Transmitter and Receiver Architectures for Molecular Communications: A Survey on Physical Design with Modulation, Coding, and Detection Techniques

Inspired by nature, molecular communications (MC), i.e., the use of molecules to encode, transmit, and receive information, stands as the most promising communication paradigm to realize the nanonetworks. Even though there has been extensive theoretical research toward nanoscale MC, there are no examples of implemented nanoscale MC networks. The main reason for this lies in the peculiarities of nanoscale physics, challenges in nanoscale fabrication, and highly stochastic nature of the biochemical domain of envisioned nanonetwork applications. This mandates developing novel device architectures and communication methods compatible with MC constraints. To that end, various transmitter and receiver designs for MC have been proposed in the literature together with numerable modulation, coding, and detection techniques. However, these works fall into domains of a very wide spectrum of disciplines, including, but not limited to, information and communication theory, quantum physics, materials science, nanofabrication, physiology, and synthetic biology. Therefore, we believe it is imperative for the progress of the field that an organized exposition of cumulative knowledge on the subject matter can be compiled. Thus, to fill this gap, in this comprehensive survey, we review the existing literature on transmitter and receiver architectures toward realizing MC among nanomaterial-based nanomachines and/or biological entities and provide a complete overview of modulation, coding, and detection techniques employed for MC. Moreover, we identify the most significant shortcomings and challenges in all these research areas and propose potential solutions to overcome some of them.This work was supported in part by the European Research Council (ERC) Projects MINERVA under Grant ERC-2013-CoG #616922 and MINERGRACE under Grant ERC-2017-PoC #780645

Selected Advances of Quantum Biophotonics – a Short Review

This article discusses four fields of study with the potential to revolutionize our understanding and interaction with biological systems: quantum biophotonics, molecular and supramolecular bioelectronics, quantum-based approaches in gaming, and nano-biophotonics. Quantum biophotonics uses photonics, biochemistry, biophysics, and quantum information technologies to study biological systems at the sub-nanoscale level. Molecular and supramolecular bioelectronics aim to develop biosensors for medical diagnosis, environmental monitoring, and food safety by designing materials and devices that interface with biological systems at the molecular level. Quantum-based approaches in gaming improve modeling of complex systems, while nanomedicine enhances disease diagnosis, treatment, and prevention using nanoscale devices and sensors developed with quantum biophotonics. Lastly, nano-biophotonics studies cellular structures and functions with unprecedented resolution

Microfluidics for Biosensing

There are 12 papers published with 8 research articles, 3 review articles and 1 perspective. The topics cover: Biomedical microfluidics Lab-on-a-chip Miniaturized systems for chemistry and life science (MicroTAS) Biosensor development and characteristics Imaging and other detection technologies Imaging and signal processing Point-of-care testing microdevices Food and water quality testing and control We hope this collection could promote the development of microfluidics and point-of-care testing (POCT) devices for biosensing

A Thorough Insight to Techniques for Performance Evaluation in Biological Sensors

The biological sensor has played a significant and contributory role in the area of medical science and healthcare industry. Owing to critical healthcare usage, it is essential that such type of sensors should be highly robust, sustainable under the adverse condition and highly fault tolerant against any forms of possible system failure in future. A massive amount of research work has been done in the area of the sensor network. However, works done in biological sensors are quite less in number. Hence, this manuscript highlights all the significant research work towards the line of discussion for evaluating the effective in the techniques for performance evaluation of biological sensor. The study finally explores the problems and discusses it under research gap. Finally, the manuscript gives highlights of the future direction of the work to solve the research gap explored from the proposed review of the existing system

Advanced Fluorescence Microscopy Techniques-FRAP, FLIP, FLAP, FRET and FLIM

Fluorescence microscopy provides an efficient and unique approach to study fixed and living cells because of its versatility, specificity, and high sensitivity. Fluorescence microscopes can both detect the fluorescence emitted from labeled molecules in biological samples as images or photometric data from which intensities and emission spectra can be deduced. By exploiting the characteristics of fluorescence, various techniques have been developed that enable the visualization and analysis of complex dynamic events in cells, organelles, and sub-organelle components within the biological specimen. The techniques described here are fluorescence recovery after photobleaching (FRAP), the related fluorescence loss in photobleaching (FLIP), fluorescence localization after photobleaching (FLAP), Forster or fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) and the different ways how to measure FRET, such as acceptor bleaching, sensitized emission, polarization anisotropy, and fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy (FLIM). First, a brief introduction into the mechanisms underlying fluorescence as a physical phenomenon and fluorescence, confocal, and multiphoton microscopy is given. Subsequently, these advanced microscopy techniques are introduced in more detail, with a description of how these techniques are performed, what needs to be considered, and what practical advantages they can bring to cell biological research

Ultrasensitive Detection of a Protein by Optical Trapping in a Photonic-Plasmonic Microcavity

Microcavity and whispering gallery mode (WGM) biosensors derive their sensitivity from monitoring frequency shifts induced by protein binding at sites of highly confined field intensities, where field strengths can be further amplified by excitation of plasmon resonances in nanoparticle layers. Here, we propose a mechanism based on optical trapping of a protein at the site of plasmonic field enhancements for achieving ultra sensitive detection in only microliter-scale sample volumes, and in real-time. We demonstrate femto-Molar sensitivity corresponding to a few 1000s of macromolecules. Simulations based on Mie theory agree well with the optical trapping concept at plasmonic 'hotspots' locations.Comment: submitted JBP March 2012 published JBP June 2012; Journal of Biophotonics June 2012 (online

Synthetic Biology: A Bridge between Artificial and Natural Cells.

Artificial cells are simple cell-like entities that possess certain properties of natural cells. In general, artificial cells are constructed using three parts: (1) biological membranes that serve as protective barriers, while allowing communication between the cells and the environment; (2) transcription and translation machinery that synthesize proteins based on genetic sequences; and (3) genetic modules that control the dynamics of the whole cell. Artificial cells are minimal and well-defined systems that can be more easily engineered and controlled when compared to natural cells. Artificial cells can be used as biomimetic systems to study and understand natural dynamics of cells with minimal interference from cellular complexity. However, there remain significant gaps between artificial and natural cells. How much information can we encode into artificial cells? What is the minimal number of factors that are necessary to achieve robust functioning of artificial cells? Can artificial cells communicate with their environments efficiently? Can artificial cells replicate, divide or even evolve? Here, we review synthetic biological methods that could shrink the gaps between artificial and natural cells. The closure of these gaps will lead to advancement in synthetic biology, cellular biology and biomedical applications