Nano in Biotechnology and Medicine
nanoHUB-U Courses
Biological Engineering: Cellular Design Principles
Taught by Jenna Rickus
A self-paced course on the design principles underlying mechanisms of cellular and biomolecular functions such as cell architecture, energy storage and conversion, sensing and signaling, communication, time keeping, molecular synthesis, memory, and motility. Emphasis will be placed on the chemical, physical, and mathematical features that determine the performance of the biological device. Topics cover both cellular/biochemical processes and molecular/genetic circuits. Examples are presented from reverse engineering of natural systems and design of new synthetic systems.
Following are some example slides from the video lecture series.
Principles of Electronic Nanobiosensors
Taught by Muhammad A. Alam
This course will provide an in-depth analysis of the origin of the extra-ordinary sensitivity, fundamental limits, and operating principles of modern nanobiosensors. Students of this course will not learn how to fabricate a sensor, but will be able to decide what sensor to make, appreciate their design principles, interpret measured results, and spot emerging research trends.
Selected Topics: nanobiosensing, diffusion limits, form and function of ISFET, glucose sensors, cantilever sensors, genome sequence
Introduction to Bioelectricity
Taught by Pedro Irazoqui
This course is for students who are interested in learning about relating the systems of the human body that involve or communicate with bioelectrical systems, including the heart, brain, muscles, and the neuromuscular system that connects them all together. The objective of this course is to establish a background and to dig deeper into some of the applications of bioelectricity to medicine. Students will learn about how bioelectricity can be used to record and control the way the body electric behaves.
What you will Learn:
-
Introduction to the nervous system, with an overview of neurons, glia, basic central and peripheral nervous system organization, and simple neural circuits (e.g. vestibulo-ocular reflex, stretch, etc…)
-
Chemical basis of electrical signals. Derivation of membrane resting potential, ion channels, Nernst and Goldman equations. Action potentials with both saltatory and passive conduction. Types of neurotransmitters along with both direct and indirect modulation pathways.
-
Electrophysiological recording techniques including: patch-clamp, voltage-clamp, extracellular electrodes etc…
-
Electrical models of cells in standard resistor and capacitor component terms. Means of modeling current flows through cellular circuits using both Matlab and SPICE. Incorporation of discrete passive and active components into the model to simulate the presence of electrodes, amplifiers, etc
-
The Hodgkin-Huxley model of the action potential. It’s validation in the giant squid axon, and what it tells us about temperature dependence as well as sensitivity to causal, nonlinear, and subthreshold oscillatory effects
-
Introduction to basic bioelectric hardware, software, and signal processing to build your first wireless neural prosthesis!
Prerequisites:
The prerequisites of this course are freshmen physics to understand the basics of circuits, resistors and capacitors, and differential equations to follow along with the mathematics and the derivations of the core conductor cable and the Hodgkin-Huxley equations.
Selected Topics: nervous system, electric signaling, biological conductors, Nernst equation, core conductors, cable theory, Hodgkin-Huxley Model, neuromodulation
University Courses
Biological Rhythms in Health and Disease
Our major research thrusts are to understand: 1) signals that engage the circadian clockwork in the brain, 2) sub-cellular micro-environments that shape neuronal dendrites in development and repair, and 3) emergent behaviors of integrated neuronal systems.
How and why do we sleep? Nocturnal and diurnal adaptations. Circadian control of liver function. Drugs of abuse and circadian rhythms. Reproductive rhythms.
Introduction to Biophysics
Major concepts of physics inherent to biological systems. Basics of biology, including protein and DNA structure and their organization into cells with a focus on single molecule biophysics. Major experimental techniques including x-ray diffraction, optical and magnetic traps, and fluorescence microscopy, including new super-resolution techniques. Applications to cytoplasmic and nuclear molecular motors, bacterial motion, nerves, and vision.
Introduction to Biological Physics Physics 498 at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2008)
Experimental Biophysics
This course provides training in advanced biophysical techniques through hands-on laboratory exercises and weekly lectures as background. Topics will cover general optical and fluorescence spectroscopy, introduction to various microscope techniques - wide field, bright field, DIC, fluorescence, single-molecule fluorescence imaging, FRET, super-resolution fluorescence imaging, and atomic force microscopy and, if time permits, a unit on computational Visual Molecular Dynamics tools. The course is targeted to graduate students and advanced undergraduates from physics, biophysics, engineering, MCB, and chemistry. Enrollment is limited to 12 due to lab space, so you are encouraged to register early. Lectures and Labs will be held in Loomis Laboratory and the Institute for Genomic Biology.
Biosensors
Learn the underlying engineering principles used to detect small molecules, DNA, proteins, and cells in the context of applications in diagnostic testing, pharmaceutical research, and environmental monitoring. Biosensor approaches including electrochemistry, fluorescence, acoustics, and optics will be taught. The course also teaches aspects of selective surface chemistry, including methods for biomolecule attachment to transducer surfaces. Students will learn how biosensor performance is characterized and will analyze case studies of commercial biosensor systems. Blood glucose detection, fluorescent DNA microarrays, label-free biochips, and bead-based assay methods will be covered. The course teaches classical methods for biodetection, but also extends into current areas of research and novel sensors involving nanotechnology, photonic crystals, and new tools used in the fields of genomics and proteomics.
Biomolecular Physics
Physical concepts governing the structure and function of biological macromolecules; general properties, spatial structure, energy levels, dynamics and functions, and relation to other complex physical systems such as glasses; recent research in biomolecular physics; physical techniques and concepts from theoretical physics emphasized.
Neural Systems Modeling
The purpose of this independent study is to give students hands-on experience in using computers to model neural systems. A neural system is a system of interconnected neural elements, or units. Students will use existing computer programs which will simulate real neural systems. They will compare the behavior of the model units with neurophysiological data on real neurons. The neural system models will all perform a useful computation, and the similarity between the behaviors of model units and real neurons will give students insight into how the real nervous system may actually work.
Engineering Nanomedical Systems
BME 695L at Purdue University (2011) 19 Lectures.
Taught by James Leary
Selected Topics: designing/testing integrated nanomedical systems, theranostics, molecular imaging, cell targeting, cell entry mechanisms, zeta potentials, surface chemistry, nanodelivery systems, molecular biosensor feedback control systems,nanotoxicity, XPS,cancer detection and intervention, AFM, quality control in manufacturing, FDA/ EPA regulatory issues.
An older version of the course is BME 695N (2007).
Biological Nanoengineering
ABE 446 at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2010) 7 Lectures.
Taught by Kaustubh Bhalerao
Selected Topics: synthetic nanostructures, micromachining, biologic nanostructures, nanodevice design rationale, biomimetic strategies, biological response to nanodevices, nanotechnology in the environment, economic and non-technical discussions surrounding nanotechnology.
BioNanotechnology and Nanomedicine— Applications in Cancer and Mechanobiology
BIOE 498 at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2011) 27 Lectures.
Taught by Rashid Bashir, Taher A. Saif, Ann M Nardulli, Catherine J. Murphy
Selected Topics: BioMEMS, microfluidics, micro and nanofbrication, 3D biofabrication, cancer biology, metastasis, chemicals, radiation infectious agents, heredity, oncogenes, tumor suppressors, cancers, therapeutic nanotechnology, nanocarriers, metal nanoparticles, hyperthermia, colloidal metal nanoparticle optics, nanoparticle contrast agents, mechano-transduction, force traction microscopy, light in cell biology.
An Introduction to BioMEMS and Bionanotechnology
ECE 416 at The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2005) 4 Lectures
Taught by Rashid Bashir
Selected Topics: Device Fabrication Methods, DNA and Proteins, Lab on a Chip, Essentials of Microbiology, Introduction to Microfluidics, Sensing Methodologies, Integrated BioMEMS and Nanodevices.
Introduction to Bioinformatics
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2012) 18 Lectures
Taught by Saurabh Sinha
Selected Topics: molecular biology, statistics, dynamic programming, sequence alignment, hashing, genomics, hidden Markov models, gene finding, microarrays, evolutionary tree, proteomics
Summer Schools and Workshops
Bionanotechnology Summer Institute
Topics include cancer nanotechnology, cell mechanics, molecular biology, micro & nano fabrication techniques, and microfluidics.
GEM4 Cellular and Molecular Mechanics with a focus on Developmental Biology Summer School 2012
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2012) 23 Lectures.
2009 GEM4 Summer School Cellular and Molecular Mechanics with a focus on Enabling Technologies
The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2009) 28 Lectures.
Taught By Rashid Bashir, Taher Saif, Irfan Ahmad, Jimmy K. Hsia
Topics:
- Fundamentals of Cell and Molecular Biology
- Basics of Mechanics in connection with Biological Systems
- Mechanotransduction at a distance in a living cell
- Mechanics insights into the pathophysiology of human disease; Microfluidics approaches to studying human diseases
- Effects of mechanical stiffness and applied force on ligand-receptor binding kinetics at the cell-material interface
- Fundamentals of molecular dynamics and computational molecular nanomechanics
- Mechanics and Bioengineering of Basement Membranes and Extracellular Matrix
- Inflammation in Human Disease and the Auto-digestion Hypothesis
- Engineering Digital Surfaces for Programming Cell Responses
- Fundamental Problems of Computational Bio-mechanics of Cardiovascular Flow
- Review of Cellular Imaging Techniques
- Statistical mechanics of cell-cell and cell-matrix adhesions; Multi-scale approaches to study cellular adhesions
- Models and Experiments in Cytoskeletal Mechanics
- Cell microrheology: fundamentals and applications
- Next generation single molecule fluorescence technologies
- Intracellular Force Transduction
- Microfluidic systems in neurobiology
- Probing Cellular Motility using Microfluidic Tools
- Migration of epithelial cells
- Small Scale Biomechanics Measurements
- Electro-mechanical Sensing of Biomolecules and Cells on a Chip
- FIONA: Super-'Resolution' Microscopy
- Moving cells on chips, microfluidics, and clinical medicine
- Mechanotransduction at cell-cell contacts
- Nanotechnology for Cellular and Molecular Manipulations
- Live cell imaging in mechanobiology
- Deciphering mechanical and chemical signals in the extracellular matrix
- Computational methods for understanding the dynamics of interacting motor molecules in muscles
- Discussion: Issues in Physical Sciences - Biology Collaboration
- The Chemical and Mechanical Signals Driving Neutrophil Polarity and Chemotaxis
- New Soft Materials for Wound Repair and Tissue Engineering
- Seeing the Unseen: the Force Story of a Cancer Cell