Michal Cifra

Institute of Photonics and Electronics (IPE) | IPE · Bioelectrodynamics

Knowledge of electromagnetic properties of biomolecules is essential for a fundamental understanding of electric field interaction with biosystems and for development of novel biomedical diagnostic and therapeutic methods. To enable systematic analysis of the dielectric properties of biomolecule solutions we presented here a method for a rational d...

Nanosecond pulsed electric field offers novel opportunities in bionanotechnology and biomedicine enabling ultrafast physical control of membrane, and protein‐based processes for the development of novel bionanomaterials and biomedical theranostic methods. However, the mechanisms of nanosecond pulsed electric field action at the nano‐ and molecular...

Kinesin is a biological molecular nanomotor which converts chemical energy into mechanical work. To fulfill various nanotechnological tasks in engineered environments, the function of biological molecular motors can be altered by artificial chemical modifications. The drawback of this approach is the necessity of designing and creating a new motor...

Remodeling of the nanoscopic structures is not just crucial for cell biology, but it is also at the core of bioinspired materials. While the microtubule cytoskeleton in cells undergoes fast adaptation, adaptive materials still face this remodeling challenge. Moreover, the guided reorganization of the microtubule network and the correction of its ab...

Tubulin self‐assembly into microtubules is a fascinating natural phenomenon. Its importance is not just crucial for functional and structural biological processes, but it also serves as an inspiration for synthetic nanomaterial innovations. The modulation of the tubulin self‐assembly process without introducing additional chemical inhibitors/promot...

Oxidative processes in all types of organisms cause the chemical formation of electronically excited species, with subsequent ultra-weak photon emission termed biological auto(chemi)luminescence (BAL). Imaging of this luminescence phenomenon using ultra-sensitive devices could potentially enable monitoring of oxidative stress in optically accessibl...

Oxidative processes present across all types of organisms cause the chemical formation of electronically excited species with subsequent ultra-weak photon emission termed biological autoluminescence. Thus, imaging of this luminescence phenomenon using ultra-sensitive devices potentially enables monitoring of oxidative stress in optically accessible...

Kinesin is a motor protein essential in cellular functions, such as intracellular transport and cell-division, as well as for enabling nanoscopic transport in bio-nanotechnology. Therefore, for effective control of function for nanotechnological applications, it is important to be able to modify the function of kinesin. To circumvent the limitation...

Biological oxidation processes are in the core of life energetics, play an important role in cellular biophysics, physiological cell signaling or cellular pathophysiology. Understanding of biooxidation processes is also crucial for biotechnological applications. Therefore, a plethora of methods has been developed for monitoring oxidation so far, ea...

Microtubules composed of tubulin heterodimers represent highly dynamic structures. These structures are essential for basic cellular functions, such as cell division. Microtubules can grow or shrink in response to environmental signals, principally chemical cues. Here, we provide an alternative—physical—strategy to modulate tubulin properties and i...

Pulsed electric field (PEF) technology is promising for the manipulation of biomolecular components and has potential applications in biomedicine and bionanotechnology. Microtubules, nanoscopic tubular structures self-assembled from protein tubulin, serve as important components in basic cellular processes as well as in engineered biomolecular nano...

We present molecular dynamics (MD) trajectories of a single ring of B-lattice microtubule ring consisting of 13 tubulin heterodimers. The data contain trajectories of this molecular system ran under various conditions (two temperature values, three ionic strength values, three values of electric field (including no field), and four electric field o...

Nowadays, modern medicine is looking for new, more gentle, and more efficient diagnostic methods. A pathological state of an organism is often closely connected with increased amount of reactive oxygen species. They can react with biomolecules and subsequent reactions can lead to very low endogenous light emission (biological autoluminescence—BAL)....

Modulation of the structure and function of biomaterials is essential for advancing bio-nanotechnology and biomedicine. Microtubules (MTs) are self-assembled protein polymers that are essential for fundamental cellular processes and key model compounds for the design of active bio-nanomaterials. In this in silico study, a 0.5 μs-long all-atom molec...

Normal or excessive oxidative metabolism in organisms is essential in physiological and pathophysiological processes, respectively. Therefore, monitoring of biological oxidative processes induced by the chemical or physical stimuli is nowadays of extreme importance due to the environment overloaded with various physicochemical factors. Current tech...

Atmospheric electric fields (AEFs) are produced by both natural processes and electrical infrastructure and are increasingly recognized to influence and interfere with various organisms and biological processes, including human well-being. Atmospheric electric fields, in particular electromagnetic fields (EMFs), currently attract a lot of scientifi...

Nowadays, modern medicine is looking for new, more gentle and more efficient diagnostic methods. A pathological state of an organism is often closely connected with increased amount of reactive oxygen species (ROS). They can react with biomolecules and subsequent reactions can lead to very low endogenous light emission (biological autoluminescence...

Self-assembly is at the heart of many promising nanoscience technologies as well as at the core of life processes. Tubulin proteins self-assemble into microtubules, tube-like structures that are essential in cellular functions such as cell division and intracellular transport and also a major target in cancer therapies. Therefore, it is crucial to...

The application of pulsed electric field (PEF) is nowadays becoming a very promising tool for application in medicine or food industry. However, the mechanisms of PEF interaction with living matter are still not fully elucidated. The aim of the presented work is to show the potential application of biological autoluminescence (BAL) for monitoring o...

There is an increasing interest to study the interactions between atmospheric electrical parameters and living organisms at multiple scales. So far, relatively few studies have been published that focus on possible biological effects of atmospheric electric and magnetic fields. To foster future work in this area of multidisciplinary research, here...

The atmosphere is host to a complex electric environment, ranging from a global electric circuit generating fluctuating atmospheric electric fields to local lightning strikes and ions. While research on interactions of organisms with their electrical environment is deeply rooted in the aquatic environment, it has hitherto been confined to interacti...

Mechanisms of how electromagnetic (EM) field acts on biological systems are governed by the same physics regardless of the origin of the EM field (technological, atmospheric...), given that EM parameters are the same. We draw from a large body of literature of bioeffects of a man-made electromagnetic field. In this paper, we performed a focused rev...

Computational molecular methods represent an ultimate microscope to visualize and quantify dynamics of biomolecules and nanostructures on the atomic scale and also a tool to link this dynamics to macroscopic observables. However, these potentially powerful computational methods have been so far poorly explored to gain a deeper knowledge of broadban...

We present molecular dynamics (MD) trajectories of water solutions of eight zwitterionic amino-acids (L- form) glycine (GLY), alanine (ALA), proline (PRO), threonine (THR), leucine (LEU), glutamine (GLN), histidine (HIS) and tyrosine (TYR) using various force field (OPLS-AA, Amber99ff-SB, GROMOS96 54a7, CHARMM19) and water model (SPC/E, TIP3P) comb...

The term neurodegenerative diseases include a long list of diseases affecting the nervous system that are characterized by the degeneration of different neurological structures. Among them, Alzheimer disease (AD), Parkinson disease (PD), and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) are the most representative ones. The vast majority of cases are sporadi...

One of the most important barriers to the detection of the biological autoluminescence (BAL) from biosystems using a non-invasive monitoring approach, in both the in vivo and the in vitro applications, is its very low signal intensity (< 1000 photons/s/cm 2). Experimental studies have revealed that the formation of electron excited species, as a re...

While intense nanosecond pulsed electric field is known to affect subcellular structures and cell membrane (permanent disruption effect), there is still a lack of studies on the modulation effects of nanosecond pulsed electric field and its mechanism of action. In this work, we experimentally demonstrate in vitro direct effects of intense (20 kV/cm...

Microtubules are abundant natural subcellar nano-structures belonging to a class of cytoskeletal fibers responsible for key cell functions. In order to monitor the polymerization state of microtubules in vitro we developed a two-port wideband microfluidic chip based on coplanar waveguide transmission line with a narrows central conductor to provide...

Tubulin self‐assembly into microtubule is one of the most fascinating and inspiring processes in nature. In article number 1903636, Djamel Eddine Chafai, Michal Cifra, and co‐workers introduce a novel strategy based on nanosecond pulsed electric fields acting on the tubulin conformational state, leading to control over the self‐assembly process and...

Biological systems manifest continuous weak autoluminescence, which is present even in the absence of external stimuli. Since this autoluminescence arises from internal metabolic and physiological processes, several works suggested that it could carry information in the time series of the detected photon counts. However, there is little experimenta...

Intense pulsed electric fields are known to act at the cell membrane level and are already being exploited in biomedical and biotechnological applications. However, it is not clear if electric pulses within biomedically-attainable parameters could directly influence intra-cellular components such as cytoskeletal proteins. If so, a molecular mechani...

Biological systems manifest continuous weak autoluminescence, which is present even in the absence of external stimuli. Since this autoluminescence arises from internal metabolic and physiological processes, several works suggested that it could carry information in the time series of the detected photon counts. However, there is little experimenta...

Intense pulsed electric fields are known to act at the cell membrane level and are already being exploited in biomedical and biotechnological applications. However, it is not clear if intra-cellular components such as cytoskeletal proteins could be directly influenced by electric pulses within biomedically-attainable parameters. If so, a molecular...

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0086501.].

It is well known that all biological systems which undergo oxidative metabolism or oxidative stress generate a small amount of light. Since the origin of excited states producing this light is generally accepted to come from chemical reactions, the term endogenous biological chemiluminescence is appropriate. Apart from biomedicine, this phenomenon...

To develop and reliably use diagnostic and therapeutic methods employing microwaves, we need to have an accurate knowledge of biological dielectric properties. Traditionally, dielectric properties of biosamples are determined experimentally. However, such measurements require dedicated hardware and physical availability of sufficient volume of biol...

Nanoparticles (NPs) represent one of the most promising tools for drug-targeting and drug-delivery. Once NPs are administrated, they would be covered by proteins (protein corona) upon their entrance to the biological medium. Hence, protein corona represents the true biological identity of NPs, which will determine the physiological response. Among...

In this work, we attempt to understand the interaction of electrolyte ions with the cell surface in culture media and in different buffers. So far, we aligned our work with the buffers typically used in electroporation of cells. We used Zeta potential to assess cell surface-nanoenvironment interaction, where, the Zeta potential values in different...

Organisms undergoing oxidative metabolism or stress chemically generate electronically excited species through dioxetane and tetroxide pathways. Consequently, luminescence is emitted which could be exploited for non-invasive label-free monitoring of oxidative stress. Spectral analysis of this endogenous chemiluminescence can serve as a tool for ide...

Wireless RF sensors are the building blocks of the next generation sensing techniques that are quite essential for the internet of things. In this paper, the RF system comprising of ultra-wideband transmitter-receiver antenna and highly sensitive planar sensor is proposed for wireless sensing of glucose and saline concentration, which are currently...

In this paper, we discuss biological effects of electromagnetic (EM) fields in the context of cancer biology. In particular, we review the nanomechanical properties of microtubules (MTs), the latter being one of the most successful targets for cancer therapy. We propose an investigation on the coupling of electromagnetic radiation to mechanical vibr...

Background: A brief review is given of Peter W. Barlows' contributions to research on gravity tide-related phenomena in plant biology, or 'selenonastic' effects as he called them, including his early research on root growth. Also, new results are presented here from long-term recordings of spontaneous ultra-weak light emission during germination,...

Photonic signals are broadly exploited in communication and sensing and they typically exhibit Poisson-like statistics. In a common scenario where the intensity of the photonic signals is low and one needs to remove a nonstationary trend of the signals for any further analysis, one faces an obstacle: due to the dependence between the mean and varia...

This roadmap outlines the role semiconductor-based materials play in understanding the complex biophysical dynamics at multiple length scales, as well as the design and implementation of next-generation electronic, optoelectronic, and mechanical devices for biointerfaces. The roadmap emphasizes the advantages of semiconductor building blocks in int...

In recent years, excessive oxidative metabolism has been reported as a critical determinant of pathogenicity in many diseases. The advent of a simple tool that can provide a physiological readout of oxidative stress would be a major step towards monitoring this dynamic process in biological systems, while also improving our understanding of this pr...

In this paper, we discuss biological effects of electromagnetic (EM) fields in the context of cancer biology. In particular, we review the nanomechanical properties of microtubules (MTs), the latter being one of the most successful targets for cancer therapy. We propose an investigation on the coupling of electromagnetic radiation to mechanical vib...

Oxidative processes present across all types of organisms, including humans, cause chemical formation of electron excited species with subsequent endogenous ultra-weak photon emission. Thus, imaging of this endogenous chemiluminescence using ultra-sensitive devices potentially enables label-free monitoring of oxidative stress in optically accessibl...

Organisms undergoing oxidative metabolism or stress chemically generate electronically excited species through dioxetane and tetroxide pathways. Consequently, luminescence is emitted which could be exploited for non-invasive label-free monitoring of oxidative stress. Spectral analysis of this endogenous chemiluminescence can serve as a tool for ide...

Microtubules provide the mechanical force required for chromosome separation during mitosis. However, little is known about the dynamic (high-frequency) mechanical properties of microtubules. Here, we theoretically propose to control the vibrations of a doubly clamped microtubule by tip electrodes and to detect its motion via the optomechanical cou...

The mechanical properties of microtubules are of great importance for understanding their biological function and for applications in artificial devices. Although microtubule mechanics has been extensively studied both theoretically and experimentally, the relation to its molecular structure is understood only partially. Here, we report on the stru...

The possible disruption of a microtubule during mitosis can control the duplication of a cancer cell. Cancer detection and treatment may be possible based on the detection and control of microtubule mechanical oscillations in cells throughexternal fields (e.g. electromagnetic or ultrasound). However, little is known about the dynamic (high-frequenc...

The possible disruption of a microtubule during mitosis can control the duplication of a cancer cell. Cancer detection and treatment may be possible based on the detection and control of microtubule mechanical oscillations in cells through external fields (e.g. electromagnetic or ultrasound). However, little is known about the dynamic (high-frequen...

Refractive index of tubulin is an important parameter underlying fundamental electromagnetic and biophysical properties of microtubules - protein fibers essential for several cell functions including cell division. Yet, the only experimental data available in the current literature show values of tubulin refractive index (n\,=\,2.36\,-\,2.90) which...

There has been extensive study on the vibration dynamics and fluctuations of microtubules in the quest for understanding the relation between microtubule material properties and their ability to carry out several functions in cells. While experimental fluctuation analysis of microtubules has provided an important piece of knowledge about microtubul...

Ultra-weak photon emission (UPE) is light emitted spontaneously by biological systems without the use of specific luminescent complexes. UPE is emitted in the near-UV/UV-Vis/near-IR spectra during oxidative metabolic reactions; however, the specific pathways involved in UPE remain poorly understood. Here, we used HL-60 cells, a human promyelocytic...