Bioorthogonal site-selective conjugation of fluorescent dyes to antibodies: method and potential applications.

Antibodies are immensely useful tools for biochemical research and have found application in numerous protein detection and purification methods. Moreover, monoclonal antibodies are increasingly utilised as therapeutics or, conjugated to active pharmaceutical ingredients, in targeted chemotherapy. Several reagents and protocols are reported to synthesise fluorescent antibodies for protein target detection and immunofluorescence applications. However, most of these protocols lead to non-selective conjugation, over-labelling or in the worst case antigen binding site modification. Here, we have used the antibody disulphide cleavage and re-bridging strategy to introduce bright fluorescent dyes without loss of the antibody function. The resulting fluorescent IgG1 type antibodies were shown to be effective imaging tools in western blot and direct immunofluorescence experiments.

Sliding nanomechanical resonators.

The motion of a vibrating object is determined by the way it is held. This simple observation has long inspired string instrument makers to create new sounds by devising elegant string clamping mechanisms, whereby the distance between the clamping points is modulated as the string vibrates. At the nanoscale, the simplest way to emulate this principle would be to controllably make nanoresonators slide across their clamping points, which would effectively modulate their vibrating length. Here, we report measurements of flexural vibrations in nanomechanical resonators that reveal such a sliding motion. Surprisingly, the resonant frequency of vibrations draws a loop as a tuning gate voltage is cycled. This behavior indicates that sliding is accompanied by a delayed frequency response of the resonators, making their dynamics richer than that of resonators with fixed clamping points. Our work elucidates the dynamics of nanomechanical resonators with unconventional boundary conditions, and offers opportunities for studying friction at the nanoscale from resonant frequency measurements.

Inverse engineering of shortcut pulses for high fidelity initialization on qubits closely spaced in frequency.

High-fidelity qubit initialization is of significance for efficient error correction in fault tolerant quantum algorithms. Combining two best worlds, speed and robustness, to achieve high-fidelity state preparation and manipulation is challenging in quantum systems, where qubits are closely spaced in frequency. Motivated by the concept of shortcut to adiabaticity, we theoretically propose the shortcut pulses via inverse engineering and further optimize the pulses with respect to systematic errors in frequency detuning and Rabi frequency. Such protocol, relevant to frequency selectivity, is applied to rare-earth ions qubit system, where the excitation of frequency-neighboring qubits should be prevented as well. Furthermore, comparison with adiabatic complex hyperbolic secant pulses shows that these dedicated initialization pulses can reduce the time that ions spend in the excited state by a factor of 6, which is important in coherence time limited systems to approach an error rate manageable by quantum error correction. The approach may also be applicable to superconducting qubits, and any other systems where qubits are addressed in frequency.

Energy-dependent path of dissipation in nanomechanical resonators.

Energy decay plays a central role in a wide range of phenomena, such as optical emission, nuclear fission, and dissipation in quantum systems. Energy decay is usually described as a system leaking energy irreversibly into an environmental bath. Here, we report on energy decay measurements in nanomechanical systems based on multilayer graphene that cannot be explained by the paradigm of a system directly coupled to a bath. As the energy of a vibrational mode freely decays, the rate of energy decay changes abruptly to a lower value. This finding can be explained by a model where the measured mode hybridizes with other modes of the resonator at high energy. Below a threshold energy, modes are decoupled, resulting in comparatively low decay rates and giant quality factors exceeding 1 million. Our work opens up new possibilities to manipulate vibrational states, engineer hybrid states with mechanical modes at completely different frequencies, and to study the collective motion of this highly tunable system.

Parametric amplification and self-oscillation in a nanotube mechanical resonator.

A hallmark of mechanical resonators made from a single nanotube is that the resonance frequency can be widely tuned. Here, we take advantage of this property to realize parametric amplification and self-oscillation. The gain of the parametric amplification can be as high as 18.2 dB and tends to saturate at high parametric pumping due to nonlinear damping. These measurements allow us to determine the coefficient of the linear damping force. The corresponding damping rate is lower than the one obtained from the line shape of the resonance (without pumping), supporting the recently reported scenario that describes damping in nanotube resonators by a nonlinear force. The possibility to combine nanotube resonant mechanics and parametric amplification holds promise for future ultralow force sensing experiments.

Damaging graphene with ozone treatment: a chemically tunable metal-insulator transition.

We present a multiscale ab initio study of electronic and transport properties of two-dimensional graphene after epoxide functionalization via ozone treatment. The orbital rehybridization induced by the epoxide groups triggers a strong intervalley scattering and changes dramatically the conduction properties of graphene. By varying the coverage density of epoxide defects from 0.1 to 4%, charge conduction can be tuned from a diffusive to a strongly localized regime, with localization lengths down to a few nanometers long. Experimental results supporting the interpretation as a metal-insulator transition are also provided.

Transport properties of graphene in the high-current limit.

We present a detailed study of the high-current transport properties of graphene devices patterned in a four-point configuration. The current tends to saturate as the voltage across graphene is increased but never reaches the complete saturation as in metallic nanotubes. Measurements are compared to a model based on the Boltzmann equation, which includes electron-scattering processes due to charged and neutral impurities, and graphene optical phonons. The saturation is incomplete because of the competition between disorder and optical phonon scattering.

Subnanometer motion of cargoes driven by thermal gradients along carbon nanotubes.

An important issue in nanoelectromechanical systems is developing small electrically driven motors. We report on an artificial nanofabricated motor in which one short carbon nanotube moves relative to another coaxial nanotube. A cargo is attached to an ablated outer wall of a multiwalled carbon nanotube that can rotate and/or translate along the inner nanotube. The motion is actuated by imposing a thermal gradient along the nanotube, which allows for subnanometer displacements, as opposed to an electromigration or random walk effect.

YY1-DNA interaction results in a significant change of electronic context as measured by capacitance.

The detailed mechanism behind the processes of DNA-dependent RNA transcription initiation is largely unknown. When transcription initiation factors bind DNA, a significant change in the electrostatic state of the complex can result. Using electrical capacitance measurements of solutions of the YY1 zinc finger transcription initiation factor and the adeno-associated viral P5 promoter DNA, we observed a specific dielectric change when a protein-DNA complex was formed. We propose that complexation results in electrostatic changes that may trigger the markedly different electrical behavior, and offer a possible explanation for our results.