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Full-Text Articles in Chemistry

Nanoparticle Building Blocks For Functional Structures, Youngdo Jeong Nov 2014

Nanoparticle Building Blocks For Functional Structures, Youngdo Jeong

Doctoral Dissertations

A major goal in material science is achieving a desired function using structures fabricated with designed building blocks. Advanced synthetic and self-assembly techniques allow various nanomaterials to become promising building blocks, providing the control of the interaction between building blocks. The unique properties of nanomaterials can be transferred to structured systems. Among nanomaterials, inorganic nanoparticles such as gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), magnetic particles, and quantum dots (QDs) provide useful physical properties stemming from their inorganic core, large surface areas, and oriented surface functionalities. My research has focused on fabricating functional systems using gold nanoparticles (AuNPs), manipulating the interaction between AuNPs, bio-entities, …


Protein Behavior Directed By Heparin Charge And Chain Length, Burcu Baykal Minsky Aug 2014

Protein Behavior Directed By Heparin Charge And Chain Length, Burcu Baykal Minsky

Doctoral Dissertations

Glycosaminoglycans (GAGs), highly charged biological polyelectrolytes, are of growing importance as biomaterials and pharmaceutical drugs due to their immense range of physiological functions. They bind to many proteins; however, the degree of structural selectivity in GAG-protein interactions is largely unknown .Our studies have focused on the importance of heparin (a model GAG) charge and chain length in protein binding in order to explore its potential applications in biofunctional tissue scaffold materials, as polysaccharide drugs in anticoagulation, and as inhibitory agents in protein aggregation. We used electrospray ionization mass spectrometry, capillary electrophoresis, size exclusion chromatography, dynamic/static light scattering and electrostatic protein …


Ligand-Receptor Interactions For Supramolecular Disassembly With Applications In Screening And Drug Delivery, Diego Amado Torres Aug 2014

Ligand-Receptor Interactions For Supramolecular Disassembly With Applications In Screening And Drug Delivery, Diego Amado Torres

Doctoral Dissertations

Proteins have the capacity to bind specific sets of compounds known as ligands, these are small molecules with a recurrent theme in their molecular design that is a characteristic exploited here to (i) identify particular affinities of small molecules for proteins with the aim of using them as ligands, inhibitors, or targeting moieties in more complex systems by means of a methodology that screens small molecules based on protein affinity; (ii) decorate a self-assembling supramolecular system at different positions, making it responsive to a complementary protein with the aim of exploring differences in disassembly and sensitivity of the release of …