We present the behaviour of particles with chemical and geometrical anisotropy at a planar oil-water interface. We find that Janus cylinders with a small aspect ratio adopt an upright configuration, whereas the particles with a large aspect ratio exhibit both the upright and tilted configurations, which can be explained by the presence of two minima in the attachment energy profile. Such unique configurations significantly affect their assembly structure and lateral interactions. In particular, we observe strong capillary attractions between two tilted Janus cylinders and show that the scaling behaviour of the interaction depends on the lateral alignments of two cylinders. Consequently, this capillarity leads to a variety of assembled structures, which we attribute to the quasi-quadrupolar interface deformation observed around each particle.
Noncoding small regulatory RNA molecules control gene expression and microRNAs provide one of the best examples in eukaryotes. However, bacterial RNAs of comparable size to eukaryotic microRNAs have received little attention. Here, we demonstrate the existence of microRNA-size, small RNAs (msRNAs) in the model bacterium Escherichia coli. We examined the small RNAs in E. coli using a deep sequencing approach, and analyzed 33.2 million small RNA clone reads after size fractionation. Bioinformatic analysis of the whole set revealed more than 400 individual msRNA species. The cellular contents of selected highly expressed msRNAs were verified by quantitative RT-PCR and northern blotting. Although, the functional significance of these RNAs is unclear, their high abundance suggests that they may play specialized roles in bacteria, analogous to miRNAs in eukaryotes.
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