#Discovery of Mesh Cell Structure Could Help Understand Development of Cancer For the first time a structure called he meshhas been identified
which helps to hold together cells. This discovery, which has been published in the online journal elife, changes our understanding of the cell internal scaffolding.
This also has implications for researchersunderstanding of cancer cells as the mesh is made partly of a protein
which is found to change in certain cancers, such as those of the breast and bladder.
The finding was made by a team led by Dr Stephen Royle, associate professor and senior Cancer Research UK Fellow at the division of biomedical cell biology at Warwick Medical school.
Dr Royle said: s a cell biologist you dream of finding a new structure in cells but it so unlikely.
Scientists have been looking at cells since the 17th century and so to find something that no one has seen before is amazing. esearchers at the University Warwick Medical school made the discovery by accident
while looking at gaps between microtubules which are part of the cellsnternal skeleton In dividing cells,
these gaps are incredibly small at just 25 nanometres wide 3, 000 times thinner than a human hair.
One of Dr Royle Phd students was examining structures called mitotic spindles in dividing cells using a technique called tomography
which is like a hospital CAT SCAN but on a much smaller scale. This meant that they could see the structure which they later named the mesh.
Mitotic spindles are the cell way of making sure that when they divide each new cell has a complete genome.
Mitotic spindles are made of microtubules and the mesh holds the microtubules together, providing support. While nter-microtubule bridgesin the mitotic spindle had been seen before,
the researchers were the first to view the mesh. The study received funding and support from Cancer Research UK and North West Cancer Research.
Dr Royle said: e had been looking in 2d and this gave the impression that ridgeslinked microtubules together.
All of a sudden, tilting the fibre in 3d showed us that the bridges were not single struts at all
A cell needs to share chromosomes accurately when it divides otherwise the two new cells can end up with the wrong number of chromosomes.
This is called aneuploidy and this has been linked to a range of tumours in different body organs.
The mitotic spindle is responsible for sharing the chromosomes and the researchers at the University believe that the mesh is needed to give structural support.
Too little support from the mesh and the spindle will be too weak to work properly, however too much support will result in it being unable to correct mistakes.
TACC3, is overproduced in certain cancers. When this situation was mimicked in the lab, the mesh and microtubules were altered
and cells had trouble sharing chromosomes during division. Dr Emma Smith, senior science communications officer at Cancer Research UK, said:
roblems in cell division are common in cancer cells frequently end up with the wrong number of chromosomes.
This early research provides the first glimpse of a structure that helps share out a cell chromosomes correctly
when it divides, and it might be a crucial insight into why this process becomes faulty in cancer
and whether drugs could be developed to stop it from happening. orth West Cancer Research (NWCR) has funded the research as part of a collaborative project between the University of Warwick and the University of Liverpool,
where part of the research is being carried out. Anne Jackson CEO at NWCR, said: r Royle and Professor Ian Prior at the University of Liverpool have made significant inroads into our understanding of the way in
which cancer cells behave, which could potentially better inform future cancer therapies. s a charity we fund only the highest standard of research,
as evidenced by Dr Royle work. ll funded our projects undergo a thorough peer review process, before they are considered by our scientific committee.
Our specially selected scientific committee includes some of the UK leading professors, award-winning scientists and pioneering professionals. arwick Medical school division of biomedical cell biology carries out fundamental molecular and cellular research into biomedical problems.
Major human diseases such as cancer inflammation, neurodegeneration and bacterial/viral infection are primarily diseases of cells.
Without a molecular understanding of the underlying cell biology, intelligent directed therapeutic intervention is impossible. The division research focuses on fundamental cell biology processes such as cell division and intracellular communication.
Source: http://www2. warwick. ac. uk m
#Scientists Discover New Chemical reaction Pathway on Titanium dioxide The reaction mechanism, reported in ACS Nano, involves the application of an electric field that narrows the width of the reaction barrier,
thereby allowing hydrogen atoms to tunnel away from the surface. This opens the way for the manipulation of the atomic-scale transport channels of hydrogen,
which could be important in hydrogen storage. Hydrogen has been put forward as a clean and renewable alternative to the burning of hydrocarbons
and one of the great challenges of our day is to find an efficient way to store
and transport it. The team used scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) to directly visualize single hydrogen ions
The pulse generates an electric field as well as injecting electrons into the sample. By using a new theoretical approach developed by Dr. Kajita,
the electric field reduces the width of the barrier, thereby allowing the hydrogen to desorb by quantum tunneling (Fig. 2). Lead author Prof.
Taketoshi Minato (Tohoku Univ. and RIKEN, currently Kyoto University) commented that"The new reaction pathway could be exploited in nanoscale switching devices and hydrogen storage technology.
For instance, electric fields could be used to extract hydrogen from a Tio2-based storage device e
#Grolltex to Commercialize Graphene Mass Production Technology with The Triton Fund Investment A University of California,
San diego graduate student has found a way to use mass-produced graphene, an allotrope of carbon that is one atom-thick.
Large-scale graphene can be used for applications such as water desalination membranes and flexible electronics. raphene is more conductive than any metal we know of,
and it 200 times stronger than steel because of the way the atoms bond to form a hexagonal pattern (think of chicken wire) with a cloud of free electrons hovering above and below it,
said UC San diego Nanoengineering Ph d. candidate Aliaksandr (Alex) Zaretski. t has been known for years that graphene is useful as a water desalination membrane.
We can introduce nanopores into a monolayer of graphene, push large quantities of salt water through and the salt will be rejected on the basis of size
and charge. he problem, according to Zaretski, is that no one has been able to produce graphene on a large-enough scale for this
and other applications. rolltex looks like they have cracked the code on this. The company has developed an environmentally benign process to grow graphene with the same properties as traditional manufacturing.
who suggested he apply to the Southern California Clean energy technology Acceleration Program managed by the von Liebig Entrepreneurism Center and funded by the Department of energy.
Through this program, Alex received proof of concept funding and individualized mentorship to help validate his technology for the market. t was a really eye-opening experience,
and this year first prize at Chapman University 4th Annual California Dreaminbusiness Plan Competition. Things took off Zaretski patented the technology through UC San diego Technology Transfer Office
From there, he went on to form a core team by hiring a CEO Jeff Draa
said Zaretski. wanted to go to a graduate school where my ideas would not only be accepted, but embraced and nurtured.
or the Medical school. Technology areas of interest include cloud applications, analytics, social media, mobile, materials, medical devices, digital health, healthcare IT, instruments and cloud software infrastructure.
Of particular interest are technologies that can be matched with a targeted vertical market. For more information, interested parties may contact TTF at info@thetritonfund. com. About Vertical Venture Partners:
Vertical Venture Partners is a venture capital firm focused on investments in companies that target specific vertical markets.
Some vertical markets of interest include Retail, Healthcare, Transportation, Insurance, Financial services and Telecommunications. Some technology areas of interest include:
analytical applications, cloud applications, mobile, vertical CRM, cybersecurity and software infrastructure. Vertical Venture Partners will invest at any stage of a company growth
The von Liebig Center is recognized a nationally Proof of Concept Center with a mission to accelerate the commercialization of university discoveries.
now an NSF funded Iorps Site, has helped more than 200 innovator teams conduct proof of concept studies and market research through a combination of gap funding, expert mentorship and entrepreneurial education.
#Silver-Ion Infused Lignin Nanoparticles Effectively Kill Bacteria Orlin Velev, an engineer at NC State engineer,
along with other researchers developed nanoscale particles that introduce silver antimicrobial potency to a biocompatible lignin core.
The silver-ion infused lignin nanoparticles, coated with a layer of charged polymer that aids the particles to stick to the target microbes,
can effectively destroy a wide range of harmful microorganisms, including E coli bacteria. When the targeted bacteria are wiped out by nanoparticles,
silver gets depleted from these particles. Upon disposal, the rest of the particles also degrade easily due to their biocompatible lignin core.
This greatly restricts the harm posed to the environment. People have been interested in using silver nanoparticles for antimicrobial purposes,
but there are lingering concerns about their environmental impact due to the long-term effects of the used metal nanoparticles released in the environment.
We show here an inexpensive and environmentally responsible method to make effective antimicrobials with biomaterial cores.
Velev, INVISTA Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular engineering at NC State. The nanoparticles infused with silver ions were utilized to attack Pseudomonas aeruginosa, disease-causing bacteria;
E coli, a bacterial species that cause food poisoning; Staphylococcus epidermis, bacteria that form toxic biofilms on plastics such as catheters in the human body;
and Ralstonia, a genus of bacteria that contains various soil-borne pathogens. All these bacteria were destroyed by the newly developed nanoparticles.
Using this latest technique, researchers can easily modify the nanoparticle recipe to target certain microbes.
According to Alexander Richter, first author of the paper and a Ph d. candidate at NC State who received the 2015 Lemelson-MIT prize,
the nanoparticles can form the basis for developing pesticide products that reduce risk, have minimal environmental impact,
and are priced affordably. We expect this method to have a broad impact. We may include less of the antimicrobial ingredient without losing effectiveness
while at the same time using an inexpensive technique that has a lower environmental burden. We are now working to scale up the process to synthesize the particles under continuous flow conditions.
Other researchers from the University of Hull, EPA, University college London and Wageningen University also took part in the research.
The National Science Foundation, the U s. Environmental protection agency, and NC State funded the study y
#SEMICON WEST 2015: imec and Besi Develop Automated Thermocompression Solution for Narrow-Pitch Die-to-Wafer Bonding 3d IC technology,
stacking multiple dies into a single device, aims to increase the functionality and performance of next-generation integrated circuits while reducing footprint and power consumption.
It is a key technology to enable the next generation of portable electronics, such as smartphones and tablets,
which require smaller ICS that consume less power. One of the challenges to making 3d IC manufacturing an industrial reality is the development of a high-throughput automated process flow for narrow-pitch,
high-accuracy die-to-die and die-to-wafer bonding. Thermocompression bonding (TCB) is a widespread process used by the industry for highly accurate die-to-package bonding.
The method released the stress in the laminate layer and avoided stress to build up between the two stacked layers.
Yet, more traditional approaches to thermocompression bonding come with long cycle times(>1 minute per die),
Imec and Besi demonstrated die-to-wafer bonding at high accuracy, sufficient for 50 m pitch solder micro bump arrays and a throughput of>1000 UPH with a dual bond head
and processes, has enabled us to develop our 8800 TC bonder tool according to the needs of the semiconductor industry,
#New Method to Visualize Topological Insulators at the Nanoscale Using Large particle accelerator Scientists trying to improve the semiconductors that power our electronic devices have focused on a technology called spintronics as one especially promising area of research.
Unlike conventional devices that use electronscharge to create power, spintronic devices use electronsspin. The technology is used already in computer hard drives
and many other applications and scientists believe it could eventually be used for quantum computers, a new generation of machines that use quantum mechanics to solve complex problems with extraordinary speed.
Emerging research has shown that one key to greatly improving performance in spintronics could be a class of materials called topological insulators.
they conduct electricity. But topological insulators have certain defects that have limited so far their use in practical applications,
The UCLA researchers have overcome that challenge with a new method to visualize topological insulators at the nanoscale.
which was led by which Louis Bouchard, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry, and Dimitrios Koumoulis, a UCLA postdoctoral scholar,
was published online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The new method is the first use of betaetected nuclear magnetic resonance to study the effects of these defects on the properties of topological insulators.
and slowed down to a desired energy level before they are implanted in the topological insulators.
In betaetected nuclear magnetic resonance, ions (in this case, the ionized lithium-8 atoms) of various energies are implanted in the material of interest (the topological insulator) to generate signals from the material layers of interest.
Co-authors of the PNAS research were Danny King, formerly a UCLA graduate student in chemistry and biochemistry;
Kang L. Wang, a UCLA professor of electrical engineering; Liang He, formerly a postdoctoral scholar in Wang lab;
Xufeng Kou, formerly a graduate student in Wang lab; Gerald Morris and Masrur Hossain at TRIUMF;
Dong Wang of the University of British columbia; Gregory Fiete, a professor at the University of Texas, Austin;
and Mercouri Kanatzidis, a professor at Northwestern University. Source: http://www. ucla. edu h
#New Multispectral Microscope for Studying Impact of Experimental Drugs on Biological Samples This is the largest such microscopic image ever created.
This level of multicolor detail is essential for studying the impact of experimental drugs on biological samples
and is an important advancement over traditional microscope designs, which have fallen short when it comes to imaging large, spectrally diverse samples.
The power of this innovative instrument is to simultaneously process large amounts of data, thus addressing a major bottleneck in pharmaceutical research:
rapid, data-rich biomedical imaging. By merging data simultaneously collected by thousands of microlenses optical elements each smaller than the width of a human hair this new multispectral microscope is able to produce a continuous series of datasets that essentially reveal how much of multiple colors
are present at each point in a single biological sample. harmaceutical research is awash with cutting-edge equipment that tries to image
what is happening at the cellular level and smaller, said Antony Orth, a researcher formerly at the Rowland Institute, Harvard university in Cambridge and now with the ARC Centre for Nanoscale Biophotonics,
RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. e recognized that the microscopy part of the drug development pipeline was much slower than it could be designed
and a system specifically for this task. rth and his colleagues published their results in Optica,
the new high-impact journal of The Optical Society. Multispectral Imaging Color and Data Combinemultispectral imaging is used for a variety of scientific and medical research applications.
This process not only produces an image, it also provides data about specific colors, or frequencies, in that image.
Medical researchers are able to study these frequencies to learn about the composition and chemical processes that are taking place within a biological sample.
This is essential for pharmaceutical research particularly cancer research--to observe how cells and tissues respond to specific chemicals and experimental drugs.
Such research, however, is very data intensive and slow since current multispectral microscopes can only survey a single point at a time with few color channels,
typically only 4 or 5. This process must then be repeated over and over to scan the entire sample.
Microlenses and Parallel processing for Big Datato overcome these limitations, Orth and his team took inspiration from modern computing, in
which massive amounts of data and calculations are handled simultaneous by multicore processors. In the case of imaging,
however, the work of a single microscope lens is distributed among an entire array or microlenses,
each responsible for collecting multispectral data for a very narrow portion of each sample. To capture this data,
a laser is focused onto a small spot on the sample by each microlens. The laser light causes the sample to fluoresce,
emitting specific wavelengths of light that differ depending on the molecules that are present. This fluorescence is imaged then back onto the camera.
This is done for thousands of microlenses at once. This multipoint scanning greatly reduces the amount of time necessary to image a sample by simultaneously harnessing thousands of lenses. y recording the color spectrum of the fluorescence
200 by 200 pixels wide. These individual multicolor images were stitched then together into a large mosaic image.
By simultaneously imaging 13 separate colors bands, the dataset produced was nearly 17 billion pixels in size.
The Challenge of Big Datathis novel approach initially presented a challenge in the data pipeline.
The raw data is in the form of one megapixel images recorded at 200 frames per second a data rate much higher than current microscopes
and process a tremendous amount of data each second. Over time, the availability and prices of fast cameras and fast hard drives have come down considerably,
allowing for a much more affordable and efficient design. The current limiting factor is loading the recorded data from hard drives to active computer memory to produce an image.
The researchers estimate that an active memory of about 100 gigabytes to store the raw dataset would improve the entire process even further.
Impact of Big data on Multispectral Imagingthe goal of this technology is to speed up drug discovery.
the team would like to expand to live cell imaging in which billion-pixel, time-lapse movies of cells moving
#Breakthrough Imaging Technique Reveals Unprecedented Details of Nanocrystal Structures An international research team, co-headed by Hans Elmlund,
an associate professor from the Monash University ARC Centre of Excellence in Advanced Molecular Imaging, has devised a breakthrough imaging technique for capturing the 3d structures of nanocrystals,
which find application in cancer treatment, pollution reduction, renewable energy collection. Scientists from Harvard, Boston, and Princeton universities have played also a role in the development of this innovative technique, called D Structure Identification of Nanoparticles by Graphene Liquid Cell EM (SINGLE),
which enables the analysis of the 3d structures of these particles for the first time. Metallic nanoparticles have dimensions in the nanometer range
which makes it impossible to visualize their structure. This limitation has prevented researchers from gaining insights into how they work.
along with its application in the characterization of the 3d structures of nanoparticles. With the integration of three recently designed components, the novel imaging method delivers a performance far superior than earlier techniques.
which is a one-molecule-thick bag capable of holding liquid within it during exposure to the ultra high vacuum of the electron microscope column.
A direct electron detector is the second component which has a much higher sensitivity than conventional camera film.
It is capable of capturing movies of the nanoparticle when they spin around in solution. A 3d modeling approach called PRIME is the final component,
and this can generate 3d computer models of individual nanoparticles using the movies captured. The movie clips, posted along with the publication, show the unprecedented details of the structure of two platinum nanoparticles.
This in depth information allowed the research team to gain new insights into the growth of these highly useful particles at individual atom level.
Particle 1 in action Monash University Youtube. comthe field had expected cubical or at least highly symmetrical platinum nanocrystals. t was surprising to learn that they form asymmetrical multi-domain structures,
Elmlund said. Exploring how these nanoparticles form and evolve, and characterizing how they go through the transitions to achieve their final form are the next steps of the research team. t is important for us to understand this,
so that we can design new materials, for example, to build better or more efficient solar cells, or make better and more economical use of fossil fuels,
Elmlund said
#Simpler Thermodynamic Approach Could Help Improve the Performance of Graphene-Based Nanoelectronic Devices The researchers found that the energy of ultrafast electrical currents passing through graphene is converted very efficiently into electron heat,
making graphene electrons behave just like a hot gas. he heat is distributed evenly over all electrons.
in turn has a strong effect on the electrical conduction of grapheneexplains Professor Mischa Bonn, Director at the MPI-P. The study,
graphene finds a multitude of applications in modern nanoelectronics. They range from highly efficient detectors for optical
and wireless communications to transistors operating at very high speeds. A constantly increasing demand for telecommunication bandwidth requires an ever faster operation of electronic devices,
pushing their response times to be as short as a picosecond. he results of this study will help improve the performance of graphene-based nanoelectronic devices such as ultra-high speed transistors and photodetectorssays Professor Dmitry Turchinovich,
who led the research at the MPI-P. In particular they show the way for breaking the terahertz operation speed barrier i e. one thousand billions of oscillations per second for graphene transistors.
Source: http://www. mpip-mainz. mpg. de w
#Gallium Phosphide Nanowires Significantly Increase Efficiency of Solar fuel Cells The solar cell made of gallium phosphide (Gap) generates clean fuel hydrogen gas from Water gap is a compound containing phosphide and gallium which also acts
as a basis for certain colored LEDS. If the gallium phosphide is processed in the form of tiny nanowires,
the efficiency of the solar cell can be increased tenfold without using considerable amounts of costly material.
The electricity thus generated by the solar cell can be utilized to trigger chemical reactions. If these reactions produce fuel, then solar fuels would become a promising alternative for polluting fuels.
One way is to use electricity that is produced to split the liquid water. This process is called electrolysis.
In case of oxygen, this generates hydrogen gas which can be combusted in fuel cells or can be utilized as a clean fuel source in the chemical industry, for instance in cars to drive engines.
One efficient solution is to link a current silicon solar cell to a battery which is capable of splitting the liquid water;
however, this is a costly process. To that end, researchers have been focusing on a semiconductor material which not only changes sunlight into an electrical charge,
but also splits the water, acting as a form of solar fuel cell. The research team at FOM and TU/e found their desired candidate in Gap,
which has excellent electrical properties. However, a major disadvantage of this compound is that it cannot efficiently absorb light
when a huge flat surface is present as that utilized in Gap solar cells. The team resolved this issue by fabricating a network of small Gap nanowires
which measured 90nm in width and 500nm in length. This grid instantly increases the hydrogen yield by a factor of 10 to 2. 9,
%which is a major record for Gap cells although it is still not close to the 15%efficiency obtained by silicon cells connected to a battery.
Erik Bakkers, TU/e professor and research head, stated that it is not just the yield,
a large number of opportunities still exist for improvement . or the nanowires we needed ten thousand less precious Gap material than in cells with a flat surface.
That makes these kinds of cells potentially a great deal cheaper Bakkers said. n addition, Gap is also able to extract oxygen from the water
so you then actually have a fuel cell in which you can temporarily store your solar energy.
In short, for a solar fuels future we cannot ignore gallium phosphide any longer. y
#Sticky-Flare Nanotechnology Reveals RNA Misregulation in Living Cells A new technology--called"Sticky-flares"--developed by nanomedicine experts at Northwestern University offers the first real-time method to track
and observe the dynamics of RNA distribution as it is transported inside living cells. Sticky-flares have the potential to help scientists understand the complexities of RNA better than any analytical technique to date
and observe and study the biological and medical significance of RNA misregulation. Details will be published the week of July 20 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS.
"said Chad A. Mirkin, a nanomedicine expert and corresponding author of the study.""We hope that many more researchers will be able to use this platform to increase our understanding of RNA function inside cells."
"Mirkin is the George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry in the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences and professor of medicine, chemical and biological engineering, biomedical engineering and materials science and engineering.
Sticky-flares are tiny spherical nucleic acid gold nanoparticle conjugates that can enter living cells and target and transfer a fluorescent reporter or"tracking device"to RNA transcripts.
the scientists explain how they used Sticky-flares to quantify ß-actin mrna in Hela cells (the oldest and most commonly used human cell line) as well as to follow the real-time transport of ß-actin mrna in mouse embryonic
which was the first genetic-based approach that is able to detect live circulating tumor cells out of the complex matrix that is human blood.
Nanoflares have been very useful for researchers that operate in the arena of quantifying gene expression. Aurasense, Inc.,a biotechnology company that licensed the Nanoflare technology from Northwestern University,
and EMD-Millipore, another biotech company, have commercialized Nanoflares. There are now more than 1, 700 commercial forms of Nanoflares sold under the Smartflare?
name in more than 230 countries. The Sticky-flare is designed to address limitations of Smartflares? most notably their inability to track RNA location and enter the nucleus. The Northwestern team believes Sticky-flares are poised to become a valuable tool for researchers who desire to understand the function of RNA in live cells l
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