Publications related to Polyimide microfluidic devices with integrated nanoporous filtration areas manufactured by micromachining and ion track technology

From Surfactants to 3D Printing: How Ion-Chelator Pair Interactions Affect the Mechanical Properties of Bioinspired Materials

The remarkable adaptability observed in marine ecosystems has often inspired researchers when developing new soft materials. The research undertaken in this thesis explores how ion chelator pair interactions influence the mechanical properties of bioinspir ...

EPFL2024

Large Libraries of Structurally Diverse Macrocycles Suitable for Membrane Permeation

Christian Heinis, Alessandro Angelini, Mischa Schüttel, Ganesh Kumar Mothukuri, Manuel Leonardo Merz, Zsolt Bognár, Xinjian Ji, Edward Jeffrey Will, Alexander Lund Nielsen, Anne Sofie Luise Zarda

Macrocycles offer an attractive format for drug development due to their good binding properties and potential to cross cell membranes. To efficiently identify macrocyclic ligands for new targets, methods for the synthesis and screening of large combinator ...

Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH2024

Membrane specificity of the human cholesterol transfer protein STARD4

Charlotte Julie Caroline Gehin

STARD4 regulates cholesterol homeostasis by transferring cholesterol between the plasma membrane and endoplasmic reticulum. The STARD4 structure features a helix-grip fold surrounding a large hydrophobic cavity holding the sterol. Its access is controlled ...

Academic Press Ltd- Elsevier Science Ltd2024

Influence of micro-patterned support properties and interfacial polymerization conditions on performance of patterned thin-film composite membranes

Kumar Varoon Agrawal, Cédric Karel J Van Goethem

Patterned membranes prepared via spray-modified non -solvent induced phase separation (s-NIPS) have successfully shown enhanced fluxes and better fouling control, thanks to the increased surface area and high fluid shear at the membrane/feed interface. The ...

Elsevier2024

Functionalized Å-scale Pores in Graphene for Carbon Capture

Kuang-Jung Hsu

Single-layer graphene, hosting a high density of functionalized molecular-sieving atom-thick pores, is considered to be an excellent material for gas separation membranes. These functionalized atom-thick pores enable the shortest transport pathway across t ...

EPFL2024

Advancements in Nanomechanical Characterization and Biomolecular Imaging with Atomic force Microscopy

Veronika Cencen

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) is a widely used imaging tool for obtaining a variety of information for a range of samples. Although it was initially intended to serve as a method of observing very flat solid surfaces, its use expanded into several other fi ...

EPFL2024

Membrane electrode assembly simulation of anion exchange membrane water electrolysis

Jan Van Herle, Zoé Mury, Suhas Nuggehalli Sampathkumar, Khaled Lawand

Anion exchange membrane water electrolysis (AEMWE) offers a green hydrogen production method that eliminates the need for platinum group metals (PGM) as electrocatalysts. This study employs a COMSOL (R) 6.0 model to simulate a 1x1 cm(2) Ni fibre - Raney (R ...

Elsevier2024

Advancing Cell-Free Synthetic Biology: From sustained PURE protein synthesis to an isothermal one-pot DNA replication system

Laura Sophie Grasemann

One of the goals of synthetic biology is the development of an artificial cell. Building an artificial cell from scratch will provide a deeper understanding of fundamental mechanisms and models in biology and promises to contribute towards building novel p ...

EPFL2024

S-acylation and lipid exchange at the ER-Golgi membrane contact sites regulate pathogen entry in human cells

Muhammad Umair Anwar

Cells have evolved endocytic pathways to internalize different molecules, to regulate intra-cellular communication and their interaction with external environment. Pathogens have co-evolved with cells to exploit these processes for infections. In particula ...

EPFL2024

Crystal, defect, and morphology engineering of porous two-dimensional materials for ionic separation

Heng-Yu Chi

Ordered two-dimensional (2D) materials hosting Å-scale pores are highly promising for enabling challenging separation, thanks to well-defined pore geometry resulting in tight confinement of ions when hosted inside the pore. In addition, the 2D nature of th ...

EPFL2024

Rescue of secretion of rare-disease-associated misfolded mutant glycoproteins in UGGT1 knock-out mammalian cells

Maurizio Molinari

Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) retention of misfolded glycoproteins is mediated by the ER-localized eukaryotic glycoprotein secretion checkpoint, UDP-glucose glycoprotein glucosyl-transferase (UGGT). The enzyme recognizes a misfolded glycoprotein and flags it ...

Wiley2024

Multiscale Porosity Microfluidics to Study Bacterial Transport in Heterogeneous Chemical Landscapes

Francesco Carrara, Jiande Zhou

Microfluidic models are proving to be powerful systems to study fundamental processes in porous media, due to their ability to replicate topologically complex environments while allowing detailed, quantitative observations at the pore scale. Yet, while por ...

Wiley2024

A new self-adjustable glaucoma valve

Nikolaos Stergiopoulos, Stéphane Bigler, Julien Maxime Gerber, Soroush Rafiei

Introduction: Glaucoma, the leading cause of irreversible blindness globally, affects more than 70 million people across the world. When initial treatments prove ineffective, especially for cases with high intraocular pressure (IOP), the preferred approach ...

Frontiers Media Sa2024

Improved microfluidic transcriptome based screening methods

Christoph Merten, Leonie Kolmar, Xiaoli Ma, Hongxing Hu

The invention provides microfluidic screening systems for the identification of compounds or compositions influencing cellular transcriptomes. The invention is predicated upon taking into account differences in newly synthesized mRNA in contrast to so call ...

2024

Microfluidic systems for infectious disease diagnostics

Thomas Lehnert, Martinus Gijs

Microorganisms, encompassing both uni- and multicellular entities, exhibit remarkable diversity as omnipresent life forms in nature. They play a pivotal role by supplying essential components for sustaining biological processes across diverse ecosystems, i ...

Royal Soc Chemistry2024

Homogenization theory captures macroscopic flow discontinuities across Janus membranes

François Gallaire, Pier Giuseppe Ledda, Giuseppe Antonio Zampogna, Kevin Wittkowski

Janus membranes, thin permeable structures with chemical and geometrical asymmetric properties, show great potential in industrial separation processes. Yet the link between the micro- and macro-scale behaviours of these membranes needs to be established r ...

Cambridge University Press2023

High throughput wide field second harmonic imaging of giant unilamellar vesicles

Sylvie Roke, Pierre-Marc Jean Marie Dansette, Maksim Eremchev, David Roesel

Cell-sized giant unilamellar vesicles (GUVs) are an ideal tool for understanding lipid membrane structure and properties. Label-free spatiotemporal images of their membrane potential and structure would greatly aid the quantitative understanding of membran ...

AIP Publishing2023

Micro- or nanostructured optical element

Niels Quack, Dorian Giraud Herle

A micro- or nanostructured optical element (1) is proposed comprising: a membrane (3) with an array of holes (5), the membrane (3) comprising a membrane light wave facing surface; an array of pillars (7) sized and shaped such that a respective pillar (7) i ...

2023

Structure of a membrane-bound menaquinol:organohalide oxidoreductase

Henning Paul-Julius Stahlberg, Christof Holliger, Julien Maillard, Lorenzo Cimmino, Dongchun Ni, Babatunde Edukpe Ekundayo

Organohalide-respiring bacteria are key organisms for the bioremediation of soils and aquifers contaminated with halogenated organic compounds. The major players in this process are respiratory reductive dehalogenases, corrinoid enzymes that use organohali ...

Nature Research2023

Effects of thermal, mechanical, and electrostatic perturbations on lipid membrane hydration investigated by second harmonic imaging

Seonwoo Lee

Hydrated lipid bilayer membranes are crucial components of cells and organelles, serving as the outer boundary that separates the cellular components from the extracellular environment. Lipid membranes regulate their structures and functions by dynamically ...

EPFL2023