Rui Oliveira-Silva

Technical University of Lisbon | UTL · Institute for Biotechnology and Bioengineering (IBB)

Proteases play a pivotal role in several biological processes, from digestion, cell proliferation, and differentiation to fertility. Deregulation of protease metabolism can result in several pathological conditions (i.e., cancer, neurodegenerative disorders, and others). Therefore, monitoring proteolytic activity in real time could have a fundament...

A simple method based on sucrose density gradient centrifugation is proposed here for the fractionation of colloidal silver nanotriangles. This method afforded particle fractions with surface plasmon resonances, spanning from red to infrared spectral ranges that could be used to tune optical properties for plasmonic applications. This feature was e...

The search for sustainable catalytic oxidation processes remains a challenge. One process of utmost industrial and economic importance is the selective oxidation of cyclohexane, in the route of nylon-6,6 production, which requires urgent improvement. Herein, Au nanotriangles (Au NTs) were prepared following a three-step (seed preparation, growth an...

While a continuous monitoring of temperature at the micro and nano-scales is clearly of interest in many contexts, in many others a yes or no answer to the question "did the system locally exceeded a certain temperature threshold?" can be more accurate and useful. This is the case of hard-to-detect events, such as those where temperature fluctuatio...

This paper reports about a study of the local plasmonic resonance (LSPR) produced by metal nanoparticles embedded in a dielectric or semiconductor matrix. It is presented an analysis of the LSPR for different nanoparticle metals, shapes, and embedding media composition. Metals of interest for nanoparticle composition are Aluminum and Gold. Shapes o...

The development of portable low-cost integrated optics-based biosensors for photonics-on-a-chip devices for real-time diagnosis are of great interest, offering significant advantages over current analytical methods. We report the fabrication and characterization of an optical sensor based on a Mach-Zehnder interferometer to monitor the growing conc...

Introduction Chronic periodontitis (CP) is a complex immuno-inflammatory disease affecting the periodontium, the tissue that give support to the teeth. Its severity is associated to the destruction of the periodontal ligament, deepening of periodontal pockets, alveolar bone resorption and even tooth loss. So far, the diagnosis of CP relies on subje...

The widespread use of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) is accompanied by a growing concern regarding their potential risks to human health, thus calling for an increased understanding of their biological effects. The aim of this work was to systematically study the extent to which changes in cellular metabolism were dependent on the properties of AgNPs...

The efforts dedicated to improving water decontamination procedures have prompted the interest in the development of efficient, inexpensive, and reusable sorbents for the uptake of dye pollutants. In this work, novel sorbents consisting of carrageenan polysaccharides grafted to magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles were prepared. κ- and ι-carrageenan w...

Chronic periodontitis (CP) is a complex immuno-inflammatory disease that results from pre-established gingivitis. We investigated potential differences in salivary peptidome in health and CP. Saliva was collected from 9 CP patients and 10 healthy subjects, from which 5 CP and 5 healthy were enriched following endoProteoFASP approach, separated and...

Protein post-translational modifications (PTMs) have increasingly become a research field of incredible importance to fully understand the regulation of biological processes in health and disease. Among PTMs, glycosylation is one of the most studied for which contributed the development and improvement of enrichment techniques. Nowadays, glycoprote...

New magnetic nanoprobes based on surface-functionalized magnetite particles were synthesized and used to selectively capture metalloproteases from human saliva samples. In addition to high specific surface area, these nanoparticles displayed metal ion chelating moieties grafted onto the surface due to the reaction with the organosilane EDTA-TMS ((N...

Formed as an interdisciplinary domain on the basis of Human Genome Project, proteomics aims at the large-scale study of proteins. The enthusiasm that resulted from obtaining the complete human genetic information has, however, been chastened by the realization that this information contributes little to the comprehension and knowledge of the expres...