Ethanol Induces Extracellular Vesicle Secretion by Altering Lipid Metabolism through the Mitochondria-Associated ER Membranes and Sphingomyelinases

Recent evidence pinpoints extracellular vesicles (EVs) as key players in intercellular communication. Given the importance of cholesterol and sphingomyelin in EV biology, and the relevance of mitochondria-associated endoplasmic reticulum membranes (MAMs) in cholesterol/sphingomyelin homeostasis, we evaluated if MAMs and sphingomyelinases (SMases) could participate in ethanol-induced EV release. EVs were isolated from the extracellular medium of BV2 microglia treated or not with ethanol (50 and 100 mM). Radioactive metabolic tracers combined with thin layer chromatography were used as quantitative methods to assay phospholipid transfer, SMase activity and cholesterol uptake/esterification. Inhibitors of SMase (desipramine and GW4869) and MAM (cyclosporin A) activities were also utilized. Our data show that ethanol increases the secretion and inflammatory molecule concentration of EVs. Ethanol also upregulates MAM activity and alters lipid metabolism by increasing cholesterol uptake, cholesterol esterification and SMase activity in microglia. Notably, the inhibition of either SMase or MAM activity prevented the ethanol-induced increase in EV secretion. Collectively, these results strongly support a lipid-driven mechanism, specifically via SMases and MAM, to explain the effect of ethanol on EV secretion in glial cells.

Self-oscillations in solid methane irradiated by electrons

The formation of self-oscillations of temperature and concentration of radicals in an electron-irradiated methane film at low temperatures has been investigated experimentally and theoretically. Self-oscillations arise due to the activation nature of diffusion and radical recombination processes. Self-oscillations were studied experimentally by measuring the desorption of particles from an irradiated sample and theoretically by solving the kinetic equations for defects in a methane sample. Concentration self-oscillations of two types of particles have been found and investigated; namely, hydrogen atoms and CH3 radicals formed during the irradiation of methane by electrons. It is shown that with an increase in the irradiation intensity, the oscillation periods decrease, and the calculation value are of the order of magnitude observed in the experiment. A model of a manifestation of the self-oscillation of hydrogen molecule concentration during desorption is presented.

Strong coupling between organic dye molecules and lattice modes of a dielectric nanoparticle array

Plasmonic structures interacting with light provide electromagnetic resonances that result in a high degree of local field confinement, enabling the enhancement of light-matter interaction. Plasmonic structures typically consist of metals, which, however, suffer from very high ohmic losses and heating. High-index dielectrics, meanwhile, can serve as an alternative material due to their low-dissipative nature and strong scattering abilities. We studied the optical properties of a system composed of all-dielectric nanoparticle arrays covered with a film of organic dye molecules (IR-792) and compared these dielectric arrays with metallic nanoparticle arrays. We tuned the light-matter interaction by changing the concentration in the dye film and reported the system to be in the strong coupling regime. We observed a Rabi splitting between the surface lattice resonances of the nanoparticle arrays and the absorption line of the dye molecules of up to 253 and 293 meV, for the dielectric and metallic nanoparticles, respectively. The Rabi splitting depends linearly on the square root of the dye molecule concentration, and we further assessed how the Rabi splitting depends on the film thickness for a low dye molecule concentration. For thinner films of thicknesses up to 260 nm, we observed no visible Rabi splitting. However, a Rabi splitting evolved at thicknesses from 540 to 990 nm. We performed finite-difference time-domain simulations to analyze the near-field enhancements for the dielectric and metallic nanoparticle arrays. The electric fields were enhanced by a factor of 1200 and 400, close to the particles for gold and amorphous silicon, respectively, and the modes extended over half a micron around the particles for both materials.

MoS2 pixel arrays for real-time photoluminescence imaging of redox molecules

Measuring the behavior of redox-active molecules in space and time is crucial for understanding chemical and biological systems and for developing new technologies. Optical schemes are noninvasive and scalable, but usually have a slow response compared to electrical detection methods. Furthermore, many fluorescent molecules for redox detection degrade in brightness over long exposure times. Here, we show that the photoluminescence of “pixel” arrays of monolayer MoS2 can image spatial and temporal changes in redox molecule concentration. Because of the strong dependence of MoS2 photoluminescence on doping, changes in the local chemical potential substantially modulate the photoluminescence of MoS2, with a sensitivity of 0.9 mV/Hz on a 5 μm × 5 μm pixel, corresponding to better than parts-per-hundred changes in redox molecule concentration down to nanomolar concentrations at 100-ms frame rates. This provides a new strategy for visualizing chemical reactions and biomolecules with a two-dimensional material screen.

Spatial Awareness of a Bacterial Swarm

Bacteria are perhaps the simplest living systems capable of complex behaviour involving sensing and coherent, collective behaviour an example of which is the phenomena of swarming on agar surfaces. Two fundamental questions in bacterial swarming is how the information gathered by individual members of the swarm is shared across the swarm leading to coordinated swarm behaviour and what specific advantages does membership of the swarm provide its members in learning about their environment. In this article, we show a remarkable example of the collective advantage of a bacterial swarm which enables it to sense inert obstacles along its path. Agent based computational model of swarming revealed that independent individual behaviour in response to a two-component signalling mechanism could produce such behaviour. This is striking because independent individual behaviour without any explicit communication between agents was found to be sufficient for the swarm to effectively compute the gradient of signalling molecule concentration across the swarm and respond to it.