Small leucine-rich proteoglycans, such as biglycan, and their side chain sulfated glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), have been suggested to be involved in bone formation and mineralization processes. The present study was designed to investigate whether chondroitin sulfate (CS), one of the GAG, and its oversulfated structures coupled with bone morphogenetic protein-4 (BMP-4) alter the differentiation and subsequent mineralization of MC3T3-E1 osteoblastic cells. CS-E, one of the oversulfated CS structure, enhanced cell growth, alkaline phosphatase (ALP) activity, collagen deposition, and mineralization whereas heparin enhanced only ALP activity and mineralization. As well as CS-E, CS-H, and CPS also enhanced the mineralization of the cells. CS-E enhanced the mineralization of the cells by interacting with protein in the conditioned medium. CS-E induced mineralization was significantly inhibited by an antibody against BMP-4. The addition of exogenous BMP-4 further increased the capacity of CS-E to enhance mineralization. Fluorescence correlation spectroscopy method using fluoresceinamine-labeled GAG revealed that the oversulfated GAGs have a high affinity for BMP-4. The disaccharide analysis of the cells indicated that MC3T3-E1 cells are capable of producing oversulfated structures of CS by themselves. The lack of CS from the cells after chondroitinase treatment resulted in the inhibition of mineralization. These results in the present study indicate that oversulfated CS, which possesses 4,6-disulfates in N-acetyl-galactosamine, binds to BMP-4 and promotes osteoblast differentiation and subsequent mineralization.

We demonstrate local manipulation and detection of nuclear spin coherence in semiconductor quantum wells by an optical pump-probe technique combined with pulse rf NMR. The Larmor precession of photoexcited electron spins is monitored by time-resolved Kerr rotation (TRKR) as a measure of nuclear magnetic field. Under the irradiation of resonant pulsed rf magnetic fields, Rabi oscillations of nuclear spins are traced by TRKR signals. The intrinsic coherence time evaluated by a spin-echo technique reveals the dependence on the orientation of the magnetic field with respect to the crystalline axis as expected by the nearest neighbor dipole-dipole interaction.

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We studied electron density ͑n͒ dependence of the extrinsic spin Hall effect in n-doped GaAs with n raging from 1.8ϫ 10 16 to 3.3ϫ 10 17 cm −3. By scanning Kerr microscopy measurements, we observed spin accumulation near the channel edges in all the samples due to the extrinsic spin Hall effect. The spin Hall conductivity SH is obtained for each sample by comparing the Kerr rotation induced by optically injected spins. SH is found to increase with n, and it is shown that a theoretical model reported earlier agrees well with the experimental n dependence of SH .

We demonstrate manipulation of nuclear spin coherence in a GaAs/AlGaAs quantum well by optically detected nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). A phase shift of the Larmor precession of photoexcited electron spins is detected to read out the hyperfine-coupled nuclear spin polarization. Multipulse NMR sequences are generated to control the population and examine the phase coherence in quadrupolar-split spin-3/2 75As nuclei. The phase coherence among the multilevel nuclear spin states is addressed by application of pulse sequences that are used in quantum gate operations.

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Anisotropic spin dynamics of two-dimensional electrons in strained n-InGaAs∕AlGaAs (110) quantum wells (QWs) is investigated by a time-resolved Faraday rotation technique. Strong anisotropy of the relaxation time for the electron spins in parallel (τ‖) and perpendicular (τ⊥) to the QWs is observed (τ⊥∕τ‖∼60) at 150 K as a result of the enhanced D'yakonov–Perel' (DP) spin relaxation mechanism. At 5 K, an anisotropic feature of the spin relaxation time is also observed in the presence of in-plane magnetic field, suggesting that the DP mechanism is effective for low-temperature spin relaxation.