Dr. Francesco Ricci will visit Gothelf lab on Tuesday and Wednesday (Oct 25-26 2016) where he will act as a member of the assessment committee in connection to Ilenia Manuguerra’s PhD defence.

Dr. Ricci is head of the research group, Laboratory of Biosensors & Nanomachines at University of Rome, Italy (http://www.francescoriccilab.com/). His research focus lies within the fields of nanotechnology, analytical chemistry, biotechnology, computational chemistry and drug-releasing nanomachines.

Specialized iNANO Lecture:

On Tuesday, Oct 25, at 15:15 Dr. Ricci will give a Specialized iNANO Lecture in Physics Auditorium (1523-318) at Department of Physics:

Title: Gaining control of DNA-based nanodevices

Abstract:

Nature has invented a number of tricks and strategies by which the behavior of proteins and other biomolecular machines can be finely controlled. These highly optimized and evolved mechanisms allow to control biological pathways with different chemical and environmental stimuli and are at the basis of the high specificity and selectivity of biomolecular machines.

Motivated by the above arguments we have characterized and recreated in-vitro several mechanisms to control the response of DNA-based nanodevices for diagnostic and drug-delivery applications (1-2).

Using these mechanisms we can finely control the activity of DNA-based nanodevices with different chemical and environmental stimuli including pH (3-7), antibodies (2), enzymes (8), small molecules (9) and electronic inputs (10).

I will present an overview of the most representative and recent examples developed in our lab in the above research directions and I will give a brief presentation of the new routes and possibilities that these results offer.

References

1. Porchetta. A., et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2013, 135, 13238.
2. Ranallo, S. et al., Angew. Chem., 2015, 54, 13214.
3. Idili, A. et al., Nano Lett., 2015, 15, 5539.
4. Porchetta, A,   et al. Nano Lett., 2015, 15, 4467.
5. Amodio, A. et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2014, 136, 16469.
6. Idili, A. et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2014, 136, 5836.
7. Amodio, A. et al., J. Am. Chem. Soc., 2016, in press.
8. Del Grosso, E. et al., Nano Lett., 2015, 15, 8407.
9. Del Grosso, E. et al., Nanoscale, 2016, in press.
10. Ranallo, S. et al., Chem. Sc., 2016, 7, 66-71.