Integrated Calendar

Processes at the interface of inorganic solids and polymers mimic a large variety of natural processes such as stimuli responsive behavior, self-healing, actuation, transport and delivery, pH-buffering, but they are not well understood. Polyelectrolyte multilayers are suitable for studying this, as they can be manipulated at will between glassy, rubbery, hydrogel or organogel. We suggest to investigate photocatalytically triggered local pH changes in titania / polyelectrolyte Layer-by-Layer (LbL) / lipid bilayer assembled interfaces, mimicking natural processes in a novel design strategy for inorganic / polymer interfaces as well as to further brain-inspired computing.
We have shown recently that under irradiation of TiO2 a series of photocatalytic reactions leads to a local change in pH, which modulates the pH sensitive LbL assembly. Prime questions are: (i) how many photons are needed to locally change the pH on titania? (ii) what is the optimum LbL architecture to understand the basis of proton trapping and storage, the pH gradient under local irradiation? And (iii) how to achieve reversible actuation of different assemblies for advanced applications?
We focus for the first time on the possibility of efficient transformation of energy of electromagnetic irradiation into local pH shift to actuate soft matter. This is used to demonstrate the application on cell surface interactions, self-repairing strategies, use of a chemical systems to communicate with bacteria, in general control on non-linear chemical processes at interfaces.

During postimplantation development of the mouse embryo, descendants of the inner cell mass cells in the early epiblast transit from the naïve pluripotent state to the primed pluripotent state. Concurrent with the transition of the pluripotency states is the specification of cell lineages and formation of germ layers in the embryos that serves as the blueprint for embryogenesis. Fate mapping and lineage analysis studies have revealed that cells in different regions of the germ layers acquire location-specific cell fates during gastrulation. The regionalization of cell fates heralding the formation of the basic body plan is conserved in vertebrate embryos at a common phylotypic stage of development. Knowledge of the molecular regulation that underpins the lineage specification and tissue patterning is instrumental for understanding embryonic programming and stem cell-based translational study. However, a genome-wide molecular annotation of lineage segregation and tissue architecture of post-implantation embryo has yet to be undertaken. Here, we reported a spatially resolved transcriptome of cell populations at defined positions in the germ layers over the period of pre- to late gastrulation development. This spatio-temporal transcriptome provides high resolution digitized in situ gene expression profiles and defines the molecular attribute of the genealogy of lineages and continuum of pluripotency states in time and space. The transcriptome further identifies the networks of molecular determinants that drive lineage specification and tissue patterning in the early postimplantation mouse embryo.

TBA