Sharif Digital Repository

In recent years, applications of dielectrophoresis-based platforms have been recognized as effective and dependable approach to separate cells and bioparticles, suspended in different carrier fluids, based on particle size and electrical properties. In this study, a microfluidic device was fabricated by an unprecedented electrode pattern, and several experiments were performed to enrich samples including either of yeast, Escherichia coli, or latex particles. A chemical deposition-based method was employed for fabrication of microelectrodes, inducing nonuniform electric field required for dielectrophoresis-based separation. One major advantage of our employed method is low fabrication cost,... 

A crude phenolic glycolipid extract from Mycobacterium bovis BCG was fractionated by column chromatography. A reversed-phase high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) method with UV detection at 275nm was developed for simultaneous detection and separation of phenolic glycolipids (PGLs) in Mycobacterium bovis BCG. This analysis provides a good resolution. Different solvent systems and columns for HPLC were compared. A system composed of acetonitrile-water in the ratio of 0→80% at a flow rate of 0.8 mL/min and C8 analytical column were found to be optimum for HPLC of the phenolic glycolipids. This simple method is therefore appropriate to purify these compounds present in M. bovis extract... 

So-called negative capacitance seems to remain an obscure feature in the analysis of the frequency-dependent impedance of perovskite solar cells. It belongs to one of the puzzling peculiarities arising from the mixed ionic-electronic conductivity of this class of semiconductor. Here we show that apparently high capacitances in general (positive and negative) are not related to any capacitive feature in the sense of a corresponding charge accumulation. Instead, they are a natural consequence of slow transients mainly in forward current of the diode upon ion displacement when changing voltage. The transient current leads to a positive or negative ‘capacitance’ dependent on the sign of its... 

There is a substantial volume of mobile phone waste every year. Due to the disadvantages of traditional methods, it is necessary to look for biological processes that are more eco-friendly and economical to recover metals from e-waste. Fungi provide large amounts of organic acids and dissolve metals but using sucrose in the medium is not economical. In this paper, the main objective is to find a suitable alternative carbon substrate instead of sucrose for fungi bioleaching of Ni and Cu in printed circuit boards (PCBs) of mobile phones using Penicillium simplicissimum. Four kinds of carbon sources (including sucrose, cheese whey, sugar, and sugar cane molasses) were selected. Also, pH and... 

A large number of treatment approaches have been used for spinal cord injury improvement, a medically incurable disorder, and subsequently stem cell transplantation appears to be a promising strategy. The main objective of this study is to ascertain whether combinational therapy of human neural stem cells (hNSCs) together with lithium chloride improves cell survival, proliferation, and differentiation in a rat spinal contusion model, or not. Contusive spinal cord injury was implemented on Wistar male rats. Experimental groups comprised of: control, hNSCs transplanted, lithium chloride (Li), and hNSCs and lithium chloride (hNSCs + Li). In every experimental group, locomotor activity score and... 

Background: Cancer is the first cause of death in developed countries. The heterogeneous nature of cancer requires patient-specified treatment plans. One reliable approach is collecting Circulating Tumour Cells (CTCs) and using them for prognosis and drug response assessment purposes. CTCs are rare and their separation from normal cell requires high-accuracy methods. Methods: A microfluidic cell capture device to separate CTCs from peripheral blood is presented in this study. The CTC separation device applies hydrodynamic forces to categorize cells according to their sizes. The proposed device is designed and evaluated by numerical simulations and validated experimentally. The simulation... 

Breast and prostate cancers are common types of cancers with various strategies, such as chemotherapy and radiotherapy, for their therapy. Since these methods have undesired side effects and poor target affinity, neoteric strategies—known as aptamer-based smart drug delivery systems (SDDSs)—have been developed in recent years to overcome the obstacles of current treatment, and investigated for a clinical trial. The high affinity and versatility of aptamers for binding to the corresponding targets make them highly noticeable agents in the drug delivery domains. In addition to their exceptional benefits, aptamers are able to overcome tumor resistance because of their high selectivity and low... 

Shape is a key factor in influencing mechanical responses of bones. Considered to be smart viscoelastic and inhomogeneous materials, bones are stimulated to change shape (model and remodel) when they experience changes in the compressive strain distribution. Using reverse engineering techniques via computer-aided design (CAD) is crucial to create a virtual environment to investigate the significance of shape in biomechanical engineering. Nonetheless, data are lacking to quantify the accuracy of generated models and to address errors in finite element analysis (FEA). In the present study, reverse engineering through extrapolating cross-sectional slices was used to reconstruct the diaphysis of... 

Stimulus repetition suppresses the neural activity in different sensory areas of the brain. This mechanism of so-called stimulus-specific adaptation (SSA) has been observed in both spiking activity and local field potential (LFP) responses. However, much remains to be known about the effect of SSA on the spike–LFP relation. In this study, we approached this issue by investigating the spike-phase coupling (SPC) in control and adapting paradigms. For the control paradigm, pure tones were presented in a random unbiased sequence. In the adapting paradigm, the same stimuli were presented in a random pattern but it was biased to an adapter stimulus. In fact, the adapter occupied 80% of the... 

Control problem in a biological system is the problem of finding an interventional policy for changing the state of the biological system from an undesirable state, e.g. disease, into a desirable healthy state. Boolean networks are utilized as a mathematical model for gene regulatory networks. This paper provides an algorithm to solve the control problem in Boolean networks. The proposed algorithm is implemented and applied on two biological systems: T-cell receptor network and Drosophila melanogaster network. Results show that the proposed algorithm works faster in solving the control problem over these networks, while having similar accuracy, in comparison to previous exact methods. Source... 

Background: An essential requirement for performing robotic-assisted surgery on a freely beating heart is a prediction algorithm that can estimate the future heart trajectory. Method: Heart motion, respiratory volume (RV) and electrocardiogram (ECG) signal were measured from two dogs during thoracotomy surgery. A comprehensive multimodality prediction algorithm was developed based on the multivariate autoregressive model to incorporate the heart trajectory and cardiorespiratory data with multiple inherent measurement rates explicitly. Results: Experimental results indicated strong relationships between the dominant frequencies of heart motion with RV and ECG. The prediction algorithm... 

Background and aims: The main purpose of this investigation in Low-Level Laser Therapy (LLLT) on diabetic rats is laser wavelength effect on interleukins: IL-1α, IL-1β, IL6. Materials (Subjects) and Methods: At first, diabetes was induced in Wistar rats by streptozotocin (STZ) injection. Then, by intravenous laser therapy, the rats were irradiated by four continuous wave lasers: IR (λ = 808 nm), Red (λ = 638 nm), Green (λ = 532 nm) and Blue (λ = 450 nm) to compare the related laser wavelength effect on different interleukins. The inflammatory parameters were measured 2,6 and 24 hours after laser therapy from blood samples and plotted for different laser wavelengths. Results: The results show... 

Investigating human brain activity during expressing emotional states provides deep insight into complex cognitive functions and neurological correlations inside the brain. To be able to resemble the brain function in the best manner, a complex and natural stimulus should be applied as well, the method used for data analysis should have fewer assumptions, simplifications, and parameter adjustment. In this study, we examined a functional magnetic resonance imaging dataset obtained during an emotional audio-movie stimulus associated with human life. We used Jackknife Correlation (JC) method to derive a representation of time-varying functional connectivity. We applied different binary measures... 

Background: Skeletal muscle mass, which is regulated by a balance between muscle protein synthesis and degradation, is an important factor for movement to meet everyday needs, especially in pathological conditions and aging. The purpose of the present investigation was to compare the alterations of the gene expression involved in muscle protein synthesis and degradation signaling pathways induced by two exercise training protocols. Methods: Eight weeks old Wistar rats have been assigned to the present experimental study, which was conducted from August 2018 to October 2018 at the animal laboratory of Tehran University. They were randomly divided into two resistance and endurance training... 

Monthly mean satellite derived Chl-a, aerosols, wind, SST, PAR, and turbidity datasets were used to investigate the possible factors regulating phytoplankton variability in the Persian Gulf. The spatial correlation analysis revealed two distinct regions of SST and PAR, and a relatively uniform spatial correlation pattern of the other parameters. The cross correlation between aeolian dusts and Chl-a was significantly positive with 1–3 months offset. The pattern of spatial correlation between Chl-a and SST was positive in the shallow regions without time lag, and was negative with time offset of 3–5 months in deeper regions. The cross correlation between Chl-a and north-ward winds were... 

Compared with conventional cancer treatments, the main advantage of oncolytic virotherapy is its tumor-selective replication followed by the destruction of malignant cells without damaging healthy cells. Accordingly, this kind of biological therapy can potentially be used as a promising approach in the field of cancer management. Given the failure of traditional monitoring strategies (such as immunohistochemical analysis (in providing sufficient safety and efficacy necessary for virotherapy and continual pharmacologic monitoring to track pharmacokinetics in real-time, the development of alternative strategies for ongoing monitoring of oncolytic treatment in a live animal model seems... 

Respiratory virus infections are among the most prevalent diseases in humans and contribute to morbidity and mortality in all age groups. Moreover, since they can evolve fast and cross the species barrier, some of these viruses, such as influenza A and coronaviruses, have sometimes caused epidemics or pandemics and were associated with more serious clinical diseases and even mortality. The recently identified Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is a Public Health Emergency of International concern and has been associated with rapidly progressive pneumonia. To ensure protection against emerging respiratory tract... 

Ciprofloxacin is an alternative to vancomycin for treatment of methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) infections. The objective of this study was to optimization of niosomes encapsulated ciprofloxacin and evaluate their antibacterial and anti-biofilm efficacies against ciprofloxacin-resistant methicillin-resistant S. aureus (CR-MRSA) strains. Formulation of niosomes encapsulated ciprofloxacin were optimized by changing the proportions of Tween 60, Span 60, and cholesterol. The optimized ciprofloxacin encapsulated niosomal formulations based on Span 60 and Tween 60 were prepared and characterized using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and... 

Cellular internalization of inorganic, lipidic and polymeric nanoparticles is of great significance in the quest to develop effective formulations for the treatment of high morbidity rate diseases. Understanding nanoparticle–cell interactions plays a key role in therapeutic interventions, and it continues to be a topic of great interest to both chemists and biologists. The mechanistic evaluation of cellular uptake is quite complex and is continuously being aided by the design of nanocarriers with desired physico-chemical properties. The progress in biomedicine, including enhancing the rate of uptake by the cells, is being made through the development of structure–property relationships in... 

Naïve pluripotency can be established in human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) by manipulation of transcription factors, signaling pathways, or a combination thereof. However, differences exist in the molecular and functional properties of naïve hPSCs generated by different protocols, which include varying similarities with pre-implantation human embryos, differentiation potential, and maintenance of genomic integrity. We show here that short treatment with two chemical agonists (2a) of nuclear receptors, liver receptor homologue-1 (LRH-1) and retinoic acid receptor gamma (RAR-γ), along with 2i/LIF (2a2iL) induces naïve-like pluripotency in human cells during reprogramming of fibroblasts,...