Tokyo Institute of Technology

The Miller-Urey experiment was a pioneering study regarding the abiotic synthesis of organic compounds with possible relevance to the origins of life. Simple gases were introduced into a glass apparatus and subjected to an electric discharge, simulating the effects of lightning in the primordial Earth’s atmosphere-ocean system. The experiment was conducted for one week, after which, the samples collected from it were analyzed for the chemical building blocks of life.

Here, we demonstrate a simple production method for size-controllable, monodisperse, water-in-oil (W/O) microdroplets using a capillary-based centrifugal microfluidic device. This method requires only a small sample volume and enables high-yield production. We expect this method will be useful for rapid biochemical and cellular analyses.

This article describes a novel method to estimate proprioceptive drift on a 2D plane using the mirror illusion and combining a psychophysical procedure with an analysis using machine learning.

A protocol for the synthesis and characterization of diffusive motion of cyclic polymers at the single molecule level is presented.

We present a protocol for creating a real-time movie of a molecular rotational wave packet using a high-resolution Coulomb explosion imaging setup.

This article describes the detailed methodology to prepare a Multiplexed Artificial Cellular MicroEnvironment (MACME) array for high-throughput manipulation of physical and chemical cues mimicking in vivo cellular microenvironments and to identify the optimal cellular environment for human pluripotent stem cells (hPSCs) with single-cell profiling.

Here, we present a protocol to prepare charge transfer chromophores based on a polyoxometalate/polymer composite membrane.

We establish here a method for coating the surface of a surface acoustic wave (SAW) device with amorphous Teflon film to improve the atomization efficiency required for application to an olfactory display.

Fluorescence resonance energy transfer-based real-time observation systems of the DNA strand exchange reaction mediated by Rad51 were developed. Using the protocols presented here, we are able to detect the formation of reaction intermediates and their conversion into products, while also analyzing the enzymatic kinetics of the reaction.

Bead loading introduces proteins, plasmids, and particles into adherent mammalian cells. This cell loading technique is inexpensive, rapid, and does not substantially affect cell health. It is best suited for live-cell imaging.

This protocol describes how to use the Microbial Microdroplet Culture system (MMC) to conduct automated microbial cultivation and adaptive evolution. MMC can cultivate and sub-cultivate microorganisms automatically and continuously and monitor online their growth with relatively high throughput and good parallelization, reducing labor and reagent consumption.

Here, we describe a method to transplant and identify human cell spheroids into chick embryos. This xenograft model uses the embryonic microenvironment as a source of instructive signals to assay cell migration, differentiation, and tropism and is especially suited for the study of primary and/or heterogeneous cell populations.

The in vitro reactivation of motile cells is a crucial experiment in understanding the mechanisms of cell motility. The protocol describes reactivating the demembranated cell models of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a model organism to study cilia/flagella.

Most swimming photoautotrophic organisms show photo-induced behavioral changes (photobehavior). The present protocol observes the said photobehavior in the model organism Chlamydomonas reinhardtii.

In this study, zinc oxide nanoparticles were synthesized using a precipitation method. The antibacterial effect of the synthesized particles was tested against multidrug-resistant methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) and Pseudomonas aeruginosa bacterial strains.

Herein, we introduce graphene oxide/copper (GO/Cu) nanocomposites as an antibacterial nanomaterial. The antibacterial effectiveness of the GO/Cu nanocomposites was evaluated against both antibiotic-resistant gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria.