News from the NNI Community - Research Advances Funded by Agencies Participating in the NNI

Imaging a specific protein inside a cell requires labeling it with a fluorescent tag carried by an antibody that binds to the protein. Antibodies are about 10 nanometers long, while typical proteins are usually about 2 to 5 nanometers in diameter, so if the proteins are too densely packed, the antibodies can't get to them. To overcome this limitation, researchers from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University, and the University of Maryland have developed a way to make those "invisible" proteins visible. Their technique expands a cell or tissue sample before labeling the proteins, which makes the proteins more accessible to fluorescent tags.

Researchers from the University of Wisconsin–Madison, HRL Laboratories LLC, in Malibu, California, and the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia, have found a way to better control silicon quantum dot qubits. One common issue with silicon qubits is competition between different kinds of quantum states, and the states that most often compete with the ones needed for computing are “valley states.” The researchers found a way to control the valley states, even in the presence of defects.

Researchers from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Berkeley Lab, the University of Central Florida, and Penn State have unveiled a new, fast, and readily reproducible way to map and identify defects in two-dimensional (2D) materials. It uses an application of artificial intelligence to quickly analyze data from autonomous experiments, which in recent years have become a powerful tool for imaging 2D materials.

The focused ion beam is an essential tool for cutting patterns as small as several billionths of a meter deep and wide in tiny industrial parts. But the focused ion beam has been limited by a trade-off between high speed and fine resolution. Now researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology have discovered that a masking process can virtually eliminate this trade-off, enabling a focused ion beam to machine at high current (and therefore high speed) without sacrificing fine resolution.

Using a suspended nanowire, researchers from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and the University of Missouri have, for the first time, created a tiny sensor that can simultaneously measure electrical and mechanical cellular responses in cardiac tissue. With its size much smaller than a single cell, the nanowire can tightly patch onto a cell’s membrane and "listen to" cellular activities. Also, it can convert "heard" bioelectrical and biomechanical activities into electrical sensing signals for detection.

Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Korea University in Seoul have devised a transparent infrared reflective coating. Designed with a nano-mesh structure, the coating transmits sunlight and reflects body thermal radiation. This new coating could be used in clothes that keep people warm in winter and in counter-surveillance military applications – specifically, to provide camouflage under the scrutiny of thermal imaging cameras. 

Scientists from Johns Hopkins University and the University of Washington have created a platform that shows promise in speeding up the design of lipid nanoparticles, which can be used to carry messenger RNA to cells and generate immunity. But the potency of mRNA begins to decline within 24 hours of its delivery. So, the scientists designed lipid nanoparticles that carry a promising alternative, called plasmid DNA, which can last for up to seven days. The researchers are now leveraging these nanoparticles to develop a vaccine against malaria. 

Researchers at Washington University in St. Louis have shown that when materials with nanopores are submerged in a highly saline liquid, the pH inside the nanopores can be as much as 100 times more acidic than in the bulk solution. The researchers developed plasmonic nanoparticle sensors that reported how pH changed as they moved through the pores and their immediate environment. Each sensor consists of a gold nanoparticle paired with a molecule that is sensitive to pH. 

Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine and the University of South Florida Health Heart Institute have shown that an experimental nanoparticle-based drug therapy protects mice from sudden death due to the rupture of a major blood vessel in the abdomen, pointing the way toward a new strategy for treating deadly abdominal aortic aneurysms. The researchers used nanoparticles to deliver anti-inflammatory payloads directly to inflamed blood vessels. 

Researchers at The University of Texas at Austin and the U.S. Department of Energy’s Sandia National Laboratories have developed synaptic transistors for brain-like computers using the thin, flexible material graphene. These transistors are similar to synapses in the brain, which connect neurons to each other, and they can interact with living cells and tissue.