MRS Fall 2009: Tuesday morning, part 2
I'm back in Symposium UU (Molecular biomimetics and materials design) for the rest of the morning, then off to the Exhibition in the afternoon.
One of my top wishes for these packed sessions is that people around me wouldn't have extended (and often loud) conversations. Then again, they probably are annoyed with me typing continually during the talks.
I'm particularly interested in the next talk, from Prof. Carole Perry. I had a lab next to her academic "father", Bob Williams. She's a contemporary of Stephen Mann at Bristol and I've been interested in the both their research areas since my graduate days.
UU1.6 "From biominerals to (bio)materials: the role of biomolecule-mineral interactions" Carole Perry (Nottingham Trent University)
She covered a few areas after an attractive introduction contrasting synthetic and natural mineralisation.
Biomimetic growth of ZnO. I found her critique of phage display interesting: as with any random mutagenesis technique, we don't know how it's working and we don't know what's best. She and her group has been growing single crystal planes of ZnO to look at selectivity of surface binding for peptides engineered beyond those identified by phage display.
Silica binding peptides. Different consensus sequences bind to different types of silica. Why? What is the mechanism of binding? Only two they looked at showed electrostatic interactions; something else must be a factor. Guided by computer then changes to some residues, they found that the better binding had two clear charge domains.
Dipeptides templating "flat" silver plates. Why does Gly-Gly create flat plates? They think that it's more complicated than selective adsorption on Ag(111). Their computational work suggests the formation of three discrete water layers over (111) that then affects the transport of the dipeptide to the surface. The highest interaction energy (Gly-Gly) gives plates, but only a small drop to Ala-Gly doesn't give plates anymore. Not clear exactly why.
UU1.7 "A scaffold for biological molecules to manufacture glass nanotubes" Franck Artzner (CNRS Rennes)
This was a clever bit of work with engineered peptide interactions that made extended cylindrical beta sheets that they could use a template to make double-walled silica nanotubes that assembled into longer and wider fibre structures.
UU1.9 "Peptide-nanowire hybrid materials for selective sensing of small molecules" Michael McAlpine (Princeton)
Michael is a new Prof at Princeton. His vision is to create new materials and miniature devices for sensing, say, breath to test for VOCs that are disease indicators.
He's using single-crystal silica nanowires on plastic. On their own, they are highly sensitive detectors already (e.g., 20 ppb NO2). Silane chemistry can help change how these discriminate. To improve this further, they are working with short oligopeptides that are responsive to small molecules. These were attached to the wires with standard silane and peptide coupling chemistry.This looks pretty strong in terms of discrimination, especially now that they're combining phage display to select for small molecule binding. They adapted the technique by adjusting the R group on a silane to mimic the behaviour of a small molecule in solution.
UU1.10 "Biofunctionalized carbon nanotube transistor for chemical sensors" Sang Nyon Kim (Wright Patterson AFB & Universal Technology)
They're working with SWNT-FET sensors. Their goal of small molecule sensing is like that of the previous speaker (but they're looking at molecules that are more interesting to the DoD). Here, though, they have bifunctional oligopeptides, one end to stick to the CNT and one to the bind to small molecules to improve the selectivity of their devices.
One of my top wishes for these packed sessions is that people around me wouldn't have extended (and often loud) conversations. Then again, they probably are annoyed with me typing continually during the talks.
I'm particularly interested in the next talk, from Prof. Carole Perry. I had a lab next to her academic "father", Bob Williams. She's a contemporary of Stephen Mann at Bristol and I've been interested in the both their research areas since my graduate days.
UU1.6 "From biominerals to (bio)materials: the role of biomolecule-mineral interactions" Carole Perry (Nottingham Trent University)
She covered a few areas after an attractive introduction contrasting synthetic and natural mineralisation.
Biomimetic growth of ZnO. I found her critique of phage display interesting: as with any random mutagenesis technique, we don't know how it's working and we don't know what's best. She and her group has been growing single crystal planes of ZnO to look at selectivity of surface binding for peptides engineered beyond those identified by phage display.
Silica binding peptides. Different consensus sequences bind to different types of silica. Why? What is the mechanism of binding? Only two they looked at showed electrostatic interactions; something else must be a factor. Guided by computer then changes to some residues, they found that the better binding had two clear charge domains.
Dipeptides templating "flat" silver plates. Why does Gly-Gly create flat plates? They think that it's more complicated than selective adsorption on Ag(111). Their computational work suggests the formation of three discrete water layers over (111) that then affects the transport of the dipeptide to the surface. The highest interaction energy (Gly-Gly) gives plates, but only a small drop to Ala-Gly doesn't give plates anymore. Not clear exactly why.
UU1.7 "A scaffold for biological molecules to manufacture glass nanotubes" Franck Artzner (CNRS Rennes)
This was a clever bit of work with engineered peptide interactions that made extended cylindrical beta sheets that they could use a template to make double-walled silica nanotubes that assembled into longer and wider fibre structures.
UU1.9 "Peptide-nanowire hybrid materials for selective sensing of small molecules" Michael McAlpine (Princeton)
Michael is a new Prof at Princeton. His vision is to create new materials and miniature devices for sensing, say, breath to test for VOCs that are disease indicators.
He's using single-crystal silica nanowires on plastic. On their own, they are highly sensitive detectors already (e.g., 20 ppb NO2). Silane chemistry can help change how these discriminate. To improve this further, they are working with short oligopeptides that are responsive to small molecules. These were attached to the wires with standard silane and peptide coupling chemistry.This looks pretty strong in terms of discrimination, especially now that they're combining phage display to select for small molecule binding. They adapted the technique by adjusting the R group on a silane to mimic the behaviour of a small molecule in solution.
UU1.10 "Biofunctionalized carbon nanotube transistor for chemical sensors" Sang Nyon Kim (Wright Patterson AFB & Universal Technology)
They're working with SWNT-FET sensors. Their goal of small molecule sensing is like that of the previous speaker (but they're looking at molecules that are more interesting to the DoD). Here, though, they have bifunctional oligopeptides, one end to stick to the CNT and one to the bind to small molecules to improve the selectivity of their devices.
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