Fernandes, C, Pina AS, Barbosa AJM, Padrão I, Duarte F, Andreia C, Teixeira S, Alves V, Gomes P, Fernandes TG, Dias AMGC, Roque ACA.
2019.
Affinity‐triggered assemblies based on a designed peptide‐peptide affinity pair. Biotechnology Journal. -(-):-.
AbstractAffinity‐triggered assemblies rely on affinity interactions as the driving force to assemble physically‐crosslinked networks. WW domains are small hydrophobic proteins binding to proline‐rich peptides that are typically produced in the insoluble form. Previous works attempted the biological production of the full WW domain in tandem to generate multivalent components for affinity‐triggered hydrogels. In this work, an alternative approach was followed by engineering a 13‐mer minimal version of the WW domain that retains the ability to bind to target proline‐rich peptides. Both ligand and target peptides were produced chemically and conjugated to multivalent polyethylene glycol, yielding two components. Upon mixing, they together form soft biocompatible affinity‐triggered assemblies, stable in stem cell culture media, and displaying mechanical properties in the same order of magnitude as for those hydrogels formed with the full WW protein in tandem.
dos Santos, R, Figueiredo C, Viecinski AC, Pina AS, Barbosa AJM, Roque ACA.
2019.
Designed affinity ligands to capture human serum albumin. Journal of Chromatography A. 1583:88-97.
AbstractHuman serum albumin (HSA) in an important therapeutic agent and disease biomarker, with an increasing market demand. By proteins and drugs that bind to HSA as inspiration, a combinatorial library of 64 triazine-based ligands was rationally designed and screened for HSA binding at physiological conditions. Two triazine-based lead ligands (A3A2 and A6A5), presenting more than 50% HSA bound and high enrichment factors, were selected for further studies. Binding and elution conditions for HSA purification from human plasma were optimized for both ligands. The A6A5 adsorbent yielded a purified HSA sample with 98% purity at 100% recovery yield under mild binding and elution conditions.
Esteves C, Santos GMC, Alves C, Palma S, Porteira AR, Filho J, HA C, Alves VD, Faustino BMM, Ferreira I, Gamboa H, Roque ACA.
2019.
Effect of film thickness in gelatin hybrid gels for artificial olfaction. Materials Today Bio. 1:-.
AbstractArtificial olfaction is a fast-growing field aiming to mimic natural olfactory systems. Olfactory systems rely on a first step of molecular recognition in which volatile organic compounds (VOCs) bind to an array of specialized olfactory proteins. This results in electrical signals transduced to the brain where pattern recognition is performed. An efficient approach in artificial olfaction combines gas-sensitive materials with dedicated signal processing and classification tools. In this work, films of gelatin hybrid gels with a single composition that change their optical properties upon binding to VOCs were studied as gas-sensing materials in a custom-built electronic nose. The effect of films thickness was studied by acquiring signals from gelatin hybrid gel films with thicknesses between 15 and 90 μm when exposed to 11 distinct VOCs. Several features were extracted from the signals obtained and then used to implement a dedicated automatic classifier based on support vector machines for data processing. As an optical signature could be associated to each VOC, the developed algorithms classified 11 distinct VOCs with high accuracy and precision (higher than 98%), in particular when using optical signals from a single film composition with 30 μm thickness. This shows an unprecedented example of soft matter in artificial olfaction, in which a single gelatin hybrid gel, and not an array of sensing materials, can provide enough information to accurately classify VOCs with small structural and functional differences.
Roque, ACA, Fred A, Gamboa H.
2019.
Foreword, January 2019. BIODEVICES 2019 - 12th International Conference on Biomedical Electronics and Devices, Proceedings; Part of 12th International Joint Conference on Biomedical Engineering Systems and Technologies, BIOSTEC 2019. , Prague: SciTePress