DMI/MEMS Seminar Presented by Prof. Hao Yan

Designer Nucleic Acid Architectures for Programmable Molecular Systems.

My lab uses nature's design rules as inspiration to advance biomedical, energy-related, and other technological innovations through the use of self-assembling molecules and materials. We aim to create intelligent materials with better component controls at the atomic and molecular levels. Speciically, we are interested in designing bio-inspired molecular building blocks such as DNA, RNA and proteins and programming their higher order assembly into systems that will perform complex functions. Our ultimate goals are 1) to engineer an information guided self-assembling molecular system for the finest possible interactions of molecules in a three-dimensional space; and 2) to create man-made molecular machines/molecular robotics through molecular design, molecular programming, directed molecular evolution and molecular systems engineering. In this talk I will discuss some of our work along this line and present some of the challenges and opportunities that exist in DNA and RNA based molecular design to engineer programmable materials and programmable medicine.