Biophysical Reviews and Letters

In this paper, we present our view about what are the 2016 better biophysical works in the world, scanned over many journals, general and particular. The cryoelectron microscopy technique to view biological complexes is an emerging force to biophysicists, where measuring and solving single molecules is still among the most powerful and interesting subareas, to see biological processes with most precise resolution. Interdisciplinary biophysics appeared in most top journals, dealing with areas including socioeconophysics and biophysical economics, network and channel dynamics, patchy particles, etc. Other specific works to emphasize here reported on biological engineering of molecules and complexes, proteins’ dynamics and aging and crowding.

In the present work, the thermostabilities of mitoxantrone (MTX) complexes with DNA from sarcoma 45 and healthy rat liver were studied. DNAs from both sources were irradiated by resonant (64.5 GHz and 50.3 GHz) and nonresonant (48.3 GHz) frequencies of water. The obtained data showed that DNA solution irradiation by resonant frequencies of water induces a dehydration of nucleotides and Na${}^{\mathrm{\text{+}}}$ ions in the solution. It is shown that at relatively low concentrations of MTX, when one MTX molecule binds to almost 100 pairs of bases of DNA, the thermostabilities of complexes decrease. Moreover, this change is more pronounced ($\sim 0.8^{\circ }$C) at the complex formation with DNA released from sarcoma 45 tumor.

Agar gel is a linear viscoelastic material with low deformations ($<0.01\%$). Here, characterization technique used is the rheometer-type Carri-Med “CSL 100”. This rheometer offers us the opportunity to study the gel in static and dynamic shear. The study is done at low frequencies ($0.1$–$40\mathrm{\text{Hz}}$). Mechanical characterization of the agar gel in terms of dynamic modulus is performed for different concentrations. The dynamic rigidity of the gel decreases with increasing concentration. The 8% agar gel simulates very well the dynamic rigidity of brain tissue at low frequency. The range of low frequencies is rarely studied for this material (brain) in the literature. Most tests done on brain tissue are in a frequency range between $50\mathrm{\text{Hz}}$ and $600\mathrm{\text{Hz}}$. Yet, the Maxwell–Kelvin–Voigt model simulates very well the 8% agar gel. The instant elasticity derived from mathematical modeling of agar gel is similar to that measured in the literature for the brain tissue. Hence agar gel can be used in the construction of physical models of the human head used to analyze the dynamic response of the head to shock or to an inertial load.