Professor Friedrich C. Simmel will visit the Gothelf lab on Wednesday and Thursday (Oct 26-27 2016) where he will act as a member of the assessment committee in connection to both Ilenia Manuguerra’s and Sarah Wendelbo Helmig‘s PhD defences.

Professor Simmel is head of Simmel lab, Physics of Synthetic Biological Systems (http://www.e14.ph.tum.de/en/home/) at Technical University of Munich, Germany. His research focus lies within physicochemical properties of natural and artificial biomolecular systems and their potential applications in nanotechnology and synthetic biology.

Specialized iNANO Lecture:

On Wednesday, Oct 26, at 14:15 professor Simmel will give a Specialized iNANO Lecture in Auditorium VI (1510-213) at Department of Chemistry:

Title: Condensing DNA into nanometer-sized objects and patterns

Abstract: 

In nature, DNA molecules often have to be packed into strongly confined spaces such as the cell nucleus, sperm heads, or virus capsids. This condensation process is facilitated by cationic condensing agents, which help to overcome the strong electrostatic repulsions between closely packed DNA duplexes. In this talk, we will present two applications of condensing agents in an artificial context. First, we demonstrate how polyamines can be used to create and stabilize DNA origami nanostructures under low ionic strength conditions. Second, we show how condensation of micrometer long DNA molecules can be directed along one-dimensional lines on a lithographically structured biochip. The dynamics of 1D condensation depends on the size of the patterns and can be utilized for the implementation of unconventional computational processes.

References:

1. A. Chopra, S. Krishnan, F. C. Simmel, Nano Letters (2016) – DOI:10.1021/acs.nanolett.6b03586
2. Günther Pardatscher, Dan Bracha,
   Ohad Vonshak, Shirley Daube, F. C. Simmel Roy Bar-Ziv, Nature Nanotechnology (2016) – DOI: 10.1038/nnano.2016.142