News

Laure Bar, Marta Lavrič, Miha Škarabot, and George Cordoyiannis (F5), in collaboration with Maja Caf and Slavko Kralj (K8, Jožef Stefan Institute), Aleš Iglič (University of Ljubljana), Patricia Losada-Pérez (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium), and Raj Kumar Sadhu (Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India), have published an article entitled “Lipid-phase-modulated interactions of gold nanoparticles with supported vesicular and planar membranes” in Colloids and Surfaces B: Biointerfaces. This article provides new insights into the impact of lipid phase on interactions between lipid membranes and nanoparticles. Using quartz crystal microbalance with dissipation monitoring, complemented by atomic force microscopy and simulations, it demonstrates that vesicle rupture – induced by nanoparticles – is enhanced in rigid membranes (gel-ordered or ripple phase) compared to fluid (liquid-disordered phase) membranes. Importantly, the effect of lipid phase is decoupled from other physicochemical parameters, such as the lipid acyl chain length and the presence of charge in either the membrane or the nanoparticles. These findings establish lipid phase as a key determinant of nanoparticle-membrane interactions and advance fundamental understanding. This insight is essential, as dynamic changes in bilayer rigidity, composition, and surface charge regulate these interactions.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.colsurfb.2026.115665

Honeybees and bee products, such as honey, royal jelly, propolis, pollen, and others, are often found to contain residues of different types of pesticides, including insecticides, acaricides (against varroa mite), fungicides, and herbicides. Bees are exposed either through direct veterinary treatment or by interactions with the environment. Monitoring bees and bee products is thus important both in view of food safety and environmental monitoring. In the review paper, we analysed literature published between 2019 and 2024 and conducted a relational co-occurrence analysis. Our study identified the gaps of the monitored matrices and calls for standardized quality control and reporting practices. The work was partially supported by the ARIS grant J7–50040.

The paper was published in the journal Trends in Environmental Analytical Chemistry https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S221415882600005X#spnsr1

Cyanobacteria, also known as blue-green algae, are among the most significant life forms in our planet’s history. They caused the formation of an oxygen atmosphere, which enabled the evolution of more complex organisms. Filamentous cyanobacteria can glide on surfaces and react to changes in environmental conditions by reversing their gliding direction. In the new study, we investigated a novel navigation mechanism whereby the filaments move straight through water, but bend and turn to the right on dry substrate. We developed a theoretical model that established a connection between helicity of the gliding motion and the curvature of the track. This research was conducted in collaboration with the experimental group of Dr. Vahid Nasirimarekani at the Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization (MPIDS) in Göttingen, Germany.

Published in: A. Vilfan, L. Abbaspour, S. Villa in V. Nasirimarekani, “Chiral gliding: Right-handed navigation of filamentous cyanobacteria”, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. 123: e2534547123 (2026), https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2534547123
 

George Cordoyiannis, in collaboration with J. Thoen and C. Glorieux (KU Leuven, Belgium), P. Losada-Pérez (Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium), I. Lelidis (University of Athens, Greece), and C.S.P. Tripathi (Banaras Hindu University, India), has published a review article entitled “The Halperin-Lubensky-Ma argument on the nature of the liquid-crystalline nematic-to-smectic A phase transition: what we have learnt from experiments over the past 50 years” in Liquid Crystals Reviews. This article comprehensively reviews half century of experiments that aimed to detect the fluctuation-induced weakly-first-order character of the nematic-to-smectic A (N-SmA) phase transition in liquid crystals, based on the Halperin-Lubensky-Ma (HLM) argument. High-resolution calorimetric and optical birefringence studies, including some conducted by the authors of this work, exhibit remarkable scaling consistent with the HLM predictions. This experimental demonstration of HLM in liquid crystals is of major importance for a wide range of physical systems, from superconductors to quantum chromodynamics, in which fluctuation-induced first-order transitions occur.
https://doi.org/10.1080/21680396.2025.2602170
 

The journal Nature Reviews Physics has published a review article entitled “Platforms for the realization and characterization of Tomonaga–Luttinger liquids”. In the article, a colleague from the department, Martin Klanjšek, together with an international group of collaborators, provides an overview of the field of physics that has developed over the past two decades based on the theoretical concept of the Tomonaga–Luttinger liquid. The concept describes the physics of interacting quantum particles in one dimension, where, compared to the more common case of three dimensions, the role of interactions is so strong that it leads to very unusual collective behavior, which is, however, entirely universal, applying equally to fermions, bosons, and anyons. The article demonstrates how this concept has proven successful in describing experimental results in such diverse systems as organic conductors, carbon nanotubes, quantum wires, topological edge states in quantum spin Hall insulators, Josephson junctions, Bose liquids in nanocapillaries, and quantum spin chains and ladders.

Link to the article: https://www.nature.com/articles/s42254-025-00866-w