The City College of New York
Chemical Engineering Department
PRESENTS

Professor Paul S. Cremer
Department of Chemistry, Texas A&M University

Department: Chemical Engineering
Date & Time: Mon, Nov 2,  14:00 
Location: Steinman Hall - T312
Topic: Using Supported Bilayers for Protein Sensing and Separation

ABSTRACT

 This presentation will describe recent advances in our laboratory for creating supported phospholipid bilayers (SPBs) for use in bioanalytical and biophysical applications. SPBs are a promising system for mimicking many properties of native cell membranes. As such, they hold great promise for creating highly selective biosensors as well as for the design of nanoscale environments in which membrane proteins can be separated and probed without denaturation. Three important hurdles exist, however, before these systems can be widely exploited in these applications. First, SPBs are generally unstable upon exposure to air. Second, there is typically insufficient space between the lower leaflet of the supported bilayer and an underlying planar support to allow full mobility for membrane proteins. Finally, label-free detection schemes need to be designed to detect proteins within these planar supramolecular architectures. Specific molecular level strategies developed in our laboratory will be discussed for all three cases.