Annual Report 2007 - The Australian Nanotechnology Network

OVERSEAS TRAVEL FELLOWSHIPS
Opportunities for Five to six Overseas Travel Fellowships valued at up to $5,000 each are
offered every 6 months. This is a mechanism whereby Australian students and early career
researchers can visit overseas laboratories to gain new skills and training in this emerging field
of research. These fellowships are also offered for attending International Summer Schools of
minimum one week duration, or longer.
Applications are ranked and Fellowships awarded to the top 5-6 ranked applications.
Dr Dusan Losic (Uni South Australia) – visit to the University of Chicago,
USA.
Dusan is an Early Career Researcher and his area of research interest is - nanomembranes for
molecular separation and biosensing, bioinspired materials and devices ,surface modifications
and functionalisations , electrochemical sensors and biosensors, scanning probe microscopy
(AFM and STM)
The project aims are twofold: to develop a new Si chip based ion-channel platform that consists
of planar lipid bilayer membrane supported on highly ordered nano porous alumina
membrane,and to characterise physical, conductive, and transport properties including ionchannel
activity of fabricated membranes.This platform offers exciting possibilities to be used as
a generic method for many physiological and pharmaceutical studies and development of
biosensing devices with high selectivity and sensitivity.
His application was supported by his supervisor Prof John Ralston and Prof Ratnesh Lal from the
University of Chicago.
Report on ARCNN 2007 Travel Fellowship
The title of project:
Biomimetic bilayer membranes on porous alumina for the study of membrane-active proteins
Host Organisation:
Prof. Ratnesh Lal, Ph.D. The University of Chicago, Center for Nanomedicine
Time of visit:
26 Oct 2007 to 19 Nov 2007
Funding support
$ 5000 ARCNN and $ 5000 UniSA/IWRI
Aims and Research Outcomes:
The aim of this ARCNN fellowship project is directed toward the development a new membrane
biomimetic chip based on an ion-channel platform that consists of artificial planar bilayer
membranes on porous alumina (PA) membranes. The particular objectives were fabrication of a
novel biomimetic platform of lipid bilayers (LB) on PA, characterisation of their physical,
conductive, and transport properties including ion-channel activity.
The project was carried out in Prof. Lal’s lab at the University of Chicago, Centre for
Nanomedicine, who is a world-leading expert in the field of studying ion-channel membranes
using state of art imaging techniques (AFM, conductive and force imaging, fluorescence
microscopy, and ion-channelling technique). This visit proposed to extend the existing
collaboration with Prof. Lal and build my expertise in this field, which is complementary to my
current ARC fellowship project (DP 0770930, Engineered Nanotube membranes for Molecular
Separation and Biosensing).
The work accomplished during this project includes:
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