Many properties of materials, including their dissolution kinetics, hardness, and optical appearance, depend on their structure. Unfortunately, it is often difficult to control the structure of low molecular weight organic compounds that have a high propen ...
Structure determination of materials is key to understanding their physical properties. While single-crystal X-ray diffraction is the gold standard for structures displaying long-range order, many materials of interest are polycrystalline and/or disordered ...
Activin-A is a Transforming Growth Factor-B (TGFB)-related cytokine that regulates various biological processes including cell proliferation and differentiation through autocrine, paracrine or endocrine signaling. Activin-A expression is upregulated in mul ...
Barocaloric (BC) materials provide cheaper and more energy efficient alternatives to traditional refrigerants. Some liquid alkanes were recently shown to exhibit a colossal BC effect, matching the entropy changes in commercial vapour-liquid refrigerants. D ...
Proteins control nearly every facet of life on a molecular level. Proteins are formed from linear strings of amino acids, which fold into three-dimensional structures that can enact functions. Evolution has created highly efficient proteins in diverse fold ...
Adult autologous human epidermal stem cells can be extensively expanded ex vivo for cell and gene therapy. Identifying the mechanisms involved in stem cell maintenance and defining culture conditions to maintain stemness is critical, because an inadequate ...
Microcapsules are appealing containers for delivering active ingredients, such as drugs and cosmetics, or conducting chemical and biological reactions on a small scale. To control the timing and location of release of these encapsulants, the shells of micr ...
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 ...
Synthetic biology aims to engineer cells as miniature biological devices to sense, process, and respond to exogenous stimuli. Protein switches are designed to sense and respond to various molecular queues in a fast and specific manner, which fits the requi ...
Protein Engineering, especially protein post-translational modification (PTM), ex-tends proteomes in a more complex way than one can expect from analysis of their encod-ing genomes. It can activate or deactivate certain catalytic functions, add new desired ...