Genetic Engineering of Crystals, Films, and Surfaces

This lecture will discuss the design and construction of artificial proteins that form well-defined crystals, films, and surfaces. The design of such materials draws on ideas taken in part from polymer chemistry and physics and in part from structural biology, and exploits the sequence control and chain-length uniformity provided by genetic engineering. Motivating much of this work is the question: "What kinds of new materials properties can be achieved only in uniform chain populations and not in the statistical mixtures of chains prepared by conventional polymerization processes?" Four issues will be addressed: i). strategies for efficient, accurate synthesis of wholly artificial proteins, ii). design and fabrication of polymeric crystals of controlled thickness and surface functionality, iii). incorporation of non-natural amino acids, and iv). synthesis of monodisperse, polar, helical rods and the prospects for their assembly into larger-scale structures