Center for Astrophysics
An infrared view of NGC6334, the Cat’s Paw Nebula, a giant, star-forming molecular cloud. New submillimeter observations of the southern dark complex in this cloud have uncovered the first prestellar cores (embryos of future stars) ever found in a massive cloud, but they are very cold and cannot be seen in infrared images like this one.
ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA
Stars form as gravity contracts the gas and dust in an interstellar cloud until cores develop that are dense enough to coalesce into stars. A dense core in the earliest phase of this process is called a starless core, and if it has begun to collapse into a star the stage is referred to as a prestellar core. Prestellar cores can form single or multiple stars under the combined effects of gravity, magnetic fields, and turbulent motions, and understanding these and other properties of prestellar cores is critical to understanding star formation. Prestellar cores in low-mass molecular clouds have been inte
Optimizing AAV and Lentiviral Vector Development
April 15, 2021
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Importance of Plasmids
Plasmids are circular DNA molecules found mainly in bacteria, but also in yeast and plants, that replicate independently from the host’s chromosomal DNA and enable bacteria to transfer genetic information from one to another via the process of horizontal gene transfer. They may also serve other functions, such as imparting antibiotic resistance. Natural plasmids contain an origin of replication, which controls the host range and copy number of the plasmid and allows initiation of replication. They also generally have at least one other gene that