Intracellular Controlled Radical Polymerizations

合成生物学和(生物)材料的界面是一个非常有前途的研究领域，但尚未得到充分的探索。它可以在解决人类最大的问题之一方面发挥关键作用，这就是生命是如何开始的，非生物材料是如何变成有生命的。如果合成的聚合物被成功地整合到活细胞中，就可以通过生物正交触发器在细胞内诱导效应，从而开辟控制细胞的新途径，即控制细胞的发育和行为。该项目的总体目标是将生物催化可控自由基聚合(BioCRP)整合到活细胞中，作为一种将生物系统与合成聚合物和聚合物纳米结构相结合的全新方法。该项目旨在从根本上了解两亲性嵌段共聚物在细胞内直接合成和自组装时会发生什么，以及如何引导这一过程形成纳米结构或半合成细胞膜。为此，将开发细胞内生物C反应蛋白和聚合诱导自组装的方法，并将研究嵌段共聚物的细胞内自组装及其与细胞膜的整合。

The interface of synthetic biology and (bio)materials is a highly promising, yet underexplored field of research. It can play a key role in addressing one of the biggest questions to mankind, which is how life started and how non-living materials became living. If synthetic polymers are successfully integrated into living cells, it will become feasible to induce effects within cells by bio-orthogonal triggers, thereby, opening up new avenues to gain control over cells, i.e. over their development and behavior. The overarching goal of this project is to integrate biocatalytic controlled radical polymerizations (bioCRP) into living cells as a fundamentally new approach to interface biological systems with synthetic polymers and polymeric nanostructures. This project aims to achieve a fundamental understanding of what happens when amphiphilic block copolymers are synthesized and self-assembled directly within cells, and how this process can be steered to form nanostructures or semi-synthetic cell membranes. To this end, methods for intracellular bioCRP and polymerization-induced self-assembly will be developed and the intracellular self-assembly of block copolymers and their integration into the cell membrane will be studied.