Bioengineering Graduate Program - Guest Seminar - Biomimetic Self-assembly of Subcellular Structures
If there is a secret recipe that enables living cells to build themselves from individual molecules, it is likely the hierarchical self-organization. Here, we report recent progress in the synthetic self-assembly analogous to subcellular structures, including flattened sacs, crystalline membranes, reconfigurable coacervate droplets, semiflexible filaments, and asters. Simplicity is the key of these synthetic systems—they can reproduce the architecture and, sometimes, functions of seemly complicated biological systems with surprisingly minimal constitutes, underling the overwhelming importance of fundamental physicochemical mechanisms over specific molecular details. Beyond molecular self assembly on a microscale, we expect integration of the assembled structures to function in unison and synergy as the next step towards cell imitation.
Lingxiang Jiang received BS and PhD in Peking University (2007, 2012); Postdoc with Steve Granick in University of Illinois at Champaign Urbana (2015). Joined Jinan University as a principal investigator in 2016 and moved to South China University of Technology in 2020. Emerging Investigator (Chem. Comm. 2020), Outstanding Young Researchers (Current Opinion in Colloid & Interface Science, 2019). He is interested in the self-assembly and dynamic behavior of subcellular structures, with publications in PNAS, Nat Comm, Angew etc.
Webpage: http://www2.scut.edu.cn/aismst/2020/1119/c21553a408977/page.htm