Event Series

Molecular Discovery Seminar Series

Event Description

The uniquely diverse structures and functions of biomolecules offer many exciting opportunities for creating new materials with advanced properties. Using only a limited set of side chains and auxiliary groups, they have evolved unparalleled abilities to accelerate chemical transformations, facilitate the delivery of genetic cargo to targeted cells, bind specific analytes in complex mixtures, transduce energy, and generate elaborate three-dimensional structures through self-assembly. Over the years, our lab has sought to incorporate these capabilities into new materials for use in diagnostic imaging, solar energy collection, and water purification. To do this, however, we also needed to develop a suite of chemical strategies that can attach synthetic molecules and polymers to single locations on a wide range of biomolecules. For future materials applications these reactions also must be economical and scalable, requiring them to achieve high yields with minimal reagent excesses. The...