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Introduction
Jitka Cejkova currently works at the Department of Chemical Engineering and she is alifer.
Publications
Publications (41)
The University of Chemistry and Technology Prague celebrates its 70th anniversary this year. On this occasion, this paper devoted to the Faculty of Chemical Engineering is presented. First, the history of the faculty and the development of its departments is summarized. The faculty was established as the Faculty of Chemical Production, Automation a...
Chemobrionics is a core topic of systems chemistry, as it plays a central role in understanding complex self‐assembling systems and is related to work done on the origin of life as well as the design of complex materials. The ChemSystemsChem Special Collection on Chemobrionics showcases some of the most exciting work done in this field today.
Nature has found one method of organizing living matter, but maybe there are also other options -- not yet discovered -- on how to create life. To study the life as it could be is the objective of an interdisciplinary field called Artificial Life (commonly abbreviated as ALife). The word "artificial" refers to the fact that humans are involved in t...
Spontaneous pattern formation in far from equilibrium systems plays important role in various disciplines including biology and reaction-diffusion chemistry. Recently, we have found that when a system consisting of a 1-decanol droplet and alkaline sodium decanoate aqueous solution is opened to the environment, and water evaporates, dramatic morphol...
The presented study is devoted to the investigation of the micellization-induced liquid-liquid fluctuations in sodium decanoate (NaD) aqueous solutions, based on the vibrational spectroscopic study of NaD and the determination of critical micelle concentration (CMC) of this system. At the same time, we focused on monitoring the effect of the additi...
Self-organizing precipitation processes, such as chemical gardens forming biomimetic micro- and nanotubular forms, have the potential to show us new fundamental science to explore, quantify, and understand nonequilibrium physicochemical systems, and shed light on the conditions for life's emergence. The physics and chemistry of these phenomena, due...
Droplet systems remain the subject of a constant fascination in science and technology. Here we focus on organic droplets floating on the surface of aqueous surfactant solutions. These droplets can exhibit intriguing interactions. Recently we have found independently in two laboratories that we can observe almost the same complex collective behavio...
Many new therapeutic candidates and active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) are poorly soluble in an aqueous environment, resulting in their reduced bioavailability. A promising way of enhancing the release of an API and, thus, its bioavailability seems to be the use of liquid oil marbles (LOMs). An LOM system behaves as a solid form but consists...
Decanol droplets in a thin layer of sodium decanoate with sodium chloride exhibit bifurcation branching growth due to interplay between osmotic pressure, diffusion and surface tension. We aimed to evaluate if morphology of the branching droplets changes when the droplets are subject to electrical potential difference. We analysed graph-theoretic st...
Decanol droplets in a thin layer of sodium decanoate with sodium chloride exhibit bifurcation branching growth due to interplay between osmotic pressure, diffusion and surface tension. We aimed to evaluate if morphology of the branching droplets changes when the droplets are subject to electrical potential difference. We analysed graph-theoretic st...
Chemotaxis is a natural way for cells and organisms to perform oriented movement in a chemical gradient. Positive chemotaxis occurs if the movement is in the direction of increasing concentration. If the movement is in the opposite direction, the chemotaxis is called negative. The goal of this chapter is to describe non-biological positive chemotac...
Maze solving and finding the shortest path or all possible exit paths in mazes can be interpreted as mathematical problems which can be solved algorithmically. These algorithms can be used by both living entities (such as humans, animals, cells) and non-living systems (computer programs, simulators, robots, particles). In this chapter we summarize...
Protocells are objects that mimic one or several functions of biological cells and may be embodied as solid particles, lipid vesicles, or droplets. Our work is based on using decanol droplets in an aqueous solution of sodium decanoate in the presence of salt. A decanol droplet under such conditions bears many qualitative similarities with living ce...
Liquid droplets are very simple objects present in our everyday life. They are extremely important for many natural phenomena as well as for a broad variety of industrial processes. The conventional research areas in which the droplets are studied include physical chemistry, fluid mechanics, chemical engineering, materials science, and micro- and n...
A liquid marble is a liquid droplet encapsulated in a hydrophobic powder that adheres to the liquid surface. Liquid marbles preparation is very simple – a small amount of liquid is carefully dripped on the layer of hydrophobic powder consisting of nano-or micro particles, which spread spontaneously at the interface liquid/air. This process results...
The ability to simulate the 3D structure of a human body is essential to increase the efficiency of drug development. In vivo conditions are significantly different in comparison to in vitro conditions. A standardly used cell monolayer on tissue culture plastic (2D cell culture) is not sufficient to simulate the transfer phenomena occurring in livi...
One of the fundamental properties of living organisms is the ability to sense and respond to changes in their environment by movement. If a motile cell senses soluble molecules and follows along a concentration gradient to the source, or if it moves away from a source of undesirable chemicals, e.g. repellent, toxin, it is displaying a directional m...
Pattern formation in far from equilibrium systems is observed in several disciplines including biology, geophysics, and reaction-diffusion chemistry, comprising both living and nonliving systems. We aim to study such non-equilibrium dynamics on a lab-scale with materials of simple composition. We present a novel system based on a 1-decanol droplet...
The chemotactic movement of decanol droplets in aqueous solutions of sodium decanoate in response to concentration gradients of NaCl has been investigated. Key parameters of the chemotactic response, namely the induction time and the migration velocity, have been evaluated as function of the sodium decanoate concentration and the NaCl concentration...
A new method for triggering the burst liberation of encapsulated sub-micron particles from carrier particles using embedded microorganisms has been developed. Triggering mechanisms such as those based on chemical, light, thermal, or magnetic stimuli are known, but man-made particles are not yet able to replicate the concept of “dormancy” found in b...
The slime mould Dictyostelium discoideum is an excellent microorganism that allows, as a model system, to study many biological problems, such as chemotaxis, gene expression, adhesion, cell differentiation, cell sorting, multicellular development from single cells, intercellular communication, phagocytosis, motility, programmed cell death and signa...
Recent advances in the fabrication, characterization and application of micro- and nano-particles that possess a non-uniform internal structure are reviewed. The particle structures include core-shell particles, particles with multiple cores or a multi-layered structure, porous particles with both regular and random pore structure, as well as compl...
Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) and surface-enhanced infrared absorption (SEIRA) are powerful analytical techniques used for the study and characterization of ultrathin films and monolayers of organic compounds adsorbed on the nanostructured surface of several metals. The main requirement which has to be met for the SERS- and SEIRA-activit...
The emergence of wave patterns in chemical and biological systems is of interest for the understanding of development, differentiation, signaling, and other phenomena. In this work we report a new type of wave pattern - called the “global wave” - which was observed in populations of Dictyostelium discoideum cells exposed to an excess of cyclic aden...
Composite microcapsules consisting of a thermo-responsive hydrogel poly-N-isopropylacrylamide (PNIPAM) and coated by silica (SiO(2)) nanoparticles have been synthesized by the inverse Pickering emulsion polymerization method. The composite capsules, whose mean diameter is in the 25-86 microm range in the expanded state, were characterized by static...
Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (SERS) on copper substrates of various morphologies, prepared by electrochemical deposition on platinum targets, was investigated. The substrate preparation procedures differed by the coating bath compositions, applied current densities and the duration of individual steps. The surface morphology of the substrates...
Copper substrates active in surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) were prepared by cathodic reduction, using a massive platinum target as cathode. Two electrochemical baths (with 16-sulfanylhexadecanoic acid or 4-aminobenzene-1-thiol) and several steps with different current densities were tested. For testing SERS activity of the prepared substr...
The ability of both single-cellular and higher organisms to actively move in the concentration gradient of a signalling molecule whether to seek a source of nutrient or a partner to mate is one of the most prominent external signs of life: it moves, hence it must be alive!. Mimicking chemotaxis in artificial or bio-artificial systems is a challengi...
Surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) is a powerful technique of Raman signal detection of substances at a low concentration level. it allows observation of structural details of films with very small thicknesses. It is possible to achieve the enhancement of Raman signal of species located on the surface of properly prepared SERS-active substrat...
Starving cells of Dictyostelium discoideum undergo a developmental cycle where cAMP is autocatalytically produced and relayed from cell to cell, resulting in the propagation of excitation waves over a spatially extended population. Later on the homogeneous cell layer transforms into a pattern of cell streams directed perpendicular to the cAMP waves...
The problem of targeted delivery and controlled release of a chemical payload in difficult-to-access microstructured environments such as living tissues or porous soil is considered. Composite microcapsules consisting of the thermo-responsive hydrogel poly-N-isopropylacrylamide (PNIPAM) with dispersed iron oxide nanoparticles have been prepared by...
2. vyd. Nad názvem: Evropský sociální fond v ČR, Ústav chemického inženýrství, Vysoká škola chemicko-technologická v Praze "Učební text pro účastníky laboratorních kurzů a seminářů projektu ESF č. CZ.04.3.07/4.2.01/9 Senzory a biosenzory pro biotechnologie, lékařskou diagnostiku a životní prostředí, podpora rozvoje biotechnologií a inovační podniká...
Projects
Project (1)
Pattern formation in far-from-equilibrium systems is observed in several disciplines including biology, geophysics, and reaction-diffusion chemistry, comprising both living and nonliving systems. We aim to study such nonequilibrium dynamics on the laboratory scale with materials of simple composition. We present a novel system based on a 1-decanol droplet placed in a solution of alkaline decanoate. Previously, we showed the short time scale behavior of this system, which included chemotaxis and maze solving. Here we explore long time scale dynamics of the system (several hours) when open to the environment. We observe dramatic morphological changes in the droplet including long tentacular structures, and we analyze the morphology of these structures at both the macroscopic and microscopic scales across a large range of initial conditions. Such reproducible morphological changes in simple droplets open a path to the exploration of shape-based effects in larger-scale pattern-formation studies.
http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs/10.1021/acs.langmuir.6b01062
http://www.chobotix.cz/jitka
