Four chemoreceptors in Escherichia coli mediate responses to chemicals in the environment. The receptors self-associate and localize to the cell poles. This aggregation implies that interactions among receptors are important parameters of signal processing during chemotaxis. We examined this phenomenon using a receptor-coupled in vitro assay of CheA kinase activity. The ability of homogeneous populations of the serine receptor Tsr and the aspartate receptor Tar to stimulate CheA was directly proportional to the ratio of the receptor to total protein in cell membranes up to a fraction of 50%. Membranes containing mixed populations of Tar and Tsr supported an up to 4-fold greater stimulation of CheA than expected on the basis of the contributions of the individual receptors. Peak activity was seen at a Tar:Tsr ratio of 1:4. This synergy was observed only when the two proteins were expressed simultaneously, suggesting that, under our conditions, the fundamental "cooperative receptor unit" is relatively static, even in the absence of CheA and CheW. Finally, we observed that inhibition of receptor-stimulated CheA activity by serine or aspartate required significantly higher concentrations of ligand for membranes containing mixed Tsr and Tar populations than for membranes containing only Tsr (up to 10(2)-fold more serine) or Tar (up to 10(4)-fold more aspartate). Together with recent analyses of the interactions of Tsr and Tar in vivo, our results reveal the emergent properties of mixed receptor populations and emphasize their importance in the integrated signal processing that underlies bacterial chemotaxis.

We present a streaming method for reconstructing surfaces from large data sets generated by a laser range scanner using wavelets. Wavelets provide a localized, multiresolution representation of functions and this makes them ideal candidates for streaming surface reconstruction algorithms. We show how wavelets can be used to reconstruct the indicator function of a shape from a cloud of points with associated normals. Our method proceeds in several steps. We first compute a low-resolution approximation of the indicator function using an octree followed by a second pass that incrementally adds fine resolution details. The indicator function is then smoothed using a modified octree convolution step and contoured to produce the final surface. Due to the local, multiresolution nature of wavelets, our approach results in an algorithm over 10 times faster than previous methods and can process extremely large data sets in the order of several hundred million points in only an hour.

The bis-phosphine compounds M(PBut3)2, M = Pd and Pt, readily eliminate one PBut3 ligand and transfer MPBut3 groups to the ruthenium-ruthenium bonds in the compounds Ru3(CO)12, Ru6(CO)17(micro6-C), and Ru6(CO)14(eta6-C6H6)(micro6-C) without displacement of any of the ligands on the ruthenium complexes. The new compounds, Ru3(CO)12[Pd(PBut3)]3, 10, and Ru6(CO)17(micro6-C)[Pd(PBut3)]2, 11, Ru6(CO)17(micro6-C)[Pt(PBut3)]n, n = 1 (12), n = 2 (13), and Ru6(CO)14(eta6-C6H6)(micro6-C)[Pd(PBut3)]n, n = 1 (15), n = 2 (16), have been prepared and structurally characterized. In most cases the MPBut3 groups bridge a pair of mutually bonded ruthenium atoms, and the associated Ru-Ru bond distance increases in length. Fenske-Hall calculations were performed on 10 and 11 to develop an understanding of the electron deficient metal-metal bonding. 10 undergoes a Jahn-Teller distortion to increase bonding interactions between neighboring Ru(CO)4 and Pd(PBut3) fragments. 11 has seven molecular orbitals important to cluster bonding in accord with cluster electron-counting rules.