Publications related to Conformation of Ring Polymers in 2D Constrained Environments

Ion Adsorption Enhances Apparent Nonelectrostatic Attraction between Monomers in Polyelectrolyte Brushes

Polyelectrolyte brushes are responsive to salt in the environment, and this has found broad applications in antifouling, biolubrication, and drug delivery. Salt primarily influences the conformation of the polyelectrolytes through ion adsorption. While ion ...

American Chemical Society2024

Soft Mechanochemistry of Disulfide-Crosslinked Polymer Networks

Zhao Meng

Mechanochemistry harnesses mechanical force to facilitate chemical reactions. Traditionally, the field of polymer mechanochemistry has used methods to activate chemical bonds, which use forces that are larger than those that are required to break a covalen ...

EPFL2024

Resolving bacterial cell biology: from replisome dynamics to cell wall synthesis

Chen Zhang

Bacteria are ubiquitous single cellular organisms. Compared to eukaryotic cells, bacteria have two unique characteristics: the membrane-less nucleoid and the cell wall built of peptidoglycan (PG). In most bacteria, a single circular chromosome is compacted ...

EPFL2024

Chromosome organization shapes replisome dynamics in Caulobacter crescentus

Suliana Manley, Laurent Casini, Chen Zhang

DNA replication in bacteria takes place on highly compacted chromosomes, where segregation, transcription, and repair must occur simultaneously. Within this dynamic environment, colocalization of sister replisomes has been observed in many bacterial specie ...

Nature Portfolio2024

Oxidative Defect Detection Within Free and Packed DNA Systems: A Quantum Mechanical/Molecular Mechanics (QM/ MM) Approach

Ursula Röthlisberger

Base excision repair enzymes (BERs) detect and repair oxidative DNA damage with efficacy despite the small size of the defects and their often only minor structural impact. A charge transfer (CT) model for rapid scanning of DNA stretches has been evoked to ...

Swiss Chemical Soc2024

The Structural Dispersity of Oligoethylene Glycol-Containing Polymer Brushes Determines Their Interfacial Properties

Harm-Anton Klok, Alberto Ongaro, Irene Filipucci

Ought to their bioinert properties and facile synthesis, poly[(oligoethylene glycol)methacrylate]s (POEGMAs) have been raised as attractive alternatives to poly(ethylene glycols) (PEGs) in an array of (bio)material applications, especially when they are ap ...

Amer Chemical Soc2024

Development of tools and methods for protein identification: From single molecules to in vivo applications

Salome Riccarda Püntener

As the fundamental machinery orchestrating cellular functions, proteins influence the state of every cell profoundly. As cells exhibit significant variations from one to another, analyzing the proteome on a single-cell level is imperative to unravel their ...

EPFL2024

Recycling of Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) Kits

Francesco Stellacci, Yong Zhu, Weina Liu

Polymerase chain reaction (PCR) kits have been used as common diagnosing tools during the outbreak of the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, with daily worldwide usage in the millions. It is well known that at the beginn ...

AMER CHEMICAL SOC2023

Bottlebrush Dielectric Elastomers with Improved Properties for Actuation

Yeerlan Adeli

Dielectric elastomer actuators (DEA) are elastic capacitors composed of a pair of compliant electrodes and a soft dielectric elastomer film sandwiched in between. This kind of stretchable capacitors can be actuated when charged, can generate electricity fr ...

EPFL2023

Influence of structural dynamics on cell uptake investigated with single-chain polymeric nanoparticles

Francesco Stellacci, Arthur Eliot Bouchez, Lixia Wei, Suiyang Liao

Most nanoparticles' parameters affect their interactions with cells. To date, all the parameters studied are basically static (e.g., size, shape, ligands, and charge). This is unfortunate, because proteins have struc-tural dynamics that most nanoparticles ...

CELL PRESS2023

C2CAplus: A One-Pot Isothermal Circle-to-Circle DNA Amplification System

Sebastian Maerkl, Laura Sophie Grasemann

Rolling circle amplification (RCA) is a widely used DNA amplification method that uses circular template DNA as input and produces multimeric, linear single- or double-stranded DNA. Circle-to-circle amplification (C2CA) has further expanded this method by ...

Amer Chemical Soc2023

Telomere protection against oxidative stress

Thu Trang Nguyen

Telomeres are nucleoprotein structures at the ends of linear chromosomes, being essential for the maintenance of genomic integrity. Telomeres have a unique structure which distinguishes chromosome termini from DNA damage sites. Shelterin complexes are the ...

EPFL2023

Spatially multiplexed single-molecule translocations through a nanopore at controlled speeds

Aleksandra Radenovic, Georg Fantner, Samuel Mendes Leitão, Barney Frederick Drake, Sanjin Marion, Vytautas Navikas, Simon Finn Mayer, Helena Miljkovic

In current nanopore-based label-free single-molecule sensing technologies, stochastic processes influence the selection of translocating molecule, translocation rate and translocation velocity. As a result, single-molecule translocations are challenging to ...

2023

Revealing the Formation Dynamics of Janus Polymer Particles: Insights from Experiments and Molecular Dynamics

Philip Robin Loche

Seeded emulsion polymerization is one of the best-known methods for preparing polymer particles with a controlled size, composition, and shape. It first requires the preparation of seed particles, which are then swollen with additional monomer (the same as ...

Amer Chemical Soc2023

cgNA+: A sequence-dependent coarse-grain model of double-stranded nucleic acids

Rahul Sharma

DNA mechanics plays a crucial role in many biological processes, including nucleosome positioning and protein-DNA interactions. It is believed that nature employs epigenetic modifications in DNA to further regulate gene expression. Moreover, double-strande ...

EPFL2023

Recombinant Full-Length TDP-43 Oligomers Retain Their Ability to Bind RNAs, Are Not Toxic, and Do Not Seed TDP-43 Aggregation in Vitro

Hilal Lashuel, Lixin Yang, Yllza Jasiqi

TAR DNA-binding protein with 43 kD (TDP-43) is a partially disordered protein that misfolds and accumulates in the brains of patients affected by several neurodegenerative diseases. TDP-43 oligomers have been reported to form due to aberrant misfolding or ...

Amer Chemical Soc2023

Development of multiplexed single-molecule imaging techniques to study chromatin invasion dynamics of chromatin effector proteins

Kristina Makasheva

DNA-binding proteins physically interact with the DNA and directly affect genomic functions. The eukaryotic genome is compacted into chromatin, limiting the DNA access to nuclear factors. In this Ph.D. thesis, I explored the dynamic mechanisms, that allow ...

EPFL2023

Achieving high hybridization density at DNA biosensor surfaces using branched spacer and click chemistry

Mounir Driss Mensi, Sandrine Gerber, Lucas Mayoraz, Perrine Agnes Edith Robin, Alireza Kavand

The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the necessity to develop fast, highly sensitive and selective virus detection methods. Surface-based DNA-biosensors are interesting candidates for this purpose. Functionalization of solid substrates with DNA must be pr ...

2023

A field-capable rapid plant DNA extraction protocol using microneedle patches for botanical surveying and monitoring

Sebastian Maerkl, Jonathan Selz, Nicolas Rémi Adam

PremiseA novel protocol for rapid plant DNA extraction using microneedles is proposed, which supports botanic surveys, taxonomy, and systematics. This protocol can be conducted in the field with limited laboratory skills and equipment. The protocol is vali ...

WILEY2023

Regulation and impact of TERRA R-loops at human telomeres

Rita Valador Fernandes

Telomeres are the nucleoprotein structures found at the ends of linear chromosomes. They ensure that the termini of chromosomes are not inappropriately recognized as sites of DNA damage, and are therefore crucial for genome stability. In spite of the heter ...

EPFL2023