Today Alina defended successfully her PhD thesis "Fluorescent nanodiamonds as free radical sensors in live mammalian cells" with a superb Cum Laude. Congratulations!
Free radicals are atoms and molecules that contain at least one unpaired electron. For decades, they have attracted the attention of researchers, due to their role in numerous biological processes, both in health and disease. Due to their high reactivity, however, free radicals have always been difficult to detect with high sensitivity and resolution.
Nanodiamonds – diamond nanoparticles – have been used as labels due to their exceptional biocompatibility and the extremely stable fluorescence of their color centers. This fluorescence can be modulated by external factors, such as magnetic fields. This property has led to the idea of using nanodiamonds to sense the magnetic fields generated by free radicals in biological samples.
This thesis explores the applications of nanodiamond-based magnetometry for free radical detection in live mammalian cells and tackles some of the challenges of this approach.
More information about thesis "Fluorescent nanodiamonds as free radical sensors in live mammalian cells"
