Computational Investigation of the Ordered Water System Around Microtubules: Implications for Protein Interactions.

The existence of an exclusion zone in which particles of a colloidal suspension in water are repelled from hydrophilic surfaces has been experimentally demonstrated in numerous studies, especially in the case of Nafion surfaces. Various explanations have been proposed for the origin of this phenomenon, which is not completely understood yet. In particular, the existence of a fourth phase of water has been proposed by G. Pollack and if this theory is proven correct, its implications on our understanding of the properties of water, especially in biological systems, would be profound and could give rise to new medical therapies. Here, a simple approach based on the linearized Poisson-Boltzmann equation is developed in order to study the repulsive forces mediated by ordered water and involving the following interacting biomolecules: 1) microtubule and a tubulin dimer, 2) two tubulin dimers and 3) a tubulin sheet and a tubulin dimer. The choice of microtubules in this study is motivated because they could be a good candidate for the generation of an exclusion zone in the cell and these models could be a starting point for detailed experimental investigations of this phenomenon.

Annual Acoustic Presence of Fin Whale (Balaenoptera physalus) Offshore Eastern Sicily, Central Mediterranean Sea.

In recent years, an increasing number of surveys have definitively confirmed the seasonal presence of fin whales (Balaenoptera physalus) in highly productive regions of the Mediterranean Sea. Despite this, very little is yet known about the routes that the species seasonally follows within the Mediterranean basin and, particularly, in the Ionian area. The present study assesses for the first time fin whale acoustic presence offshore Eastern Sicily (Ionian Sea), throughout the processing of about 10 months of continuous acoustic monitoring. The recording of fin whale vocalizations was made possible by the cabled deep-sea multidisciplinary observatory, "NEMO-SN1", deployed 25 km off the Catania harbor at a depth of about 2,100 meters. NEMO-SN1 is an operational node of the European Multidisciplinary Seafloor and water-column Observatory (EMSO) Research Infrastructure. The observatory was equipped with a low-frequency hydrophone (bandwidth: 0.05 Hz-1 kHz, sampling rate: 2 kHz) which continuously acquired data from July 2012 to May 2013. About 7,200 hours of acoustic data were analyzed by means of spectrogram display. Calls with the typical structure and patterns associated to the Mediterranean fin whale population were identified and monitored in the area for the first time. Furthermore, a background noise analysis within the fin whale communication frequency band (17.9-22.5 Hz) was conducted to investigate possible detection-masking effects. The study confirms the hypothesis that fin whales are present in the Ionian Sea throughout all seasons, with peaks in call detection rate during spring and summer months. The analysis also demonstrates that calls were more frequently detected in low background noise conditions. Further analysis will be performed to understand whether observed levels of noise limit the acoustic detection of the fin whales vocalizations, or whether the animals vocalize less in the presence of high background noise.