S. Naci Koç

Zirconium titanate synthesis by diethanol amine based sol-gel route

ZrTiO4 powder are synthesized by a modified sol-gel route via bimetallic diethanol amine complex of zirconium and titanium alkoxides. Samples are cured at 140°C and calcined between 500–800°C. Powders are characterized with XRD, TGA, DTA, SEM and TEM methods. The ZrTiO4 powders are obtained at 650°C from the amorphous form. No identified peaks can be attibuted to other phases, namely, zirconia and titania are not observed.

Evaluation of Jeffamine®-cored PAMAM dendrimers as an efficient in vitro gene delivery system†

In this study, we investigated gene delivery properties of Jeffamine-cored polyamidoamine (PAMAM) dendrimers (JCPDs). The effects of dendrimer concentration, generation, and core size on the gene delivery have been analyzed. The experimental results showed that the JCPD effectively delivered plasmid DNA inside the HeLa cells, and the transfection efficiency improved considerably as the number of generation increased. The cytotoxicity of JCPD in different concentration was tested for HeLa cell line. JCPD was complexed with a lacZ gene carrying plasmid and tested for transfection efficiency using quantitative β-galactosidase expression assay. Additionally, confocal microscopy results revealed that JCPD effectively delivered green fluorescent protein-expressing plasmid into HeLa cells and produced fluorescent signal with satisfactory efficiency. The highest transfection efficiency was obtained from JCPDs G4 and G5, which mixed with expression plasmid vectors at a 10/1 weight ratio. These results indicated that under optimized conditions, JCPD can be considered as an efficient transfection reagent and can be effectively used for gene delivery applications.