Biomimetic Systems

Given the complexity of life and living systems, it can be useful to validate research hypotheses in biomimetic systems. As the name implies, these mimic properties of biological systems (e.g., complex proteinaceous assemblies), but can be more reductionist in nature. By building nanoscale biomimetic systems bottom-up, we can carry out experiments with higher level of control than possible in vivo. We make use of model membranes to study the effect of membrane-permeating peptide and proteins, of DNA-origami based pores to mimic the nuclear pore complex (in collaboration with Chenxiang Lin and Patrick Lusk at Yale), and study nature-inspired antimicrobial peptides that are de novo engineered by Maxim Ryadnov at National Physical Laboratories.