Exploring the Intersection of Engineering and Medicine Through a Neuroscience Challenge Laboratory.

The medical curriculum is charged with training medical students who can possess both the technical and contextual abilities to adapt to the transformational world of medicine. This new objective would require incorporating engineering principles into the medical curriculum, which was formed by the University of Illinois as the Carle Illinois College of Medicine. As a fully integrated engineering based medical school, students partake in active learning modules that develop their quantitative, innovative, and entrepreneurship skills.

Extracellular Polymeric Substance Protects Some Cells in an Biofilm from the Biomechanical Consequences of Treatment with Magainin 2.

Bacterial biofilms have long been recognized as a source of persistent infections and industrial contamination with their intransigence generally attributed to their protective layer of extracellular polymeric substances (EPS). EPS, consisting of secreted nucleic acids, proteins, and polysaccharides, make it difficult to fully eliminate biofilms by conventional chemical or physical means. Since most bacteria are capable of forming biofilms, understanding how biofilms respond to new antibiotic compounds and components of the immune system has important ramifications.

Qualitative and Quantitative Changes to during Treatment with Magainin 2 Observed in Native Conditions by Atomic Force Microscopy.

The bacterial membrane has been suggested as a good target for future antibiotics, so it is important to understand how naturally occurring antibiotics like antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) disrupt those membranes. The interaction of the AMP magainin 2 (MAG2) with the bacterial cell membrane has been well characterized using supported lipid substrates, unilamellar vesicles, and spheroplasts created from bacterial cells. However, to fully understand how MAG2 kills bacteria, we must consider its effect on the outer membrane found in Gram-negative bacteria.