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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 55 records · Page 3
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

Advanced manufacturing provides tailor-made solutions for crystallography with x-ray free-electron lasers

Serial crystallography at large facilities, such as x-ray free-electron lasers and synchrotrons, evolved as a powerful method for the high-resolution structural investigation of proteins that are critical for human health, thus advancing drug discovery and novel therapies. However, a critical barrier to successful serial crystallography experiments lies in the efficient handling of the protein microcrystals and solutions at microscales. Microfluidics are the obvious approach for any high-throughput, nano-to-microliter sample handling, that also requires design flexibility and rapid prototyping to deal with the variable shapes, sizes, and density of crystals. Here, we discuss recent advances in polymer 3D printing for microfluidics-based serial crystallography research and present a demonstration of emerging, large-scale, nano-3D printing approaches leading into the future of 3D sample environment and delivery device fabrication from liquid jet gas-dynamic virtual nozzles devices to fixed-target sample environment technology.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
NASA NTRS2011

Digital Interface Board to Control Phase and Amplitude of Four Channels

An increasing number of parts are designed with digital control interfaces, including phase shifters and variable attenuators. When designing an antenna array in which each antenna has independent amplitude and phase control, the number of digital control lines that must be set simultaneously can grow very large. Use of a parallel interface would require separate line drivers, more parts, and thus additional failure points. A convenient form of control where single-phase shifters or attenuators could be set or the whole set could be programmed with an update rate of 100 Hz is needed to solve this problem. A digital interface board with a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) can simultaneously control an essentially arbitrary number of digital control lines with a serial command interface requiring only three wires. A small set of short, high-level commands provides a simple programming interface for an external controller. Parity bits are used to validate the control commands. Output timing is controlled within the FPGA to allow for rapid update rates of the phase shifters and attenuators. This technology has been used to set and monitor eight 5-bit control signals via a serial UART (universal asynchronous receiver/transmitter) interface. The digital interface board controls the phase and amplitude of the signals for each element in the array. A host computer running Agilent VEE sends commands via serial UART connection to a Xilinx VirtexII FPGA. The commands are decoded, and either outputs are set or telemetry data is sent back to the host computer describing the status and the current phase and amplitude settings. This technology is an integral part of a closed-loop system in which the angle of arrival of an X-band uplink signal is detected and the appropriate phase shifts are applied to the Ka-band downlink signal to electronically steer the array back in the direction of the uplink signal. It will also be used in the non-beam-steering case to compensate for phase shift variations through power amplifiers. The digital interface board can be used to set four 5-bit phase shifters and four 5-bit attenuators and monitor their current settings. Additionally, it is useful outside of the closed-loop system for beamsteering alone. When the VEE program is started, it prompts the user to initialize variables (to zero) or skip initialization. After that, the program enters into a continuous loop waiting for the telemetry period to elapse or a button to be pushed. A telemetry request is sent when the telemetry period is elapsed (every five seconds). Pushing one of the set or reset buttons will send the appropriate command. When a command is sent, the interface status is returned, and the user will be notified by a pop-up window if any error has occurred. The program runs until the End Program button is depressed.

Smith, Amy E.↗
DOE OSTI2014

Population Level Analysis of Evolved Mutations Underlying Improvements in Plant Hemicellulose and Cellulose Fermentation by Clostridium phytofermentans

The complexity of plant cell walls creates many challenges for microbial decomposition. Clostridium phytofermentans, an anaerobic bacterium isolated from forest soil, directly breaks down and utilizes many plant cell wall carbohydrates. The objective of this research is to understand constraints on rates of plant decomposition by Clostridium phytofermentans and identify molecular mechanisms that may overcome these limitations. Experimental evolution via repeated serial transfers during exponential growth was used to select for C. phytofermentans genotypes that grow more rapidly on cellobiose, cellulose and xylan. To identify the underlying mutations an average of 13,600,000 paired-end reads were generated per population resulting in ~300 fold coverage of each site in the genome. Mutations with allele frequencies of 5% or greater could be identified with statistical confidence. Many mutations are in carbohydrate-related genes including the promoter regions of glycoside hydrolases and amino acid substitutions in ABC transport proteins involved in carbohydrate uptake, signal transduction sensors that detect specific carbohydrates, proteins that affect the export of extracellular enzymes, and regulators of unknown specificity. Structural modeling of the ABC transporter complex proteins suggests that mutations in these genes may alter the recognition of carbohydrates by substrate-binding proteins and communication between the intercellular face of the transmembrane and the ATPase binding proteins. Experimental evolution was effective in identifying molecular constraints on the rate of hemicellulose and cellulose fermentation and selected for putative gain of function mutations that do not typically appear in traditional molecular genetic screens. The results reveal new strategies for evolving and engineering microorganisms for faster growth on plant carbohydrates.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Differential laboratory passaging of SARS-CoV-2 viral stocks impacts the in vitro assessment of neutralizing antibodies

Viral populations in natural infections can have a high degree of sequence diversity, which can directly impact immune escape. However, antibody potency is often tested in vitro with a relatively clonal viral populations, such as laboratory virus or pseudotyped virus stocks, which may not accurately represent the genetic diversity of circulating viral genotypes. This can affect the validity of viral phenotype assays, such as antibody neutralization assays. To address this issue, we tested whether recombinant virus carrying SARS-CoV-2 spike (VSV-SARS-CoV-2-S) stocks could be made more genetically diverse by passage, and if a stock passaged under selective pressure was more capable of escaping monoclonal antibody (mAb) neutralization than unpassaged stock or than viral stock passaged without selective pressures. We passaged VSV-SARS-CoV-2-S four times concurrently in three cell lines and then six times with or without polyclonal antiserum selection pressure. All three of the monoclonal antibodies tested neutralized the viral population present in the unpassaged stock. The viral inoculum derived from serial passage without antiserum selection pressure was neutralized by two of the three mAbs. However, the viral inoculum derived from serial passage under antiserum selection pressure escaped neutralization by all three mAbs. Deep sequencing revealed the rapid acquisition of multiple mutations associated with antibody escape in the VSV-SARS-CoV-2-S that had been passaged in the presence of antiserum, including key mutations present in currently circulating Omicron subvariants. These data indicate that viral stock that was generated under polyclonal antiserum selection pressure better reflects the natural environment of the circulating virus and may yield more biologically relevant outcomes in phenotypic assays. Thus, mAb assessment assays that utilize a more genetically diverse, biologically relevant, virus stock may yield data that are relevant for prediction of mAb efficacy and for enhancing biosurveillance.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2021

FMX – the Frontier Microfocusing Macromolecular Crystallography Beamline at the National Synchrotron Light Source II

Two new macromolecular crystallography (MX) beamlines at the National Synchrotron Light Source II, FMX and AMX, opened for general user operation in February 2017 [Schneider et al. (2013). J. Phys. Conf. Ser. 425 , 012003; Fuchs et al. (2014). J. Phys. Conf. Ser. 493 , 012021; Fuchs et al. (2016). AIP Conf. Proc. SRI2015 , 1741 , 030006]. FMX, the micro-focusing Frontier MX beamline in sector 17-ID-2 at NSLS-II, covers a 5–30 keV photon energy range and delivers a flux of 4.0 × 10 12 photons s −1 at 1 Å into a 1 µm × 1.5 µm to 10 µm × 10 µm (V × H) variable focus, expected to reach 5 × 10 12 photons s −1 at final storage-ring current. This flux density surpasses most MX beamlines by nearly two orders of magnitude. The high brightness and microbeam capability of FMX are focused on solving difficult crystallographic challenges. The beamline's flexible design supports a wide range of structure determination methods – serial crystallography on micrometre-sized crystals, raster optimization of diffraction from inhomogeneous crystals, high-resolution data collection from large-unit-cell crystals, room-temperature data collection for crystals that are difficult to freeze and for studying conformational dynamics, and fully automated data collection for sample-screening and ligand-binding studies. FMX's high dose rate reduces data collection times for applications like serial crystallography to minutes rather than hours. With associated sample lifetimes as short as a few milliseconds, new rapid sample-delivery methods have been implemented, such as an ultra-high-speed high-precision piezo scanner goniometer [Gao et al. (2018). J. Synchrotron Rad. 25 , 1362–1370], new microcrystal-optimized micromesh well sample holders [Guo et al. (2018). IUCrJ , 5 , 238–246] and highly viscous media injectors [Weierstall et al. (2014). Nat. Commun. 5 , 3309]. The new beamline pushes the frontier of synchrotron crystallography and enables users to determine structures from difficult-to-crystallize targets like membrane proteins, using previously intractable crystals of a few micrometres in size, and to obtain quality structures from irregular larger crystals.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS1996

Aerodynamic Shape Optimization of Supersonic Aircraft Configurations via an Adjoint Formulation on Parallel Computers

This work describes the application of a control theory-based aerodynamic shape optimization method to the problem of supersonic aircraft design. The design process is greatly accelerated through the use of both control theory and a parallel implementation on distributed memory computers. Control theory is employed to derive the adjoint differential equations whose solution allows for the evaluation of design gradient information at a fraction of the computational cost required by previous design methods. The resulting problem is then implemented on parallel distributed memory architectures using a domain decomposition approach, an optimized communication schedule, and the MPI (Message Passing Interface) Standard for portability and efficiency. The final result achieves very rapid aerodynamic design based on higher order computational fluid dynamics methods (CFD). In our earlier studies, the serial implementation of this design method was shown to be effective for the optimization of airfoils, wings, wing-bodies, and complex aircraft configurations using both the potential equation and the Euler equations. In our most recent paper, the Euler method was extended to treat complete aircraft configurations via a new multiblock implementation. Furthermore, during the same conference, we also presented preliminary results demonstrating that this basic methodology could be ported to distributed memory parallel computing architectures. In this paper, our concern will be to demonstrate that the combined power of these new technologies can be used routinely in an industrial design environment by applying it to the case study of the design of typical supersonic transport configurations. A particular difficulty of this test case is posed by the propulsion/airframe integration.

Reuther, James↗
NASA NTRS1996

Aerodynamic Shape Optimization of Supersonic Aircraft Configurations via an Adjoint Formulation on Parallel Computers

This work describes the application of a control theory-based aerodynamic shape optimization method to the problem of supersonic aircraft design. The design process is greatly accelerated through the use of both control theory and a parallel implementation on distributed memory computers. Control theory is employed to derive the adjoint differential equations whose solution allows for the evaluation of design gradient information at a fraction of the computational cost required by previous design methods (13, 12, 44, 38). The resulting problem is then implemented on parallel distributed memory architectures using a domain decomposition approach, an optimized communication schedule, and the MPI (Message Passing Interface) Standard for portability and efficiency. The final result achieves very rapid aerodynamic design based on higher order computational fluid dynamics methods (CFD). In our earlier studies, the serial implementation of this design method (19, 20, 21, 23, 39, 25, 40, 41, 42, 43, 9) was shown to be effective for the optimization of airfoils, wings, wing-bodies, and complex aircraft configurations using both the potential equation and the Euler equations (39, 25). In our most recent paper, the Euler method was extended to treat complete aircraft configurations via a new multiblock implementation. Furthermore, during the same conference, we also presented preliminary results demonstrating that the basic methodology could be ported to distributed memory parallel computing architectures [241. In this paper, our concem will be to demonstrate that the combined power of these new technologies can be used routinely in an industrial design environment by applying it to the case study of the design of typical supersonic transport configurations. A particular difficulty of this test case is posed by the propulsion/airframe integration.

Reuther, James↗
NASA NTRS2014

A Multiple Parameters Biodosimetry Tool with Various Blood Cell Counts - the Hemodose Approach

There continue to be important concerns about the possibility of the occurrence of acute radiation syndromes following nuclear and radiological terrorism or accidents that may result in mass casualties in densely populated areas. To guide medical personnel in their clinical decisions for effective medical management and treatment of the exposed individuals, biological markers are usually applied to examine radiation induced biological changes to assess the severity of radiation injury to sensitive organ systems. Among these the peripheral blood cell counts are widely used to assess the extent of radiation induced bone marrow injury. This is due to the fact that the hematopoietic system is the most vulnerable part of the human body to radiation damage. Particularly, the lymphocyte, granulocyte, and platelet cells are the most radiosensitive of the blood elements, and monitoring their changes after exposure is regarded as a practical and recommended laboratory test to estimate radiation dose and injury. Based upon years of physiological and pathophysiological investigation of mammalian hematopoietic systems, and rigorous coarse-grained bio-mathematical modeling and validation on species from mouse, to dog, monkey, and human, we have developed a set of software tools Hemodose, which can use single or serial granulocyte, lymphocyte, leukocyte, or platelet counts after exposure to estimate absorbed doses of adult victims very rapidly and accurately. Some patient data from historical accidents are utilized as examples to demonstrate the capabilities of these tools as a rapid point-of-care diagnostic or centralized high-throughput assay system in a large-scale radiological disaster scenario. Most significant to the improvement of national and local preparedness of a potential nuclear/radiological disaster, this HemoDose approach establishes robust correlations between the absorbed doses and victim's various types of blood cell counts not only in the early time window (1 or 2 days), but also in the very late phase (up to 4 weeks) after exposure.

Hu, Shaowen↗
DOE OSTI2023

Rapid and efficient ambient temperature X-ray crystal structure determination at Turkish Light Source

High-resolution biomacromolecular structure determination is essential to better understand protein function and dynamics. Serial crystallography is an emerging structural biology technique which has fundamental limitations due to either sample volume requirements or immediate access to the competitive X-ray beamtime. Obtaining a high volume of well-diffracting, sufficient-size crystals while mitigating radiation damage remains a critical bottleneck of serial crystallography. As an alternative, we introduce the plate-reader module adapted for using a 72-well Terasaki plate for biomacromolecule structure determination at a convenience of a home X-ray source. We also present the first ambient temperature lysozyme structure determined at the Turkish light source (Turkish DeLight). The complete dataset was collected in 18.5 min with resolution extending to 2.39 Å and 100% completeness. Combined with our previous cryogenic structure (PDB ID: 7Y6A), the ambient temperature structure provides invaluable information about the structural dynamics of the lysozyme. Turkish DeLight provides robust and rapid ambient temperature biomacromolecular structure determination with limited radiation damage.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2020

A microchip microcontroller-based transducer controller for non-contact scanning probe microscopy with phase-locked loop, amplitude, and Q control

An inexpensive yet versatile transducer controller for non-contact scanning probe microscopy (SPM) based on a PIC32 microcontroller from Microchip Technology, Inc is described. In addition to feedback control using the amplitude or phase of the signal from the non-contact transducer, the controller includes a phase-locked loop for frequency-shift feedback, as well as fixed-amplitude, quality factor (Q) control, and self-excitation modes. Apart from the input amplifiers, output buffers, and the Q-control circuit, all other functions of the controller are instantiated in software on the microchip, enabling rapid changes in operating parameters if needed. The controller communicates with a host personal computer via a simple serial connection. The controller has been tested with a quartz tuning-fork transducer but can be used with any oscillating non-contact transducer.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2013

Inferring HIV Escape Rates from Multi-Locus Genotype Data

Cytotoxic T-lymphocytes (CTLs) recognize viral protein fragments displayed by major histocompatibility complex molecules on the surface of virally infected cells and generate an anti-viral response that can kill the infected cells. Virus variants whose protein fragments are not efficiently presented on infected cells or whose fragments are presented but not recognized by CTLs therefore have a competitive advantage and spread rapidly through the population. We present a method that allows a more robust estimation of these escape rates from serially sampled sequence data. The proposed method accounts for competition between multiple escapes by explicitly modeling the accumulation of escape mutations and the stochastic effects of rare multiple mutants. Applying our method to serially sampled HIV sequence data, we estimate rates of HIV escape that are substantially larger than those previously reported. The method can be extended to complex escapes that require compensatory mutations. We expect our method to be applicable in other contexts such as cancer evolution where time series data is also available.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2014

HEMODOSE: A Set of Multi-parameter Biodosimetry Tools

After the events of September 11, 2001 and recent events at the Fukushima reactors in Japan, there is an increasing concern of the occurrence of nuclear and radiological terrorism or accidents that may result in large casualty in densely populated areas. To guide medical personnel in their clinical decisions for effective medical management and treatment of the exposed individuals, biological markers are usually applied to examine the radiation induced changes at different biological levels. Among these the peripheral blood cell counts are widely used to assess the extent of radiation induced injury. This is due to the fact that hematopoietic system is the most vulnerable part of the human body to radiation damage. Particularly, the lymphocyte, granulocyte, and platelet cells are the most radiosensitive of the blood elements, and monitoring their changes after exposure is regarded as the most practical and best laboratory test to estimate radiation dose. The HEMODOSE web tools are built upon solid physiological and pathophysiological understanding of mammalian hematopoietic systems, and rigorous coarse-grained biomathematical modeling and validation. Using single or serial granulocyte, lymphocyte, leukocyte, or platelet counts after exposure, these tools can estimate absorbed doses of adult victims very rapidly and accurately. Some patient data in historical accidents are utilized as examples to demonstrate the capabilities of these tools as a rapid point-of-care diagnostic or centralized high-throughput assay system in a large scale radiological disaster scenario. Unlike previous dose prediction algorithms, the HEMODOSE web tools establish robust correlations between the absorbed doses and victim's various types of blood cell counts not only in the early time window (1 or 2 days), but also in very late phase (up to 4 weeks) after exposure

Hu, Shaowen↗
NASA NTRS2014

HEMODOSE: A Set of Multi-parameter Biodosimetry Tools

There continues to be important concerns of the possibility of the occurrence of acute radiation syndromes following nuclear and radiological terrorism or accidents that may result in mass casualties in densely populated areas. To guide medical personnel in their clinical decisions for effective medical management and treatment of the exposed individuals, biological markers are usually applied to examine radiation induced biological changes to assess the severity of radiation injury to sensitive organ systems. Among these the peripheral blood cell counts are widely used to assess the extent of radiation induced bone marrow (BM) injury. This is due to the fact that hematopoietic system is a vulnerable part of the human body to radiation damage. Particularly, the lymphocyte, granulocyte, and platelet cells are the most radiosensitive of the blood elements, and monitoring their changes after exposure is regarded as a practical and recommended laboratory test to estimate radiation dose and injury. In this work we describe the HEMODOSE web tools, which are built upon solid physiological and pathophysiological understanding of mammalian hematopoietic systems, and rigorous coarse-grained biomathematical modeling and validation. Using single or serial granulocyte, lymphocyte, leukocyte, or platelet counts after exposure, these tools can estimate absorbed doses of adult victims very rapidly and accurately to assess the severity of BM radiation injury. Some patient data from historical accidents are utilized as examples to demonstrate the capabilities of these tools as a rapid point-of-care diagnostic or centralized high-throughput assay system in a large-scale radiological disaster scenario. HEMODOSE web tools establish robust correlations between the absorbed doses and victim's various types of blood cell counts not only in the early time window (1 or 2 days), but also in very late phase (up to 4 weeks) after exposure.

Hu, Shaowen↗
DOE OSTI2019

Membrane protein megahertz crystallography at the European XFEL

The world’s first superconducting megahertz repetition rate hard X-ray free-electron laser (XFEL), the European XFEL, began operation in 2017, featuring a unique pulse train structure with 886 ns between pulses. With its rapid pulse rate, the European XFEL may alleviate some of the increasing demand for XFEL beamtime, particularly for membrane protein serial femtosecond crystallography (SFX), leveraging orders-of-magnitude faster data collection. Here, we report the first membrane protein megahertz SFX experiment, where we determined a 2.9 Å-resolution SFX structure of the large membrane protein complex, Photosystem I, a > 1 MDa complex containing 36 protein subunits and 381 cofactors. We address challenges to megahertz SFX for membrane protein complexes, including growth of large quantities of crystals and the large molecular and unit cell size that influence data collection and analysis. The results imply that megahertz crystallography could have an important impact on structure determination of large protein complexes with XFELs.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗
DOE OSTI2023

Review of in situ process monitoring for metal hybrid directed energy deposition

Hybrid manufacturing, or the combination of additive and subtractive manufacturing within a single build volume is transforming the way products are being fabricated. Additive manufacturing confers unprecedented freedom of design and reduced material usage while enabling serial customization. Subtractive manufacturing provides superior surface finish and improved dimensional accuracies. Interwoven, these two digital manufacturing paradigms are enabling the rapid manufacturing of complex, highly accurate, and customized geometries in a diversity of high-performance alloys. In situ monitoring, heavily relied upon in either additive or subtractive, becomes even more crucial with the interplay of the two processes in a single combined build sequence. Moreover, challenges that do not exist in either process alone can now have a dramatic impact on final part quality: (1) a large amount of heat is generated during additive manufacturing deposition, which is primarily dissipated into the machine tooling and impacts accuracy by deforming the material and causing misaligned machining; (2) microstructure, mechanical properties, and residual stresses are the result of the complex thermal histories generated by additive manufacturing and can impact subsequent cutting performance. This comprehensive review considers previous research in monitoring and providing closed-loop control in both additive and subtractive manufacturing separately and then considers the implications of the effectiveness of these monitoring techniques when additive and subtractive processes are integrated together.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2019

Toward G protein-coupled receptor structure-based drug design using X-ray lasers

Rational structure-based drug design (SBDD) relies on the availability of a large number of co-crystal structures to map the ligand-binding pocket of the target protein and use this information for lead-compound optimization via an iterative process. While SBDD has proven successful for many drug-discovery projects, its application to G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) has been limited owing to extreme difficulties with their crystallization. Here, a method is presented for the rapid determination of multiple co-crystal structures for a target GPCR in complex with various ligands, taking advantage of the serial femtosecond crystallography approach, which obviates the need for large crystals and requires only submilligram quantities of purified protein. The method was applied to the human β 2 -adrenergic receptor, resulting in eight room-temperature co-crystal structures with six different ligands, including previously unreported structures with carvedilol and propranolol. The generality of the proposed method was tested with three other receptors. This approach has the potential to enable SBDD for GPCRs and other difficult-to-crystallize membrane proteins.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS1987

Distributed parameter modeling of the structural dynamics of the Solar Array Flight Experiment

A distributed-parameter model of the structural dynamics of the space-shuttle-deployed Solar Array Flight Experiment is developed and used to produce estimates of the modal frequencies and mode shapes. A lumped parameter version of the distributed model is used to estimate model characteristics by analyzing the measured responses of 32 targets. To make the modeling more tenable, a distributed parameter system is used to reduce the number of unknown parameters, a modified Newton-Raphson technique is used for rapid convergence, and a parallel processing supercomputer is used for more efficient computation. The performances of computers with a high-speed serial processor and with a high-speed parallel processor are compared. The best results are obtained with the modeling approach in which maximum likelihood estimation is applied to distributed parameter models.

Taylor, L. W., Jr.↗
DOE OSTI2016

Hydrodynamic trapping for rapid assembly and in situ electrical characterization of droplet interface bilayer arrays

The droplet interface bilayer (DIB) is a modular technique for assembling planar lipid membranes between water droplets in oil. The DIB method thus provides a unique capability for developing digital, droplet-based membrane platforms for rapid membrane characterization, drug screening and ion channel recordings. This paper demonstrates a new, low-volume microfluidic system that automates droplet generation, sorting, and sequential trapping in designated locations to enable the rapid assembly of arrays of DIBs. The channel layout of the device is guided by an equivalent circuit model, which predicts that a serial arrangement of hydrodynamic DIB traps enables sequential droplet placement and minimizes the hydrodynamic pressure developed across filled traps to prevent squeeze-through of trapped droplets. Furthermore, the incorporation of thin-film electrodes fabricated via evaporation metal deposition onto the glass substrate beneath the channels allows for the first time in situ, simultaneous electrical interrogation of multiple DIBs within a sealed device. Combining electrical measurements with imaging enables measurements of membrane capacitance and resistance and bilayer area, and our data show that DIBs formed in different trap locations within the device exhibit similar sizes and transport properties. Simultaneous, single channel recordings of ion channel gating in multiple membranes are obtained when alamethicin peptides are incorporated into the captured droplets, qualifying the thin-film electrodes as a means for measuring stimuli-responsive functions of membrane-bound biomolecules. Furthermore, this novel microfluidic-electrophysiology platform provides a reproducible, high throughput method for performing electrical measurements to study transmembrane proteins and biomembranes in low-volume, droplet-based membranes.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗