COLLOQUIUM: Guiding Principles for Peptide Nanotechnology
CIC nanoGUNE Seminars
- Speaker
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Rein Ulijn, ASRC/CUNY, New York, USA
- When
-
2018/10/15
13:00 - Place
- nanoGUNE seminar room, Tolosa Hiribidea 76, Donostia - San Sebastian
- Add to calendar
-
iCal
Life's diverse molecular functions are largely based on only a small number of
highly conserved building blocks- the twenty canonical amino acids. These
building blocks are chemically simple, but when they are organized in three-
dimensional structures of tremendous complexity, new properties emerge, giving
rise to the extraordinary machinery of life. So, if just twenty simple
building blocks- when appropriately assembled - give rise to the complexity
and functionality that can sustain life- then this is clearly a very versatile
construction set.
Our overall goal is conceptually simple: to figure out how to make nanoscale
systems and materials from biology’s building blocks, and to apply these
materials to diverse problems, that require them to be interfaced, ideally
seamlessly, with living systems, or the natural environment.
Different from other research groups, we have an unbiased approach, that is
not guided by copying biological systems, and we keep these systems as simple
as possible, which lowers barriers to application. The talk will focus on our
latest results in three areas: (i) directed discovery of peptide
nanostructures with new functions, by searching the sequence space (1,2); (ii)
application of peptide nanostructures as functional materials (including
customizable melanin pigments (3) and cell culture matrices (4)). (iii)
actively assembling systems, that continuously turn over chemical fuels,
enabling dynamic changes in structure and function (5).
**REFERENCES**
1\. C.G. Pappas, et al., Dynamic Peptide Libraries for the Discovery of
Supramolecular Nanomaterials, Nature Nanotechnol., 11 , 960 (2016).
2\. P.W.J.M. Frederix, et al. Exploring the Sequence Space for (Tri-)peptide
Self-Assembly to Design and Discover New Hydrogels, Nature Chem., 7, 30-37
(2015).
3\. A. Lampel, et al., Polymeric Peptide Pigments with Sequence-encoded
Properties, Science, 356, 1064 (2017).
4\. E.V. Alakpa, et al. Tunable Supramolecular Hydrogels for Selection of
Lineage-Guiding Metabolites in Stem Cell Cultures, Chem, 1, 298 (2016).
5. M. Kumar, et al., Amino Acid-Encoded Biocatalytic Self-Assembly Enables the Formation of Transient Conducting Nanostructures, Nature Chem. 10, 696-703. (2018).
**Host** : J.M. Pitarke