Sensing membrane stress with near IR-emissive porphyrins.

Probes embedded within a structure can enable prediction of material behavior or failure. Carefully assembled composites that respond intelligently to physical changes within a material could be useful as intrinsic sensors. Molecular rotors are one such tool that can respond optically to physical environmental changes.

Human embryonic stem cell-derived keratinocytes exhibit an epidermal transcription program and undergo epithelial morphogenesis in engineered tissue constructs.

Human embryonic stem (hES) cells are an attractive source of cellular material for scientific, diagnostic, and potential therapeutic applications. Protocols are now available to direct hES cell differentiation to specific lineages at high purity under relatively defined conditions; however, researchers must establish the functional similarity of hES cell derivatives and associated primary cell types to validate their utility. Using retinoic acid to initiate differentiation, we generated high-purity populations of keratin 14+ (K14) hES cell-derived keratinocyte (hEK) progenitors and performed microarray analysis to compare the global transcriptional program of hEKs and primary foreskin keratinocytes.