Experimental-computational design of protein-based materials
Diego Lopez Barreiro (Delft University)
https://dlopezbarreiro.github.io/Exceptional SIMM seminar on Wednesday the 10th of November at 3.30pm in the amphi Boreau
Engineers and scientists are increasingly working with Nature’s structural proteins, such as silk, elastin, or collagen, to synthesise multifunctional materials for applications in biomedicine, biosensing, renewable energy, or infrastructure, to name a few. This is due to their natural abundance, biocompatibility, controllable nanostructure, multi-stimuli responsiveness, and tuneable structural, mechanical, or optical properties. Nonetheless, revolutions in bioprocess engineering, and molecular and synthetic biology, are making it increasingly accessible to design new protein polymers and produce them via microbial fermentations.Thus, we can create novel protein polymers with optimized sequences with preprogrammed physicochemical or biological properties. The development of these materials can be greatly accelerated by computational modelling, namely molecular dynamics simulations. Using these computational tools, we can predict the effect of protein polymer features (i.e., sequence, chain length) or processing conditions (i.e., temperature, pH, solvent) on the properties of the resulting materials, avoiding costly experimental iterations to determine fabrication parameters. In this talk, Diego López Barreiro will present a combined experimental-computational approach for the manufacture of multifunctional protein-based materials. He will showcase examples of how this approach can be applied to natural and
recombinant silk and silk-elastin biopolymers, in combination with additives like biobased carbons, carbon nanoparticles, or biomineralized silica nanoparticles.
- This évènement has passed.
