Journal Club for June 26

It was decided during my rotation-review meeting to use a smaller PEG molecule (3-mer) for silanization of pncSi. Following is the brief description of the polymer.   Boiling Point: 147-9°C @ 0.3mm               Freezing Point: <0°C Specific Gravity: 1.16                                    Vapor Pressure, 25°: <0.1mm Vapor Density (air=1): >1…

Electro-osmosis: Yesterday I tried to study the electro-osmosis-like phenomenon that we were observing with the electrophoretic cell.   All membranes again had pinholes.  I set up the wells as before, but I would remove 50ul from the well which the negative electrode was attached.  I turned on the voltage and waited until the water level came…

Along with differently sized square membranes, I also designed a wafer with different sizes of slits.  On each chip, there is a 4000, 2000, 1000 and 500um long window.  The thicknesses of these windows are 200, 100, 50 and 25um.  I’m interested to see if there is an aspect ratio that causes endothelial cell alignment/tubulogenesis. …

The following images are from ARPE-19 Cells cultured for 3 Weeks over here in Nottingham (thanks for help from Emilia Moradi, Victoria Ciampani, and Kevin Webb). MgF2 nanomembrane chips were positioned into a transwell insert and sealed using PDMS, a biocompatible polymer, creating a two-compartment transwell. After an ethanol sterilization, ARPE-19 cells were seeded in a 12 well…

I have created a successfully sealed flow chamber with this current device (V2.4), with the caveat that I sealed off the top chamber and was unable to test leaking from the top to the bottom. Again, the dialysis chips from Dean’s work were used, as well as the same bulk microscope slide electrodes.   Improvements…

During the last weeks of my rotation, Tejas and I attempted to study neutrophil migration in the following setup, using fMLP as a chemoattractant: In order to do this, we permanently bonded a 1 mm PDMS gasket to the bottom and top sides of a 3 micron microporous SEPCON and filled the back side (which is…