objective: the development of combining mesenchymal stem cells (mscs) with surface modified three-dimensional (3d) biomaterial scaffold provides a desirable alternative for replacement of damaged and diseased tissue. nanofibrous scaffolds serve as suitable environment for cell attachment and proliferation due to their similarity to the physical dimension of the natural extracellular matrix. in ...

Cell alignment by underlying topographical cues has been shown to affect important biological processes such as differentiation and functional maturation in vitro. However, the routine use of cell culture substrates with micro- or nano-topographies, such as grooves, is currently hampered by the high cost and specialized facilities required to produce these substrates. Here we present cost-effec...

Synthetic substrates that mimic the properties of extracellular matrix proteins hold significant promise for use in systems designed for tissue engineering applications. In this report, we designed a synthetic polymeric substrate that is intended to mimic chemical, mechanical, and topological characteristics of collagen. We found that elastomeric poly(ester amide) substrates modified with repli...

Increased realization of the spatial heterogeneity found within in vivo tissue microenvironments has prompted the desire to engineer similar complexities into in vitro culture substrates. Microcontact printing (μCP) is a versatile technique for engineering such complexities onto cell culture substrates because it permits microscale control of the relative positioning of molecules and cells over...

Strains of Fusarium moniliforme from different geographic areas and from corn and other substrates were tested for the ability to produce fumonisins in culture. The test results indicate that the potential exists for production of fumonisins by such strains in agricultural commodities and other substrates in widespread geographic areas.

Stem cell function is regulated by intrinsic as well as microenvironmental factors, including chemical and mechanical signals. Conducting polymer-based cell culture substrates provide a powerful tool to control both chemical and physical stimuli sensed by stem cells. Here we show that polypyrrole (PPy), a commonly used conducting polymer, can be tailored to modulate survival and maintenance of ...

The tentative clinical application of human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs), such as human embryonic stem cells and human induced pluripotent stem cells, is restricted by the possibility of xenogenic contamination resulting from the use of mouse embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) as a feeder layer. Therefore, we investigated hPSC cultures on biomaterials with different elasticities that were grafted w...

 In order to investigate the effects of artificial substrates (vertical surface of polypropylene fabrics) on cultured shrimp, we reared 28-day old Litopenaeus vannamei post-larvae (PL28) intensively for 90 days at a density of 510 shrimp/m2 in each of 8 tanks. Two tanks containing no artificial substrate were a control group, and 1, 3 and 5 artificial substrates were present in other 6 tanks. T...

LEVEL: INTERMEDIATE M ycoplasma are the simplest self-replicating prokaryotes (1, 2). They infect a wide variety of eukaryotic hosts including humans, animals (birds, reptiles, fish, mammals), insects, plants, and bovine and ovine rumen. They are the smallest free-living prokaryotes, varying in size from 0.3 to 0.8 μm with a genome size of 580–2220 kb. They are contained by only a cell membrane...