Seminar by Dr. Ngo Son Tung and Dr. Thai Hoang Chien

On January 25, 2024, the lectures from Dr. Ngo Son Tung and take place at the meeting room of Ton Duc Thang University, Bao Loc campus.

Dr. Ngo Son Tung presents a talk entitled "Morphology of a Transmembrane Aβ42 Tetramer via REMD Simulations"

Abstract:

The folding/misfolding of membrane-permiable Amyloid beta (Aβ) peptides is likely associated with the advancing stage of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) by disrupting Ca2+ homeostasis. In this context, the aggregation of four transmembrane Aβ17–42 peptides was investigated using temperature replica-exchange molecular dynamics (REMD) simulations. The obtained results indicated that the secondary structure of transmembrane Aβ peptides tends to have different propensities compared to those in solution. Interestingly, the residues favorably forming β-structure were interleaved by residues rigidly adopting turn-structure. A combination of β and turn regions likely forms a pore structure. Six morphologies of 4Aβ were found over the free energy landscape and clustering analyses. Among these, the morphologies include (1) Aβ binding onto the membrane surface and three transmembrane Aβ; (2) three helical and coil transmembrane Aβ; (3) four helical transmembrane Aβ; (4) three helical and one β-hairpin transmembrane Aβ; (5) two helical and two β-strand transmembrane Aβ; and (6) three β-strand and one helical transmembrane Aβ. Although the formation of the β-barrel structure was not observed during the 0.28 ms─long MD simulation, the structure is likely to form when the simulation time is further extended.

Dr. Thai Hoang Chien presents a talk entitled "Small scale analysis of porosity-dependent functionally graded triply periodic minimal surface nanoplates using nonlocal strain gradient theory"

Abstract:

In recent years, the triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) has emerged as a remarkable solution for constructing structures, drawing inspiration from natural architectures. TPMS offers several outstanding features, including porous architectures with high interconnectivity, smooth surfaces and the ability to achieve mathematically controllable geometry features. However, it is evident that the current research has not fully harnessed the extensive potential and benefits of TPMS structures. In this paper, a groundbreaking approach for analyzing functionally graded triply periodic minimal surface (FG-TPMS) nanoplate, which is utilized a novel nonlocal strain gradient isogeometric analysis, is provided. Three patterns of the FG-TPMS nanoplate, namely Primitive (P), Gyroid (G) and I-gragh and Wrapped Package-graph (IWP), are utilized in this study. The primary focus is to investigate size dependent problems with two types of density distributions. The proposed model successfully incorporates both nonlocal effects and strain gradient effects into nanoplate structures. The paper demonstrates how the mechanisms responsible for both reducing and enhancing stiffness in the nanoplate can be understood by fine-tuning the nonlocal and strain gradient parameters. The findings of this study offer promising prospects for future design and optimization as they provide a robust approach to address the complex mechanical behavior observed in the FG-TPMS nanoplate. The proposed model not only captures the behavior accurately but also opens up new avenues for exploring the capabilities of FG-TPMS structures.