Seminar entitled "Design and Discovery of Materials Inspired by Antifreeze Proteins"
| Dates: | 12 February 2020 |
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| Times: | 12:30 - 13:30 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | Department of Materials |
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| Speaker: | Matthew I. Gibson |
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The formation and growth of ice is a major issue, from ice-build up on aircraft wings or wind turbines, to the frustration of scraping your car windows in winter before driving to work!
Biological systems are particularly susceptible to low temperature stress, which can lead to cell death, collapse of microtubule networks, protein aggregation and membrane rupture.
Extremophiles have developed an elegant range of macromolecular solutions to control cold-induced damage from antifreeze proteins, to ice nucleating proteins to late embryogenesis proteins.
I will discuss the role that synthetic polymer chemistry can play in dissecting how these proteins achieve one of the most complex recognition events in biology – recognising ice in water.
I will also discuss our progress in discovering new materials capable of protecting cells and proteins during cryopreservation (without interacting with ice). Using these insights we have
successfully cryopreserved a range of proteins, micro-organisms and cells using the polymers in place of traditional small molecular cryoprotective agents.
Biography
Matthew Gibson holds a Chair joint between the Department of Chemistry and the Medical School at the University of Warwick. He obtained his PhD from University of Durham
and conducted postdoctoral research at EPFL Switzerland, before being appointed to Warwick in 2009. Matt has been awarded the 2012 MacroGroup Young researchers medal, a
2014 RSC emerging technologies prize, 2015 Dextra medal, 2015 PAT young talent prize and the 2018 Macromolecules/Biomacromolecules Young Investigator Prize.
Matt holds a Royal Society Industry Fellowship, as well as an ERC starting and consolidator grants. Matt’s research group focusses on developing new biomaterials:
This spans extremophile inspired materials for cell storage, to new technologies for pathogen detection/neutralisation as well as fundamental polymer and glyco-science.
Speaker
Matthew I. Gibson
Role: Professor of Chemistry, Royal Society Industry Research Fellow
Organisation: University of Warwick
Travel and Contact Information
Find event
C53
Sackville Street Building
Manchester
