First off, a quick update on the state of the lab. The day finally came, we had to pack up and put everything in storage, so unless there is a very pressing need, I’m done data collection for the time being. I don’t think that will be a problem; we have enough for publication as-is,…
Hello everyone, for my first ever post I would like to share with you a collection of ideas that has turned into a review I’ll be working on. Here you will find some selected publications that report interesting fabrication processes at the nanoscale. I have summarized the processes and added some raw schematics of how…
This post is an update of the TAT ELISA study. Details of which can be found in the prior post by Keisha and I: https://trace-bmps.org/blog/data/2016/02/18/hemocompatibility-studies This is the most up-to-date data: The error bar represents the standard error of mean. n = 3 for each group NOTE: We used serum as the positive control…. serum is…
Purpose: Study the hemocompatibility of different substrates using the concentration of C3a as the indicator. Background: C3a is a protein produced during immune response. Directly from Wikipedia: The classical pathway of complement activation is initiated when the C1 complex, made up of C1r and C1s serine proteases, recognizes the Fc region of IgM or IgG…
After reading and discussing a paper in journal club that talked about cells having a “mechanical memory” (found here “Mechanical memory and dosing influence stem cell fate“), we decided to replicate our previous YAP/TAZ experiments with passage one HUVECs direct from Life Technologies as to avoid making our cells “remember” that they had ever been plated…
I was concerned that even though my calculations for etching the microporous MgF2 material show that the silicon nitride was being removed completely, not all of the silicon nitride was indeed being removed. Hypothetically, the presence of additional remnants of silicon nitride could be causing additional film stress and cause membranes to break more frequently. I…
It is expecting that the high electric field gradient at the nanopore entrance could amplify the dielectrophoretic force so that the nanoparticles transported toward the membrane could be manipulated based on their polarizabilities. To prove the concept, the electric field was applied across the nanoporous membrane while a bolus of gold nanoparticles was delivered across…
Just to give a brief background, I have been working with endothelial cells to make a microvessel mimetic device, and one of the important requirements for endothelial cell culture is to be able to grow the cells under physiological levels of shear stress. Further, since I am trying to achieve neutrophil transmigration through the endothelial…
As we’re uncovering more bits and pieces of data, we kept being lead to the idea that our membranes may be made out of SiO2 and have a modulus in the gigapascal range, but cells seem to perceive them as soft substrates. After looking at focal adhesions, fibronectin deposition, and cell/cell junction formation, we’re still sticking…
Since my last update I have been trying to achieve reliable size-separation of DNA by length using dwell time with the NPN pre-filter. Originally I had hoped to achieve 250-bp resolution near the optimal length for the NPN filter devices that we are working with, but that turned out to be a bit overly ambitious,…