Education & KnowledgeHow Cell Membranes Keep You Alive
PeerTube
Jocelyn Etienne#PhysCell Conference, 7–11 September 2026 in Egmond aan Zee, a lovely beach location in the #netherlands
Deadline May 8, 2026.
https://meetings.embo.org/event/26-physcell
Conference topics include:
* #Mechanics and #dynamics of #membranes, #cells, #tissues, and #organoids
* Reconstituted systems and synthetic cells
* #Biomolecular condensates
* #Physics of #chromosomes and the #nucleus
* Sensing and information in #livingCells
See you there!
DoomsdaysCWThis High School Student Invented a Filter That Eliminates 96 Percent of Microplastics From Drinking Water
Virginia teenager Mia Heller’s filtration system harnesses the power of ferrofluid, a magnetic oil that binds to microplastics in flowing water
by Ramsha Waseem, March 20, 2026
Excerpt: "A few years ago, teenager Mia Heller came across an article in her local newspaper about ongoing water quality issues in her neighborhood in Warrington, Virginia. Tests had revealed that the water available for daily consumption was highly contaminated with PFAS and microplastic pollution. The article further reported that government agencies would not be providing any funds for filtering the water.
" 'It was up to people to provide their own filtration,' says Heller.
"Not long after the article came out, Heller’s parents invested in an advanced water filtration system at her home. The system, however, required constant upkeep. Seeing her mother replace the water filter #membranes time and again, Heller set out to find a better solution.
" 'It inspired me to design a filter without the use of membranes, to decrease the costs and maintenance needs associated with water filtration,' says the now 18-year-old student at Kettle Run High School. Through her school, she also attends a half-day program for math, science and technology at nearby Mountain Vista Governor’s School.' "
[...]
" 'It was essentially just a container,' she says. Within the container was her filtration system, what she called a 'spinning magnified vial.' Heller harnessed a reusable magnetic oil called ferrofluid to selectively bind to microplastic particles as water flows through her filtration system. While her model successfully filtered out the #microplastics from the water in two simple steps, the system still required constant maintenance, as it did not self-recycle the ferrofluid.
" 'But if I could create a system that was able to basically clean itself and #reuse material,' she explains, 'the maintenance needs could go down by a lot.' "
[...]
"About five iterations later, she found the perfect solution. Her current prototype, which is about the size of a standard bag of flour, consists of three modules. The first unit, about a liter in volume, holds the contaminated water inside it, while the second stores the magnetic oil-based ferrofluid. The core process takes place in the third module, which is much smaller. 'A magnetic field pulls the microplastics out of the water, and the ferrofluid is recovered and reused in a closed loop,' explains Heller. As a stand-alone filter (similar to a Brita pitcher), the system can filter about one liter of water at a time."
#SolarPunkSunday #WaterFiltration #WaterIsLife #MicroplasticPollution
Stephan HackerAnother great session of #PosterPitches at #NWOCHAINS. We learned about a huge diversity of topics including #SupramoecularAssemblies, #biomarker #sensing, #Ion-selective #membranes, radical #polymerization and #MassSpectrometry.
Stephan HackerAnother great session of #PosterPitches at #NWOCHAINS. We learned about a huge diversity of topics including #SupramoecularAssemblies, #biomarker #sensing, #Ion-selective #membranes, radical #polymerization and #MassSpectrometry.
John Vaccaro (johniac)SciTech Chronicles. . . . . . . . .May 24th, 2025
#metabolic #"Peganum harmala" #sensorial #rue #"cis-urocanic acid" #"Staphylococcus epidermidis" #urocanase #microbiome #nanofiltration #membranes #hydroxide #carbonate #"Venus flytrap" #"aquatic waterwheel" #shading #"striped bug" #"USS F-1" #WHOI #Alvin #Sentry
PLOS Biology#Staphylococcus secretes toxins such as PVL to kill immune cells, incl macrophages. This study shows that PVL binds anionic #phospholipids under acidic conditions, targeting lysosomal & mitochondrial #membranes (but not plasma membrane) to promote bacterial escape @PLOSBiology https://plos.io/3RvcArh
Staphylococcal toxin PVL ruptures model membranes under acidic conditions through interactions with cardiolipin and phosphatidic acid
Staphylococcus aureus secretes toxins, such as Panton-Valentine leukocidin (PVL), to kill immune cells, including macrophages. This study shows that PVL binds phosphatidic acid and cardiolipin in acidic conditions, targeting lysosomal and mitochondrial membranes (but not the plasma membrane) to promote bacterial escape.
Victoria Stuart 🇨🇦 🏳️⚧️🤯 Noise-guided tuning of synthetic protein waves in living cells 😀
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2025.03.21.644572v1
* yeast spatiotemporal protein circuits
* genetically encoded oscillators
* clonal populations oscillate at diff. frequencies
* independ. tunable frequency/amplitude w.i. single population
#Saccharomyces #SyntheticBiology #WaveformEngineering #BioOscillators #Membranes #wafeforms
Noise-guided tuning of synthetic protein waves in living cells
Biological systems use protein circuits to organize cellular activities in space and time, but engineering synthetic dynamics is challenging due to stochastic effects of genetic and biochemical variation on circuit behavior. Genetically encoded oscillators (GEOs) built from bacterial MinDE-family ATPase and Activator modules generate fast orthogonal protein waves in eukaryotic cells, providing an experimental model system for genetic and biochemical coordination of synthetic protein dynamics. Here, we use budding yeast to experimentally define and model phase portraits that reveal how the breadth of frequencies and amplitudes available to a GEO are genetically controlled by ATPase and Activator expression levels and noise. GEO amplitude is encoded by ATPase absolute abundance, making it sensitive to extrinsic noise on a population level. In contrast, GEO frequency is remarkably stable because it is controlled by the Activator:ATPase ratio and thus affected primarily by intrinsic noise. These features facilitate noise-guided design of different expression strategies that act as filters on GEO waveform, enabling us to construct clonal populations that oscillate at different frequencies as well as independently tune frequency and amplitude variation within a single population. By characterizing 169 biochemically distinct GEOs, we provide a rich assortment of phase portraits as starting points for application of our waveform engineering approach. Our findings suggest noise-guided design may be a valuable strategy for achieving precision control over dynamic protein circuits. ### Competing Interest Statement The authors have declared no competing interest.
preLightsA new preLight has appeared! ✨🔔
Barbora Knotkova highlights a preprinted study from Friederike Benning & team (ChaoLab) in which the structure-function relationship at the site of cellular respiration is under review. 👀
CellBioNewsSeeing more in expansion #microscopy: New methods light up #lipid #membranes and allow for high-resolution #protein mapping
https://phys.org/news/2025-03-expansion-microscopy-methods-lipid-membranes.html
Seeing more in expansion microscopy: New methods light up lipid membranes and allow for high-resolution protein mapping
In biology, seeing can lead to understanding, and researchers in Professor Edward Boyden's lab at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research are committed to bringing life into sharper focus. With a pair of new methods, they are expanding the capabilities of expansion microscopy—a high-resolution imaging technique the group introduced in 2015—so researchers everywhere can see more when they look at cells and tissues under a light microscope.