NRG

Voting is open until NRG tomorrow. We’ll critically discuss the winner and summarize the 2nd place paper. [yop_poll id=”3″]

This is a recent paper in Nature Materials that shows stem cells are influenced by prior culture on varying stiffness substrates. This means that when cells are induced towards adipogenic or osteogenic lineages, their prior culture history on a stiff or soft substrate affects their future differentiation. This is further evidence that in vitro culture of stem…

This paper (Variance of Streaming Potential) examines the sources of error in zetapotential measurements. Jess and Zydney both cite it in their EO papers as a source of experimental procedure – in particular this paper found that waiting for the pressure to equilibrate at discrete timepoints works better than a continuous ramp-up in pressure. From…

Sugiura 2010 (Anal. Chem) This paper details a PDMS microfluidic system to perform dose response assays  (what I’m hoping to achieve over this summer). They use serial dilutions to get separate trials spanning six orders of magnitude, showing an optimal dosage to kill HeLa cells. Their system is very efficient, using very shallow channels and balancing the…

This paper touches on two thing of current interest to me: Electrical Impedance Spectroscopy (EIS) and troponin detection. Tropinin detection has been identified as a useful biomarker for a chip based blood analyzer. Tropinin is a plasma biomarker that correlates strongly with a recent heart attack. EIS is a technique we’ve heard about in the…

Hi all, i have to present for a biomechanics journal club meet next Friday (Jun/06/2014) and figured that i might as well double-dip the presentation.   Currently i am leaning forward to present this article: Takano (Futai) microfld nanofld 2012 [pocket-sized cell culture] which showcased a pocket-sized, stand-alone device for cell culture. No need for…

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…

Kelly & I deposited 100 & 300 nm thick SiO2 films on bare wafers with the P5000 PE-CVD tool at RIT last week.  The wafers were then annealed according to JP’s recipe overnight to stabilize the TEOS layer film stress.  The stress was measured using the Tencor P2 profilometer by scanning across it before depositing…