Event Details
Alfred E.Mann Department of Biomedical Engineering - Seminar series
Thu, Apr 17, 2025
11:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Location: MCB Room 101
Speaker: Ashutosh Chilkoti,Ph.D., Alan L. Kaganov Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Materials Science and Chemistry, Senior Associate Dean at Pratt School of Engineering and Professor for the Department of Biomedical Engineering Duke University, Durham, USA
Talk Title: Molecular Engineering of Biointerfaces and Intrinsically Disordered Proteinsâ
Abstract: I will describe two disparate projects in this talk that illustrate the diversity of ongoing workin my laboratory. In the first half, I will describe a point-of-care diagnostic—the D4 assay—that we have developed, in which all reagents are printed and stored on a “non-fouling”—protein and cell resistant—polymer brush. The D4 assay has no moving parts, does notrequire a cold-chain, and works from a single drop of blood with minimal user intervention,and measures the concentration of multiple analytes with a sub-picomolar limit of detection.In the second half, I will introduce synthetic intrinsically disordered proteins (SynIDPs) thatare genetically encoded polymers of short peptide repeats that exhibit upper criticalsolution temperature (UCST) or lower critical solution temperature (LCST) phase behavior,like many naturally occurring IDPs. Because of their simplicity, the phase behavior ofSynIDPs can be rationally tuned at the molecular level by control of their sequence,composition, and chain length. I will describe how SynIDPs can be used to develop simplebut powerful tools for biotechnology and for the design of synthetic biomolecularcondensates in live cells to control diverse cellular functions
Biography: I will describe two disparate projects in this talk that illustrate the diversity of ongoing workin my laboratory. In the first half, I will describe a point-of-care diagnostic—the D4 assay—that we have developed, in which all reagents are printed and stored on a “non-fouling”—protein and cell resistant—polymer brush. The D4 assay has no moving parts, does notrequire a cold-chain, and works from a single drop of blood with minimal user intervention,and measures the concentration of multiple analytes with a sub-picomolar limit of detection.In the second half, I will introduce synthetic intrinsically disordered proteins (SynIDPs) thatare genetically encoded polymers of short peptide repeats that exhibit upper criticalsolution temperature (UCST) or lower critical solution temperature (LCST) phase behavior,like many naturally occurring IDPs. Because of their simplicity, the phase behavior ofSynIDPs can be rationally tuned at the molecular level by control of their sequence,composition, and chain length. I will describe how SynIDPs can be used to develop simplebut powerful tools for biotechnology and for the design of synthetic biomolecularcondensates in live cells to control diverse cellular functions.
Host: Eunji Chung