Biomedical subjects

Jason Crain

Publications and source records attributed to Jason Crain.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Improved silicon nitride surfaces for next-generation microarrays.

This work reports how the use of a standard integrated circuit (IC) fabrication process can improve the potential of silicon nitride layers as substrates for microarray technology. It has been shown that chemical mechanical polishing (CMP) substantially improves the fluorescent intensity of positive control gene and test gene microarray spots on both low-pressure chemical vapor deposition (LPCVD) and plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) silicon nitride films, while maintaining a low fluorescent background. This results in the improved discrimination of low expressing genes. The results for the PECVD silicon nitride, which has been previously reported as unsuitable for microarray spotting, are particularly significant for future devices that hope to incorporate microelectronic control and analysis circuitry, due to the film's use as a final passivating layer.

Fluorescence↗

PubMed2006

Solution structure of the aqueous model peptide N-methylacetamide.

Classical molecular dynamics simulations of aqueous N-methylacetamide (NMA) have been performed across a concentration range at 308 K. This peptidic fragment molecule is a useful model for investigating water/peptide hydrogen bond competition. The simulations predict considerable NMA self-association even at low concentrations with a concentration-dependent increase in the ratio of branched to linear clusters. Water-mediated NMA contacts are a feature of this regime, manifested by an unexpected increase in the number of short NMA oxygen contacts arising from water bridge motifs. In contrast, bulk water structure is significantly disrupted by the addition of even small quantities of NMA. With increases in NMA concentration water molecules become progressively more isolated, forming dimers and trimers hydrogen-bonded to NMA. The mixture in this concentration regime may therefore offer a minimal model system for certain structural properties of interior water buried in protein cavities and hydrogen-bonded to mainchain peptide groups.

Acetamides↗

PubMed2006

Excess entropy in alcohol-water solutions: a simple clustering explanation.

We show that the anomalous negative excess entropy of mixing characteristic of aqueous lower alcohols containing hydrophobic groups is quantitatively consistent with a model exploiting only the experimentally observed molecular-scale segregation of the components across the entire concentration range. The simple model presented here, which uses plausible interatomic distances as its only free parameters, obviates the need to invoke "iceberg" or other water restructuring concepts which, though frequently postulated in explaining the hydrophobic interaction, are unsupported by recent experiments.

Journal Article↗

PubMed2004

Probing the liquid-state structure and dynamics of aqueous solutions by fluorescence spectroscopy.

Time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy of the solvent-sensitive molecule 1,8-anilinonaphthalene sulfonate (ANS) is used to probe the structure and dynamics of an aqueous methanol solution (mole fraction = 0.5). The intensity decay of ANS in the mixed solvent displays single exponential kinetics under ambient conditions. At low temperature, a simple two-state solvent relaxation model describes the fluorescence decay for ANS in both methanol and the mixed solvent. The temperature dependence of ANS fluorescence in the mixed solvent is attributed to the onset of glassy dynamics in the aqueous component at higher temperature, implying a partial demixing of the water and methanol due to self-association. We discuss the absence of more complicated fluorescence decays in such a heterogeneous solvent system.

Journal Article↗