We report on results of recent studies of collisions of low-energy electrons with nucleobases and other DNA constituents. A particular focus of these studies has been the identification and characterization of resonances that play a role in electron attachment leading to strand breaks in DNA. Comparison of the calculated resonance positions with results of electron transmission measurements is ...

D the holiday season, transformations abound. At the end of the year, my family, friends, and colleagues parade in their ugly sweaters or their New Year’s Eve party-wear. I was thinking about how these adornments can influence our circle of interactions. As a tangible example, my colleague George Phillips attracted a crowd with his prize-winning sweater (Figure 1). Our first issue of 2012 also ...

The optical confinement generated by metal-based nanoapertures fabricated on a silica substrate has recently enabled single-molecule fluorescence measurements to be performed at physiologically relevant background concentrations of fluorophore-labeled biomolecules. Nonspecific adsorption of fluorophore-labeled biomolecules to the metallic cladding and silica bottoms of nanoapertures, however, r...

We present here the in vitro release profiles of either fluorescently labeled biomolecules or computed tomography contrast nanoagents from engineered collagen hydrogels under physiological conditions. The collagen constructs were designed as potential biocompatible inserts into wounded human gingiva. The collagen hydrogels were fabricated under a variety of conditions in order to optimize the r...

Even before the development of the idea to exploit marine biomolecules for human needs (pharmaceuticals, cosmetics, etc.), the interest for such compounds is implicit when one ponders the astonishingly basic definition of marine biotechnology as " a natural extension of cultural practices of garnering food from the ocean " by the anthropologist Helmreich who beautifully summarizes the origins o...

are remarkably stable and inert,1 and show sharp, well-resolved, and simple paramagnetic resonance spectra2 that are sensitive to molecular motion,3 and, to a lesser extent, sensitive to polarity of the molecular environment.4 As shown below, such nitroxide radicals containing an isocyanate group can be bound to proteins and synthetic polypeptides in a manner similar to that used previously to ...

Decoration of nanoparticles, in particular biomolecules, gathered high attention in recent years.(1-7) Of special interest is the potential use of biomolecules as templates for the fabrication of semiconducting or metallic nanostructures.(1-7,26) In this work we show the application of atomic layer deposition, a gas-phase thin film deposition process, to biological macromolecules, which are fre...