The latest Accounts of Chemical Research is a special issue on Gene Silencing and Delivery. We were fortunate to have been invited to contribute to the volume, while also having the issue adorned with cover art developed by our very own Mike Smith. Click the image for a higher resolution version. We should also thankContinue reading “a future in graphic design?”
Author Archives: Andrew Lyon
the importance of being self-critical
In laboratory science-based fields, we are accustomed to performing research using the principles of the scientific method. To summarize, we form a hypothesis, conduct an experiment, collect data, analyze and interpret the data, and then draw conclusions that may or may not be aligned with the initial hypothesis. We then cycle back with a revisedContinue reading “the importance of being self-critical”
wow…someone would really do this?
Thought I would share the following post from Retraction Watch: Elsevier parasitology journal retracts paper after finding author made up peer reviewer email addresses So, the main point is this: the author apparently submitted the paper and suggested reviewers for the paper, as is required by most (all?) journals these days. However, the editors ofContinue reading “wow…someone would really do this?”
good luck to Alicia!
This coming Friday is Alicia’s last day with the group. We have been very fortunate to work with her – she brought a fantastic attitude to a job that probably got a bit frustrating at times. Hopefully we made her job a bit easier by being a generally friendly and low-maintenance group! Soon she willContinue reading “good luck to Alicia!”
the interplay of normalized tumor vasculature and nanoparticles
It’s been a while since the last post – busy times around here. However, I finally found a few spare moments to read some papers. One that popped out at me is a recent pub in Nature Nanotechnology entitled “Normalization of tumor blood vessels improves the delivery of nanomedicines in a size-dependent manner“. Rakesh JainContinue reading “the interplay of normalized tumor vasculature and nanoparticles”
congrats to Mike!
This is a bit overdue, but better late than never. Congratulations to Dr. Mike Smith, who successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation a few weeks back. Mike is off to bigger and better things with Merck. Good luck!
delivering siRNA and cleaving cross-links
A couple of new papers from the group have appeared online. Jeff has written up his very nice work on disulfide containing microgels – the manuscript recently appeared online in Macromolecules. In this paper, we demonstrate the ability to synthesize redox-sensitive microgels using a low temperature synthesis approach originally developed in the group by XiaoboContinue reading “delivering siRNA and cleaving cross-links”
shoya izayaka
The group recently went to a Japanese pub, Shoya Izayaka to celebrate Hiro’s fellowship, and to get some decent food. Here are some pix from the event.
proteins in microgels
A new paper from the group just appeared in Macromolecules ASAP. “Tunable Encapsulation of Proteins within Charged Microgels” describes some light scattering studies by Mike Smith wherein he used the Calypso coupled to MALS and dRI detection to study the loading of cytochrome C within pNIPAm-AAc microgels. The take-home message here is that for theContinue reading “proteins in microgels”
self-replication is cool
A clever little paper just came out as an Advance Online Publication in Nature Chemistry (Self-reproduction of supramolecular giant vesicles combined with the amplification of encapsulated DNA). Tadashi Sugawara from the University of Tokyo shows in this work that when you fabricate a vesicle containing an amphiphilic imidazolium catalyst, you can actually cause the vesicleContinue reading “self-replication is cool”
congrats to Hiro!
Hiro has been awarded a JSPS Postdoctral Fellowship for Research Abroad. This is a two year fellowship that will allow him to greatly expand on his work using microgels in bioengineering applications. Congrats!
mmmm…Korean tacos…
Ok, so this pic is of Korean nachos, but most of us had tacos. Mike snapped this pic before he dug into lunch at the Hankook Taqueria today. Check out the awesomeness after the jump…
A tight sqeeze
A new paper from the group is out today that has arisen out of our collaboration with Henry White at U. of Utah and his student Deric Holden. The basic idea is this: Grant Hendrickson from our group previously observed, using a simple filtration set-up, that microgels could pass through pores that were nearly 10-times smallerContinue reading “A tight sqeeze”
Nanogels in Microcapsules
A new paper from the group has just been published online in Macromolecular Rapid Communications. The paper describes work by Xiaobo (Bob) Hu, wherein he developed a 1-pot method for the synthesis of semi-hollow hydrogel nanocapsules containing thermoreversible nanoparticles.
Microgels as (poor) crowders
Here is an interesting paper that has arisen out of a collaboration with Gary Pielak’s group at UNC-CH. “An upper limit for macromolecular crowding effects“, just published in BMC Biophysics, basically illustrates that even at very high microgel concentrations, there is little change in the observed stability of solvated proteins. In other words, microgels areContinue reading “Microgels as (poor) crowders”
Lyon Research Group 