CAREER: Histone-Mimetic Gold Nanoparticles as Self-Activating and Tailorable Gene Delivery Scaffolds

0746458 Sullivan材料研究部生物材料项目授予特拉华州大学的这项职业奖是通过将纳米金颗粒与附着的仿生和核特异性解包装肽结合的自组装单层功能化来研究一种新型的自激活基因递送平台。 有了这个奖项，Millicent Sullivan博士将合成和表征用三甲基化组蛋白尾部（H3 K4 Me 3）修饰的组蛋白模拟金纳米颗粒（HMGNs）。 这些纳米粒子与质粒DNA的自组装将是该项目的另一部分。该项目的最终潜在目标是创建包含组蛋白尾部组合的HMGN，其优化HMGN/DNA纳米复合物的核特异性转录激活。 该项目的目标之一是将特拉华州大学的研究活动与研究生和本科生的教学、培训和教育结合起来。 该项目的外联部分涉及高中学生及其教师的参与。 当地高中教师将被选拔并在研究员培训？的实验室作为教学实习生在生物工程课程模块，这些教师反过来将提供培训和实习的高中学生。 此外，这些高中学生和教师将由本科生和研究生共同指导。

0746458SullivanThis Career award to University of Delaware by the Biomaterials program in the Division of Materials Research is to study a novel, self-activating gene delivery platform by combining self-assembled monolayer-functionalized with nanogold particles with attached biomimetic and nucleus-specific unpackaging peptides. With this award, Dr. Millicent Sullivan will synthesize and characterize histone-mimetic gold nanoparticles (HMGNs) modified with trimethylated histone tails (H3K4Me3). Self-assembly of these nanoparticles with plasmid DNA will be the other part of this project. The ultimate potential goal of this project is to create HMGNs containing combinations of histone tails that optimize nucleus-specific transcriptional activation of HMGN/DNA nanocomplexes. This project, if successful, could develop an integrated gene therapy scaffold and a generic gene/drug delivery system targeted to the nucleus of the cell.One of the objectives of this project is to integrate research activities with teaching, training and education of graduate and undergraduate students at University of Delaware. The outreach component of the project involves the participation of high school students and their teachers. Local high school teachers will be selected and trained at the researcher?s laboratory as teaching interns in bioengineering course module, and these teachers in turn will provide training and internship to high school students. In addition, these high school students and teachers will be co-mentored by undergraduate and graduate students.