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    The political role of the people's liberation army 1949-1973

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    This thesis is to study the political role of the People's Liberation Army from the approach of structure and function. The framework of the thesis consists of three major parts, first, the influence of Chinese traditional political culture on, and the formation of, the political role of the PL A; second, the influence of domestic political struggles and external military conflicts on the development of the political role of the PLA; and the third, the analysis of the transition of the PLA's political role from the structure and personnel arrangements of the CCPCC Within the above-mentioned three scopes, this thesis make a thorough discussion on the following: (1) The relationship between the structure of the PRC and the formation of the PLA's political role; (2) How has ideology influenced the army's political role; (3) What is Mao's viewpoint and his influence on the development of the army's political role; (4) What is the link between the army and the party, and how has this developed; (6) What accounts for the expansion of the PLA's political functions; (7) What is the influence of political factional struggles on the PLA's political role; (8) Is it political institution or military institution that controls the recruitment of the military elite; (9) What are the disparities between the military elite in handling international conflicts and what are their political considerations; (10) What is the Party's position in the army; (11) How have the Party’s important meetings and personnel arrangements influenced the rise and fall of the PLA's political role

    Single-Molecule TPM Studies on the Conversion of Human Telomeric DNA

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    AbstractHuman telomere contains guanine-rich (G-rich) tandem repeats of single-stranded DNA sequences at its 3′ tail. The G-rich sequences can be folded into various secondary structures, termed G-quadruplexes (G4s), by Hoogsteen basepairing in the presence of monovalent cations (such as Na+ and K+). We developed a single-molecule tethered particle motion (TPM) method to investigate the unfolding process of G4s in the human telomeric sequence AGGG(TTAGGG)3 in real time. The TPM method monitors the DNA tether length change caused by formation of the G4, thus allowing the unfolding process and structural conversion to be monitored at the single-molecule level. In the presence of its antisense sequence, the folded G4 structure can be disrupted and converted to the unfolded conformation, with apparent unfolding time constants of 82 s and 3152 s. We also observed that the stability of the G4 is greatly affected by different monovalent cations. The folding equilibrium constant of G4 is strongly dependent on the salt concentration, ranging from 1.75 at 5 mM Na+ to 3.40 at 15 mM Na+. Earlier spectral studies of Na+- and K+-folded states suggested that the spectral conversion between these two different folded structures may go through a structurally unfolded intermediate state. However, our single-molecule TPM experiments did not detect any totally unfolded intermediate within our experimental resolution when sodium-folded G4 DNA molecules were titrated with high-concentration, excess potassium ions. This observation suggests that a totally unfolding pathway is likely not the major pathway for spectral conversion on the timescale of minutes, and that interconversion among folded states can be achieved by the loop rearrangement. This study also demonstrates that TPM experiments can be used to study conformational changes in single-stranded DNA molecules
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