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LECTURE: Visit by prof. William M. Shih, Harvard University, USA, Wednesday Nov 15-17 2016

Portrait of Professor William Shih. Private photo.

Professor William M. Shih will visit Gothelf lab and CDNA on Nov 15-17 2016 where he will act as a member of the assessment committee in connection to Guido Grossi’s PhD defense. Guido Grossi is a member of Biomolecular Design Lab and a part of EScoDNA and CDNA.

Professor Shih is a member of CDNA and will also participate in the this year’s CDNA annual meeting with the Danish National Research Foundation.

Professor Shih is Professor at the Department of Biological Chemistry, Molecular Pharmacology and Department of Cancer Biology at Harvard University. Prof. William M. Shih is overseeing an effort to apply Synthetic Biology approaches to the development of self-assembling DNA nanostructures and devices for use in biomedical applications (https://wyss.harvard.edu/team/core-faculty/william-shih/).

Specialized iNANO Lecture:

On Wednesday, Nov 16, at 14:15 professor Shih will give a Specialized iNANO Lecture in INANO Auditorium (1593-012):

Title: DNA-based building blocks for future therapeutics

Abstract:

DNA origami, in which a long scaffold strand is assembled with a large number of short staple strands into parallel arrays of double helices, has proven a powerful method for custom nanofabrication. Although diverse shapes in 2D are possible, the single-layer rectangle has proven the most popular, as it features fast and robust folding and modular design of staple strands for simple abstraction to a regular pixel surface.

Here I will discuss the DNA-origami barrel architecture, built as stacked rings of double helices, that retains these appealing features, while extending construction into 3D. I will discuss how we can use these architectures to scaffold liposome assembly, and how they can serve as building blocks for nanocapsules for future therapeutic application.