Research

Molecular Bionics

Technology inspired by biological systems is called Bionics. Engineering of proteins is the discipline of acquiring and applying chemical knowledge to design and (re-)build structures. Covalent tethers, caps, turn-mimics, and other rigid structural building blocks in exchange for natural amino acids yields synthetic variants of natural biopolymers which can classified as shape-persistent biohybrids.

Producing well-optimized solutions that had never appeared in nature has a benefit for other scientific disciplines:

Improving on biopolymers: The beta-turn mimic Hot=Tap restricts a beta-turn and forms polar contacts at a protein-protein interface.

Synthetic mini-silaffins mediate the precipitation of silica under ambient conditions as it is done by diatomee (Prof. C. Steinem, Prof. M. Sumper).

The Alzheimer peptide forms so-called toxic oligomers which then further aggregate to plaques. Our aim is to synthesize specific aggregation states which are soluble and help characterizing the binding epitope of the anti-Alzheimer-antibody (Prof. R. Dodel).

Engineered covalent capping of three collagen peptide strands yields mini-collagens of adjustable length and melting temperature.

The inherent tendency of peptides to form macrocyclic rings can be quantified by the reversible macrocyclisation of iminopeptides.

All synthesis depend on the availability of adequately protected amino acid building blocks.

Head-to-head-linked RNA links two RNA strands in an unnatural way.

Methods

Chemical Synthesis of modular biopolymers on polymer support. Development of new building blocks for peptide chemistry.

Further keywords:

Bioorganic Chemistry / Peptidomimetics / Supramolecular Chemistry / NMR spectroscopy