens, Bjorn ID - 15097 IS - 4 JF - Geoscientific Model Development SN - 1991-959X TI - Effects of vertical grid spacing on the climate simulated in the ICON-Sapphire global storm-resolving model VL - 17 ER - TY - JOUR AB - In this note, we prove a formula for the cancellation exponent kv,n between division polynomials ψn and ϕn associated with a sequence {nP}n∈N of points on an elliptic curve E defined over a discrete valuation field K. The formula greatly generalizes the previously known special cases and treats also the case of non-standard Kodaira types for non-perfect residue fields. AU - Naskręcki, Bartosz AU - Verzobio, Matteo ID - 12311 JF - Proceedings of the Royal Society of Edinburgh Section A: Mathematics KW - Elliptic curves KW - Néron models KW - division polynomials KW - height functions KW - discrete valuation rings SN - 0308-2105 TI - Common valuations of division polynomials ER - TY - JOUR AB - Speciation is a key evolutionary process that is not yet fully understood. Combining population genomic and ecological data from multiple diverging pairs of marine snails (Littorina) supports the search for speciation mechanisms. Placing pairs on a one-dimensional speciation continuum, from undifferentiated populations to species, obscured the complexity of speciation. Adding multiple axes helped to describe either speciation routes or reproductive isolation in the snails. Divergent ecological selection repeatedly generated barriers between ecotypes, but appeared less important in completing speciation while genetic incompatibilities played a key role. Chromosomal inversions contributed to genomic barriers, but with variable impact. A multidimensional (hypercube) approach supported framing of questions and identification of knowledge gaps and can be useful to understand speciation in many other systems. AU - Johannesson, Kerstin AU - Faria, Rui AU - Le Moan, Alan AU - Rafajlović, Marina AU - Westram, Anja M AU - Butlin, Roger K. AU - Stankowski, Sean ID - 15099 JF - Trends in Genetics SN - 0168-9525 TI - Diverse pathways to speciation revealed by marine snails ER - TY - JOUR AB - The paper is devoted to the analysis of the global well-posedness and the interior regularity of the 2D Navier–Stokes equations with inhomogeneous stochastic boundary conditions. The noise, white in time and coloured in space, can be interpreted as the physical law describing the driving mechanism on the atmosphere–ocean interface, i.e. as a balance of the shear stress of the ocean and the horizontal wind force. AU - Agresti, Antonio AU - Luongo, Eliseo ID - 15098 JF - Mathematische Annalen SN - 0025-5831 TI - Global well-posedness and interior regularity of 2D Navier-Stokes equations with stochastic boundary conditions ER - TY - JOUR AB - The coupling between Ca2+ channels and release sensors is a key factor defining the signaling properties of a synapse. However, the coupling nanotopography at many synapses remains unknown, and it is unclear how it changes during development. To address these questions, we examined coupling at the cerebellar inhibitory basket cell (BC)-Purkinje cell (PC) synapse. Biophysical analysis of transmission by paired recording and intracellular pipette perfusion revealed that the effects of exogenous Ca2+ chelators decreased during development, despite constant reliance of release on P/Q-type Ca2+ channels. Structural analysis by freeze-fracture replica labeling (FRL) and transmission electron microscopy (EM) indicated that presynaptic P/Q-type Ca2+ channels formed nanoclusters throughout development, whereas docked vesicles were only clustered at later developmental stages. Modeling suggested a developmental transformation from a more random to a more clustered coupling nanotopography. Thus, presynaptic signaling developmentally approaches a point-to-point configuration, optimizing speed, reliability, and energy efficiency of synaptic transmission. AU - Chen, JingJing AU - Kaufmann, Walter AU - Chen, Chong AU - Arai, Itaru AU - Kim, Olena AU - Shigemoto, Ryuichi AU - Jonas, Peter M ID - 14843 JF - Neuron SN - 0896-6273 TI - Developmental transformation of Ca2+ channel-vesicle nanotopography at a central GABAergic synapse ER - TY - THES AU - Chen, JingJing ID - 15101 SN - 2663 - 337X TI - Developmental transformation of nanodomain coupling between Ca2+ channels and release sensors at a central GABAergic synapse ER - TY - JOUR AB - Quantum computers are increasing in size and quality but are still very noisy. Error mitigation extends the size of the quantum circuits that noisy devices can meaningfully execute. However, state-of-the-art error mitigation methods are hard to implement and the limited qubit connectivity in superconducting qubit devices restricts most applications to the hardware's native topology. Here we show a quantum approximate optimization algorithm (QAOA) on nonplanar random regular graphs with up to 40 nodes enabled by a machine learning-based error mitigation. We use a swap network with careful decision-variable-to-qubit mapping and a feed-forward neural network to optimize a depth-two QAOA on up to 40 qubits. We observe a meaningful parameter optimization for the largest graph which requires running quantum circuits with 958 two-qubit gates. Our paper emphasizes the need to mitigate samples, and not only expectation values, in quantum approximate optimization. These results are a step towards executing quantum approximate optimization at a scale that is not classically simulable. Reaching such system sizes is key to properly understanding the true potential of heuristic algorithms like QAOA. AU - Sack, Stefan AU - Egger, Daniel J. ID - 15122 IS - 1 JF - Physical Review Research SN - 2643-1564 TI - Large-scale quantum approximate optimization on nonplanar graphs with machine learning noise mitigation VL - 6 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Cell division in all domains of life requires the orchestration of many proteins, but in Archaea most of the machinery remains poorly characterized. Here we investigate the FtsZ-based cell division mechanism in Haloferax volcanii and find proteins containing photosynthetic reaction centre (PRC) barrel domains that play an essential role in archaeal cell division. We rename these proteins cell division protein B 1 (CdpB1) and CdpB2. Depletions and deletions in their respective genes cause severe cell division defects, generating drastically enlarged cells. Fluorescence microscopy of tagged FtsZ1, FtsZ2 and SepF in CdpB1 and CdpB2 mutant strains revealed an unusually disordered divisome that is not organized into a distinct ring-like structure. Biochemical analysis shows that SepF forms a tripartite complex with CdpB1/2 and crystal structures suggest that these two proteins might form filaments, possibly aligning SepF and the FtsZ2 ring during cell division. Overall our results indicate that PRC-domain proteins play essential roles in FtsZ-based cell division in Archaea. AU - Nußbaum, Phillip AU - Kureisaite-Ciziene, Danguole AU - Bellini, Dom AU - Van Der Does, Chris AU - Kojic, Marko AU - Taib, Najwa AU - Yeates, Anna AU - Tourte, Maxime AU - Gribaldo, Simonetta AU - Loose, Martin AU - Löwe, Jan AU - Albers, Sonja Verena ID - 15118 IS - 3 JF - Nature Microbiology TI - Proteins containing photosynthetic reaction centre domains modulate FtsZ-based archaeal cell division VL - 9 ER - TY - JOUR AB - In this paper we consider an SPDE where the leading term is a second order operator with periodic boundary conditions, coefficients which are measurable in (t,ω) , and Hölder continuous in space. Assuming stochastic parabolicity conditions, we prove Lp((0,T)×Ω,tκdt;Hσ,q(Td)) -estimates. The main novelty is that we do not require p=q . Moreover, we allow arbitrary σ∈R and weights in time. Such mixed regularity estimates play a crucial role in applications to nonlinear SPDEs which is clear from our previous work. To prove our main results we develop a general perturbation theory for SPDEs. Moreover, we prove a new result on pointwise multiplication in spaces with fractional smoothness. AU - Agresti, Antonio AU - Veraar, Mark ID - 15119 IS - 1 JF - Annales de l'institut Henri Poincare Probability and Statistics SN - 0246-0203 TI - Stochastic maximal Lp(Lq)-regularity for second order systems with periodic boundary conditions VL - 60 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Entire chromosomes are typically only transmitted vertically from one generation to the next. The horizontal transfer of such chromosomes has long been considered improbable, yet gained recent support in several pathogenic fungi where it may affect the fitness or host specificity. To date, it is unknown how these transfers occur, how common they are and whether they can occur between different species. In this study, we show multiple independent instances of horizontal transfers of the same accessory chromosome between two distinct strains of the asexual entomopathogenic fungusMetarhizium robertsiiduring experimental co-infection of its insect host, the Argentine ant. Notably, only the one chromosome – but no other – was transferred from the donor to the recipient strain. The recipient strain, now harboring the accessory chromosome, exhibited a competitive advantage under certain host conditions. By phylogenetic analysis we further demonstrate that the same accessory chromosome was horizontally transferred in a natural environment betweenM. robertsiiand another congeneric insect pathogen,M. guizhouense. Hence horizontal chromosome transfer is not limited to the observed frequent events within species during experimental infections but also occurs naturally across species. The transferred accessory chromosome contains genes that might be involved in its preferential horizontal transfer, encoding putative histones and histone-modifying enzymes, but also putative virulence factors that may support its establishment. Our study reveals that both intra- and interspecies horizontal transfer of entire chromosomes is more frequent than previously assumed, likely representing a not uncommon mechanism for gene exchange.Significance StatementThe enormous success of bacterial pathogens has been attributed to their ability to exchange genetic material between one another. Similarly, in eukaryotes, horizontal transfer of genetic material allowed the spread of virulence factors across species. The horizontal transfer of whole chromosomes could be an important pathway for such exchange of genetic material, but little is known about the origin of transferable chromosomes and how frequently they are exchanged. Here, we show that the transfer of accessory chromosomes - chromosomes that are non-essential but may provide fitness benefits - is common during fungal co-infections and is even possible between distant pathogenic species, highlighting the importance of horizontal gene transfer via chromosome transfer also for the evolution and function of eukaryotic pathogens. AU - Habig, Michael AU - Grasse, Anna V AU - Müller, Judith AU - Stukenbrock, Eva H. AU - Leitner, Hanna AU - Cremer, Sylvia ID - 14478 IS - 11 JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America SN - 0027-8424 TI - Frequent horizontal chromosome transfer between asexual fungal insect pathogens VL - 121 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Given a fixed finite metric space (V,μ), the {\em minimum 0-extension problem}, denoted as 0-Ext[μ], is equivalent to the following optimization problem: minimize function of the form minx∈Vn∑ifi(xi)+∑ijcijμ(xi,xj) where cij,cvi are given nonnegative costs and fi:V→R are functions given by fi(xi)=∑v∈Vcviμ(xi,v). The computational complexity of 0-Ext[μ] has been recently established by Karzanov and by Hirai: if metric μ is {\em orientable modular} then 0-Ext[μ] can be solved in polynomial time, otherwise 0-Ext[μ] is NP-hard. To prove the tractability part, Hirai developed a theory of discrete convex functions on orientable modular graphs generalizing several known classes of functions in discrete convex analysis, such as L♮-convex functions. We consider a more general version of the problem in which unary functions fi(xi) can additionally have terms of the form cuv;iμ(xi,{u,v}) for {u,v}∈F, where set F⊆(V2) is fixed. We extend the complexity classification above by providing an explicit condition on (μ,F) for the problem to be tractable. In order to prove the tractability part, we generalize Hirai's theory and define a larger class of discrete convex functions. It covers, in particular, another well-known class of functions, namely submodular functions on an integer lattice. Finally, we improve the complexity of Hirai's algorithm for solving 0-Ext on orientable modular graphs. AU - Dvorak, Martin AU - Kolmogorov, Vladimir ID - 10045 JF - Mathematical Programming KW - minimum 0-extension problem KW - metric labeling problem KW - discrete metric spaces KW - metric extensions KW - computational complexity KW - valued constraint satisfaction problems KW - discrete convex analysis KW - L-convex functions SN - 0025-5610 TI - Generalized minimum 0-extension problem and discrete convexity ER - TY - JOUR AB - We present an auction algorithm using multiplicative instead of constant weight updates to compute a (1-E)-approximate maximum weight matching (MWM) in a bipartite graph with n vertices and m edges in time 0(mE-1), beating the running time of the fastest known approximation algorithm of Duan and Pettie [JACM ’14] that runs in 0(mE-1 log E-1). Our algorithm is very simple and it can be extended to give a dynamic data structure that maintains a (1-E)-approximate maximum weight matching under (1) one-sided vertex deletions (with incident edges) and (2) one-sided vertex insertions (with incident edges sorted by weight) to the other side. The total time time used is 0(mE-1), where m is the sum of the number of initially existing and inserted edges. AU - Zheng, Da Wei AU - Henzinger, Monika H ID - 15121 JF - Mathematical Programming SN - 0025-5610 TI - Multiplicative auction algorithm for approximate maximum weight bipartite matching ER - TY - JOUR AB - As a key liquid organic hydrogen carrier, investigating the decomposition of formic acid (HCOOH) on the Pd (1 1 1) transition metal surface is imperative for harnessing hydrogen energy. Despite a multitude of studies, the major mechanisms and key intermediates involved in the dehydrogenation process of formic acid remain a great topic of debate due to ambiguous adsorbate interactions. In this research, we develop an advanced microkinetic model based on first-principles calculations, accounting for adsorbate–adsorbate interactions. Our study unveils a comprehensive mechanism for the Pd (1 1 1) surface, highlighting the significance of coverage effects in formic acid dehydrogenation. Our findings unequivocally demonstrate that H coverage on the Pd (1 1 1) surface renders formic acid more susceptible to decompose into H2 and CO2 through COOH intermediates. Consistent with experimental results, the selectivity of H2 in the decomposition of formic acid on the Pd (1 1 1) surface approaches 100 %. Considering the influence of H coverage, our kinetic analysis aligns perfectly with experimental values at a temperature of 373 K. AU - Yao, Zihao AU - Liu, Xu AU - Bunting, Rhys AU - Wang, Jianguo ID - 15114 JF - Chemical Engineering Science SN - 0009-2509 TI - Unravelling the reaction mechanism for H2 production via formic acid decomposition over Pd: Coverage-dependent microkinetic modeling VL - 291 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Water is known to play an important role in collagen self-assembly, but it is still largely unclear how water–collagen interactions influence the assembly process and determine the fibril network properties. Here, we use the H2O/D2O isotope effect on the hydrogen-bond strength in water to investigate the role of hydration in collagen self-assembly. We dissolve collagen in H2O and D2O and compare the growth kinetics and the structure of the collagen assemblies formed in these water isotopomers. Surprisingly, collagen assembly occurs ten times faster in D2O than in H2O, and collagen in D2O self-assembles into much thinner fibrils, that form a more inhomogeneous and softer network, with a fourfold reduction in elastic modulus when compared to H2O. Combining spectroscopic measurements with atomistic simulations, we show that collagen in D2O is less hydrated than in H2O. This partial dehydration lowers the enthalpic penalty for water removal and reorganization at the collagen–water interface, increasing the self-assembly rate and the number of nucleation centers, leading to thinner fibrils and a softer network. Coarse-grained simulations show that the acceleration in the initial nucleation rate can be reproduced by the enhancement of electrostatic interactions. These results show that water acts as a mediator between collagen monomers, by modulating their interactions so as to optimize the assembly process and, thus, the final network properties. We believe that isotopically modulating the hydration of proteins can be a valuable method to investigate the role of water in protein structural dynamics and protein self-assembly. AU - Giubertoni, Giulia AU - Feng, Liru AU - Klein, Kevin AU - Giannetti, Guido AU - Rutten, Luco AU - Choi, Yeji AU - Van Der Net, Anouk AU - Castro-Linares, Gerard AU - Caporaletti, Federico AU - Micha, Dimitra AU - Hunger, Johannes AU - Deblais, Antoine AU - Bonn, Daniel AU - Sommerdijk, Nico AU - Šarić, Anđela AU - Ilie, Ioana M. AU - Koenderink, Gijsje H. AU - Woutersen, Sander ID - 15116 IS - 11 JF - Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America SN - 0027-8424 TI - Elucidating the role of water in collagen self-assembly by isotopically modulating collagen hydration VL - 121 ER - TY - GEN AB - This zip file contains data, and analysis for the paper "Elucidating the role of water in collagen self-assembly by isotopically modulating collagen hydration". AU - Giubertoni, G. AU - Woutersen, S. ID - 15126 TI - Dataset Collagen Self Assembly in H2O and D2O ER - TY - JOUR AB - The hippocampal mossy fiber synapse, formed between axons of dentate gyrus granule cells and dendrites of CA3 pyramidal neurons, is a key synapse in the trisynaptic circuitry of the hippocampus. Because of its comparatively large size, this synapse is accessible to direct presynaptic recording, allowing a rigorous investigation of the biophysical mechanisms of synaptic transmission and plasticity. Furthermore, because of its placement in the very center of the hippocampal memory circuit, this synapse seems to be critically involved in several higher network functions, such as learning, memory, pattern separation, and pattern completion. Recent work based on new technologies in both nanoanatomy and nanophysiology, including presynaptic patch-clamp recording, paired recording, super-resolution light microscopy, and freeze-fracture and “flash-and-freeze” electron microscopy, has provided new insights into the structure, biophysics, and network function of this intriguing synapse. This brings us one step closer to answering a fundamental question in neuroscience: how basic synaptic properties shape higher network computations. AU - Vandael, David H AU - Jonas, Peter M ID - 15117 IS - 6687 JF - Science TI - Structure, biophysics, and circuit function of a "giant" cortical presynaptic terminal VL - 383 ER - TY - THES AB - Point sets, geometric networks, and arrangements of hyperplanes are fundamental objects in discrete geometry that have captivated mathematicians for centuries, if not millennia. This thesis seeks to cast new light on these structures by illustrating specific instances where a topological perspective, specifically through discrete Morse theory and persistent homology, provides valuable insights. At first glance, the topology of these geometric objects might seem uneventful: point sets essentially lack of topology, arrangements of hyperplanes are a decomposition of Rd, which is a contractible space, and the topology of a network primarily involves the enumeration of connected components and cycles within the network. However, beneath this apparent simplicity, there lies an array of intriguing structures, a small subset of which will be uncovered in this thesis. Focused on three case studies, each addressing one of the mentioned objects, this work will showcase connections that intertwine topology with diverse fields such as combinatorial geometry, algorithms and data structures, and emerging applications like spatial biology. AU - Cultrera di Montesano, Sebastiano ID - 15094 SN - 2663 - 337X TI - Persistence and Morse theory for discrete geometric structures ER - TY - CONF AB - We present a dynamic data structure for maintaining the persistent homology of a time series of real numbers. The data structure supports local operations, including the insertion and deletion of an item and the cutting and concatenating of lists, each in time O(log n + k), in which n counts the critical items and k the changes in the augmented persistence diagram. To achieve this, we design a tailor-made tree structure with an unconventional representation, referred to as banana tree, which may be useful in its own right. AU - Cultrera di Montesano, Sebastiano AU - Edelsbrunner, Herbert AU - Henzinger, Monika H AU - Ost, Lara ED - Woodruff, David P. ID - 15093 T2 - Proceedings of the 2024 Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithms (SODA) TI - Dynamically maintaining the persistent homology of time series ER - TY - GEN AB - Motivated by applications in the medical sciences, we study finite chromatic sets in Euclidean space from a topological perspective. Based on the persistent homology for images, kernels and cokernels, we design provably stable homological quantifiers that describe the geometric micro- and macro-structure of how the color classes mingle. These can be efficiently computed using chromatic variants of Delaunay and alpha complexes, and code that does these computations is provided. AU - Cultrera di Montesano, Sebastiano AU - Draganov, Ondrej AU - Edelsbrunner, Herbert AU - Saghafian, Morteza ID - 15091 T2 - arXiv TI - Chromatic alpha complexes ER - TY - JOUR AB - The brain’s functionality is developed and maintained through synaptic plasticity. As synapses undergo plasticity, they also affect each other. The nature of such ‘co-dependency’ is difficult to disentangle experimentally, because multiple synapses must be monitored simultaneously. To help understand the experimentally observed phenomena, we introduce a framework that formalizes synaptic co-dependency between different connection types. The resulting model explains how inhibition can gate excitatory plasticity while neighboring excitatory–excitatory interactions determine the strength of long-term potentiation. Furthermore, we show how the interplay between excitatory and inhibitory synapses can account for the quick rise and long-term stability of a variety of synaptic weight profiles, such as orientation tuning and dendritic clustering of co-active synapses. In recurrent neuronal networks, co-dependent plasticity produces rich and stable motor cortex-like dynamics with high input sensitivity. Our results suggest an essential role for the neighborly synaptic interaction during learning, connecting micro-level physiology with network-wide phenomena. AU - Agnes, Everton J. AU - Vogels, Tim P ID - 15171 JF - Nature Neuroscience SN - 1097-6256 TI - Co-dependent excitatory and inhibitory plasticity accounts for quick, stable and long-lasting memories in biological networks ER - TY - JOUR AB - We propose a novel approach to concentration for non-independent random variables. The main idea is to “pretend” that the random variables are independent and pay a multiplicative price measuring how far they are from actually being independent. This price is encapsulated in the Hellinger integral between the joint and the product of the marginals, which is then upper bounded leveraging tensorisation properties. Our bounds represent a natural generalisation of concentration inequalities in the presence of dependence: we recover exactly the classical bounds (McDiarmid’s inequality) when the random variables are independent. Furthermore, in a “large deviations” regime, we obtain the same decay in the probability as for the independent case, even when the random variables display non-trivial dependencies. To show this, we consider a number of applications of interest. First, we provide a bound for Markov chains with finite state space. Then, we consider the Simple Symmetric Random Walk, which is a non-contracting Markov chain, and a non-Markovian setting in which the stochastic process depends on its entire past. To conclude, we propose an application to Markov Chain Monte Carlo methods, where our approach leads to an improved lower bound on the minimum burn-in period required to reach a certain accuracy. In all of these settings, we provide a regime of parameters in which our bound fares better than what the state of the art can provide. AU - Esposito, Amedeo Roberto AU - Mondelli, Marco ID - 15172 JF - IEEE Transactions on Information Theory SN - 0018-9448 TI - Concentration without independence via information measures ER - TY - JOUR AB - The James Webb Space Telescope is revealing a new population of dust-reddened broad-line active galactic nuclei (AGN) at redshifts z ≳ 5. Here we present deep NIRSpec/Prism spectroscopy from the Cycle 1 Treasury program Ultradeep NIRSpec and NIRCam ObserVations before the Epoch of Reionization (UNCOVER) of 15 AGN candidates selected to be compact, with red continua in the rest-frame optical but with blue slopes in the UV. From NIRCam photometry alone, they could have been dominated by dusty star formation or an AGN. Here we show that the majority of the compact red sources in UNCOVER are dust-reddened AGN: 60% show definitive evidence for broad-line Hα with a FWHM > 2000 km s −1, 20% of the current data are inconclusive, and 20% are brown dwarf stars. We propose an updated photometric criterion to select red z > 5 AGN that excludes brown dwarfs and is expected to yield >80% AGN. Remarkably, among all zphot > 5 galaxies with F277W – F444W > 1 in UNCOVER at least 33% are AGN regardless of compactness, climbing to at least 80% AGN for sources with F277W – F444W > 1.6. The confirmed AGN have black hole masses of 107–109M⊙. While their UV luminosities (−16 > MUV > −20 AB mag) are low compared to UV-selected AGN at these epochs, consistent with percent-level scattered AGN light or low levels of unobscured star formation, the inferred bolometric luminosities are typical of 107–109M⊙ black holes radiating at ∼10%–40% the Eddington limit. The number densities are surprisingly high at ∼10−5 Mpc−3 mag−1, 100 times more common than the faintest UV-selected quasars, while accounting for ∼1% of the UV-selected galaxies. While their UV faintness suggests they may not contribute strongly to reionization, their ubiquity poses challenges to models of black hole growth. AU - Greene, Jenny E. AU - Labbe, Ivo AU - Goulding, Andy D. AU - Furtak, Lukas J. AU - Chemerynska, Iryna AU - Kokorev, Vasily AU - Dayal, Pratika AU - Volonteri, Marta AU - Williams, Christina C. AU - Wang, Bingjie AU - Setton, David J. AU - Burgasser, Adam J. AU - Bezanson, Rachel AU - Atek, Hakim AU - Brammer, Gabriel AU - Cutler, Sam E. AU - Feldmann, Robert AU - Fujimoto, Seiji AU - Glazebrook, Karl AU - De Graaff, Anna AU - Khullar, Gourav AU - Leja, Joel AU - Marchesini, Danilo AU - Maseda, Michael V. AU - Matthee, Jorryt J AU - Miller, Tim B. AU - Naidu, Rohan P. AU - Nanayakkara, Themiya AU - Oesch, Pascal A. AU - Pan, Richard AU - Papovich, Casey AU - Price, Sedona H. AU - Van Dokkum, Pieter AU - Weaver, John R. AU - Whitaker, Katherine E. AU - Zitrin, Adi ID - 15170 JF - Astrophysical Journal SN - 0004-637X TI - UNCOVER spectroscopy confirms the surprising ubiquity of active galactic nuclei in red sources at z > 5 VL - 964 ER - TY - CONF AB - A linearly ordered (LO) k-colouring of a hypergraph is a colouring of its vertices with colours 1, … , k such that each edge contains a unique maximal colour. Deciding whether an input hypergraph admits LO k-colouring with a fixed number of colours is NP-complete (and in the special case of graphs, LO colouring coincides with the usual graph colouring). Here, we investigate the complexity of approximating the "linearly ordered chromatic number" of a hypergraph. We prove that the following promise problem is NP-complete: Given a 3-uniform hypergraph, distinguish between the case that it is LO 3-colourable, and the case that it is not even LO 4-colourable. We prove this result by a combination of algebraic, topological, and combinatorial methods, building on and extending a topological approach for studying approximate graph colouring introduced by Krokhin, Opršal, Wrochna, and Živný (2023). AU - Filakovský, Marek AU - Nakajima, Tamio Vesa AU - Opršal, Jakub AU - Tasinato, Gianluca AU - Wagner, Uli ID - 15168 SN - 9783959773119 T2 - 41st International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science TI - Hardness of linearly ordered 4-colouring of 3-colourable 3-uniform hypergraphs VL - 289 ER - TY - JOUR AB - Primary implant stability, which refers to the stability of the implant during the initial healing period is a crucial factor in determining the long-term success of the implant and lays the foundation for secondary implant stability achieved through osseointegration. Factors affecting primary stability include implant design, surgical technique, and patient-specific factors like bone quality and morphology. In vivo, the cyclic nature of anatomical loading puts osteosynthesis locking screws under dynamic loads, which can lead to the formation of micro cracks and defects that slowly degrade the mechanical connection between the bone and screw, thus compromising the initial stability and secondary stability of the implant. Monotonic quasi-static loading used for testing the holding capacity of implanted screws is not well suited to capture this behavior since it cannot capture the progressive deterioration of peri‑implant bone at small displacements. In order to address this issue, this study aims to determine a critical point of loss of primary implant stability in osteosynthesis locking screws under cyclic overloading by investigating the evolution of damage, dissipated energy, and permanent deformation. A custom-made test setup was used to test implanted 2.5 mm locking screws under cyclic overloading test. For each loading cycle, maximum forces and displacement were recorded as well as initial and final cycle displacements and used to calculate damage and energy dissipation evolution. The results of this study demonstrate that for axial, shear, and mixed loading significant damage and energy dissipation can be observed at approximately 20 % of the failure force. Additionally, at this load level, permanent deformations on the screw-bone interface were found to be in the range of 50 to 150 mm which promotes osseointegration and secondary implant stability. This research can assist surgeons in making informed preoperative decisions by providing a better understanding of the critical point of loss of primary implant stability, thus improving the long-term success of the implant and overall patient satisfaction. AU - Silva-Henao, Juan D. AU - Schober, Sophie AU - Pahr, Dieter H. AU - Reisinger, Andreas G. ID - 15164 JF - Medical Engineering and Physics SN - 1350-4533 TI - Critical loss of primary implant stability in osteosynthesis locking screws under cyclic overloading VL - 126 ER -