Still digging out . . .

Controllable Snail-Paced Light in Biological Bacteriorhodopsin Thin Film Physical Review Letters 2005, 95:253601 KEYWORDS: physics, optics, ultraslow light, cute science, photonic, optical switch, halobacteria, refractive index VOCAB: group velocity, optical density NOTES: -"electromagnetically induced transparency" -"The induced dipole moment interferes with the dipole driven directly by the probe field, leading to a redution in the absorption of the probe with an extremely narrow frequency interval (~1/tao). This indicates that the refractive index increases rapidly over the same spectral region . . . " -quantum yield of 65% -". . . we are able to control teh group velocity from the order of 10^-4 m/s to normal light speed." -what polymer is the matrix? -does this only work for 568 nm light? Decatenation checkpoint deficiency in stem and progenitor cells Cancer Cell 2005, 8:479 KEYWORDS: biology, checkpoint, wound-healing, stem cell, cancer VOCAB: decatenation (disentanglement by topoisomerase II of chromosomes during cell division), aneuploidy, aneuploid, pseudomitosis ("spindle formation and kinetochore poleward movement in the presence of entangled chromosomes, which results in aberrant chromosome segregation") NOTES: -"checkpoint efficiency increased when embryonic cells were induced to differentiate . . " -->are stem cells part of the cancer problem? -->the "SIGNIFICANCE" box in this journal is a fine, fine touch. -"chromosome gain and loss have been observed during the ex vivo culture of human and mouse ES cells and could be a consequence of the inefficient decatenation checkpoint." DRUGS: retinoic acid, colchicine, KRF-193 (Topoisomerase II inhibitor) Sipa1 is a candidate for underlying the metastasis efficienty modifier locus Mtes1 Nature Genetics 2005, 37:1055 KEYWORDS: metastasis, bioinformatics, confluence, adherence VOCAB: transgene, locus, orthologous, multiple cross mapping, MCM, variable tandem repeat, VTR, minisatellite, PDS domain ("frequently implicated in protein-protein interactions"), nephrogenic, missense, bromodomain NOTES: -"The control Mut1 cell line produces many rounded cells when grown to confluence compared with the flat sheet observed in the shRNA knock-down cell line" --> normal (less prone to metastasis) cells die when grown to confluence in vitro -rounded cells at confluence "suggestive of strong cellular adherence"