#Cellular structures

[jcmarchi]

Shedding new light on sugars, the “dark matter” of cellular biology - Technology Org

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/shedding-new-light-on-sugars-the-dark-matter-of-cellular-biology-technology-org/

Shedding new light on sugars, the “dark matter” of cellular biology - Technology Org

Scientists at Université de Montréal’s Department of Chemistry have developed a new fluorogenic probe that can be used to detect and study interactions between two families of biomolecules essential to life: sugars and proteins.

Our idea was to label sugar molecules with a chromophore, a chemical that gives a molecule its colour,” explained Cecioni. “The chromophore is actually fluorogenic, which means that it can become fluorescent if the binding of sugar with the lectin is efficiently captured. Image credit: Cecioni Lab

The findings by professor Samy Cecioni and his students, which open the door to a wide range of applications, were published in mid-October in the prestigious European journal Angewandte Chemie.

Found in all living cells

Sugar is omnipresent in our lives, present in almost all the foods we eat. But the importance of these simple carbohydrates extends far beyond tasty desserts. Sugars are vital to virtually all biological processes in living organisms and there is a vast diversity of naturally occurring sugar molecules.

“All of the cells that make up living organisms are covered in a layer of sugar-based molecules known as glycans,” said Cecioni. “Sugars are therefore on the front line of almost all physiological processes and play a fundamental role in maintaining health and preventing disease.”

“For a long time,” he added, “scientists believed that the complex sugars found on the surface of cells were simply decorative. But we now know that these sugars interact with many other types of molecules, particularly lectins, a large family of proteins.”

Driving disease, from flu to cancer

Like sugars, lectins are found in all living organisms. These proteins have the unique ability to recognize and temporarily attach themselves to sugars. Such interactions occur in many biological processes, such as during the immune response triggered by an infection.

Lectins are attracting a lot of attention these days. This is because scientists have discovered that the phenomenon of lectins “sticking” to sugars plays a key role in the appearance of numerous diseases.

“The more we study the interactions between sugars and lectins, the more we realize how important they are in disease processes,” said Cecioni. “Studies have shown how such interactions are involved in bacteria colonizing our lungs, viruses invading our cells, even cancer cells tricking our immune system into thinking they’re healthy cells.”

Difficult to detect…until now

There are still many missing pieces in the puzzle of how interactions between sugars and lectins unfold because they are so difficult to study. This is because these interactions are transient and weak, making detection a real challenge.

Two of Cecioni’s students, master’s candidate Cécile Bousch and Ph.D. candidate Brandon Vreulz, had the idea of using light to detect these interactions. The three researchers set to work to create a sort of chemical probe capable of “freezing” the meeting between sugar and lectin and making it visible through fluorescence.

The interaction between sugar and lectin can be described using a “lock and key” relationship, where the “key” is the sugar and the “lock” is the lectin. Chemists have already created molecules capable of blocking this lock-and-key interaction, and can now to identify exactly what sugars are binding to lectins of high interest to human health.

“Our idea was to label sugar molecules with a chromophore, a chemical that gives a molecule its colour,” explained Cecioni. “The chromophore is actually fluorogenic, which means that it can become fluorescent if the binding of sugar with the lectin is efficiently captured. Scientists can then study the mechanisms underlying these interactions and the disturbances that can arise.”

Cecioni and his students are confident their technique can be used with other types of molecules. It may even be possible to control the colour of new fluorescently labelled probes that are created.

By making it possible to visualize interactions between molecules, this discovery is giving researchers a valuable new tool for studying biological interactions, many of which are critical to human health.

Source: University of Montreal

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[georgiasedify]

Wound Healing

Wound Healing... Part 1

Wound healing is a complex process that involves replacing missing or damaged tissue and cellular structures. It can be divided into three or four phases, depending on the model used: hemostasis, inflammatory, proliferation, and remodeling.  The inflammatory phase begins at the time of injury and can last up to four days. During this phase, blood vessels constrict to prevent blood loss,…

[techdriveplay]

3D Printing: From Prototypes to Organ Transplants

In the last decade, the landscape of manufacturing, medical science, and even the arts have been fundamentally transformed by the advent of 3D printing technology. Once a niche tool used for the creation of simple prototypes, 3D printing has burgeoned into a revolutionary force that stands at the forefront of innovation across numerous sectors. This article delves into the journey of 3D printing,…

[hydrasaura]

Super robot monkey team hyperforce go! ~background/scenery appreciation post ~

[sjsnowyowl]

Tiny Blog Stuff: sharing some lab stuff from college

Electrolysis of dyes

Cell Structure through a microscope (plant cell and onion cell)

Photosynthesis/Celluar Respiration with a cabomba plant

Fermentation of yeast

I like lab and biology but lectures always makes me sleepy…

[druidshollow]

dune wants to murder ancients sooooo bad. dune is sooooooo mad she'll never get the opportunity to murder an ancient

[deva-arts]

Vincent has dark roots and white hair. Does he dye it?

Nope. His hair just fades in that color past a certain length. If he were to let it all grow out instead of shaving the sides all the time, it would all look white and spiky.

(Similarly, if he buzzed it all off, it would be black.)

[seassidess]

i fear i may be regressing into a fall out boy blog

[gonzodangerfeels]

These lightning storms have been fucking active.

[temporalrange]

crazy that this was my persona 5 summer. and it will be forever

[gauricmi]

From Glycans to Function: Navigating the Landscape of Glycomics

Glycomics, the study of complex carbohydrates known as glycans, represents a multifaceted field that delves into the diverse roles these molecules play in biological systems. By unraveling the intricate relationships between glycans and cellular function, researchers navigate a complex landscape that holds promise for advancing our understanding of health, disease, and beyond.

Glycomics in Biological Context: Glycans are ubiquitous in nature, adorning cell surfaces and influencing a myriad of physiological processes, from cell-cell recognition to immune response modulation.

Understanding the functional significance of Glycomics requires comprehensive analysis of their structures, interactions, and dynamics within biological systems.

Glycan Biosynthesis and Regulation

The intricate process of glycan biosynthesis is tightly regulated within cells, involving a complex network of enzymes, transporters, and regulatory factors.

Dysregulation of glycan biosynthesis pathways can have profound implications for cellular function, contributing to disease states such as cancer, autoimmune disorders, and metabolic syndromes.

Glycomics Technologies and Analytical Approaches

Advances in glycomics technologies, including mass spectrometry, glycan microarrays, and glycan profiling techniques, have revolutionized our ability to study glycans in unprecedented detail.

These analytical approaches enable researchers to map glycan structures, characterize glycan-protein interactions, and elucidate glycan-mediated signaling pathways, providing valuable insights into their functional roles.

Get More Insights On This Topic: Glycomics

Explore More Related Topic: Glycomics

[jcmarchi]

Artificial reef designed by MIT engineers could protect marine life, reduce storm damage

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/artificial-reef-designed-by-mit-engineers-could-protect-marine-life-reduce-storm-damage/

Artificial reef designed by MIT engineers could protect marine life, reduce storm damage

The beautiful, gnarled, nooked-and-crannied reefs that surround tropical islands serve as a marine refuge and natural buffer against stormy seas. But as the effects of climate change bleach and break down coral reefs around the world, and extreme weather events become more common, coastal communities are left increasingly vulnerable to frequent flooding and erosion.

An MIT team is now hoping to fortify coastlines with “architected” reefs — sustainable, offshore structures engineered to mimic the wave-buffering effects of natural reefs while also providing pockets for fish and other marine life.

The team’s reef design centers on a cylindrical structure surrounded by four rudder-like slats. The engineers found that when this structure stands up against a wave, it efficiently breaks the wave into turbulent jets that ultimately dissipate most of the wave’s total energy. The team has calculated that the new design could reduce as much wave energy as existing artificial reefs, using 10 times less material.

The researchers plan to fabricate each cylindrical structure from sustainable cement, which they would mold in a pattern of “voxels” that could be automatically assembled, and would provide pockets for fish to explore and other marine life to settle in. The cylinders could be connected to form a long, semipermeable wall, which the engineers could erect along a coastline, about half a mile from shore. Based on the team’s initial experiments with lab-scale prototypes, the architected reef could reduce the energy of incoming waves by more than 95 percent.

“This would be like a long wave-breaker,” says Michael Triantafyllou, the Henry L. and Grace Doherty Professor in Ocean Science and Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. “If waves are 6 meters high coming toward this reef structure, they would be ultimately less than a meter high on the other side. So, this kills the impact of the waves, which could prevent erosion and flooding.”

Details of the architected reef design are reported today in a study appearing in the open-access journal PNAS Nexus. Triantafyllou’s MIT co-authors are Edvard Ronglan SM ’23; graduate students Alfonso Parra Rubio, Jose del Auila Ferrandis, and Erik Strand; research scientists Patricia Maria Stathatou and Carolina Bastidas; and Professor Neil Gershenfeld, director of the Center for Bits and Atoms; along with Alexis Oliveira Da Silva at the Polytechnic Institute of Paris, Dixia Fan of Westlake University, and Jeffrey Gair Jr. of Scinetics, Inc.

Leveraging turbulence

Some regions have already erected artificial reefs to protect their coastlines from encroaching storms. These structures are typically sunken ships, retired oil and gas platforms, and even assembled configurations of concrete, metal, tires, and stones. However, there’s variability in the types of artificial reefs that are currently in place, and no standard for engineering such structures. What’s more, the designs that are deployed tend to have a low wave dissipation per unit volume of material used. That is, it takes a huge amount of material to break enough wave energy to adequately protect coastal communities.

The MIT team instead looked for ways to engineer an artificial reef that would efficiently dissipate wave energy with less material, while also providing a refuge for fish living along any vulnerable coast.

“Remember, natural coral reefs are only found in tropical waters,” says Triantafyllou, who is director of the MIT Sea Grant. “We cannot have these reefs, for instance, in Massachusetts. But architected reefs don’t depend on temperature, so they can be placed in any water, to protect more coastal areas.”

MIT researchers test the wave-breaking performance of two artificial reef structures in the MIT Towing Tank.

Credit: Courtesy of the researchers

The new effort is the result of a collaboration between researchers in MIT Sea Grant, who developed the reef structure’s hydrodynamic design, and researchers at the Center for Bits and Atoms (CBA), who worked to make the structure modular and easy to fabricate on location. The team’s architected reef design grew out of two seemingly unrelated problems. CBA researchers were developing ultralight cellular structures for the aerospace industry, while Sea Grant researchers were assessing the performance of blowout preventers in offshore oil structures — cylindrical valves that are used to seal off oil and gas wells and prevent them from leaking.

The team’s tests showed that the structure’s cylindrical arrangement generated a high amount of drag. In other words, the structure appeared to be especially efficient in dissipating high-force flows of oil and gas. They wondered: Could the same arrangement dissipate another type of flow, in ocean waves?

The researchers began to play with the general structure in simulations of water flow, tweaking its dimensions and adding certain elements to see whether and how waves changed as they crashed against each simulated design. This iterative process ultimately landed on an optimized geometry: a vertical cylinder flanked by four long slats, each attached to the cylinder in a way that leaves space for water to flow through the resulting structure. They found this setup essentially breaks up any incoming wave energy, causing parts of the wave-induced flow to spiral to the sides rather than crashing ahead.

“We’re leveraging this turbulence and these powerful jets to ultimately dissipate wave energy,” Ferrandis says.

Standing up to storms

Once the researchers identified an optimal wave-dissipating structure, they fabricated a laboratory-scale version of an architected reef made from a series of the cylindrical structures, which they 3D-printed from plastic. Each test cylinder measured about 1 foot wide and 4 feet tall. They assembled a number of cylinders, each spaced about a foot apart, to form a fence-like structure, which they then lowered into a wave tank at MIT. They then generated waves of various heights and measured them before and after passing through the architected reef.

“We saw the waves reduce substantially, as the reef destroyed their energy,” Triantafyllou says.

The team has also looked into making the structures more porous, and friendly to fish. They found that, rather than making each structure from a solid slab of plastic, they could use a more affordable and sustainable type of cement.

“We’ve worked with biologists to test the cement we intend to use, and it’s benign to fish, and ready to go,” he adds.

They identified an ideal pattern of “voxels,” or microstructures, that cement could be molded into, in order to fabricate the reefs while creating pockets in which fish could live. This voxel geometry resembles individual egg cartons, stacked end to end, and appears to not affect the structure’s overall wave-dissipating power.

“These voxels still maintain a big drag while allowing fish to move inside,” Ferrandis says.

The team is currently fabricating cement voxel structures and assembling them into a lab-scale architected reef, which they will test under various wave conditions. They envision that the voxel design could be modular, and scalable to any desired size, and easy to transport and install in various offshore locations. “Now we’re simulating actual sea patterns, and testing how these models will perform when we eventually have to deploy them,” says Anjali Sinha, a graduate student at MIT who recently joined the group.

Going forward, the team hopes to work with beach towns in Massachusetts to test the structures on a pilot scale.

“These test structures would not be small,” Triantafyllou emphasizes. “They would be about a mile long, and about 5 meters tall, and would cost something like 6 million dollars per mile. So it’s not cheap. But it could prevent billions of dollars in storm damage. And with climate change, protecting the coasts will become a big issue.”

This work was funded, in part, by the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

[tsa24city-hostel]

S T E E L   S T R U C T U R E

sample project for a steel structure…..note the spans and dimensions in the project description….

_ik

Using three cores for stability, the steel frame is generally based around a 9.5m × 6m grid pattern in laboratory areas and a 12.7m × 6m grid in office areas. Cellular beams have been used throughout the floor plate in order to integrate all of the ducting in what will be a heavily serviced building.

.”cellular beams have been used throughout the floor plate in order to integrate all of the ducting in what will be a heavily serviced building:

CELLULAR BEAMS:

[tsa23urban-hostel]

ALSTOM WAREHOUSE - SECTION DRAWING OF STEEL STRUCTURE

_ik

[madammidnightsblog]

Yandere Student x Teacher Darling

WARNING: public setting (classroom), yandere behavior (delusional), exhibition, m! masturbation, self-teasing, student fantasizing about adult (18-19 student, 20-30 adult), sub! male Yandere Student knows it's wrong, he knows it, but he cannot help it. Something about you just drives him insane and he cannot help watching you from the back of the classroom, one hand stuffed into his pants and rubbing himself off while you were busy teaching.

He knows that it's disgusting and deprived but how could he stop when your voice just makes his dick twitch. And those soft and round curves of your body make him want to bury himself against you and hump you like the pathetic boy he is. So, his hand was wrapped around his small dick, pumping it slowly which biting his lip to quiet the whimpers and whine that was threatening to spill from him. His hips twitching up into his hand as the tight restriction of his jeans and boxers making it harder to move his hand without looking obvious.

"Now," You turned around with a pretty smile on your face, your pink lips parting slightly to chuckle at the clueless expressions of your students. The new topic of biology was enough to make them all blink and look at you with pure confusion which made you find your students adorable, "It's time to understand the biology of the cellular structures."

Yandere Student was watching how your body softly jiggles in place when you moved around in front of the white board, writing down the basics of the course. Oh, how he loved the way your turtleneck hugged your soft tummy and those large tits of yours, following the curves with his eyes as his hand moved slower around his base, swiping his thumb along the beads of pre at his purpling tip. A low moan left him when his eyes finally land at those dress pants at your wide hips, and he almost came when he noticed the little tummy pouch that stuck out. Everything was so damn beautiful and sexy on your body, all of those soft curves and fat that was hugging your body. What he would do just to feel on that beautiful body of yours and worship you like the goddess you were.

Your eyes scanned the room to see the yandere student in the back of the classroom, his eyes glossed over and watching intensely. To you, he looked interested in what you were teaching with how he was staring what you believed to be the board as his right arm seemed to be moving but little did you know he finally just pulled his dick out under his desk. His hand moving quickly as he notice you're glancing his way, and he can't help but think you're away what he's doing, and it was making him all flustered. But unlike normal people in this situation who would think that he should stop because you might notice and be uncomfortable- no, he thinks you're enjoying it and think he looks so cute. I mean, why else do you keep looking back at him? You must like him and find him so cute, knowing he's jerking off like a good boy and not making a mess on the floor. His breathing grows heavier the more his eyes wonder your body and imagining what you could possibly be thinking of when you look around the classroom. You must obviously want class to end and take care of him, after all, he's a good boy that has a bad home and need your attention since his mother died mysteriously a few months ago so, he must still be trying so so hard to be back to normal. You care about your student so much so, it wouldn't be such a bad thing to take care of him- right?

[dogstarblues]

tried on thirteen different pairs of shoes and not one made me want to leave these blessed house of mine. that's just fine. i really don't want to go anywhere. i don't really wanna go anywhere. i am dented by the scars at night. and it's not agoraphobia, it's just the lack of air supply that keeps me up at night. i know i'm getting older but i'm told im not momentarily out of my mind....