Thermodynamic Limits of Sperm Swimming Precision – PRX Life

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In PRX Life Thermodynamics Reveals Coordinated Motors in Sperm Tails
Thermodynamic Limits of Sperm Swimming Precision, C. Maggi, F. Saglimbeni, V. Carmona Sosa, R. Di Leonardo, B. Nath, and A. Puglisi in PRX Life

Abstract
Sperm swimming is crucial to fertilize the egg, in nature and in assisted reproductive technologies. Modeling the sperm dynamics involves elasticity, hydrodynamics, internal active forces, and out-of-equilibrium noise.

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Rivelazione di nanoanticorpi in tracce con tecniche di risonanza plasmonica di superficie

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Bruno Tiribilli 1, Giancarlo Margheri 1, Federica Pierucci 2 , Ambra Vestri 2, Elisabetta Meacci 2
1 Istituto dei Sistemi Complessi, del Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, via Madonna del Piano 10, 50019, Sesto Fiorentino (FI).
2 Dipartimento di Scienze Biochimiche Sperimentali e Cliniche “Mario Serio”, Università di Firenze, Viale G B Morgagni  50, 50134 Firenze.

Finalità del progetto

Scopo finale del progetto è l’applicazione della tecnica Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) alla rivelazione di  un particolare nanoanticorpo, specifico per la  sfingosina-1-fosfato (S1P), un importante agente in diverse vie metaboliche, ad esempio nel citoplasma cellulare, dove è stata dimostrata la sua funzione di regolazione dei flussi di ioni Ca2+.… Read the rest

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MOVEMENT ECOLOGY OF SEABIRDS: a mechanistic explanation of their incredible navigation ability

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LÉVY FLIGHT
AVIAN
OLFACTORY
NAVIGATION
EXPERIMENTS
RESULTS
THE TEAM
LÉVY 2.0

Seabirds can fly for many days and nights across featureless oceans to their preferred feeding locations and then fly back to their nests without getting lost. How they do this has long been a mystery. Now through a careful analysis of their flight patterns, researchers have shown that seabirds are following their noses and navigate using an “odour map” – a mental patchwork picture of local odours.… Read the rest

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The Bulgarian red deer project

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Two researches of the ISC (Stefano Focardi and Sonia Lombardi), together with Federico Morimando (Studio Proeco) have visited dr. Atidzhe Ahmed and Prof. Peter Genov, colleagues at the Institute of biodiversity and ecosystems research of the Bulgarian academy of sciences (IBER-BAS). The aim of the trip was to design a new project on the movement ecology of the red deer (Cervus elaphus) in Bulgaria.… Read the rest

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Dynamics of Virus-Host interaction

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In the case of fast mutating viruses (e.g., Influenza virus), the virus-host interaction is driven by cross-immunity: after being infected by a strain, the host acquires immunity to a set of other strains antigenically similar to the infecting one (i.e., triggering the same host immune response). The evolutionary dynamics of viruses is therefore ruled by their relative antigenic distance. Can we understand the non trivial relation between antigenic and genetic distance?… Read the rest

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Protein molecules

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Biopolymers such as nucleic acids (DNA and RNA) and proteins have been charged by natural evolution with the task of storing, transmitting and transforming genetic information of living matter.
In particular proteins are the macromolecules which perform most of the biochemical and biomechanical activities of organisms. Proteins, for instance, provide the building blocks of cells and tissues, they are involved in control and regulation of cellular cycles, in enzymatic catalysis, proteins are at the basis of muscle contractions and constitute part of the immunitary defence, etc… The list of biological functions which proteins are involved in is extremely long and rapidly increasing with the research advances.
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Topological vs. Metric distance

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Basically all existing models of collective animal behaviour (bird flocks, fish schools, etc) assume that the interaction between different individuals depends on the metric distance, just as in physics. This implies, for example, that two birds 5 meters apart interact more strongly than two birds 10 meters apart.

Models developed by biologists are based on a “behavioural zones” scheme, where each zone is associated to one of the three basic ingredients of all models: short range repulsion, alignment, long range attraction.… Read the rest

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Protein Folding

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Protein Folding is a specific chemical and physical transition by which a linear sequence of aminoacids finds its functional (native) three dimensional structure. The theoretical study of protein folding represents perhaps one of the most challenging research with a marked interdisciplinary character, where biology, chemistry, physics, mathematics and computer science can fruitfully interact each other.

Our activity in this field concerns the prediction of folding mechanisms by the knowledge of tertiary structure only.

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Home Page of Andrea Cavagna

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Education:

Post-Doc, Theoretical Physics, Physics Dept, Manchester University, UK, 2001 (with Alan Bray and Mike Moore)

Post-Doc, Condensed Matter, Theoretical Physics Dept, Oxford University, UK, 1999 (with David Sherrington)

Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics, University of Rome Sapienza, Italy, 1998 (Spin-Glasses – advisor Giorgio Parisi)

M.S. and B.A. in Theoretical Physics, University of Milan and SISSA – Trieste, Italy, 1995 (Conformal Field Theory – advisor Giuseppe Mussardo)

I was trained as a theoretical physicist and I have studied for some years the statistical mechanics of disordered systems, with a particular interest in spin-glasses, structural glasses and supercooled liquids. … Read the rest

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