THE AFONIN LAB AT UNC CHARLOTTE
EST. 2015
News from 2017
November 7-11, 2017
Our lab enjoyed attending this year's SERMACS! Dr. Afonin co-organized a symposium on Bioresponsive Programmable Polymers at which Justin gave an oral presentation on "Dynamic nucleic acid assemblies with controlled properties and triggerable functions." Dr. Afonin gave an oral presentation on "Dynamic RNA nanostructures for biomedical applications" as a part of Frontiers in Nucleic Acid Chemistry. Justin, Melina, and Morgan each gave poster presentations on recent work.
November 2, 2017
Thanks to Dr. Roger Chammas, President of the Instituto do Câncer do Estado de São Paulo, Brazil, for a great seminar presentation and for visiting our lab as a part of ouRNAno!
October 31, 2017
Thanks to Dr. Emil Khisamutdinov from Ball State University for visiting our lab as a part of ouRNAno to give a workshop on Thermal Gel Gradient Electrophoresis and a lecture on techniques to CHEM 4090!
October 5, 2017
"Label-Free single-molecule thermoscopy using a laser-heated nanopore" has been published in Nano Letters! Congratulations to Justin and Dr. Afonin! (Click here to read it!)
October 2, 2017
As part of the ouRNAno initiative, Dr. Taejin Kim lead a workshop on the 3D modeling of RNA nanoparticles.
September 23, 2017
Our research highlight "Activation of multiple functionalities through interacting nanoparticles" has been published in DNA and RNA Nanotechnology! Congratulations to Morgan and Justin. (Click here to read it!)
September 14, 2017
Congratulations to Dr. Afonin for receiving a Certificate of Recognition for his reviewing activity of ACS Publications!
September 7, 2017
Our research highlight "Blink and you’ll miss it: a new biosensing strategy with nucleic acids" has been accepted in DNA and RNA Nanotechnology!Congratulations to Sameer, Kyle, and Morgan. (Click here to read it!)
August 22, 2017
Our paper "Picomolar fingerprinting of nucleic acid nanoparticles using solid-state nanopores" has been accepted in ACS Nano! Congratulations to Justin and Dr. Afonin. (Click here to read it!)
August 11, 2017
Congratulations to Kyle!
His M.S. thesis titled as "Nucleic acid-driven quantum dot-based lattice formations for biomedical applications" was successfully defended and finally accepted by UNC Charlotte! Well done Kyle!
August 9, 2017
Our paper "Programmable nucleic acid-based polygons with controlled neuroimmunomodulatory properties for predictive QSAR modeling" has been accepted in Small! Congratulations to Justin, Emily, and Dr. Afonin.
July 28, 2017
During the month of July, Oleg (second from right) worked at the Frederick National Laboratory for Cancer Research with Dr. Bruce Shapiro (Senior Investigator, RNA Biology Laboratory)!
July 26, 2017
Congratulations to Lauren L. (left, CRS), Lauren R. (middle, NanoSURE), and Melina (right, NanoSURE) as they presented their summer projects today at the 5th Annual Summer Undergraduate Research Symposium!
July 24, 2017
Our papers "Preparation of a conditional RNA switch," "Intracellular reassociation of RNA-DNA Hybrids that activates RNAi in HIV-infected cells," and "Cotranscriptional production of chemically modified RNA nanoparticles" have been published in Methods of Molecular Biology! Congratulations to Weina, Vaishu, Morriah, Dr. Striplin, and Dr. Afonin.
July 15, 2017
Our lab hosted a table at Discovery Place with our students in the NanoSURE program! We led visitors through an experiment to extract DNA from strawberries.
June 27, 2017
During the month of June, Justin worked with the Hirohide Saito Lab at the Center for iPS Cell Research and Application at Kyoto University in Kyoto, Japan!
June 1, 2017
Welcome Melina and Jared to the lab and welcome back, Dr. Panigaj and Beamlak! Congratulations to Lauren R., Lauren L., Melina, and Beamlak as they work this summer through the NanoSURE, CRS, and Project SEED programs.
May 16, 2017
Justin completed training with Dr. Marina Dobrovolskaia (Head, Immunology Section) at the Nanotechnology Characterization Lab in Frederick, MD!
May 12, 2017
Congratulations to Strahinja for winning the ACS Undergraduate Award in Inorganic Chemistry and to Morgan for winning the first annual UNC Charlotte Award in Biochemistry!
May 5, 2017
Kyle and Justin presented posters at the 9th Annual CBES Graduate Student Poster Competition. Congratulations to Justin for winning 2nd Place Overall! Check out his feature on the CBES website here.
May 3, 2017
Our work has been highlighted by the Frederick National Laboratory website! (Click here to read it!)
April 23, 2017
Our Strawberry DNA Extraction and Facepainting table was a huge success at this year's Science & Technology Expo.
April 21, 2017
Strahinja, Oleg, and Morgan gave oral presentations and Lauren R. and Dylan gave poster presentations at the 2017 Undergraduate Research Conference!
April 13, 2017
Congratulations to Kyle, who was awarded the Herschel and Cornelia Everett Foundation First-Year Graduate Fellowship!
March 27, 2017
Kyle (left) presented a poster and Justin (right) gave an oral presentation at the 17th Annual Graduate Research Symposium. Congratulations to Justin for winning 1st Place in Physical and Natural Sciences Oral Presentations!
March 17, 2017
Justin represented the lab with a poster presentation at the 4th Annual Symposium on RNA Science in Albany, NY!
February 28, 2017
Our paper "Functionally-interdependent shape-switching nanoparticles with controllable properties" has been published in Nucleic Acids Research! Congratulations to Justin, Emily, Kyle, Morgan, Dr. Panigaj, and Dr. Afonin. (Click here to read it!)
January 27, 2017
Justin and Morgan both gave poster presentations at the 2017 Gordon Research Conference in RNA Nanotechnology in Ventura, CA!
January 4, 2017
Our paper "Versatile RNA tetra-U helix linking motif as a toolkit for nucleic acid nanotechnology" has been published in Nanomedicine! Congratulations to Emily and Dr. Afonin. (Click here to read it!)