Mcleodkyed0850

From single-pole magnetic tweezers to robotic magnetic-field generation systems, the development of magnetic micromanipulation systems, using electromagnets or permanent magnets, has enabled a multitude of applications for cellular and intracellular measurement and stimulation. Controlled by different configurations of magnetic-field generation systems, magnetic particles have been actuated by an external magnetic field to exert forces/torques and perform mechanical measurements on the cell membrane, cytoplasm, cytoskeleton, nucleus, intracellular motors, etc. The particles have also been controlled to generate aggregations to trigger cell signaling pathways and produce heat to cause cancer cell apoptosis for hyperthermia treatment. Magnetic micromanipulation has become an important tool in the repertoire of toolsets for cell measurement and stimulation and will continue to be used widely for further explorations of cellular/intracellular structures and their functions. Existing review papers in the literature focus on fabrication and position control of magnetic particles/structures (often termed micronanorobots) and the synthesis and functionalization of magnetic particles. Differently, this paper reviews the principles and systems of magnetic micromanipulation specifically for cellular and intracellular measurement and stimulation. Discoveries enabled by magnetic measurement and stimulation of cellular and intracellular structures are also summarized. This paper ends with discussions on future opportunities and challenges of magnetic micromanipulation in the exploration of cellular biophysics, mechanotransduction, and disease therapeutics.Cell-material interactions are crucial for many biomedical applications, including medical implants, tissue engineering, and biosensors. For implants, while the adhesion of eukaryotic host cells is desirable, bacterial adhesion often leads to infections. Surface free energy (SFE) is an important parameter that controls short- and long-term eukaryotic and prokaryotic cell adhesion. Understanding its effect at a fundamental level is essential for designing materials that minimize bacterial adhesion. Bezafibrate chemical structure Most cell adhesion studies for implants have focused on correlating surface wettability with mammalian cell adhesion and are restricted to short-term time scales. In this work, we used quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring (QCM-D) and electrical impedance analysis to characterize the adhesion and detachment of S. cerevisiae and E. coli, serving as model eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells within extended time scales. Measurements were performed on surfaces displaying different surface energies (Au, SiO2, and silanized SiO2). Our results demonstrate that tuning the surface free energy of materials is a useful strategy for selectively promoting eukaryotic cell adhesion and preventing bacterial adhesion. Specifically, we show that under flow and steady-state conditions and within time scales up to ∼10 h, a high SFE, especially its polar component, enhances S. cerevisiae adhesion and hinders E. coli adhesion. In the long term, however, both cells tend to detach, but less detachment occurs on surfaces with a high dispersive SFE contribution. The conclusions on S. cerevisiae are also valid for a second eukaryotic cell type, being the human embryonic kidney (HEK) cells on which we performed the same analysis for comparison. Furthermore, each cell adhesion phase is associated with unique cytoskeletal viscoelastic states, which are cell-type-specific and surface free energy-dependent and provide insights into the underlying adhesion mechanisms.The composite GeP3/C@rGO as a sodium ion battery anode material was fabricated by introducing a carbon matrix into GeP3 through high-energy ball milling, followed by encapsulating the resultant composite with graphene via a solution-based ultrasonic method. To delineate the individual role of carbon matrix and graphene, material characterization and electrochemical analyses were performed for GeP3/C@rGO and three other samples bare GeP3, GeP3 with graphene coating (GeP3@rGO), and GeP3 with carbon matrix (GeP3/C). GeP3/C@rGO exhibits the highest electric conductivity (5.89 × 10-1 S cm-1) and the largest surface area (167.85 m2 g-1) among the four samples. The as-prepared GeP3/C@rGO delivered a reversible high capacity of 1084 mA h g-1 at 50 mA g-1, excellent rate capacity (435.4 mA h g-1 at a high rate of 5 A g-1), and long-term cycling stability (400 cycles with a reversible capacity of 823.3 mA h g-1 at 0.2 A g-1), all of which outperform the other three samples. The kinetics investigation reveals a "pseudocapacitive behavior" in GeP3/C and GeP3/C@rGO, where solely faradic reactions took place in bare GeP3 and GeP3@rGO with a typical "battery behavior". Based on ex-situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and ex-situ electrochemical impedance spectroscopy, the carbon matrix serves to activate and stabilize the interior of the composite, while the graphene protects and restrains the exterior surface. Benefiting from the synergistic combination of these two components, GeP3/C@rGO achieved extremely stable cycling stability as well as outstanding rate performance.Plasmonic photocatalysis has emerged as a new frontier in heterogeneous catalysis due to its promise in harvesting light to drive reactions. Yet many mechanistic aspects remain to be unambiguously defined. Using single-molecule fluorescence imaging, Li et al. studied a fluorogenic and plasmon-enhanced reaction, amplex red oxidation, on single Au nanorods at subturnover resolution and under operando conditions. Both the rate-determining step and its activation energy were identified from the multiple elemental reactions. The results provide insights into the mechanism of plasmonic photocatalysis that may help the rational design of heterogeneous catalysts.Freeze-thaw poly(vinyl alcohol) hydrogels (PVA-H) offer great potential for several biomedical applications due to their biomimetic mechanical properties and biocompatibility. Despite these advantages, the use of PVA-H for load bearing applications has been limited due to poor performance in boundary lubrication compared to natural tissue such as articular cartilage. Recently, zwitterionic polymer brushes have been shown to act as effective boundary lubricants on rigid substrates; however, to the best of our knowledge, the synergistic effects of zwitterionic brushes coupled with the biomimetic fluid load support exhibited by hydrogels have not been reported. We report here on our investigation involving the synthesis and characterization of two unique types of polymer brush functionalized PVA hydrogels. The zwitterionic polymers that were compared contained either [2-(methacryloyloxy)ethyl]dimethyl-3-sulfopropylammonium hydroxide, PMEDSAH, or 2-methacryloyloxyethylphosphorylcholine, PMPC, repeating units. Both hydrogels coated with zwitterionic polymers were found to be cytocompatible. We report further on micrometer-scale surface properties via water contact angle goniometry, surface roughness measurements, and scanning electron microscopy. Finally, the impact of brush functionalization on the mechanics of the tribologically enhanced gels is reported with comparison to natural articular cartilage within the context of Hertzian contact theory.Heteroatom doping is one of the effective ways to improve the catalytic performances of nanozymes. In the present work, the plasma-assisted controllable doping of nitrogen (N) into MoS2 nanosheets has been initially proposed, resulting in efficient nanozymes. The so-obtained nanozymes were characterized separately by TEM, XRD, XPS, and FTIR. It was discovered that the resulting N-doped MoS2 nanosheets could present dramatically enhanced peroxidase-like catalytic activities depending on the plasma treatment time. Particularly, that with the 2-min treatment could display the highest catalytic activity, which is over 3-fold higher than that of pristine MoS2, that was also demonstrated by the kinetics studies. Herein, the N2 plasma treatment could facilitate the N elements to be doped covalently into MoS2 nanosheets to achieve the increased surface wettability and affinity of nanozymes for the improved access of the electrons and substrates of catalytic reactions. More importantly, the covalent doping of N elements into MoS2 nanosheets with a lower Fermi level, as evidenced by the DFT analysis, could facilitate the promoted electron transferring, resulting in the enhanced catalysis of N-doped MoS2 nanozymes, in addition to the high catalytic stability in water. Such a controllable plasma treatment strategy may open a new door toward the large-scale applications for doping heteroatoms into various nanozymes with improved catalysis performances.Clustering, endocytosis, and intracellular transport of molecules on the cell membrane are critically dependent on the type of cells. However, the membrane-associated redistribution of molecules has not been exploited to realize cell classification for diagnostic purposes. Here, we develop a set of DNA-encoded artificial receptors and ligands to monitor the cell membrane redistribution. In this system, a cholesterol-modified single-stranded DNA strand serves as the receptor localized on the membrane, and a tetrahedral DNA framework (TDF) nanostructure with a complementary overhang serves as the ligand. The DNA-encoded receptor-ligand interaction is highly orthogonal, mimicking the dynamics of natural receptors and ligands on cells. We demonstrate that the dynamics of membrane redistribution can be resolved by the dual-color fluorescent patterns of the receptor-ligand interactions in a single image, which can be exploited to classify cell lines with high fidelity. This DNA-encoded method thus holds great promise for cell typing and diagnosis.Nanopores are powerful single-molecule tools for label-free sensing of nanoscale molecules including DNA that can be used for building designed nanostructures and performing computations. Here, DNA hard drives (DNA-HDs) are introduced based on DNA nanotechnology and nanopore sensing as a rewritable molecular memory system, allowing for storing, operating, and reading data in the changeable three-dimensional structure of DNA. Writing and erasing data are significantly improved compared to previous molecular storage systems by employing controllable attachment and removal of molecules on a long double-stranded DNA. Data reading is achieved by detecting the single molecules at the millisecond time scale using nanopores. The DNA-HD also ensures secure data storage where the data can only be read after providing the correct physical molecular keys. Our approach allows for easy-writing and easy-reading, rewritable, and secure data storage toward a promising miniature scale integration for molecular data storage and computation.Metal and transition-metal dichalcogenide (TMD) hybrid systems have been attracting growing research attention because exciton-plasmon coupling is a desirable means of tuning the physical properties of TMD materials. Competing effects of metal nanostructures, such as the local electromagnetic field enhancement and luminescence quenching, affect the photoluminescence (PL) characteristics of metal/TMD nanostructures. In this study, we prepared TMD MoS2 monolayers on hexagonal arrays of Au nanodots and investigated their physical properties by micro-PL and surface photovoltage (SPV) measurements. MoS2 monolayers on bare Au nanodots exhibited higher PL intensities than those of MoS2 monolayers on 5-nm-thick Al2O3-coated Au nanodots. The Al2O3 spacer layer blocked charge transfer at the Au/MoS2 interface but allowed the transfer of mechanical strain to the MoS2 monolayers on the nanodots. The SPV mapping results revealed not only the electron-transfer behavior at the Au/MoS2 contacts but also the lateral drift of charge carriers at the MoS2 surface under light illumination, which corresponds to nonradiative relaxation processes of the photogenerated excitons.