Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Biological And Biologically Inspired Polymers For Interface Modification, Lea Clayton Paslay

Dissertations

Naturally occurring macromolecules are produced for a specific function and have the selectivity to accomplish objectives with little waste in energy. The scientific community strives to develop smart, efficient molecules on an economical scale, thus lessons can be learned from nature and applied to cost effective synthetic systems. First, the mimicry of naturally occurring antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) will be described. AMPs show great potential as alternatives to conventional antibiotics as they can selectively bind and eliminate pathogenic bacteria without harming eukaryotic tissues. Aqueous reversible addition–fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization was utilized to prepare primary and tertiary amine containing AMP polymer …