University of Los Andes

About: University of Los Andes is a education organization based out in Bogotá, Colombia. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Large Hadron Collider. The organization has 17616 authors who have published 25555 publications receiving 413463 citations.

Mineralization of SaOS-2 cells on enzymatically (silicatein) modified bioactive osteoblast-stimulating surfaces

Abstract: There is a demand for novel bioactive supports in surgery, orthopedics, and tissue engineering. The availability of recombinant silica-synthesizing enzyme (silicatein) opens new possibilities for the synthesis of silica-containing bioactive surfaces under ambient conditions that do not damage biomolecules like proteins. Here it is shown that growth of human osteosarcoma SaOS-2 cells on cluster plates precoated with Type 1 collagen is not affected by additional coating of the plates with the recombinant silicatein and incubation with its enzymatic substrate, tetraethoxysilane (TEOS). However, the enzymatic modification of the plates by biosilica deposition on the protein-coated surface caused a marked increase in calcium phosphate formation of SaOS-2 cells as revealed by alizarin red-S staining to quantify calcium mineral content. The increased occurrence of calcium-phosphate nodules on the modified surface was also observed by scanning electron microscopy. These results suggest that by supporting calcium-phosphate deposition in vitro, biosilica (silicatein)-modified surfaces are potentially bioactive in vivo, by stimulating osteoblast mineralization function.

Observation and studies of double J/psi production at the Tevatron

Abstract: We present the observation of doubly-produced $J/\psi$ mesons with the D0 detector at Fermilab in $p\bar{p}$ collisions at $\sqrt{s}=1.96$ TeV. The production cross section for both singly and doubly-produced $J/\psi$ mesons is measured using a sample with an integrated luminosity of 8.1~fb$^{-1}$. For the first time, the double $J/\psi$ production cross section is separated into contributions due to single and double parton scatterings. Using these measurements, we determine the effective cross section \sigteff, a parameter characterizing an effective spatial area of the parton-parton interactions and related to the parton spatial density inside the nucleon.