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Full-Text Articles in Engineering
Expression Systems For Synthetic Spider Silk Protein Production, Michaela R. Hugie
Expression Systems For Synthetic Spider Silk Protein Production, Michaela R. Hugie
All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023
Spider silk is a biodegradable and biocompatible natural material that is stronger than steel and more elastic than nylon. These properties make spider silk a desirable material for many commercial products, ranging from textiles to biomedical materials. Due to spiders’ cannibalistic and territorial nature it is impossible to farm them to produce spider silk at a high enough yield to meet product demands. Therefore, a bioengineered synthetic process is necessary to produce spider silk. Synthetic spider silk has been produced in bacteria, goats, yeast, plants, mammalian cells and silkworms, but none of these processes provided a commercially viable yield or …
Design, Construction And Application Of A Home-Built, Two-Photon Microscope, William P. Breeding
Design, Construction And Application Of A Home-Built, Two-Photon Microscope, William P. Breeding
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Two-photon microscopy (TPM) is a powerful, versatile imaging modality for the study of biological systems. This thesis overviews the relevant physics involved in TPM, design considerations and process of constructing a home-built, two-photon microscope, and provides a set of procedures to operate the system. Furthermore, this work explores several applications of TPM through the study of single-cell metabolism and imaging the cellular-material interface. Explored in particular depth was the imaging of cellulose nanofiber (CNF) materials, with the goal of understanding the three-dimensional nature of fibroblast cell growth when embedded within the materials. This work uncovered several optical properties of CNF, …