Extending the Biopolymer Assembly Landscape Towards Functional Materials

化学系的大分子、超分子和纳米化学项目获得该奖项，资助埃默里大学的David Lynn教授重建和扩展生物聚合物在生命系统中实现的功能。合成纳米材料的设计继续受益于对生物分子的结构研究，这些生物分子执行与细胞新陈代谢、通信以及能量捕获和利用相关的化学、电气和机械功能。这些功能来自不同的生物聚合物支架的共同组装，其方式利用了每个伙伴的独特性质。正在研究的系统作为理解联合汇编代码的最初几个步骤的指南，可以导致新的功能材料。这笔资金将扩展可用于新功能材料的结构、分析和建模方法，并创造必要的洞察力，为发现功能共同组装材料提供基础。尽管生物聚合物在我们的社会中继续扩大其结构和功能用途，但材料的静电表面图案化的控制仍然遥不可及。现在，交叉β多肽的特定模式可以扩展到简单的材料中，这些材料可以在各种形式的带电表面以前所未有的原子级分辨率进行自组装。序列特定的聚合物是必要的，但通常需要复杂的共组装来生成与现有生物表面和细胞相容的表面。最近开发的定义具有原子分辨率的均质多肽组装、测量和定义电荷图案化的方法被用于将合成的生物聚合物制备成具有明确结构的带电表面的超分子功能材料的混合物和更精细的共组装。这种能够扩展生物系统功能的复杂纳米材料的自下而上设计是材料研究新方法的一部分，具有从治疗到环境监测等潜在的长期应用。

With this award, the Macromolecular, Supramolecular and Nanochemistry Program of the Division of Chemistry is funding Professor David Lynn of Emory University to re-construct and extend the functions achieved with biopolymers in living systems. The design of synthetic nanomaterials continues to benefit from structural investigations of the biological molecules that perform the chemical, electrical, and mechanical functions associated with cellular metabolism, communication and energy capture and utilization. These functions have emerged from the co-assembly of distinct biopolymer scaffolds in ways that exploit the unique properties of each partner. The systems under investigation serve as a guide for the first few steps in understanding a co-assembly code that can lead to new functional materials. This funding will expand the structural, analytic and modeling methods available for new functional materials and create the insight necessary to provide a foundation for the discovery of functional co-assembling materials.While biopolymers continue to expand in their structural and functional uses in our society, control of the electrostatic surface patterning of materials have remained beyond our reach. The specific pattern of the cross-beta peptide assemblies can now be extended into simple materials that self-assemble with unprecedented atomic-level resolution of charged surfaces in a wide range of formats. Sequence specific polymers are necessary, but generally require complex co-assemblies to generate compatible surfaces with existing biological surfaces and cells. Recently developed methods to define homogeneous peptide assemblies with atomic resolution, to measure and define charge patterning, are positioned to prepare blends and more elaborate co-assemblies of synthetic biopolymers into supramolecular functional materials with structurally well-defined charged surfaces. This bottom-up design of complex nanomaterials capable of extending the functionality of biological systems is part of a new approach in materials research and one with potential long-term applications ranging from therapeutics to environmental monitoring.