Illinois Physics | The Grainger College of Engineering | UIUC

Researchers from NYU Grossman School of Medicine and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign showed that the way in which genes are turned on and off as bacteria grow provides clues to their regulation.

According to the study authors, organisms from bacteria to humans grow as their cells multiply by dividing, with each cell becoming two. Before cells divide, they must copy their DNA so that each of the two “daughter” cells has a copy. To do so, a molecular machine called DNA polymerase ticks down the DNA chain, reading and making a copy of each gene, one by one.

Published online January 24 in the journal Nature, the study adds to explanations of how gene expression throughout the genome is shaped by DNA replication during bacterial growth. Specifically, the research team found that when DNA polymerase arrives at any specific gene, it disrupts the transcription in a way that reveals the state of that gene’s regulatory status.

Aksimentiev  group contributes to first-ever nanoscale electromotor, created using Frontera, Expanse, Anvil supercomputers

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration has released new images of M87*, the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy Messier 87, using data from observations taken in April 2018.  With the participation of the newly commissioned Greenland Telescope and a dramatically improved recording rate across the array, the 2018 observations give us a view of the source independent from the first observations in 2017.  A recent paper published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics presents new images from the 2018 data that reveal a familiar ring the same size as the one observed in 2017.  This bright ring surrounds a deep central depression, “the shadow of the black hole,” as predicted by general relativity.  Excitingly, the brightness peak of the ring has shifted by about 30º compared to the images from 2017, which is consistent with our theoretical understanding of variability from turbulent material around black holes.

"The bulk or interior properties of HOTIs and other topological insulators have been discounted for a long time, but it turns out that a lot of interesting things are going on there as well," said Barry Bradlyn, a physics professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a project co-lead. "When we looked at the surfaces through a more careful lens, they immediately stood out as far from trivial or featureless."