Publications related to Protocell

Exosomes, microvesicles, and other extracellular vesicles-a Keystone Symposia report

Michele De Palma, Ferdinando Pucci, Qin Zhang

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are small, lipid-bilayer-bound particles released by cells that can contain important bioactive molecules, including lipids, RNAs, and proteins. Once released in the extracellular environment, EVs can act as messengers locally ...

WILEY2023

Cholesterol-Containing Liposomes Decorated With Au Nanoparticles as Minimal Tunable Fusion Machinery

Francesco Stellacci, Paulo Henrique Jacob Silva, Ester Canepa, Giulia Rossi

Membrane fusion is essential for the basal functionality of eukaryotic cells. In physiological conditions, fusion events are regulated by a wide range of specialized proteins, operating with finely tuned local lipid composition and ionic environment. Fusog ...

WILEY-V C H VERLAG GMBH2023

Liposomes and Lipid Droplets Display a Reversal of Charge-Induced Hydration Asymmetry

Sylvie Roke, Nathan Dupertuis, Saranya Pullanchery Sankara Narayanan

The unique properties of water are critical for life. Water molecules have been reported to hydrate cations and anions asymmetrically in bulk water, being a key element in the balance of biochemical interactions. We show here that this behavior extends to ...

Amer Chemical Soc2023

Article Structure and functionality of a multimeric human COQ7:COQ9 complex

Matteo Dal Peraro, Luciano Andres Abriata

Coenzyme Q (CoQ) is a redox-active lipid essential for core metabolic pathways and antioxidant defense. CoQ is synthesized upon the mitochondrial inner membrane by an ill-defined "complex Q" metabolon. Here, we present structure-function analyses of a lipi ...

CELL PRESS2022

New Insights for Parasitic Effects of Label-Free Biosensors Based on Capacitive Micromachined Ultrasonic Transducers

Sandro Carrara, Zhengwen Jiang, Yihe Zhao, Jie Li

Capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducers (CMUTs) are regarded as an attractive candidate in bio-applications such as imaging and molecule monitoring. However, the previous researches on biochemical sensing are mostly air-coupled application based on ...

IEEE-INST ELECTRICAL ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS INC2022

Age- and gender-related differences in brain tissue microstructure revealed by multi-component T2 relaxometry

Erick Jorge Canales Rodriguez

In spite of extensive work, inconsistent findings and lack of specificity in most neuroimaging techniques used to examine age- and gender-related patterns in brain tissue microstructure indicate the need for additional research. Here, we performed the larg ...

2021

Electrophile Signaling and Emerging Immuno- and Neuro-modulatory Electrophilic Pharmaceuticals

Yimon Aye, Jesse Poganik

With a lipid-rich environment and elevated oxygen consumption, the central nervous system (CNS) is subject to intricate regulation by lipid-derived electrophiles (LDEs). Investigations into oxidative damage and chronic LDE generation in neural disorders ha ...

FRONTIERS MEDIA SA2020

Single-molecule kinetics of pore assembly by the membrane attack complex

Georg Fantner, Adrian Pascal Nievergelt

The membrane attack complex (MAC) is a hetero-oligomeric protein assembly that kills pathogens by perforating their cell envelopes. The MAC is formed by sequential assembly of soluble complement proteins C5b, C6, C7, C8 and C9, but little is known about th ...

Springer2019

A machine learning approach for mapping the very shallow theoretical geothermal potential

Jean-Louis Scartezzini, Dan Assouline, Nahid Mohajeri Pour Rayeni

The very shallow geothermal potential (vSGP) is increasingly recognized as a viable resource for providing clean thermal energy in urban and rural areas. This is primarily due to its reliability, low-cost installation, easy maintenance, and little constrai ...

2019

Lipid exchange and signaling at ER–Golgi contact sites

Meticulous observations of the cell perinuclear region where the Golgi and the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) networks intermingle have revealed close contact sites of barely 20 nm between these two organelles. Recent studies demonstrate that molecular machine ...

2018

Interaction of Oil and Lipids in Freestanding Lipid Bilayer Membranes Studied with Label-Free High-Throughput Wide-Field Second-Harmonic Microscopy

Sylvie Roke, Orly Bagunu Tarun, Maksim Eremchev

The interaction of oils and lipids is relevant for membrane biochemistry since the cell uses bilayer membranes, lipid droplets, and oily substances in its metabolic cycle. In addition, a variety of model lipid membrane systems, such as freestanding horizon ...

2018

Pre-transition effects mediate forces of assembly between transmembrane proteins

Berend Smit

We present a mechanism for a generic, powerful force of assembly and mobility for transmembrane proteins in lipid bilayers. This force is a pre-transition (or pre-melting) effect for the first-order transition between ordered and disordered phases in the m ...

Elife Sciences Publications Ltd2016

Perturbations of the Straight Transmembrane alpha-Helical Structure of the Amyloid Precursor Protein Affect Its Processing by gamma-Secretase

Matteo Dal Peraro, Patrick Fraering, Mitko Dimitrov, Thomas Lemmin

Background: Amyloid- neurotoxicity depends on the specificity of the proteolytic cleavage of the amyloid precursor protein (APP) transmembrane domain. Results: The APP transmembrane -helix is straight in a biological membrane bilayer. Conclusion: The flexi ...

American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology2014

Amphiphilic amino acids: a key to adsorbing proteins to nanopatterned surfaces?

Francesco Stellacci

It has been suggested that amphiphilic amino acids play an important role in the adsorption of proteins on nanostructured surfaces with an ordered, striped domain structure such as those presented by monolayer-protected metal nanoparticles (MPMNs). We have ...

Royal Soc Chemistry2013

Vesicle Photonics

Demetri Psaltis, Sylvie Roke, Jeffrey Alan Hubbell, Andreas Vasdekis

Amphiphiles, under appropriate conditions, can self-assemble into nanoscale thin membrane vessels (vesicles) that encapsulate and hence protect and transportmolecular payloads.Vesicles assemble naturally within cells but can also be artificially synthesize ...

Annual Reviews2013

Molecular Modeling of Membrane Embedded Proteins

Thomas Lemmin

Over the past years, molecular modeling and simulation techniques have had a major impact on experimental life sciences. They are capable of providing accurate insight into microscopic mechanisms, which are usually difficult to investigate experimentally. ...

EPFL2013

Nanostructured Surfaces for the Detection of Single-Particles and Single-Molecules

Romain Wyss

Biomarker detection and diagnosis are important steps in the prevention and the treatment of a disease. There is an increasing need for utmost sensitive and robust sensing devices; in this framework, subwavelength (metal) pores could contribute to a concep ...

EPFL2013

An array of 100 μm × 100 μm dielectric elastomer actuators with 80% strain for tissue engineering applications

Herbert Shea, Samin Akbari

Biological cells modulate their behavior, express genes, proliferate or differentiate in response to mechanical strains ranging from 1% to 20%. There currently exists no technique to apply strain to many targeted individual cells in a larger culture in ord ...

Elsevier2012

Connecting vesicular transport with lipid synthesis: FAPP2

Giovanni D'Angelo

Next to the protein-based machineries composed of small G-proteins, coat complexes, SNAREs and tethering factors, the lipid-based machineries are emerging as important players in membrane trafficking. As a component of these machineries, lipid transfer pro ...

2012

Label-free spectroscopic detection of vesicles in water using vibrational sum frequency scattering

Sylvie Roke, Hilton Barbosa De Aguiar

Vibrational sum frequency scattering (SFS) has been used to study sub-micron, catanionic vesicles in solution. The vesicles were synthesized from a binary mixture of dodecyltrimethylammonium bromide (DTAB) and sodium dodecylsulfate (SDS) surfactants in deu ...

2011