Combined seminars on
Quantum Computing and Technologies for Biological Systems
Link to the online event
Laura Marchetti (Dipartimento di Farmacia, Università di Pisa)
“Biological system big data analysis: are quantum technologies a new opportunity?”
Abstract:
Life sciences and medicine have recently witnessed a major paradigm shift, prompted by the application of other scientific disciplines including mathematics, statistics, modelling and informatics to the quantitative analysis of biological and health-care related data. The causes of this shift reside mainly on the recent biotechnological progress that has allowed biologists and physicians to access an unprecedented, massive amount of data at different levels (molecular, supramolecular, cellular, and so on) of biological complexity. The use of computational approaches has thus become a necessary tool to: i) quantitatively analyze, annotate, correlate and integrate biological and health-care related data; ii) predict the structure, function and interactions of biomolecules or bioactive molecules or design them de novo. This talk is aimed at illustrating significant examples of quantitative analysis of big data and of prediction algorithms in biology and medicine. This will hopefully open a discussion about the thematic areas of the biomedical field which best fit to the context of our PRA project, and about possible available data-sets that may be tackled by a quantum computation approach.
Camilla Coletti (NEST, Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, Pisa)
“2D materials: synthesis, properties and interaction with biological systems”
Abstract:
During this talk it will be introduced an interdisciplinary project that sprouts from the idea of interfacing two-dimensional (2D) materials with biological systems with the overarching goal of investigating whether the quantum properties of 2D materials can be used to modulate biological functions and possibly achieve desired therapeutic actions. In the first part of the talk, the scalable synthesis of highly-crystalline 2D materials via chemical vapor deposition (CVD) will be introduced [1-3]. For graphene, it will be demonstrated how the electrical properties of the synthesized scalable material are nowadays comparable to those of the gold standard, exfoliated graphene [4]. Its possible applications, ranging from integrated optical photonics [5] to regenerative medicine [6], will be discussed. Also, the properties of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDs) and 2D van der Waals heterostacks such as those of TMDs and graphene, and two-dimensional gold and graphene will be introduced [7, 8] and their possible adoption as a platform for biological systems discussed [9].
References
[1] V. Miseikis, F. Bianco, J. David, M. Gemmi, V. Pellegrini, M. Romagnoli, C. Coletti, “Deterministic patterned growth of high-mobility large-crystal graphene: a path towards wafer scale integration”, 2D Materials, vol. 4, (no. 2), pp. 021004 (2017).
[2] A. Rossi, H. Buch, C. Di Rienzo, V. Miseikis, D. Convertino, A. Al-Temimy, V. Voliani, M. Gemmi, V. Piazza, C. Coletti, “Scalable synthesis of WS2 on graphene and h-BN: An all-2D platform for light-matter transduction”, 2D Materials, vol. 3, (no. 3), pp. 031013 (2016).
[3] S. Pace, L. Martini, D. Convertino, D.- H. Keum, S. Forti, S. Pezzini, F. Fabbri, V. Miseikis, C. Coletti, “Synthesis of Large-Scale Monolayer 1T-MoTe2 and Its Stabilization via Scalable hBN Encapsulation”, ACS Nano, accepted, https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.0c05936
[4] S. Pezzini, V. Mieikis, S. Pace, F. Rossella, K. Watanabe, T. Taniguchi, C. Coletti, “High-quality electrical transport using scalable CVD graphene”, 2D Materials 7 (4), 041003 (2020).
[5] V. Miseikis, S. Marconi, M.A. Giambra, A. Montanaro, L. Martini, F. Fabbri, S. Pezzini, G. Piccinini, S. Forti, B. Terres, I. Goykhman, L. Hamidouche, P. Legagneux, V. Sorianello, A.C. Ferrari, F.H.L. Koppens, M. Romagnoli, C. Coletti, “Ultrafast, Zero-Bias, Graphene Photodetectors with Polymeric Gate Dielectric on Passive Photonic Waveguides”, ACS Nano 2020, 14, 9, 11190-11204 (2020).
[6] D. Convertino, F. Fabbri, N. Mishra, M. Mainardi, V. Cappello, G. Testa, S. Capsoni, Simona, L. Albertazzi, Lorenzo, S. Luin, L. Marchetti, C. Coletti, “Graphene promotes axon elongation through local stall of Nerve Growth Factor signaling endosomes”, Nano Letters 20, 5, 3633-3641, (2020).
[7] S. Forti, A. Rossi, H. Buech, T. Cavallucci, F. Bisio, A. Sala, T.O. Mentes, A. Locatelli, M. Magnozzi, M. Canepa, K. Mueller, S. Link, U. Starke, V. Tozzini, C. Coletti, Nanoscale 9 (42), 16412-16419 (2017).
[8] S. Forti, S. Link, A. Stöhr, Y. Niu, A.A. Zakharov, C. Coletti, U. Starke, Nature Communications, 11 (1), 1-7, (2020).
[9] D. Convertino, N. Mishra, L. Marchetti, M. Calvello, A. Viegi, A. Cattaneo, F. Fabbri, C. Coletti, “Effect of chemical vapor deposition WS2 on viability and differentiation of SH-SY5Y cells”, Frontiers in neuroscience 14 (2020).