May29
Posted on May 29 by
Saturday, May 18th brought a beautiful and celebratory commencement exercise to campus at Emmanuel College! It also brought to an end a wonderful and productive research experience for these four amazing GRAB Lab seniors. Congrats to Donalissa, Kristy, Sydney, and Hailey! You brought tremendous enthusiasm for chemistry, nanoparticles, collagen, origami, calcium, TEM, AFM, ICP, NMR, fluorescence and so much more. You also brought your growing expertise in each of your areas of study. THANK YOU for being what is always the best part of this group – you! The chemistry is pretty great too. Godspeed on all of your future chemistry fun and make sure you return to campus...
May14
Posted on May 14 by
With the semester coming to an end, Juan gets ready for a summer full of research! Although many current GRAB Lab members will be graduating and missed, the research must go on! There are many plans for the summer. Currently, experimental methods on decreasing the amount of collagen on the surface of the quartz crystal are being conducted in hopes of seeing a decrease in frequency, indicating an increase of mineral mass. Hopefully, a decrease in frequency will be seen this summer (fingers are...
May14
Posted on May 14 by
As the semester is wrapping up, Marissa is looking forward to new experiments to be conducted over the summer. As the place experiments are progressing and seem to be working, there are new ideas on how to characterize these nanoparticles. After discussing with several people during the ACS Conference, she plans to run the nanoparticles through a relatively high agarose gel to see how different charges and sizes separate. In the meantime, she is back to synthesize even more nanoparticles to continue the place...
Apr07
Posted on Apr 7 by
Congratulations to the whole group and particularly to Kassidy, Kristy, Amanda, and Marielle on their new publication, “Equilibrium interactions of biomimetic DNA aptamers produce intrafibrillar calcium phosphate mineralization of collagen” in Acta Biomaterialia! This has been a work in progress for a long while and is our first foray into collagen hydrogels, intrafibrillar mineralization, the PILP mechanism, and bone-like materials. This is a huge step for us! Thank you to Laurie Gower (U Florida) for providing some protocols and insight to get us on our way with. this. Marielle really began the whole project by being the first student to create collagen hydrogels on campus. Kassidy did the experiments that first showed the impact of DNA aptamers on collagen mineralization. Kristy and Amanda got into the chemistry behind it all to show affinity and uptake of chemical precursors to try to explain what is really happening. This was a great group effort and is something we can build on! Thank you to Emmanuel College and the National Science Foundation (DMR 1904460) for funding of this...
Apr07
Posted on Apr 7 by
With spring in the air and the end of the semester right around the corner, Sydney has been reminiscing about her work in synthesizing fluorescent solid-lipid nanoparticles. As she condenses and packs up her past experiments, she has been looking back at all the skills that GRAB lab has taught her. While she’s not eager to leave GRAB lab after only one year on the team, Sydney is excited to put her new skills to use as a chemist in the work...
Mar19
Posted on Mar 19 by
The entire group did an amazing job sharing our work with the chemistry research community at the American Chemical Society conference in New Orleans! We contributed to our chemistry community, learned a lot from other researchers, and were a little overwhelmed by hanging with so many chemists at the same time. These are our people! Congrats to Hailey, Kristy, Donalissa, Juan, and...
