Join the Department of Materials Science and Engineering on Wednesday, February 26th, for a seminar with Rain Ulijn from the CUNY Advanced Research Center. His talk, “Context-Dependence in Assembly Code for Supramolecular Peptide Materials and Systems,” will be held in Maryland Hall Room 110 from 3-4pm.
Abstract: Context-Dependence in Assembly Code for Supramolecular Peptide Materials and Systems
Peptides have tremendous potential as building blocks of designer materials with wide-ranging applications, including those that nature never explored. The Ulijn lab is taking steps to making this vision a reality, not by copying biology, but by developing methodology for bottom-up design, discovery and evolution of functional materials and biofluids for a variety of applications. The talk will include our latest research in this area, focusing on the rich side-chain interaction space in short peptides to mimic biology’s context-adaptive and flexible structures: (i) Supramolecular Peptide Dispersions: We have developed dispersions that undergo drying-induced phase separation, forming porous peptide microparticles capable of stabilizing proteins or small molecule payloads. (ii) Context-Adaptive Peptide Crystals: We are investigating peptide crystals that exhibit context-dependent actuation. (iii) Drug-Matched Peptide Excipients: We are designing peptide excipients that are tailored to enhance the bioavailability of specific drug molecules. (iv) Experimental Learning and Memory: We are exploring sequence-adaptive peptide mixtures to enable experimental learning and memory.
Our research collectively demonstrates the remarkable potential of peptides and dynamically exchanging peptide mixtures as designable and tunable nanomaterials for a wide range of applications in biomedicine and green nanotechnology.
Bio: Rein Ulijn
Rein Ulijn is Founding Director of the Nanoscience Initiative at the Advanced Science Research Center at CUNY and the Albert Einstein Professor of Chemistry at Hunter College. His research group is figuring out how the peptide sequence space can be repurposed as a universal materials assembly code. Applications are developed in drug delivery, protein storage, energy harvesting materials and other fields. He has been recognized through international awards and honors, including the Department of Defense’s Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship, was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh; Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC); Royal Society Merit Award, RSC Medals. Originally from the Netherlands, he received his BS and MS from the Wageningen University, Netherlands and his PhD from Strathclyde University, UK and completed his postdoc at the University of Edinburgh. Previous to joining CUNY in 2014, he held tenured professorships at the Universities of Strathclyde and Manchester in the UK.