“Self-repairing” nanoshell for cell protection

Self-repair is nature''s way of protecting living organisms. However, most single cells are inherently less capable of self-repairing, which greatly limits their wide applications. Here, we present a self-assembly approach to create a nanoshell around the cell surface using nanoporous biohybrid aggregates. The biohybrid shells present self-repairing behaviour, resulting in high activity and extended viability of the encapsulated cells (eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells) in harsh micro-environments, such as under UV radiation, natural toxin invasion, high-light radiation and abrupt pH-value changes. Furthermore, an interaction mechanism is proposed and studied, which is successful to guide design and synthesis of self-repairing biohybrid shells using different bioactive molecules.     

Synthesis of broadband and flat parametric gain by idler loss in optical fiber

Besides dispersion engineering, idler-band distributed fiber loss provides a new synthesis freedom to flatten and broaden the gain spectrum for a fiber-optic parametric amplifier. This interesting phenomenon is based on the fact that the power balance between signal and idler is broken by idler loss, which changes the power conversion process in four-wave-mixing. The pump-to-signal conversion efficiency is kept unchanged in spite of the loss.     

Parallel detection and quantitative analysis of specific binding of proteins by oblique-incidence reflectivity difference technique in label-free format

In this work, we parallelly detected the specific binding between microarray targets including 12 different kinds of proteins and the probe solution containing five corresponding antibodies and quantitatively analyzed the interactions between CDH13 and solution phase anti-CDH13 at six different probe concentrations by oblique-incidence reflectivity difference (OIRD) method in label-free format. The detection sensitivity reached 10 ng/mL. The experimental results indicate that the OIRD method is a promising and competing technique not only in research work but also in clinic.     

A 2-dimensional gradual period photonic heterostructure possessing omnidirectional band gap in visible range made by holography

A 2-dimensional gradual period photonic heterostructure was made with holography by use of non-uniform swelling effect of dichromated gelatin during processing. In this structure, the symmetric point group of triangle lattice was debased to C_2V from C_6V. Theoretical analysis and experimental results show that omnidirectional band gap in visible range can be achieved with this kind of heterostructure made by low refractive index materials.