Integrated Calendar

Publishing research papers is a cornerstone of working in life sciences, but do you know what actually happens to your manuscript once it is submitted to a scientific journal? Anne Nielsen – scientific editor for The EMBO journal – will take you behind the scenes of scientific publishing at EMBO and explain how editors make decisions, find referees and work with authors to improve the revised manuscript. She will also discuss some of the challenges faced by the current publishing landscape, talk about the efforts EMBO is making to prevent errors and fraud from entering the literature, and offer advice on manuscript writing and submission.

After almost 100 years of research inorganic layered (2D) materials, like MoS2, are currently used as catalysts, lubricants, and perhaps most importantly in rechargeable Li- ion batteries. After a short briefing on the history of 2D materials research,1 the concepts which lead to the first synthesis of hollow-cage nanostructures, including nanotubes (INT) and fullerene-like (IF) nanoparticles from 2D compounds, will be presented. The progress with the high-temperature synthesis and characterization of new inorganic nanotubes (INT) and fullerene-like (IF) nanoparticles (NP) will be presented. In particular, the synthesis and structure of nanotubes from the ternary “misfit” layered compounds (MLC), like LnS-TaS2 (Ln= La, Ce, Gd, Ho, Er), CaCoO-CoO2 and numerous other MLC were elucidated. More recently nanotubes (and nanoscrolls) from quaternary MLC were reported.
Major progress has been achieved in elucidating the structure of INT and IF using advanced microscopy techniques, like aberration corrected TEM and related techniques. Mechanical, electrical and optical measurements of individual WS2 nanotubes reveal their unique quasi-1D characteristics. This analysis demonstrate their different behavior compared to the bulk phase. Applications of the IF/INT as superior solid lubricants and for reinforcement of variety of polymers and light metal alloys was demonstrated. Few recent studies indicate that this brand of nanoparticles is less toxic than most nanoparticles. With expanding product lines, manufacturing and sales, these nanomaterials are gradually becoming an industrial commodity.
1. L. Panchakarla, B. Visic and R. Tenne, “Perspective”, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2017, 139, 12865-12878.

Cell penetrating peptides have a unique potential for targeted drug delivery, therefore, mechanistic understanding of their membrane action has been sought since their discovery over 20 years ago. While ATP-driven endocytosis is known to play a major role in their internalization, there has been also ample evidence for the importance of passive translocation for which the direct mechanism, where the peptide is thought to directly pass through the membrane via a temporary pore, has been widely advocated. In this talk, I will question this view and demonstrate that arginine-rich cell penetrating peptides can instead enter vesicles and cells by inducing multilamellarity and fusion, analogously to the action of calcium ions. The molecular picture of this penetration mode, which differs qualitatively from the previously proposed direct mechanism, is provided by molecular dynamics simulations. In addition, the kinetics of vesicle agglomeration and fusion by nonaarginine, nonalysine, and calcium ions are documented in real time by fluorescence techniques and the induction of multilamellar phases in vesicles and cells is revealed both via electron microscopy and fluorescence spectroscopy. We thus show that the newly identified passive cell penetration mechanism is analoguous to vesicle fusion induced by calcium ions, demonstrating that the two processes are of a common mechanistic origin.