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Nanomaterials for Health-Care, Environmental Monitoring and Food Quality Control

A special issue of Materials (ISSN 1996-1944). This special issue belongs to the section "Advanced Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 June 2021) | Viewed by 1589

Special Issue Editor


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Guest Editor
Department of Environmental Biology, Sapienza University of Rome, 00185 Rome, Italy
Interests: biosensor; lab-on-chip; point-of-care devices; biomedical diagnostics and agri-food safety
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The emergence of nanotechnology has led to the development of novel nanomaterials: natural or manufactured objects with at least one of the three dimensions at the nanoscale. The advances in new strategies for synthesizing nanomaterials together with tools for their characterization led to a vast academic and industrial interests due to the possible applications of these materials in the development of new products, devices, and technologies.

Nanomaterials including micelles, liposomes, solid lipid nanoparticles, inorganic (metal) nanoparticles, quantum dots, polymeric nanoparticles, mesoporous silica nanoparticles, dendrimers, nanotubes-nanowires, graphene surfaces, and thin films have been demonstrated to have physical, chemical, and biological properties which differ from those of single atoms of bulk solid matter. Nanomaterials are characterized by the unique combination of small size and immense surface area, which is reflected in their mechanical, magnetic, optical, and catalytic properties, thereby permitting new levels of performances and applications in biosensing, diagnostics, therapeutics, drug delivery, medicine, biomedical imaging, water purification, environmental monitoring, and food quality control.

The aim of this Special Issue is to show to researchers and scientists the new achievements in the synthesis, characterization, and applications of nanomaterials in health-care and bioanalytical science, such as environmental monitoring and food quality control. We encourage the submission of reviews, mini-reviews, original articles, and short communications displaying the potential of nanomaterials in health-care and analytical settings, also using “real world” samples.

Dr. Francesca Costantini
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Materials is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2600 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • nanomaterials
  • synthesis
  • characterization
  • health-care
  • biosensing
  • environmental monitoring
  • food quality control

Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

11 pages, 23738 KiB  
Article
Split Aptamers Immobilized on Polymer Brushes Integrated in a Lab-on-Chip System Based on an Array of Amorphous Silicon Photosensors: A Novel Sensor Assay
by Manasa Nandimandalam, Francesca Costantini, Nicola Lovecchio, Lorenzo Iannascoli, Augusto Nascetti, Giampiero de Cesare, Domenico Caputo and Cesare Manetti
Materials 2021, 14(23), 7210; https://doi.org/10.3390/ma14237210 - 26 Nov 2021
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1289
Abstract
Innovative materials for the integration of aptamers in Lab-on-Chip systems are important for the development of miniaturized portable devices in the field of health-care and diagnostics. Herein we highlight a general method to tailor an aptamer sequence in two subunits that are randomly [...] Read more.
Innovative materials for the integration of aptamers in Lab-on-Chip systems are important for the development of miniaturized portable devices in the field of health-care and diagnostics. Herein we highlight a general method to tailor an aptamer sequence in two subunits that are randomly immobilized into a layer of polymer brushes grown on the internal surface of microfluidic channels, optically aligned with an array of amorphous silicon photosensors for the detection of fluorescence. Our approach relies on the use of split aptamer sequences maintaining their binding affinity to the target molecule. After binding the target molecule, the fragments, separately immobilized to the brush layer, form an assembled structure that in presence of a “light switching” complex [Ru(phen)2(dppz)]2+, emit a fluorescent signal detected by the photosensors positioned underneath. The fluorescent intensity is proportional to the concentration of the target molecule. As proof of principle, we selected fragments derived from an aptamer sequence with binding affinity towards ATP. Using this assay, a limit of detection down to 0.9 µM ATP has been achieved. The sensitivity is compared with an assay where the original aptamer sequence is used. The possibility to re-use both the aptamer assays for several times is demonstrated. Full article
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