Carlo Montemagno

University of Alberta | UAlberta · Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering

This paper reports the design, fabrication and quantitative performance analysis of a low-cost, flexible carbon nanotube (CNT) network-based deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sensor. These sensors comprise an array of ink-jet printed silver (Ag) electrodes on a transparent polyethylene terephthalate (PET) flexible substrate, where a CNT network acts as a...

We report the design, fabrication and quantitative performance analysis of a low-cost, flexible carbon nanotube (CNT) network-based deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sensor. These sensors comprise an array of ink-jet printed silver (Ag) electrodes on a transparent polyethylene terephthalate (PET) flexible substrate, where a CNT network acts as a sensing...

We report the design, fabrication and quantitative performance analysis of a low-cost, flexible carbon nanotube (CNT) network-based deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sensor. These sensors comprise an array of ink-jet printed silver (Ag) electrodes on a transparent polyethylene terephthalate (PET) flexible substrate, where a CNT network acts as a sensing...

We report the design, fabrication and quantitative performance analysis of a low-cost, flexible carbon nanotube (CNT) network-based deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sensor. These sensors comprise an array of ink-jet printed silver (Ag) electrodes on a transparent polyethylene terephthalate (PET) flexible substrate, where a CNT network acts as a sensing...

We report the design, fabrication and quantitative performance analysis of a low-cost, flexible carbon nanotube (CNT) network-based deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sensor. These sensors comprise an array of ink-jet printed silver (Ag) electrodes on a transparent polyethylene terephthalate (PET) flexible substrate, where a CNT network acts as a sensing...

We report the design, fabrication and quantitative performance analysis of a low-cost, flexible carbon nanotube (CNT) network-based deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) sensor. These sensors comprise an array of ink-jet printed silver (Ag) electrodes on a transparent polyethylene terephthalate (PET) flexible substrate, where a CNT network acts as a sensing...

Detection of low abundance target DNA/RNA for clinical or research purposes is challenging because the target sequences can be hidden under a large background of human genomic or non-human metagenomic sequences. We describe a probe-based capture method to enrich for target sequences with DNA-clicked iron oxide nanoparticles. Our method was tested a...

Glaucoma is a leading cause of irreversible blindness worldwide. Current treatments of glaucoma involve lowering the IOP by means of decreasing aqueous humor production or increasing non-trabecular aqueous humor outflow with the help of IOP-lowering eye drops, nanotechnology enabled glaucoma drainage implants, and trabeculectomy. However, there is...

Solution-processable organic semiconducting materials have been utilized for low-cost disposable flexible electronics applications through additive printing techniques. Organic electrochemical transistors (OECTs) are powerful devices for biosensing due to their simplicity, stability in aqueous media and high transconductance. Here, we report fully...

In this paper we review the current status of high-performance computing applications in the general area of drug discovery. We provide an introduction to the methodologies applied at atomic and molecular scales, followed by three specific examples of implementation of these tools. The first example describes in silico modeling of the adsorption of...

Human trabecular meshwork (hTM) cell isolation in academic settings utilizes the motile nature of these cells, allowing them to migrate away from the explant and proliferate on distal regions of the culture substrate. Corneoscleral rims used for transplantation are a potential source of explants for the establishment of hTM cell cultures. However,...

Organic electrochemical transistors (OECT) have been gaining importance due to their applications in biological and chemical sensing along with logic circuitry. Most OECT studies have utilized poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT:PSS) as the channel material which operates in depletion mode. Here, we have used PEDOT:PSS as...

A photoresponsive microstructured composite is fabricated through the impregnation of cellulosic filter paper (FP) with a spiropyran-modified acrylic polymer. The polymer enwraps uniformly each individual cellulose fiber, increases the thermal stability of cellulose, and ensures the preservation of the composite functionalities even upon removal of...

The Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) process is the one of the most commonly used additive manufacturing technique, due to its simplicity and the range of available materials. The quality of the parts printed via FDM depends on several process parameters. These parameters are dependent on the Computer Aided Design (CAD), Computer Aided Manufacturing...

Channelrhodopsins (ChRs) are a group of membrane proteins that allow cation flux across the cellular membrane when stimulated by light. They have been emerged as important tools in optogenetics where light is used to trigger a change in the membrane potential of live cells which induces downstream physiological cascades. There is also increased int...

A new type of aquaporin‐based biomimetic water purification membrane is fabricated using a propargyl functionalized β‐sheet peptide (FBP1). FBP1 is demonstrated to bind to aquaporin and form a stable protein–peptide complex in aqueous solution, as well as covalently conjugate with azide group. Substrate starting material, polysulfone (PSU), is modi...

Motivation: The computational prediction of RNA secondary structure by free energy minimization has become an important tool in RNA research. However in practice, energy minimization is mostly limited to pseudoknot-free structures or rather simple pseudoknots, not covering many biologically important structures such as kissing hairpins. Algorithms...

Oral drugs present the most convenient, economical, and painless route for self-administration. Despite commercialization of multiple technologies relying on micro- and nanocrystalline drugs, research on microparticles (MPs) based oral biopharmaceuticals delivery systems has still not culminated well enough in commercial products. This is largely d...

The marriage of biomolecular recognition and magnetic nanoparticle creates tremendous opportunities in the development of advanced technology both in academic research and in industrial sectors. In this paper, we review current progress on the magnetic nanoparticle-biomolecule hybrid systems, particularly employing the recognition pairs of DNA-DNA,...

In this work we studied the light induced self-assembly of F-actin and heavy meromyosin (HMM) in tubular vesicles or “tubularsomes” during initiation by ATP. To mimic nature, light-induced ATP synthesis...

In this paper, we report on the fabrication and performance analysis of multiplexed carbon nanotube (CNT) network based biosensors for detecting real-time deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) hybridization. We have presented a tailor-made application of analytic hierarchy process (AHP) that matches the risk assessment of such CNT network biosensors. In this...

Motivation RNA is a biopolymer with various applications inside the cell and in biotechnology. Structure of an RNA molecule mainly determines its function and is essential to guide nanostructure design. Since experimental structure determination is time-consuming and expensive, accurate computational prediction of RNA structure is of great importan...

The current study presents low cost 3D printed materials with desired electrical charactrestics for RF/microwave applications. In contrast to the traditional manufacturing techniques of fabrication in electronics, additive manufacturing (AM) is a proper technology for making parts with more advanced complex features. The applications of AM in RF/mi...

Polymersomes formed by the self-assembling of block copolymers gained huge attraction recently due to it numerous potential applications especially as nano-reactors, tunable controlled delivery carriers, templates for bio-mineralization etc. The self-assembly of these block copolymers amphiphiles into monodisperse structures in aqueous solutions is...

Biomining of valuable metals using a target specific approach promises increased purification yields and decreased cost. Target specificity can be implemented with proteins/peptides, the biological molecules, responsible from various structural and functional pathways in living organisms by virtue of their specific recognition abilities towards bot...

The hydrothermal synthesis of nano sized magnesium oxide materials in various shapes using different precursors have been explored in this work. Herein the organic base of hexamethylenetetramine (HMTA) was first time used as a hydrolysis base instead of usually used urea and the optimized conditions to form pure magnesium oxide nanowires with above...

We have developed two functionalized β-sheet peptides (FBPs) and demonstrated that they can stabilize a variety of integral membrane proteins (IMPs), and most importantly allow covalent crosslinking of the IMPs...

The shortage of fresh water is one of the most critical problems our society must address. The most commonly accepted method to produce fresh water is by membrane systems. Since the discovery of aquaporins (AQPs) (water channel proteins), researchers have been trying to incorporate them as functional units in biomimetic membranes to achieve superio...

Synthesis, purification, and characterization of 3'-O-caged 2'-deoxyribonucleoside triphosphates (dNTPs), namely 3'-O-(2-nitrobenzyl)-2'-deoxy ribonucleoside triphosphates (NB-dNTPs) and 3'-O-(4,5-dimethoxy-2-nitrobenzyl)-2'-deoxy ribonucleoside triphosphates (DMNB-dNTPs), are discussed in detail. A total of eight 3'-O-caged dNTPs are synthesized w...

Migration pattern of the purified NaChBac on a pseudo-native SDS-PAGE gel. The protein migrates in its monomer form, which has an MW of 33.4 kDa. (TIF)

Conductance and open probability analysis of the same NaChBac sample in Fig 4 with the presence of 4 mM lidocaine N-ethyl bromide in the trans chamber. (TIF)

Multiple sequence alignment of NaChBac and other prokaryotic Navs. For NaChBac and NavSP1, whose atomic structure is not available, the transmembrane domains were estimated using TMHMM and highlighted in green boxes. For NavRh, NavAb and NavMS, the annotation of the transmembrane helices S1 to S6 (highlighted in black boxes) is based on their X-ray...

Schematic representation of osmotic swelling-driven proteoliposome fusion with the planar bilayer. Proteoliposome was added to the proximity of the lipid bilayer (step 1). The vesicle swells due to the osmotic difference between its interior and its surrounding (step 2). Subsequently, the vesicle is fused into the bilayer (step 3), leading to the i...

Ionic selectivity of single-molecule NaChBac under a bi-ionic voltage ramp protocol. (DOCX)

Planar lipid bilayer device, alternatively known as BLM, is a powerful tool to study functional properties of conducting membrane proteins such as ion channels and porins. In this work, we used BLM to study the prokaryotic voltage-gated sodium channel (Nav) NaChBac in a well-defined membrane environment. Navs are an essential component for the gene...

3D printing manufacturing technology has been utilized in various applications due to its promising manufacturing advantages. Desktop Digital Light Processing (DLP) printers provide high-resolution products with a moderate price range. DLP uses an array of micromirrors to transmit UV light from the light projector in order to perform selective curi...

The cover image, by Niloofar Nayebi et al., is based on the Research Article A computational method for selecting short peptide sequences for inorganic material binding, DOI: 10.1002/prot.25356.

Galacto-oligosaccharides (GOS) synthesized from lactose using Aspergillus oryzae β-galactosidases. We studied the influences of enzyme concentration (0.02–0.1%. w/v), temperature (40–70 °C), pH (4.5–8), lactose concentration (5–40%, w/v) and foam architecture reaction media on formation of GOS. The total GOS increased from about 7 to 23 (wt.% of in...

Silicon nitride (SiNx) based biosensors have the potential to converge on the technological achievements of semiconductor microfabrication and biotechnology. Development of biofunctionalized SiNx surface and its integration with other devices will allow us to integrate the biosensing capability with probe control, data acquisition and data processi...

Crystallins are a major family of proteins located within the lens of the eye. Cataracts are thought to be due to the formation of insoluble fibrillar aggregates, which are largely composed of proteins from the crystallin family. Today the only cataract treatment that exists is surgery and this can be difficult to access for individuals in the deve...

Polymeric scaffolds containing biomimics offer exciting therapies with broad potential impact for cellular therapies and thereby potentially improve success rates. Here we report the designing and fabrication of a hybrid scaffold that can prevent a foreign body reaction and maintain cell viability. A biodegradable acrylic based cross linkable polyc...

Abstract: While computational RNA secondary structure prediction is an important tool in RNA research, it is still fundamentally limited to pseudoknot-free structures (or at best very simple pseudoknots) in practice. Here, we make the prediction of complex pseudoknots---including kissing hairpin structures---practically applicable by reducing the o...

The transfer of bio-functionality from natural living organisms to stable engineered environments opens a wide horizon of applications. Our work focusses on the creation of materials and devices that transform bio traits and collect, process and act on the information in response to changes in their local environment, thus promoting additive manufa...

A gas responsive hybrid membrane is fabricated by surface-grafting PDEAEMA on carbon nanotubes. The reversable surface wettabilites switch from hydrophobic to hydrophilic by the introduction of carbon dioxide and nitrogen gases. These can be utilized for oil/water and oil/water emulsion separations. The switchable characteristics of the CNT/PDEAEMA...

"www.pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acsami.7b09087" - Oil/water separation has been of great interest worldwide due to the increasingly serious environmental pollution caused by the abundant discharge of industrial wastewater, oil spill accidents and odors. Here, we describe simple and economical super-hydrophobic hybrid membranes for effective oil/w...

Utilising an interfacial piezoelectric ZnO nanosheet layer, a significant enhancement in the power density is reported for the triboelectric nanogenerators (TENG) based on phase inversion membranes of polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and polyamide-6 (PA6). At an applied force of 80 N, the TENG device incorporating electrochemically deposited ZnO nano...

Discovering or designing biofunctionalized materials with improved quality highly depends on the ability to manipulate and control the peptide-inorganic interaction. Various peptides can be used as assemblers, synthesizers, and linkers in the material syntheses. In another context, specific and selective material-binding peptides can be used as rec...

Fabrication of biodegradable polymer nanoparticles (NPs) is a fascinating research area because of their great potential in biomedical applications. In this work, apart from the well-reported di-or tri-block copolymer nanoassembly, homopolymers based on poly(caprolactone) were designed, synthesized and fabricated to obtain a 200 nm size NPs, contro...

The development of a smart microencapsulation system programmed to actively respond to environmental pH change has long been recognized a key technology in pharmaceutical and food sciences. To this end, we developed hollow microparticles (MPs) with self-controlled macropores that respond to environmental pH change, using an Oil-in-Water emulsion te...

Environmental factors, mainly oxidative stress and exposure to sunlight, induce the oxidation, cross-linking, cleavage, and deamination of crystallin proteins, resulting in their aggregation and, ultimately, cataract formation. Various denaturants have been used to initiate the aggregation of crystallin proteins in vitro. All of these regimens, how...

The color of crystallin mixture ratio 1:2:1 before and after UV-B radiation for 10 hr. (DOCX)

Expression and purification of Human crystallin proteins. (DOCX)

CD spectrums and resulting fits. (DOCX)

A fast and reproducible method for estimating the sulfur ester content of cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) prepared by a pilot plant (Alberta Innovates Technology Futures – Alberta, Canada) is discussed. CNCs from sulfuric acid hydrolysis forms electrostatically stabilized suspensions because of the introduction of sulfate ester groups onto the surface...

Functional three-dimensional constructs incorporating biological materials produced by additive manufacturing techniques are provided. The biological material can be a protein that is incorporated into the three-dimensional construct via a light-inducible functional group and 0 retains its native function. In one embodiment, the biological material...

A multi-walled carbon nanotube membrane that has been modified so that one or both surfaces of the membrane are superhydrophobic or superhydrophilic is disclosed. Methods of making and using the multi-walled carbon nanotube membrane are provided.

Here, we present our work on preparing a novel nanomaterial composed of inorganic binding peptides and magnetic nanoparticles for inorganic mining. Two previously selected and well-characterized gold-binding peptides from cell surface display, AuBP1 and AuBP2, were exploited. This nanomaterial (AuBP-MNP) was designed to fulfill the following two si...