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Biological molecules can be used as versatile templates for assembling nanoscale materials because of their unique structures and chemical diversities. Supramolecular organization of molecular pigments, as is found in the natural light-harvesting antenna, has drawn attention for its potential applications to sensors, photocatalytic systems, and photonic devices. Here we show the arrangement of molecular pigments into a one-dimensional light-harvesting antenna using M13 viruses as scaffolds. Chemical grafting of zinc porphyrins to M13 viruses induces distinctive spectroscopic changes, including fluorescence quenching, the extensive band broadening and small red shift of their absorption spectrum, and the shortened lifetime of the excited states. Based on these optical signatures we suggest a hypothetical model to explain the energy transfer occurring in the supramolecular porphyrin structures templated with the virus. We expect that further genetic engineering of M13 viruses can allow us to coassemble other functional materials (e.g., catalysts and electron transfer mediators) with pigments, implying potential applications to photochemical devices.

Results are reported from the HERMES experiment at HERA on a measurement of the neutron spin structure function ~(x, Q2) in deep inelastic scattering using 27.5 GeV longitudinally polarized positrons incident on a polarized 3He internal gas target. The data cover the kinematic range 0.023 < x < 0.6 and 1 (GeV/c) 2 < Q2 < 15 (GeV/c) 2. The integral fo~i0623 ~(x) dx evaluated at a fixed Qz of 2.5 (GeV/c) 2 is-0.0344-0.013(stat.)+0.005(syst.). Assuming Regge behavior at low x, the first moment F'~ = fl ~(x)dx is-0.037 ± 0.013(stat.)±0.005(syst.)±0.006(extrapol.

We present an efficient method for measuring cell stretching based on three-dimensional viscoelastic particle focusing. We suspended cells in a biocompatible viscoelastic medium [poly(vinylpyrrolidone) solution in phosphate-buffered saline]. The medium viscoelasticity significantly homogenized the trajectories of cells along the centerline of a simple straight channel, which could not be achieved in conventional Newtonian media. More than 95% of red blood cells (RBCs) were successfully delivered to the stagnation point of a cross-slot microchannel and stretched by extensional flow. By computational simulations, we proved that this method prevents inaccuracies due to random lateral distributions of cells and, further, guarantees rotational-free cell stretching along the shear-free channel centerline. As a demonstration, we characterized the differences in RBC deformabilities among various heat treatments. Furthermore, we monitored the decrease of deformability due to nutrient starvation in human mesenchymal stem cells. We envisage that our novel method can be extended to versatile applications such as the detection of pathophysiological evolution in impaired RBCs due to malaria or diabetes and the monitoring of cell quality in stem cell therapeutics.

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Spin transfer in deep-inelastic ⌳ electroproduction has been studied with the HERMES detector using the 27.6 GeV polarized positron beam in the DESY HERA storage ring. For an average fractional energy transfer ͗z͘ϭ0.45, the longitudinal spin transfer from the virtual photon to the ⌳ has been extracted. The spin transfer along the ⌳ momentum direction is found to be 0.11Ϯ0.17(stat)Ϯ0.03(syst); similar values are found for other possible choices for the longitudinal spin direction of the ⌳. This result is the most precise value obtained to date from deep-inelastic scattering with charged lepton beams, and is sensitive to polarized up quark fragmentation to hyperon states. The experimental result is found to be in general agreement with various models of the ⌳ spin content, and is consistent with the assumption of helicity conservation in the fragmentation process.

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