On November 25th, I’ll be heading up north to give a talk at the Molecular Foundry, a nanotechnology research facility at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, just up the hill from the university. The talk will be on the topic I discussed in my post from a few days ago:
Modular Molecular Composite Nanosystems
Abstract: The next level of atomically precise, self-assembled nanosystems is coming into view: complex structures that use assemblies of folded macromolecular structures as frameworks to organize diverse specialized components. Recent developments have made available a set of nanoscale structures with complementary strengths. Proteins, DNA, peptoids, and other foldamers give designers access to a combinatorial space of atomically precise structures, while nanotubes, nanoparticles, quantum dots, organometallic complexes, solid surfaces (among many others) give designers access to an growing range of specialized functional components. Together, these developments promise to enable routine engineering of precise, three-dimensional molecular nanostructures that orient and position functional components to form complex systems. In realizing and exploiting this potential, new computational design tools will play an essential role.
Ron Zuckerman directs the Biological Nanostructures facility at the foundry, and pioneered research in peptoids. He recently published a JACS paper describing new folded peptoid structures. I wrote to him, we discussed prospects for peptoid design software (a problem both like and unlike protein engineering), and he invited me to speak. Should be fun — researchers at the Molecular Foundry are doing a wide range of important work.
Peptoids deserve a post of their own: Their properties and ease of synthesis make attractive as components of self-assembled nanosystems, and they deserve more attention from nanotechnology researchers.
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