• Derivative Spectroscopy and its Application at Detecting the Weak Emission/Absorption Lines

    分类: 天文学 >> 天文学 提交时间: 2024-03-29 合作期刊: 《Research in Astronomy and Astrophysics》

    摘要: The development of spectroscopic survey telescopes like Large Sky Area Multi-Object Fiber Spectroscopic Telescope (LAMOST), Apache Point Observatory Galactic Evolution Experiment and Sloan Digital Sky Survey has opened up unprecedented opportunities for stellar classification. Specific types of stars, such as early-type emission-line stars and those with stellar winds, can be distinguished by the profiles of their spectral lines. In this paper, we introduce a method based on derivative spectroscopy (DS) designed to detect signals within complex backgrounds and provide a preliminary estimation of curve profiles. This method exhibits a unique advantage in identifying weak signals and unusual spectral line profiles when compared to other popular line detection methods. We validated our approach using synthesis spectra, demonstrating that DS can detect emission signals three times fainter than Gaussian fitting. Furthermore, we applied our method to 579,680 co-added spectra from LAMOST Medium-Resolution Spectroscopic Survey, identifying 16,629 spectra with emission peaks around the Hα line from 10,963 stars. These spectra were classified into three distinct morphological groups, resulting in nine subclasses as follows. (1) Emission peak above the pseudo-continuum line (single peak, double peaks, emission peak situated within an absorption line, P Cygni profile, Inverse P Cygni profile); (2) Emission peak below the pseudo-continuum line (sharp emission peak, double absorption peaks, emission peak shifted to one side of the absorption line); (3) Emission peak between the pseudo-continuum line.

  • MIWI and piRNA-mediated cleavage of messenger RNAs in mouse testes

    分类: 生物学 >> 生物物理学 >> 细胞生物学 提交时间: 2016-05-12

    摘要: The piRNA machinery is known for its role in mediating epigenetic silencing of transposons. Recent studies suggest that this function also involves piRNA-guided cleavage of transposon-derived transcripts. As many piRNAs also appear to have the capacity to target diverse mRNAs, this raises the intriguing possibility that piRNAs may act extensively as siRNAs to degrade specific mRNAs. To directly test this hypothesis, we compared mouse PIWI (MIWI)-associated piRNAs with experimentally identified cleaved mRNA fragments from mouse testes, and observed cleavage sites that predominantly occur at position 10 from the 5' end of putative targeting piRNAs. We also noted strong biases for U and A residues at nucleotide positions 1 and 10, respectively, in both piRNAs and mRNA fragments, features that resemble the pattern of piRNA amplification by the 'ping-pong' cycle. Through mapping of MIWI-RNA interactions by CLIP-seq and gene expression profiling, we found that many potential piRNA-targeted mRNAs directly interact with MIWI and show elevated expression levels in the testes of Miwi catalytic mutant mice. Reporter-based assays further revealed the importance of base pairing between piRNAs and mRNA targets and the requirement for both the slicer activity and piRNA-loading ability of MIWI in piRNA-mediated target repression. Importantly, we demonstrated that proper turnover of certain key piRNA targets is essential for sperm formation. Together, these findings reveal the siRNA-like function of the piRNA machinery in mouse testes and its central requirement for male germ cell development and maturation.