Bjørn Torger Stokke
Background and activities
Stokke leads a biophysics based research activity at the interface between life-science and engineering, with emphasis on physical properties of biological macromolecules, their assemblies, e.g. hydrogels. Mesoscale structure formation and interactions within biopolymers are fundamental phenomena underpinning molecular understanding of biopolymers and their technological exploitation. We study details of biopolymer interactions, association states occurring within polyelectrolyte complexes, biopolymer assemblies and multilayers, polysaccharide gels, and responsive gels as biospecific signal transducers. The activity covers a range of various biological macromolecules and their properties domains as exemplified by information provided in the following links:
Single-molecular pair interactions
http://home.phys.ntnu.no/brukdef/prosjekter/biopolymerphysics/single_interactions.html
Bioresponsive hydrogels as signal transducing materials in biosensors
http://home.phys.ntnu.no/brukdef/prosjekter/biopolymerphysics/bioresponsive_gels.html
Polyelectrolyte complexes
http://home.phys.ntnu.no/brukdef/prosjekter/biopolymerphysics/polyelectrolytes.html
Structure and properties of beta-glucans
http://home.phys.ntnu.no/brukdef/prosjekter/biopolymerphysics/glucans.html
Microfluidics – devices for preparation of hydrogels with controlled size, and separation of exosomes
http://www.ntnu.edu/microfluidics/
Amyloid structures studied by AFM and TIRFM
http://home.phys.ntnu.no/brukdef/prosjekter/biopolymerphysics/research.html
Structure of polysaccharide hydrogels
http://home.phys.ntnu.no/brukdef/prosjekter/biopolymerphysics/polysaccharide_gels.html
Nanoscopic characterization of Toll-like receptors
http://home.phys.ntnu.no/brukdef/prosjekter/biopolymerphysics/toll_receptors.html
Physics of the enzymatic mode of action
http://home.phys.ntnu.no/brukdef/prosjekter/biopolymerphysics/enzyme_action.html
In addition to classical ensemble averaging techniques, application of single-molecule techniques is a distinctive facet of our approach to tackle core issues within these topics. The tools implemented locally for this research include atomic force microscopy, total internal reflection fluorescence microscopy, dynamic force spectroscopy, high resolution interferometry and rheology. These tools are complemented by additional techniques made available to through collaborations with laboratories either locally, or within national and international collaborations. We are also increasing taking advantage of parts of the micro-and nanoscale fabrication facilities provided by NTNU NanoLab, e.g., for custom design of fabricated microfluidic chips. A distintiive feature of the research efforts is also the combination of experimental approaches with numerical/theoretical ones, e.g, finite element modelling of bioresponsive hydrogels, modelling of enzymatic mode of action, and implementation of efficient routines for extraction of quantitative parameters (e.g. force spectroscopy, image analysis).
Courses
- TFY4525 - Bionanotechnology, Specialization Course
- FY8911 - Molecular Biophysics
- TFY4310 - Molecular Biophysics
- FY8411 - Polymers, Gels and Networks
Scientific, academic and artistic work
A selection of recent journal publications, artistic productions, books, including book and report excerpts. See all publications in the database
Journal publications
- (2022) Interrelation between swelling, mechanical constraints and reaction–diffusion processes in molecular responsive hydrogels. Soft Matter. vol. 18.
- (2021) Fabrication of monodisperse alginate microgel beads by microfluidic picoinjection: a chelate free approach. Lab on a Chip. vol. 21 (11).
- (2021) A Perturbation Analysis Approach for Studying the Effect of Swelling Kinetics on Instabilities in Hydrogel Plates. Journal of applied mechanics. vol. 88 (5).
- (2021) A Titratable Cell Lysis-on-Demand System for Droplet-Compartmentalised Ultrahigh-Throughput Screening in Functional Metagenomics and Directed Evolution. ACS Synthetic Biology. vol. 10 (8).
- (2021) DNA aptamer functionalized hydrogels for interferometric fiber-optic based continuous monitoring of potassium ions. Biosensors. vol. 11 (8).
- (2021) On the determination of mechanical properties of aqueous microgels-towards high-throughput characterization. Gels. vol. 7 (2).
- (2021) Curved passive mixing structures: a robust design to obtain efficient mixing and mass transfer in microfluidic channels. Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering (JMM). vol. 31 (1).
- (2021) Characterization of Mixing Performance Induced by Double Curved Passive Mixing Structures in Microfluidic Channels. Micromachines. vol. 12 (5).
- (2020) Impact of Silanization Parameters and Antibody Immobilization Strategy on Binding Capacity of Photonic Ring Resonators. Sensors. vol. 20 (11).
- (2020) Signal Amplification of a Gravimetric Glucose Biosensor Based on the Concanavalin A–Dextran Affinity Assay. IEEE Sensors Journal. vol. 21 (4).
- (2020) Dense carbon-nanotube coating scaffolds stimulate osteogenic differentiation of mesenchymal stem cells. PLOS ONE. vol. 15.
- (2020) Toehold length of target ssDNA affects its reaction-diffusion behavior in DNA-responsive DNA-co-acrylamide hydrogels. Biomacromolecules. vol. 21 (5).
- (2020) Morpholino target molecular properties affect the swelling process of oligomorpholino-functionalized responsive hydrogels. Polymers. vol. 12 (2).
- (2020) Donnan Contribution and Specific Ion Effects in Swelling of Cationic Hydrogels are Additive: Combined High-Resolution Experiments and Finite Element Modeling. Gels. vol. 6 (3).
- (2019) Nanoparticle-hydrogel composites: From molecular interactions to macroscopic behavior. Polymers. vol. 11 (2).
- (2019) The Characterisation and Quantification of Immobilised Concanavalin A on Quartz Surfaces Based on The Competitive Binding to Glucose and Fluorescent Labelled Dextran. Applied Sciences. vol. 9 (2).
- (2019) Buckling initiation in layered hydrogels during transient swelling. Journal of the Mechanics and Physics of Solids. vol. 128.
- (2019) Myeloma-derived extracellular vesicles mediate HGF/c-Met signaling in osteoblast-like cells. Experimental Cell Research. vol. 383 (1).
- (2019) Local Structure of Ca2+ Alginate Hydrogels Gelled via Competitive Ligand Exchange and Measured by Small Angle X-Ray Scattering. Gels. vol. 5 (1).
- (2018) In vitro single-cell dissection revealing the interior structure of cable bacteria. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. vol. 115 (34).