| Pacific Rim Symposium on Surfaces, Coatings and Interfaces (PacSurf 2018) | |
| Biomaterial Surfaces & Interfaces | Wednesday Sessions |
| Session BI-WeE |
| Session: | Biomolecule/Material Interactions and Medical Applications |
| Presenter: | Jenny Malmstrom, University of Auckland, New Zealand |
| Correspondent: | Click to Email |
In my research group, we are interested in the interface between materials and biological systems – such as proteins and cells. Structured or organised surfaces with nanoscale features are important in a range of fields ranging from energy and computing to controlling cellular adhesion or differentiation. The precise organisation of proteins at surfaces is one route to creating such engineered interfaces. Proteins exist with an enormous structural and chemical versatility and lend themselves well to be functionalized with different moieties. The ability to rationally engineer proteins enables the use of proteins as carefully designed nanometer sized building blocks.
I will present work from our group focussed on using protein-protein interactions to build up higher order protein structures, and our efforts to organize and functionalise these structures. Proteins like Lsmα and peroxiredoxin self-assemble into robust doughnuts whose pore size can be tuned specifically to encapsulate metal complexes or nanoparticles and then assemble further into stacks to create magnetic, electrical or optical nanorods. We are harnessing this potential to create functional arrays of these self-assembling protein rings. We have explored ways of arranging these protein rings, for example through templating using a self-assembling block copolymer, or through specific binding to a patterned surface. Furthermore, the protein core has been used to template the synthesis of small (~4 nm) iron oxide nanoparticles. Throughout all of this work, imaging is an important characterisation tool and I will show how we use AFM (including magnetic force microscopy) and other techniques to understand our systems.
Building on this work, I will also present how we are developing some of these thin block copolymer films as biointerfaces, with the aim to control both protein and cellular interactions at the interface.