Indian Institute of Technology Palakkad&nbsp;(IIT Palakkad or IIT PKD) is a public autonomous&nbsp;engineering&nbsp;and&nbsp;research&nbsp;institute located in&nbsp;Palakkad,&nbsp;Kerala. It was&nbsp;one of the five new&nbsp;IITs&nbsp;proposed in the&nbsp;2014 Union budget of India. The campus was inaugurated on 3 August 2015. The institute has 94 faculty, 978 students, and 63 non-teaching staffs.

IT Palakkad currently offers four-year Bachelor of Technology (B.Tech) and two years MS programmes in 8 different engineering disciplines including&nbsp;Computer Science, Electrical, Mechanical, Civil among others.

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IIT Palakkad

In this report, we demonstrate glucose-derived carbon nanospheres to be an emerging class of intracellular carriers. The surfaces of these spheres are highly functionalized and do not need any further modification. Besides, the intrinsic fluorescence property of carbon nanospheres helps in tracking their cellular localization without any additional fluorescent tags. The spheres are found to target the nucleus of the mammalian cells, causing no toxicity. Interestingly, the in vivo experiments show that these nanospheres have an important ability to cross the blood-brain barrier and localize in the brain besides getting localized in the liver and the spleen. There is also evidence to show that they are continuously being removed from these tissues over time. Furthermore, these nanospheres were used as a carrier for the membrane-impermeable molecule CTPB (/V-(4-chloro-3-trifluoromethylphenyl)-2- ethoxybenzamide), the only known small-molecule activator of histone acetyltransferase (HAT) p300.2 Biochemical analyses such as Western blotting, immunohistochemistry, and gene expression analysis show the induction of the hyperacetylation of histone acetyltransferase (HAT) p300 (autoacetylation) as well as histones both in vitro and in vivo and the activation of HAT-dependent transcription upon CTPB delivery. These results establish an alternative path for the activation of gene expression mediated by the induction of HAT activity instead of histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibition. © 2008 American Chemical.

World University root node

Department of Chemistry

Nano Letters

Intrinsically fluorescent carbon nanospheres as a nuclear targeting vector: delivery of membrane-impermeable molecule to modulate gene expression in vivo

BCN nanotube brushes have been obtained by the high temperature reaction of amorphous carbon nanotube (a-CNT) brushes with a mixture of boric acid and urea. The a-CNT brushes themselves were obtained by the pyrolysis of glucose in a polycarbonate membrane. The BCN nanotubes have been characterized by EELS, XPS, electron microscopy, Raman spectroscopy and other techniques. The composition of these nanotubes is found to be BC4N. The nanotubes, which are stable up to 900 °C, are insulating and nonmagnetic. They exhibit a selective uptake of CO2 up to 23.5 wt%. In order to understand the structure and properties, we have carried out first-principles density functional theory based calculations on (6,0), (6,6) and (8,0) nanotubes with the composition BC4N. While (8,0) BC4N nanotubes exhibit a semiconducting gap, the (6,0) BC4N nanotube remains metallic if ordered BN bonds are present in all the six-membered rings. The (6,6) BC 4N nanotubes, however, exhibit a small semiconducting gap unlike the carbon nanotubes. The most stable structure is predicted to be the one where BN3 and NB3 units connected by a B-N bond are present in the graphite matrix, the structure with ordered B-N bonds in the six-membered rings of graphite being less stable. In the former structure, (6,0) nanotubes also exhibit a gap. The calculations predict BC4N nanotubes to be overall nonmagnetic, as is indeed observed. © The Royal Society of Chemistry.

Journal of Materials Chemistry

Synthesis, structure and properties of homogeneous BC4N nanotubes

Amorphous carbon nanotube brushes were prepared by a simple method using glucose as the carbon precursor. The functional surfaces of these nanotubes were covered with gallium ions and then calcined to get gallium oxide nanotube brushes. The gallium oxide nanotube brushes were successfully converted to crystalline GaN nanotube brushes by treatment of ammonia at 800°C. The method is applicable to make other nanobrushes as well. © 2007 American Chemical Society.