Last week, our group members Luo Zhongrui, Genís Rabost and Anna Laromaine worked on the beam line MIRAS at the synchrothron ALBA in collaboration with Núria Benseny. We visualized C. elegans by FTIR and analyzed their tissues. They also had the visit of a former group member Laura Gonzalez-Moragas, who started this research line.
Congratulations to our students for their excellent marks in their Research Projects!
Ander Arbide
Undergraduate Student Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, UAB
Title: Thin film C/SiO2 electrodes: detection of heavy metals in water
Supervisor: Martí Gich and César Fernández
Mark: 9.1/10
Date of defense: July 7th, 2017
Olatz Arriaga
On the 19th of July of 2017, the second internal call of the Frontier Interdisciplinary Projects (FIP) within the FUNMAT Severo Ochoa program was resolved with very good news for the N&N group! Two researcher from the group, Anna Roig and Martí Gich, will participate in two of the eight awarded projects:
A sensor platform to detect heavy metals has been developed within the COMMON SENSE project and presented during its final event, last Friday 27th January.
The partners that participated in the development of this sensor platform are Dublin City University (DCU), DropSens, National Center of Microelectronics (CNM-IMB) (CSIC), and the Nanoparticles and Nanocomposites Group (NN) at ICMAB (CSIC).
Highlights of the heavy metals sensor platform (photo):
Apart from this sensor, in which the NN Group has participated, the COMMON SENSE project has developed prototypes of other in situ next generation marine monitoring sensors:
For more information, please visit the COMMON SENSE project website or contact the leader of the Dissemination and Knowledge Management Work Package, Cliona Ní Cheallachain (cliona@aquatt.ie).
The COMMON SENSE project has received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Program (Ocean 2013-2) under grant agreement no 614155.
On Friday, January 27, there will be a public and free event to present the final results of the COMMON SENSE project on “Demonstration of next generation sensors for advanced real-time ocean observation“.
This event will closure the COMMON SENSE project, in which the NN group has actively participated in the development of electrochemical sensors that are able to detect different heavy metals simultaneously.
Martí Gich and Anna Roig will participate in a previous meeting on Thursday, with the project team, and on Friday on the public event.
Professionals working in the marine environment and citizens curious about the status of our oceans are invited!
The COMMON SENSE project is creating prototypes of next generation in-situ marine sensors to deliver vital information about the oceans. The project directly responds to the requirement for integrated and effective data acquisition systems by developing innovative sensors that will contribute to our understanding of how the marine environment functions. In doing so, COMMON SENSE results can support the implementation of European Union marine policies such as the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD) and the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).
As the COMMON SENSE project comes to a successful conclusion, the results will be presented at this final workshop, along with a demonstration of the novel sensors developed and tested during the project.
The COMMON SENSE sensors need less human operation and intervention than current technologies and create standardised data on eutrophication, underwater noise, heavy metals, and marine litter, with a focus on microplastics. Other important parameters considered are temperature, pressure, pH and pCO2.
Download the program
Register for the event
Jordi, student of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at UAB, will present his work entitled “Techniques for Bacterial Cellulose Production, Modification and Characterisation“, next January 19th, at 9.30 am, at Sala de Graus II C5/1068 (Science Faculty, UAB).
Jordi has been with us for nearly 7 months, and he has been working under the supervision of Anna Laromaine, as part of his practical studies (UAB coordinator is Dolors Baró).
We are very happy that he will continue with us to do his Bachelor’s Final Project until next summer!
INPhINIT is a new doctoral fellowship programme promoted by “la Caixa” Foundation devoted to attract international Early-Stage Researchers to the top Spanish research centres in the areas of Bio and Health Sciences, Physics, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics.
INPhINIT recruits per call 57 Early-Stage Researchers of any nationality, who enjoy a 3-year employment contract at the Research Centre of their choice among those selected and awarded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (“Severo Ochoa” centres of excellence and “Maria de Maeztu” units of excellence) and the Spanish Ministry of Health (“Carlos III centres of excellence”).
ICMAB-CSIC is one of the “Severo Ochoa” centers selected, and has published 24 PhD open positions under the INPhINIT programme.
One of this projects is offered by Anna Roig and Martí Gich, within the NN Group, and is entitled “Mesoporous Magnetic Nanorods for Theranostics”:
The project aims at developing high aspect ratio magnetic silica-based materials as multimodal agents for theranostic purposes. The targeted materials are mesoporous silica rods containing inorganic nanoparticles to serve as contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging and computed tomography and at the same time encapsulating selected drugs. The project aims at demonstrating that engineered magnetic objects in the rod shape can constitute a new family of carriers for therapeutic agents with radically new properties and advantages compared to the magnetic nanoparticles used so far.
Application deadline: 2 Februrary 2017
More information:
Teresa Soto, high school student at Institut Pere Calders, Bellaterra, has presented her Research Project (Treball de Recerca) entitled “Estudi comparatiu de dos polímers: la cel·lulosa bacteriana i la seda” (Comparative study of two polymers: bacterial cellulose and silk).
The project is about comparing the properties between these two biopolymers: bacterial cellulose, produced in our lab by the bacteria Gluconacetobacter xylinus, and silk, obtained from the cocoons of silkworms.
Teresa was with us for a couple of months to do the experimental part of her project, under the supervision of Anna Laromaine.
The NN group members would like to congratulate Laura González for her excellent work on the Ph.D. thesis defense!
Laura’s thesis is entitled “Evaluating inorganic nanoparticles in the living organism Caenorhabditis elegans” and has been supervised by Dr. Anna Laromaine and Dr. Anna Roig, from the NN group.
The jury was formed by Dr. Maria Vallet-Regí (Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain), Dr. Stefaan Soenen (KU Leuven, Belgium) and Dr. Joel N. Meyer (Duke University, USA).
Congratulations Laura!
This Friday 16th of December Laura González is going to defend her Doctoral Thesis entitled “Evaluating inorganic nanoparticles in the living organism Caenorhabditis elegans”, supervised by Dr. Anna Laromaine and Dr. Anna Roig.
Abstract:
In this thesis, we have used the simple model organism Caenorhabditis elegans as an in vivo biological system to screen inorganic nanoparticles (NPs) with biomedical uses. In particular, we have assessed the behaviour of two types of particles with different composition, size and surface properties: iron oxide NPs coated with citrate and bovine serum albumin, and gold nanoparticles of two different sizes. We have studied their interactions with C. elegans including their uptake, fate, biological effects and NP-responsive molecular mechanisms, and compared our results with previous studies. To this end, we have combined toxicity tests, materials science and imaging techniques and gene expression analysis. We have been able to perform this biological evaluation in the synthetic laboratory where the particles were synthesized and characterised due to the advantageous experiments features of C. elegans.
In summary, this thesis exploits the potential of C. elegans as a simple animal model to evaluate NPs in the initial stages of development and contributes to: (i) a systematic and comprehensive evaluation of NPs in C. elegans, in particular studying the influence of NP properties (size, surface coating and core composition) on their in vivo effects, (ii) extend the toolkit of techniques available to characterise nano-bio interactions in small organisms.
The Jury Members will be:
Everyone is invited to join the presentation, that will be held at 12 pm at ICMAB Conference Room Carles Miravitlles. After the defense, there will be a “pica-pica” for everyone in the dining room.
The N&N group participates in the @NextGEM_eu project, for which we prepared this video explaining how we work with c.elegans. 🪱
👉 Dr. @PolAlonso1 explains how we use these nematodes and why they are useful for assessing biological effects.
#BioEM #5G
Miquel Torras