Search results for " Materials Science"
showing 10 items of 7414 documents
In vitro fibrillogenesis of the amyloid beta 1-42 peptide: cholesterol potentiation and aspirin inhibition.
2002
Understanding the formation of extracellular amyloid neurofibrillar bundles/senile plaques and their role in the development of Alzheimer's disease is of considerable interest to neuroscientists and clinicians. Major components of the extracellular neurofibrillar bundles are polymerized amyloid beta (Abeta) peptides (1-40), (1-42) and (1-43), derived in vivo from the soluble amyloid precursor protein (sAPP) by proteolytic (beta- and gamma-secretase) cleavage. The Abeta(1-42) peptide is widely considered to be of greatest significance in relation to the pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. A well-defined ultrastructural characteristic within Alzheimer dense plaques is the presence of helical…
Cholesterol binding to amyloid-β fibrils: A TEM study
2008
There is increasing interest in the role of brain cholesterol in Alzheimer's disease and the contribution of cholesterol to the formation of amyloid plaques. This paper presents a TEM study showing the binding of soluble approximately 10 nm diameter cholesterol-PEG 600 micelles to amyloid-beta(1-42) (Abeta(1-42)) fibrils formed either in the presence of this cholesterol derivative or to preformed fibrils generated under four different fibrillogenesis conditions. Specimens negatively stained with uranyl acetate revealed that during 24 h fibrillogenesis at 37 degrees C the cholesterol-PEG micelles bound periodically to Abeta(1-42) protofibrils and apparently also formed a thin smooth unbroken…
Polymorphism of amyloid-beta fibrils and its effects on human erythrocyte catalase binding.
2009
The Alzheimer's amyloid-beta (Abeta) peptide exists as a number of naturally occurring forms due to differential proteolytic processing of its precursor molecule. Many of the Abeta peptides of different lengths form fibrils in vitro, which often show polymorphisms in the fibril structure. This study presents a TEM based analysis of fibril formation by eighteen different Abeta peptides ranging in length from 5 to 43 amino acids. Spectrophotometric analysis of Congo red binding to the fibrillar material has been assessed and the binding of human erythrocyte catalase (HEC) to Abeta fibrils has also been investigated by TEM. The results show that a diverse range of Abeta peptides form fibrils a…
Negative staining across holes: application to fibril and tubular structures.
2007
The negative staining technique, when used with holey carbon support films, presents superior imaging conditions than is the case when samples are adsorbed to continuous carbon films. A demonstration of this negative staining approach is presented, using ammonium molybdate in combination with trehalose, applied to several fibrillar and tubular samples. Fibrils formed from the amyloid-beta peptide and the protease inhibitor pepstain A spread very well unsupported across holes and the different polymorphic fibril forms can be readily assessed. However, tubular forms of amyloid-beta have a tendency to be flattened, due to surface tension forces prior to and during specimen drying. Sub-fibril a…
Development and application of an alternative modelling approach for the thermo-mechanical analysis of a DEMO water-cooled lithium lead breeding blan…
2022
In the frame of the EUROfusion research activities devoted to the design of the DEMO breeding blanket (BB), the Water-Cooled Lithium-Lead BB (WCLL) concept is one of the candidates currently assessed in EU. To this end, an intense research campaign is ongoing to develop a robust geometric configuration for the WCLL BB Central Outboard Segment (COB). Since the current reference design of the WCLL COB segment is not mature enough to allow a full thermal-hydraulic assessment, an alternative procedure aimed at obtaining a thermal field for the whole segment without performing its complete thermal-hydraulic analysis is presented and applied in this work. The scope of the work is to obtain a ther…
Gold Nanorods as Plasmonic Sensors for Particle Diffusion.
2016
Plasmonic gold nanoparticles are normally used as sensor to detect analytes permanently bound to their surface. If the interaction between the analyte and the nanosensor surface is negligible, it only diffuses through the sensor’s sensing volume, causing a small temporal shift of the plasmon resonance position. By using a very sensitive and fast detection scheme, we are able to detect these small fluctuations in the plasmon resonance. With the help of a theoretical model consistent with our detection geometry, we determine the analyte’s diffusion coefficient. The method is verified by observing the trends upon changing diffusor size and medium viscosity, and the diffusion coefficients obtai…
A new 8-oxo-7,8-2 ' deoxyguanosine nanoporous anodic alumina aptasensor for colorectal cancer diagnosis in blood and urine
2021
Many important human diseases, and especially cancer, have been related to the overproduction of 8-oxo-7,8-dihydro-2 '-deoxyguanosine (8-oxo-dG). This molecule is a product of oxidative stress processes over nucleophilic bases in DNA. In this work, an aptasensor for the rapid, selective and accurate detection of this oncomarker is presented. The aptasensor consists of a nanoporous anodic alumina material loaded with a dye and is functionalized with an aptamer-based "molecular gate". In the presence of target 8-oxo-dG, the capping aptamer displaces from the surface due to the high affinity of the analyte with the capping aptamer, thus inducing delivery of the preloaded fluorescent dye. In co…
Multiplexed plasmon sensor for rapid label-free analyte detection.
2013
Efficient and cost-effective multiplexed detection schemes for proteins in small liquid samples would bring drastic advances to fields like disease detection or water quality monitoring. We present a novel multiplexed sensor with randomly deposited aptamer functionalized gold nanorods. The spectral position of plasmon resonances of individual nanorods, monitored by dark-field spectroscopy, respond specifically to different proteins. We demonstrate nanomolar sensitivity, sensor recycling, and the potential to upscale to hundreds or thousands of targets.
Two-Dimensional Indium Selenide for Sulphur Vapour Sensing Applications
2020
Surface-to-volume ratio in two-dimensional (2D) materials highlights among their characteristics as an inherent and intrinsic advantage taking into account their strong sensitivity to surface effects. For this reason, we have proposed in this work micromechanically exfoliated 2D nanosheets of InSe as an optical vapour sensor. As a proof of concept, we used 2-mercaptoethanol as the chemical analyte in vapour phase to monitor the change of the InSe photoluminescence (PL) before and after exposure to the analyte. For short vapour exposure times (at low analyte concentration), we found a PL enhancement of InSe nanosheets attributed to the surface localization of Se defects. For long vapour expo…
Characterization of porous alumina membranes for efficient, real-time, flow through biosensing
2015
Abstract Nanofluidic sensing devices promise high performance by overcoming issues of mass transport of analyte molecules to the sensing surface, whilst micro-porous membranes promise high sensitivity due to a large surface for their capture. Anodic alumina (AAO) filter membranes allow the flow through of samples, and could be used as a convenient and readily available fluidic platform for the targeted delivering of analytes to bioreceptors immobilized on the pore walls. The relatively small pore dimensions, compared to fluidic diffusion lengths, promise highly efficient capture of analytes from the whole sample volume, enabling relatively fast sensing response times and the use of small sa…