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Invite talk:
Synthetic Chemical Biology: Reconstituting Selected
Processes in Membranes and Lipoproteins
Speaker: Atul N. Parikh, Ph. D.
Dr. Parikh is Professor of Departments of Biomedical
Engineering and Chemical Engineering & Materials
Science at the University of California, Davis. His
current research interests include membrane
bioengineering, membrane biophysics, organicinorganic materials, and general soft condensed matter.
Host: Prof. Chien Chou (光電所周晟教授)
Graduate Institute of Electro-Optical Engineering
Time: 14:00-15:00, Nov. 16th 2011, Wednesday
Venues: Conference Room 3, Library (圖書館五樓第三放映室)
Research interests:
Membrane biioengineering:
Use of light to pattern lateral fluidity of phospholipid membranes (Wet Membrane
Photolithography) toward the design of membrane and membrane-protein microarrays for
technological applications;
(a) Understanding and controlling membrane fluidity using engineered biomembranes
Structure, Assembly, and Dynamics of
(b) Templating bilayer structures (e.g., monolayer/bilayer motif, 1D and 2D curvatures,
Lipid Membranes:
engineered phase separation) using chemically and topologically textured substrates;
Functional Consequences of
Membrane Dynamics
(a) Understanding membrane deformations following particle adhesion;
(b) Use of supported membranes to understand membrane-membrane fusion;
(c) Functional Dynamics in phospholipid Media (protein-membrane interactions, protein
aggregation);
(d) role of membrane microenvironments in regulating ion-channel functions;
lipid bilayers as reactive-diffusive
media
for studying chemistry in confinement, effects of dimensionality on phase behavior; and
understanding nucleation, and growth supported by dynamic templates.
Dissecting Cell-surface Interactions
using model systems
(a) The use of model membranes, in conjunction with cellular assaults, to understand the plasma
membrane dynamics during cellular apoptosis (NSF- Center for Biophotonics);
(b) The use of model membranes to understand the interactions between nutritional lipoproteins
with vascular endothelium
(a) Understanding the cooperativity of surfactant self-assembly and silica polymerization to
Co-operative Processes in Surfactant- delineate mesophase formation using vibrational spectroscopies;
templated silica mesophases:
(b) Mesophase calcination at room-temperature using UV light to designed spatial patterns of
porosities in thin-film silica mesophases
Invite talk:
Switchable nanomaterials for sensing.
A synthetic polypeptide approach
Speaker: Bo G. Liedberg, Ph. D.
Dr. Liedberg is Professor of Division of Materials
Technology at the Nanyang Technological University.
His current research includes surface chemistry and self
assembled monolayers, bioinspired and biomimetic
nanoscience, and optical biosensors, micro- and
nanoarrays.
Host: Prof. Jin-Chung Chen (陳景宗教授)
Healthy Aging Research Center (健康老化中心)
Time: 10:00-12:00, Nov. 17th 2011, Thusday
Venues:2F Conference,The 1st Medicine Building (第一醫學大樓二樓會議室)
Research interests:
Surface Chemistry
and Self Assembled
Monolayers
This part of the research concerns fundamental studies of adsorbates and ultrathin molecular architectures, like SelfAssembled Monolayers (SAMs), on solid supports. The group was very early in studying self-assembly of substituted
alkylthiols on gold substrates. A key activity has been to study temperature driven phenomena occurring in such assemblies
as well as in adsorbed layers on top such SAMs. Oligo(ethylene glycol) and oligosaccharide SAMs have attracted
considerable attention, both experimentally and theoretically, because of their structural characteristics and advantageous
properties in contact with biofluids. Another area concerns interfacial water and ice. Temperature programmed studies have
been undertaken to improve the understanding of the nucleation and microscopic wetting behavior of water/ice. The
complexity of the SAMs has increased over the years and we are today focusing on architectures based on SAMs bearing
multivalent chelator heads, helix-loop-helix polypeptides and receptor functions.
Bioinspired and
Biomimetic
Nanoscience
This research concerns the development of nanoscale architectures fabricated using either top-down or bottom-up protocols
(or a combination of both). We are, for example, developing plasmonic arrays based on 100 nm gold nano dots on silicon and
glass surface for amplification of optical fluorescence signals, so-called metal enhanced fluorescence (MEF). We are also
developing composite materials based on a combination of de novo designed peptide scaffolds, planar surfaces and
nanoparticles of controlled size and shape. A novel concept based on peptide folding has been used for controlled assembly
of gold nanoparticles. The group is also involved in the development of Dip Pen Nanolithography (DPN) for patterning of
surfaces on the 30-100 nm length scale. This work is performed jointly with a previous student of the group who nowadays is
setting up a nanolaboratory at the Institute of Physics, Vilnius. We are also involved in several EC projects where different
types of micro- and nanoscale patterning tools are employed for production of coatings for biofouling, sensing and
biomedical applications.
Optical Biosensors,
micro- and
nanoarrays
The group has a long experience in developing optical transducers for biosensing application. We were the first to
demonstrate the use of surface plasmon resonance for studies of bioaffinity interactions at surfaces, a technology that today
form the backbone in SPR/Biacore instruments developed for biospecific interaction analysis (BIA). We are today using it in
combination with ellipsometric interrogation and imaging optics for microarraying, and in combination with nanoparticle for
studies optical enhancement phenomena. This includes, for example, microarray chips for protein multiplexing. The group is
also working on the development of generic biochips for studies of ligand-receptor binding. Besides working on microarray
fabrication for protein detection and analysis we are also developing biochips for the safety and security area.