International Research Fellow Award: Programmed Structural Order in Functional Dendrimer Protein Mimics

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

0076184CastellanoThe International Research Fellow Awards Program enables U.S. scientists and engineers to conduct three to twenty-four months of research abroad. The program's awards provide opportunities for joint research, and the use of unique or complementary facilities, expertise and experimental conditions abroad.This award will provide Dr. Ronald K. Castellano with support for twenty-four months to work with Dr. Francois Diederich at Eidgenossische Technische Hochschule (ETH) in Zurich, Switzerland. This project is being co-funded by NSF's Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences' Office of Multidisciplinary Activities.This project involves the study of programmed structural order in functional dendrimer protein mimics. Dendrimers are symmetrically-branched molecules. In biological systems, secondary and tertiary protein structures work cooperatively to modulate the enzyme active site by exposing functionality and providing substrate accessibility. As a next step toward functional, dendrimer-based protein mimics this research will address control over dendrimer surface and branching structure. The proposed coiled coil dendrimers will be a new class of synthetic protein model systems that combine both structural and functional elements and will represent the first peptide-containing dendrimers to demonstrate well-defined and tunable structural order.Dr. Castellano's project will complement ongoing research at Dr. Diederich's lab, on functional dendrimers for recognition and catalysis and promises to help work toward major advances in the field of dendritic biological mimics. Dr. Diederich has nearly 20 years of experience in molecular recognition and supramolecular architectures. He is a leader in biomimetic dendrimer chemistry. The ETH will provide a unique melding of biological and chemical sciences making it the ideal place to this bioorganic research project. This research will have impacts in fields such as biochemistry, specifically biometric synthetic chemistry and in self assembly of nanoscale materials.***