Peptide Tailored Smart Surfaces

Nurit Ashkenasy, Department of Materials Engineering and the Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel

Host: Cecília Roque, UCIBIO NOVA

ZOOM link: https://bit.ly/GuestSeminarsUCIBIO

ID da reunião: 865 7786 0516

Senha: 805165

Abstract: Controlling the properties of surfaces and interfaces of materials is extremely important. Such control can be achieved by attaching organic monolayers to the surface. In this talk, I will demonstrate that using peptides, small bioorganic molecules that offer the diversity and multi-functionality of proteins, opens the way to designing highly tunable and smart surfaces.

In the first part of the talk, I will demonstrate the use of peptides to tailor the electronic properties of surfaces. The effect of peptide side chains and their backbone connectivity and folding state on the resulting electronic properties will be demonstrated. I will further show that in addition to tailoring the surface properties, the peptides can be used to template syntheses of the materials in an environmentally friendly approach. The properties of the resulting films are tuned by the peptide, which can be used to functionalize the surface, e.g., for sensing.

The utilization of the unique properties of peptides for the development of programmable surfaces will be demonstrated in the second part of the talk. I will present the design of a coiled-coil peptide system in which folding and chemical reactivity is responsive to external stimuli. The responsivity of the system facilitates the ability to control the binding of the peptides to the surface and/ or their folding state, which affects the surface's physico-chemical properties in a reversible manner. The complexity of the system will be demonstrated by using the surface properties as the readout of devices that perform numerous logical operations simultaneously. The feasibility of applying this approach to develop biosensors will be demonstrated.

Our work demonstrates novel approaches for forming controllable smart surfaces that can be used in diverse electronics, biotechnology, and medical applications.

Short CV: Nurit Ashkenasy is a professor at the Materials Engineering Department at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU), which she joined in 2006. She is also a member of the BGU’s Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology at BGU. Nurit received her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Tel Aviv University (Israel) in 2000. After a postdoctoral research at the same department, she moved in 2001 to the Scripps research institute in La Jolla California to work as a research associate in the group of Prof. Ghadiri. Nurit has published many papers in high impact journals and has been awarded with several awards, including a Fulbright postdoctoral fellowship. Her research interests include engineering of materials based on protein structural motifs for molecular electronics applications.