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Rein V. Ulijin - CUNY Advanced Science Research Center

Abstract:

We are interested in learning how peptides can be used to create functional materials and adaptive systems using bottom-up approaches. We use integrated computational and experimental approaches to search and map the peptide sequence space and create guiding principles for the formation of gels, soluble nanofilaments, liquid condensates and complex, sequence-adaptive liquids. The talk will provide updatest on four ongoing research directions: (i) Design of peptide modalities that give rise to formation of fluorescent liquid condensates that are taken up by cells. (ii) Design of dispersible nanostructures that undergo emulsification driven by evaporation. (iii) Experimental learning and memory using sequence-adaptive peptide mixtures. (iv) Co-assembly of peptides and drugs to create drug-matched nanoparticles. Overall, the research demonstrates that peptides, and mixtures of peptides, show significant potential as designable and tunable nanomaterials for a variety of applications in biomedicine and green nanotechnology.