Interfacing "Soft" and "Hard" Matter with Exquisite Chemical Control

The present paper reviews the recent development of new chemical and biological technologies for the sitespecific immobilization of proteins onto inorganic materials and their potential applications to the fields of micro and nanotechnology.

Biography: Youn-Hi Woo received her master's degree in pharmacy from the Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea in 1996 working on the organic synthesis of pharmaceuticals. She then obtained her doctoral degree in pharmacy from the Oregon State University in 2002 under the guidance of Prof. Philip J. Proteau by studying deoxyxylulose isomeroreductase inhibition for the development of new antibiotic and antimalarial agents. She then joined Prof. Stephen J. Benkovic's laboratory at the Pennsylvania State University where she performed post-doctoral research on DNA methyltransferase inhibition and assay methods. Her current research at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory focuses on using proteinsplicing techniques to label proteins in-vivo and probe transcription factor-DNA recognition. Her general research interests are in understanding small molecule-protein interactions, enzyme mechanisms and enzyme catalysis. She is also interested in applying the principles of molecular recognition towards exploring protein-protein interactions, sequence specific binding to RNA and DNA and site specific proteolysis in a high-throughput manner.

Julio A. Camarero is a staff scientist and head of the Laboratory of Protein Chemistry and Engineering at the Lawrence Livermore Laboratory since 2003. He started his studies in chemistry at the University if Barcelona (Spain), received his Master degree in 1992, and finished his PhD thesis there in 1996. Afterwards he joined the group of Professor Tom W. Muir at The Rockefeller University as a Burroughs Wellcome Fellow where he contributed to the development of new chemoselective ligation techniques for the chemical engineering of proteins. In 2000, he moved to the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory as a Distinguished Lawrence Fellow where he became staff scientist and head of laboratory in 2003. His current research interests are focused in the development of new bioorganic approaches using protein splicing and trans-splicing for the high throughput creation of protein chips and their application to biosensing and proteomics. Dr. Camarero has authored over 30 peer-reviewed publications and three invited book chapters.