Winkler Lecture: Repurposing Nature’s Building Blocks for Nanotechnology, Dr. Thomas Edwardson

~Nature uses a hierarchy of non-covalent interactions to create complex systems from simple building blocks. This combination of orthogonal supramolecular interactions is responsible for the structure and function of biological systems. To mimic these, the relationship between individual recognition motifs and the resulting macromolecular assemblies can be simplified by using a limited set of assembly rules and DNA nanotechnology has used this concept to create a wide variety of self-assembled structures with high fidelity. However, DNA nanotechnology that relies solely on Watson–Crick base-pairing is limited by this very simplicity, and ongoing efforts in this area have been focused on creating increased complexity without introducing self-assembly defects.
The first part of the talk will focus on the introduction of orthogonal supramolecular interactions to DNA nanostructures, specifically hydrophobic interactions from novel DNA-conjugates. Overall it is found that the introduction of DNA-conjugates to DNA nanostructures can introduce unprecedented modes of assembly, provide new functionality and act as an interface with other nanomaterials.
The second part of the talk concerns the engineering of protein nanomaterials, we see that the extension from a 4- to a 20-letter code brings both new challenges and opportunities for bionanotechnology. Specifically the developing self-assembled protein containers as therapeutic carriers and new tools for biotechnology will be discussed.