Recent years have seen substantial efforts aimed at constructing artificial cells from various
molecular components with the aim of mimicking the processes, behaviours and …

Many short cationic peptides are amphiphilic and are often termed antimicrobial peptides
(AMPs) as they can kill various microorganisms. These AMPs have largely been discovered …

It is commonly accepted that nanoparticles (NPs) can kill bacteria; however, the mechanism
of antimicrobial action remains obscure for large NPs that cannot translocate the bacterial …

Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) is a dominant material in the fabrication of microfluidic
devices to generate water-in-oil droplets, particularly lipid-stabilized droplets, because of its …

Piezo ion channels are activated by various types of mechanical stimuli and function as
biological pressure sensors in both vertebrates and invertebrates. To date, mechanical …

Mechanotransduction has an important role in physiology. Biological processes including
sensing touch and sound waves require as-yet-unidentified cation channels that detect …

Droplet based microfluidics is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field of research combining
soft matter physics, biochemistry and microsystems engineering. Its applications range from …

In the discipline of bottom-up synthetic biology, vesicles define the boundaries of artificial
cells and are increasingly being used as biochemical microreactors operating in …

Responsive hydrogels that undergo controlled shape changes in response to a range of
stimuli are of interest for microscale soft robotic and biomedical devices. However, these …

The membrane proteins found in nature control many important cellular functions, including
signal transduction and transmembrane ion transport, and these, in turn, are regulated by …