Nanotechnology for Biological Sciences

 Nanotechnology for Biological
Sciences

Since the invention of first scanning tunnel microscope in 1989, new insights have been gained into several fields like biochemistry, biophysics, material science, electronics and surface physics. This also led to the birth of the science branches such as nanosensors. The developing of atomic force microscopy (AFM) and optical tweezers (OT) has been crucial for the understanding of different biological problems at a single molecule level such as protein energy landscape and folding, complex DNA structures, biomechanics of cells and many others.

The AFM has proved to be an essential tool for imaging of nanostructures at single molecule level like DNA origami and fibrils with a very high resolution; another powerful application of AFM is the single molecule force spectroscopy technique which enables to analyze forces in the order of magnitude of picoNewtons, acting on the molecules letting us to explore the heterogeneous conformational landscape.

Like AFM, OT can be applied to study small forces in biological events such as protein folding or more macroscopic events like cell mechanics.

Our interest is to gain a deeper knowledge in neurobiology issues with the aid of these techniques, even if crossing over with other disciplines like molecular biology, cell biology, biochemistry and biophysics is essential.

written by Andrea Raspadori This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.