Exploring the World of Membrane Proteins: Techniques and Methods for Understanding Structure, Function, and Dynamics.

In eukaryotic cells, membrane proteins play a crucial role. They fall into three categories: intrinsic proteins, extrinsic proteins, and proteins that are essential to the human genome (30% of which is devoted to encoding them). Hydrophobic interactions inside the membrane serve to stabilize integral proteins, which span the lipid bilayer.

CNT effective interfacial energy and pre-exponential kinetic factor from measured NaCl crystal nucleation time distributions in contracting microdroplets.

Nucleation, the birth of a stable cluster from a disorder, is inherently stochastic. Yet up to date, there are no quantitative studies on NaCl nucleation that accounts for its stochastic nature. Here, we report the first stochastic treatment of NaCl-water nucleation kinetics.

Evaporation Dynamics of Sessile Saline Microdroplets in Oil.

The occurrence of concentration and temperature gradients in saline microdroplets evaporating directly in air makes them unsuitable for nucleation studies where homogeneous composition is required. This can be addressed by immersing the droplet in oil under regulated humidity and reducing the volume to the picoliter range. However, the evaporation dynamics of such a system is not well understood.

Nucleation in sessile saline microdroplets: induction time measurement deliquescence-recrystallization cycling.

Induction time, a measure of how long one will wait for nucleation to occur, is an important parameter in quantifying nucleation kinetics and its underlying mechanisms. Due to the stochastic nature of nucleation, efficient methods for measuring large numbers of independent induction times are needed to ensure statistical reproducibility. In this work, we present a novel approach for measuring and analyzing induction times in sessile arrays of microdroplets deliquescence/recrystallization cycling.

Preparation of alginate hydrogel microparticles by gelation introducing cross-linkers using droplet-based microfluidics: a review of methods.

This review examines the preparation of alginate hydrogel microparticles by using droplet-based microfluidics, a technique widely employed for its ease of use and excellent control of physicochemical properties, with narrow size distribution. The gelation of alginate is realized "on-chip" and/or "off-chip", depending on where cross-linkers are introduced. Various strategies are described and compared.